SPIDERS▶
Fifty-six new species of spider have been identified by dipping their genitals in gold.
A team of scientists discovered the species during a single 10-day expedition in Queensland. They included a tarantula the size of a human face with legs the width of a biro, and a spider with a colourful fold in its back that it can fan out like a peacock. One way scientists confirm that they’re new species is by dipping their genitals (the spiders’, not the researchers’) in liquid gold, so that they show up more clearly under an electron microscope and can be compared better with the genitals of existing species. The team’s arachnologist, Robert Raven, has arachnophobia and estimates he’s been bitten 100 times.
In New York, another team of scientists observed spiders that walk like ants to avoid being eaten, because ants often bite, sting and are generally undesirable as food. The ant-jumper spider scuttles in a zigzag pattern, just like ants do, and lifts up its two front legs every few seconds to disguise them as antennae. In other leggy arthropod news, researchers discovered a species of sea spider* that breathes through its legs. In fact, one ecologist noted that ‘they do all their business in their legs’, storing their eggs, their guts and even their gonads there.
Members of the general public have also been encouraged to seek out spiders this year – specifically one of the world’s deadliest, the funnel-web spider. A zoo in Australia asked people to stop killing funnel-webs and instead help to milk them. The Australian Reptile Park needs funnel-web spiders handed in by members of the public in order to manufacture antivenom. The zoo milks the creatures for their toxins, and then uses the resulting fluid to make the antidote by ‘firing it through a very large rabbit’, according to park ranger Mick Tate. The rabbit, while remaining unharmed, produces antibodies to fight the toxins, and these antibodies are then extracted and used to make the antivenom. It has saved 1,500 lives since it was introduced in 1981 but there’s now a shortage, hence the zoo’s request. In one interview, Tate tried to persuade listeners to help with the programme by pointing out that ‘the potential to be badly envenomed or even die is certainly still there.’ While this does explain the need for the project, it perhaps wasn’t the best way to convince members of the public to get involved.
Spiders have eaten more meat than humans have this year. New research found that while humans eat around 400 million tonnes of meat and fish annually, spiders globally consume up to 800 million tonnes. Put another – more disturbing – way, if spiders ate human flesh they could devour the world’s population (330 million tonnes) more than twice over every year.
SPRINTING▶
The world’s fastest man is going into fast food.
Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, retired from the track at this year’s World Championships in London, and he hopes to become a restaurant magnate. He announced that his ‘Tracks and Records’ brand, which opened its first outlet in Kingston, Jamaica in 2011, will come to the UK, and will be operating at 15 locations here by 2022.
The final year of Bolt’s career didn’t quite go according to plan, as he was beaten in his last 100-metre race by former drugs cheat Justin Gatlin, and he was also stripped of one of his gold medals from the 2008 Olympics. That wasn’t Bolt’s fault: Nesta Carter, one of Bolt’s colleagues in the 4 x 100-metre relay, tested positive for the drug methylhexaneamine, which meant that Bolt’s medal had to be returned – despite the fact that methylhexaneamine was not named as a banned substance until 2010.
Doping test technology usually lags a few years behind the production of performance-enhancing drugs, hence the reason you can be banned from the sport and stripped of your medals nearly 10 years after the event for taking drugs that weren’t then explicitly illegal. But that doesn’t stop experts from predicting what will be the next step. This year Lauren Petersen, a scientist who founded the Athlete Microbiome Project, predicted that athletes will soon be taking faeces as performance-enhancing drugs. There’s a microbe found in the human body called prevotella, which helps your muscles to recover from hard work. Professional athletes have a lot more prevotella in their gut than average, so it’s thought that in the future, you could take a pill that contains bacteria from, say, Usain Bolt’s poo, and it will help you become a better sprinter.
Scientists have found that when he sprints, Usain Bolt’s left foot stays on the ground for 14 per cent longer than his right foot.
At the New Zealand World Masters Games, a 101-year-old woman won gold for the 100 metres in the 100-years-and-over category. She was the only entrant.
STABLE▶
See Strong.
STICK INSECTS▶
A walking stick overtook its mum to become the world’s biggest insect.
In 2014, the Insect Museum of West China found a ‘walking stick’ insect that was 62.4 centimetres long – a full 6 centimetres longer than the previous record-holder. The museum spent years looking for it, having been alerted to the existence of huge insects by locals. The insect was taken back to the museum, where it soon laid a number of eggs, all of which hatched into baby sticks, with even the smallest over 25 centimetres long soon after birth. This year, one of those insects has grown to overtake its mother as the world’s biggest insect. It is as long as a human arm, and museum workers have found that its favourite food is strawberry jam.
Meanwhile, on an island just off the coast of Australia, another stick insect is making a comeback. The ‘walking sausage’ is 15 centimetres long and was once the world’s rarest insect, but it is now creeping back from the edge of extinction. Officially called the Lord Howe stick insect, after the island on which it was first discovered, its other names include the land lobster and the tree lobster.
In 2001 it was rediscovered on an incredibly remote, rocky island near Lord Howe Island, almost a century after scientists thought it had died out. Researchers found just 24 individuals. They carefully removed two males and two females and have been diligently breeding them ever since. In 2006 there were 50 walking sausages. By 2008 there were 700. By 2012 the number had reached 9,000, and more are being bred in zoos all over the world. Asked whether they wanted the insects back, people on Lord Howe Island were ambivalent, many saying that they are disgusting, and that they preferred the rats that almost drove the insect to extinction. In a recent island-wide referendum, however, the islanders voted 52 per cent in favour of wiping out the rats, thus giving them a clear and unequivocal mandate to press on with it.
STRIKES▶
Italian fishermen went on strike to protest against ‘extremely intelligent’ dolphins.
Fishermen on the Italian island of Lipari went on strike over the increasing problem of super-smart dolphins stealing all their fish. A spokesman said that ‘they surround your boat, get in your nets, tear them apart and you are looking at 800 euros’ damage in one night, apart from having no fish.’ The average fishing boat used to bring in 11 kilos of squid a day; it now brings in just 1.5 kilos. The fishermen can’t avoid the dolphins because they’re clever enough to recognise the noise of the boats’ engines and therefore follow them, waiting for their free food.
The fishermen’s representative, Giuseppe Spinella, said, ‘Every night in the sea, there is a war for survival … Let me be clear, we have nothing against the dolphins. But we must find a solution.’ The fishermen’s demands included a blockade, the removal of dolphins from fishing areas, the declaration of a state of natural disaster, and increased government subsidies.
One proposed solution was playing loud noises underwater to deter the dolphins. But this tactic didn’t work for the Alaskan fishermen who were caught in a similar predicament this year. Frustrated that killer whales were stealing tens of thousands of pounds of fish from their fishing lines, they tried playing loud noises under the water, only to realise the orcas learned to associate the noise with the presence of food and treated it as a dinner bell.
Other strikers included the rat-catchers of Paris, who angrily claimed they hadn’t been paid the
bonus they’d been promised after carrying out a huge cull. Fifty of them – almost the whole city’s pest-control unit – went and protested outside the city hall with a banner and a large dead rat. The mayor of Paris said she planned to send each of the city’s rat-catchers a personalised thank-you note for their work.
Researchers are working on a dolphin–human dictionary. So far it has only eight words for different whistles including ‘bow wave ride’ (when a dolphin rides the wave made by a boat) and ‘seaweed’.
STRONG▶
See Stable.
SURVEYS▶
Seventy-three per cent of Democrats said they would give up alcohol for life if it meant Donald Trump would be impeached.
So did 17 per cent of Republicans. The survey was carried out by Detox.net, which surveyed 1,013 men and women across the US on the question ‘What would you give up for alcohol?’ The study also found that 30 per cent of Republicans said they would give up alcohol for ever if it meant the media would stop writing hostile articles about the president. Worryingly, a further revelation was that 23 per cent of men wouldn’t give up alcohol to halt climate change; and 7 per cent wouldn’t quit alcohol even if it meant discovering the cure for cancer.
It wasn’t the only interesting survey carried out this year (see also YouGov). Others that looked at how the new president has affected American lives included one by match.com that found the 2016 US election put people off dating. In January each year there’s usually an uptick in people signing up to the site, but in 2017 there was a decrease. Eighteen hundred people were polled to find out why, and 29 per cent of the website’s liberal users said they felt less like dating since Trump’s victory; 14 per cent of conservative users said the same.
Back in the UK, Premier Christian Radio conducted a survey asking listeners which politician they thought was most like Jesus Christ: 2 per cent said it was UKIP’s Paul Nuttall; 20 per cent opted for Tim Farron, Jeremy Corbyn came second with 27 per cent, and Theresa May topped the poll with 45 per cent …
… which is slightly higher than the number of Americans who actually know who she is. A poll of 800 Americans found that 43 per cent could identify the current British prime minister; 36 per cent didn’t know; 9 per cent answered Tony Blair; 4 per cent each thought it was Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel; and 2 per cent thought it was Jeremy Corbyn – the same proportion who thought it was Helen Mirren.
A survey of 2,000 Londoners found that a fifth of them were scared to leave the office at lunchtime in case their colleagues judged them negatively.
SWEARING*▶
Swearing improves your cycling.
Researchers at Keele University tested people’s cycling speed and grip strength, initially as they said neutral words and then as they said swear words. People were 4 per cent better at cycling and 8 per cent better at gripping while they swore.
The subjects were allowed to pick their own swear words, which suggests that – according to another study – ‘shite’ would have been the one most commonly used. It’s Britain’s favourite swear word, based on an analysis of 500,000 online reviews. Australia’s favourite is ‘boob’ and America’s is ‘sucks’ according to the survey, which seems to have had a prudish definition of what constitutes a swear word. It also found that Brits are the sixth most bad-mouthed nationality, at least online, with one in every 1,000 words being a curse word. Cypriots topped the chart, using proportionally 10 times as many swear words as British reviewers.
Shites and boobs are technically banned now in all Sam Smith’s pubs. Humphrey Smith, owner of the chain, implemented a ‘no swearing’ policy in all 300 of his establishments. Employees will feel under particular pressure to enforce this, given unconfirmed reports that Smith sometimes enters branches in disguise in order to check on his staff.
TAIWAN▶
A water fight broke out in the Taiwanese parliament.
On numerous occasions throughout the summer, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) resorted to fisticuffs in the Taiwanese parliament. It wasn’t just fists flying: water balloons, flour bombs, eggs and eventually chairs went through the air, too. The cause of these inflamed passions was a budget proposal for an infrastructure development programme.
Although this year’s fights were particularly bad, it’s not unusual for the Taiwanese legislature to descend into chaos. In 2004 a debate on military hardware purchases turned into a food fight; in 2007 one MP ended up in hospital as the two parties argued over control of the speaker’s podium; and in 2006 an MP picked up a written proposal on transport links and shoved it in her mouth so it couldn’t be read out – she eventually spat it out when opponents pulled her hair.
At least the fights weren’t the parliament’s only achievement: this year they voted to become the first Asian country to ban the consumption of dog and cat meat and the first to legalise gay marriage.
Taiwanese politician Tung Hsiang was buried in January in the southern city of Chiayi. His funeral was attended by family members, friends, and a funeral procession featuring a marching band, giant puppets and 50 pole dancers. Tung’s son explained later that his father had appeared to him in a dream and said he wanted his funeral to be ‘hilarious’.
TENNIS▶
Multiple Wimbledon matches were delayed because players had to change their underpants.
Wimbledon’s dress code dictates that all visible clothes must be almost entirely white.* Officials were therefore unimpressed when they inspected the coloured pants worn by junior player Jurij Rodionov, and those of the top seeds in Junior Doubles, in front of spectators who were waiting for the matches to begin. They judged the garments illegal and requested that Wimbledon-issued, white replacement boxer shorts be promptly delivered to the courts. In the women’s draw, Venus Williams’s pink bra straps, which were visible during her first-round match, did not reappear after a mid-set rain delay. She didn’t confirm whether she’d been told to remove the bra, understandably saying, ‘I don’t like talking about bras in press conferences. It’s weird.’
Meanwhile, John McEnroe described as ‘weird’ the idea that he’d wear one-time arch-rival Björn Borg’s underpants in bed. He does, however, wear them everywhere else. Borg has released a range of underwear, which McEnroe described as ‘comfortable and stylish’ and said he wears 99 per cent of the time.
It emerged this year that Wimbledon ballboys and ballgirls (BBGs) have to memorise a list of individual players’ superstitions that hangs on the wall where they work. Rafael Nadal, for example, doesn’t like walking on the white lines, so the BBGs have to avoid obstructing his path in a way that forces him to do so.
The strawberries at Wimbledon will soon be grown 30 metres beneath London. The All England Lawn Tennis Club plans to use a company called Growing Underground to produce its 62,000 pounds of tournament strawberries in future. Its farm is 178 steps down from Clapham Common tube station, in tunnels originally dug as air raid shelters in the Second World War.
Listening to on-court grunting is the best way to predict the winner during a grand slam. A new study published in Animal Behaviour journal found that the higher pitched a player’s grunting gets, the likelier it is they will lose.
TERRORISM▶
For staying safe in the South Pole, see Antarctica; for pretending to be bin Laden, see Arrests, Human; for a dead friend mistaken for anthrax, see Ashes; for the extremists defeated by wild pigs, see Boar; for terrorism-themed rip-offs, see LEGO; for an encounter with the mother of all bombs, see MOAB; for extremist threats to Mr Cheese, see Somalia; for the environmentally concerned radicals, see Trees; and for a country that can’t distinguish between journalists and terrorists, see Turkey.
THEFT▶
Items stolen this year include a lunchbox, an anti-theft dog and a stuffed chimpanzee in a top hat.
Thefts went from the bizarre to the brazen to the bestial, and included the following:
▶ Two men in Italy, posing as buyers, asked an art deale
r to bring a Rembrandt and a Renoir to a rented space so they could negotiate a price for them. The two paintings were worth about 27 million euros combined. Once they’d agreed on a figure, the two men left the room, claiming they were fetching a tray of coffee. They haven’t been seen since – and nor have the paintings or the tray of coffee.
▶ A man broke into a taxidermy warehouse in London and took £100,000 worth of stuffed animals. His haul included a stuffed chimpanzee in a top hat, a stuffed lion, a stuffed sloth, a stuffed giraffe, a stuffed penguin and 13 other stuffed animals. The inanimate creatures were all later recovered in Epping Forest, London. Disregarding speculation that it was an attempt to free the creatures and return them to their natural environment, the court sentenced the perpetrator to 21 months’ imprisonment.
▶ Police in Ripon, Yorkshire, confirmed they’re investigating a spate of thefts of car bonnets, bumpers and wheel arches in the area. They have warned residents to be vigilant. No doubt they are on it, like a …
▶ A used car dealership in Fort Worth, Dallas, was robbed so many times that the owner got a guard dog. This didn’t deter the robbers, who burgled the store again, taking the guard dog with them.
▶ The owners of a jewellery store in Leeds were mugged shortly after closing up shop. Three men seized the bags they were carrying, believing they contained valuable jewellery. In fact, the contents amounted to a couple of sandwiches in some Tupperware containers.
▶ An Arizona man was arrested on suspicion of burglary after he tried to climb a fence, got his trousers caught, and was left hanging upside down with his pants around his ankles until police arrived. Nothing was lost but the man’s dignity.
THEME PARKS▶
A Chinese theme park cancelled its sinking of the Titanic.
The Chinese theme park Romandisea is currently building a 269-metre-long, life-size reconstruction of the Titanic,* including a ballroom, observation deck and first-class cabins for guests to stay in. It will be completely accurate: the head of the design team, Bruce Beveridge, said, ‘We’ll even have the correct urinals in the men’s rooms.’
The Book of the Year Page 25
