Poltys mouhoti, aka the Rolled-up Leaf Spider, is a fascinating arachnid that uses incredible camouflage to protect itself from predators during the day.

Native to Vietnam, but also spotted in other Asian countries like Cambodia, Thailand or Malaysia, the aptly-named rolled-up leaf spider is part of the Poltys genus of spiders, which numbers 43 known sub-species, most of which have this amazing ability to mimic plant parts as a self-defense mechanism. They accomplish this by tucking their legs in towards their abdomen, and extending a long, stem-like appendage outward. Even their body has a brown and green coloration and a shape reminiscent of a broken branch, which enhances the camouflage even more.

Read More »

Videos shot during a wedding in Pingdingshan, China’s Henan Province, have gone viral on social media, because of the three bridesmaids and their unusual gender.

The role of bridesmaid is traditionally reserved for women, but what happens if the bride doesn’t have any female friends, or if none of her friends can make it to the wedding? Desperate times call for desperate measures, and one woman in Pingdingshan, China, recently managed to surprise everyone in attendance at her wedding with three very unusual bridesmaids, all men. You couldn’t really tell at first glance, as they were all wearing pink sleeveless dresses, long-haired wigs and even makeup, but a closer look revealed clear manly features.

Read More »

Designer Yuru Zhang recently won a design competition with a thin, card-like lipstick inspired by the way Chinese women applied lip makeup hundreds of years ago.

The humble lipstick tube feels like it has been around forever, doesn’t it? It hasn’t obviously, but it has become some widely adopted that it is basically the only way most of us visualize lipstick. Well, one designer wants that to change and he has come up with an ingenious design for lipstick that looks nothing like the good old tube Maurice Levi invented back in 1915. Instead, he has come up with a slick, card-like design inspired by the sheets of pigment-infused paper that Chinese women used to apply lip makeup centuries ago.

Read More »

A Chinese woman who thought she had bought a pet micro-pig three years ago ended up with a 150-kg regular pig usually bred for its meat.

In 2018, Zhang Li, a young woman living in Shanghai, decided to get a pet animal for company. She wasn’t really a cat or dog person, so she started looking for an alternative, and thought she had found it when she saw an advertisement for a micro-pig. She did her research, and learn that the miniature pigs made great pets; they were adorable, grew only about the size of a small dog, and were very intelligent. So she decided to take the plunge and get one for herself, not knowing that she would end up with a 150kg beast as a pet.

Read More »

A small, oval-shaped face with a well-defined and pointy V-line chin is one of the most coveted female beauty features in many Asian countries, and they can apparently get it by simply sucking on a bottle-shaped gadget for 10 minutes a day.

You can buy pretty much anything online these days, but every once in a while we stumble upon products so bizarre that they make us scratch our heads an wonder who would ever pay money for them. Case in point, this weird beauty accessory on Chinese shopping platform TaoBao, which is supposed to help reshape users faces, if they suck on it for just 10 minutes a day. Marketed as an electric facial exerciser, the bottle-shaped gadget apparently vibrates up to 880 times per minute and it’s these high-frequency vibrations that somehow stimulate facial muscles and reshape your face.

Read More »

Almost every morning for the past two decades, Juliet the macaw has been visiting the local zoo in Rio de Janeiro to interact with others of her kind through the metal enclosure. She is the only wild macaw in the Brazilian metropolis, and this is her only opportunity to socialize.

Macaws are social birds, so loneliness is a tough burden to bare for Juliet, a beautiful blue-and-yellow macaw who calls Rio home. She is the only wild specimen seen in city since 1818, and no one really knows much about her. Zoo staff named the bird Juliet, but they don’t even know if she is actually female. It’s really hard to tell with macaws, and to establish her true gender they would need to capture the bird, and either examine her gonads or take blood or feather samples. And there’s really no need to put Juliet through all that stress just to satisfy human curiosity.

Read More »

Scientists the world over have been struggling to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus for almost two years, but one Indian numerologist believes we can cure the world of this pandemic just with the help of bad spelling.

SV Annandd Rao, a stenographer and numerology hobbyist from Ananthapuram, in India’s Andrash Pradesh state, believes that simply spelling “covid” and “corona” the wrong way can cure not only his home district, but the entire world of coronavirus. Apparently the numbers corresponding to the letters in the current spelling of these words add up to a very dangerous number, which will bring the world to its knees. But if we could change that terrible number to something beneficial, by simply adding some letters, than all will be well…

Read More »

Serama chickens are the smallest in the world, but you really couldn’t tell by their attitude. Seeing them pose with their head pulled back and chest sticking out, you’d think they were some sort of feathered bodybuilders.

The Serama chicken breed can be traced back all the way to the 1600s, to the Kelantan province of Malaysia, but the current strain can be attributed to Wee Yean Een, a breeder who popularized it during the 1970s and even gave the chicken the Serama name, after King Rama of Thailand. However, the breed was rendered almost extinct by the bird flu pandemic of the early 2000s. Luckily, they had already been exported to many countries around the world by that point, including the US and UK, and were able to make a comeback.

Read More »

Who knew watching and listening to a bartender chop block of ice into translucent jewels with a santoku knife could be so satisfying?

A Tokyo bartender recently got his five minutes of online fame after a video of him carefully turning blocks of ice into beautiful jewels went viral on Twitter, getting over one million views. It doesn’t sound like anything remotely interesting, but I spent close to an hour today just watching him slice the ice into almost perfects cubes and then cut the corners and sharp edges to create these crystal-like cubes for his patrons.

Read More »

Bugatti, a company known for its exclusive sport cars, recently unveiled a $300,000 luxury pool table that relies on highly advanced gyroscopic technology to remain perfectly level in any conditions, making it usable on yachts.

There are a few things in this world that money can’t buy, and until now, playing pool at sea was one of them. Try as they might, engineers could not design a table to negate the rocking of the boat and remain level. Until now, that is, because Bugatti apparently managed to create a self-leveling pool table that will allow the rich and powerful to enjoy a game of billiards on their expensive yachts.

Read More »

Egor Onopko, an up-and-coming blogger from Vladivostok, Russia, managed to attract a lot of media attention and make some nice pocket money by turning the right side of his neck into advertising space for interested individuals and businesses. No one really believed Onopko, who goes by “onokonda” on social media, would go through with the idea when he first announced it on Instagram, but last week, he posted visual proof that he had gone through with it, adding that he made around 1 million rubbles ($13,500) from the 10 sold advertising spots.

Read More »

A 47-year-old woman who went missing almost half a year ago in a canyon in Utah was recently found living in a small tent, surviving mostly on a diet of grass and moss.

The woman, whose name has not been released, was declared missing last November after her car and camping equipment were found in a parking lot near Spanish Fork Canyon, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. Utah County Sheriff’s Office searched the area, but could not locate her, and attempts to contact her relatives proved unsuccessful. In the end, authorities impounded the car and held her equipment, assuming that she had crossed into Colorado. Still, search and rescue teams continues to scour the area both on foot and from the air, and last weekend they finally found her.

Read More »

Austrian company Tec-Innovation recently unveiled smart shoes that use ultrasonic sensors to help people suffering from blindness of vision impairment to detect obstacles up to four meters away.

Known as InnoMake, the smart shoe aims to become a modern alternative to the decades-old walking stick that millions of people around the world depend on to get around as safely as possible. The currently available model relies on sensors to detect obstacles and warns the wearer via vibration and an audible alert sounded on a Bluetooth-linked smartphone. That sounds impressive enough, but the company is already working on a much more advanced version that incorporates cameras and artificial intelligence to not only detect obstacles but also their nature.

Read More »

Patrons at a restaurant in Taipei, were recently shocked to see cockroaches crawling all over the place after thousands of them were released on the premises by two masked men.

On May 4th, two masked men entered the G House Taipei restaurant holding large bags filled with over 1,000 cockroaches, which they simply released at the reception desk on the second floor of the establishment, before fleeing the scene. Roaches started crawling on the floor, walls and furniture, and it wasn’t long before patrons enjoying their meals there started noticing them as well. Among the diners were policemen Taipei Police Department who were attending a banquet there, and they immediately created a task force to catch the perpetrators.

Read More »

The Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Istanbul, Turkey, has the detailed ornaments of an Orthodox stone church, but it’s actually made of prefabricated cast iron elements.

Sometimes referred to as ‘The Iron Church’, St. Stephen Church is considered the largest prefabricated cast iron building in the world. It consists of thousands of prefabricated pieces of cast iron, from large walls, to small, intricate decorations, all of which weigh over 500 tons. As almost the entire structure and its exquisite décor are cast out of iron, a close inspection reveals the heads of the large screws holding it together everywhere you look.

Read More »