Small-banded kukri snakes, named after the curved Kukri knives used by Nepalese Gurkha soldiers, apparently use their sharp teeth to slice into certain victims and then proceed to eat them from the inside.

Scientists already knew that kukri snakes used their curved teeth to tear into eggs, but a recent study revealed that they sometimes used their knife-shaped fangs to slice the abdomens of poisonous toads, before sticking their heads in side them and feeding on their intestines. According to the research published in the Herpetezoa online journal, the victims are basically eaten alive from the inside, which the authors themselves found to be a macabre feeding strategy.

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The Japanese castle town of Himeji is home to the only known black cat café in the world, Nekobiyaka, where you can enjoy a refreshing drink in the company of about a dozen black felines.

There are hundreds of cat cafes all over Japan, but only one dedicated exclusively to black cats. Nekobiyaka opened in 2013 and has since become somewhat of a tourist attraction in Himeji. The owner, Ms. Yagi, came up with idea of a black cat café as a way of increasing the felines’ chances of finding a forever home. As in most places around the world, the rate of adoption for black cats in Japan is significantly lower than for all other colors, and many of them end up euthanized. At Nekobiyaka, visitors get to interact with black felines and discover that the stigma and superstition surrounding them is simply ridiculous.

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A Chinese video production startup has been getting a lot of attention on social media because of its adorable office pet – a two year-old llama-alpaca mix.

We’ve written about companies bringing pets into the office to help their human staff unwind, but that usually meant cats and small dogs. Now, a Wuxi-based company has ‘hired’ Tuo Baiwan, a young llama-alpaca mix to strut around the office and just be his adorable self. The furry animal loves attention and treats, and his human colleagues are more than willing to give him both. In return his simple presence help relieve stress and puts a smile on employees’ faces.

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Nikken Kamisori, a Japanese company with a long experience of making razors and blades, claims to have created the ultimate ear hair tweezers.

Ear hygiene is very important in Japanese culture, which explains the existence of ear cleaning parlors where ear cleaning masters wield specialized tools like the mimikaki to remove just the right amount of ear wax. Considering the long-standing tradition of ear cleaning in Japan, it comes as no surprise that a Japanese company managed to invent what it calls the world’s best ear hair tweezers. Featuring a metal spring at the end, which helps catch hairs more efficiently, the innovative device has become a huge hit among middle-aged Japanese men who care about their ear cleanliness.

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‘Kissing the Coronavirus’ is a steamy 16-page e-book that’s as wacky and funny as it is disturbing. It’s basically about a female doctor who ends up falling in love with the Coronavirus after a vaccine trial gone wrong.

The 16-page e-book, which launched on Amazon on April 22, tells the story of Dr. Alexa Ashingtonford, a scientist tasked with finding a cure for the Coronavirus who ends up falling for the enemy. When a trial vaccine is injected into a fellow scientist, he dies and becomes the virus in human form, leaving the good doctor overcome with desire. The book cover features a woman kissing a green-colored man who isn’t the Hulk, but – you guessed it – the Coronavirus, and if that doesn’t get people’s attention, the short description certainly will: “She was supposed to cure the Coronavirus. Instead… she fell in love with it”.

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A 41-year-old qualified solicitor recently took his wealthy parents to court in an attempt to force them to continue financially supporting him indefinitely.

The London-based man, who has not been identified claimed that his parents had knowingly been nurturing his dependence on them for the last 20 years, only to recently ‘significantly reduce’ their financial support, after their relationship deteriorated. He wanted a judge to rule that his parents should continue supporting him, and his lawyers cited laws relating to marriage and children during a remote family court hearing. Interestingly, the 41-year-old unemployed lawyer is currently living rent-free in a central London apartment owned by his parents. They have also been paying all his utility bills as well, but apparently that’s just not good enough…

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Poitou, or Baudet du Poitou is a French donkey breed known primarily for their large size and their distinctive coat which, if left ungroomed for long periods of time, will form dreadlocks.

Originally bred in the Poitou region of France, Baudet du Poitou was once highly sought after all over the world, because of its size and strength. Before the industrial revolution, Poitou donkeys were raised to be used in breeding large mules known as Poitevin, once “regarded as the finest and strongest in France”, and exported to various countries for the development of other donkey and mule breeds. In the former province of Poitou, donkey breeders would  traditionally leave the animals’ coats ungroomed, causing their long locks to form shaggy lumps known as ‘cadenettes’ or dreadlocks. These would sometimes grow so long that they reached the ground.

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The caterpillar of the bagworm moth is known as somewhat of a gifted architect, building impressive and durable cocoons out of twigs, leaves, seeds and other organic materials.

As larvae, bagworm moths look for a place to settle down and feed, such as a leaf or the branch of a tree. Once they’ve found a suitable location, they go out looking for building material to reinforce their cocoons with. Materials like twigs, dead leaves, seeds and even dirt are most often used, and depending on the species of bagworm moths, the cocoon can end up looking like a pile of leaves or a carefully planned miniature log cabin.

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A Spanish ham producer recently announced that it sold the most expensive piece of traditional Iberian ham to a Japanese buyer for the outrageous price of 12,000 euros ($14,100).

Julio Revilla, president of Sierra Mayor Jabugo, an Iberian ham producer based in Corteconcepción, Spain’s Huelva region, said that the record-breaking piece of ham was prepared following the strict instructions of the buyer. They requested that the ham come from an Iberian pig at least two years old that had been grazing in the mountains of Sierra Mayor for at least 100 days. The animal had to gain at least 100 kilos during the time they spend grazing and that their diet consisted only of acorns and herbs. Finally, the curing period for the ham was five years, double the normal curing period for premium ham.

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A Chinese steel production company recently made international news headlines for offering 4,116 of its employees brand new cars as bonus for surpassing profit targets for the fifth consecutive year.

On October 1st, Jiangxi West Dajiu Iron & Steel Corporation organized an epic event to celebrate its success and reward employees for contributing to its yearly growth. It was reported that the company had reported increasing profits for the last five years, and management wanted to do something special to thank the staff, so they decided to give each one of them a car. A total of 4,116 new vehicles – 2,933 Jiangling Ford Territory and 1,183 FAW-Volkswagen Magotan – were distributed in batches in the weeks prior to the National Day holiday.

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Forget wish-granting goldfish and genies in a bottle, you can now own your very own magical cat and have all your wishes fulfilled for the modest price of 10 million rubles ($127,000).

A Novosibirsk woman recently posted a bizarre ad on Russian classified ad platform Avito, asking people to pay a small fortune for her pet cat, a Scottish Fold named Vincent I, or Vinsik, for short. The woman, known only as Elena, told Russian journalists that she discovered her cat’s wish-granting powers by accident, but has since tested its effectiveness three times, to impressive results. She now wants to share its magic with others, but is asking for a considerable fee as reward for her kindness.

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A 45-year-old Chinese man reportedly suffered a heart attack after getting extremely upset while helping his son with his math homework.

The man, surnamed Liu, had been helping his Year 3 son with homework since school started last month, but over the past two weeks he had started experiencing a mild pain in his chest whenever he got frustrated with the boy. Things got really bad on Sunday, when Liu became really upset after repeating the same math question to his son three times, who was struggling to find the answer. At one point he started experiencing sharp chest pain and shortness of breath, and eventually passed out. Liu later woke up and thought medical attention at the Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital, where he learned that he had suffered a heart attack.

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A wildlife photographer recently captured one of nature’s most extraordinary camouflage masters on camera – a moth larva that looks like a mossy twig on a moss-covered tree.

Over they years we’ve featured a bunch of natural camouflage artists on Oddity Central, from the butterfly that looks like a dead leaf, or the moth with a disgusting scene painted on its wings, to the terrifying assassin bug, but the larva captured by wildlife photographer David Weiller in the Madagascar rainforest is definitely up there with the most impressive. Looking like a bulbous patch of moss and lichen with a twig-like body attached to a moss-covered tree, this fascinating creature looks like part of the tree, not a living thing.

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Shaun Mckenzie, who goes by the name of NeeYellow on social media, is an insanely-talented artist who specializes in hyper-realistic color pencil drawings that look like photographs.

The young Australian artist spends anywhere from 60 to 80 hours creating his photorealistic masterpieces, and looking at the degree of detail in some of his works it’s easy to see why he spends so much time on them. To be fair, that is just the average time required to complete a drawing; he has finished some in as “few” as 15 hours, but he has also spent over 280 hours on one of his drawings. It’s painstaking, laborious process that requires mountains of patience is what I’m trying to say.

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Blue eyes are a rare sight in Indonesia, a country where the vast majority of the population has dark hair and dark eyes, but some members of an indigenous tribe have the most stunning blue eyes, because of a rare condition known as Waardenburg Syndrome.

Believed to affect about 1 in 42,000 people, Waardenburg Syndrome is characterized by some degree of hearing loss and pigmentation deficiencies, which can include bright blue eyes (or one blue eye and one black/brown eye). It is caused by mutations in any of several genes that affect the operation of neural crest cells in embryonic development. The visual effect of Waardenburg Syndrome is particularly impressive in ethnic groups where blue eyes are a rarity, as you can see in the photos of members of the Buton tribe taken by Indonesian geologist and amateur photographer Korchnoi Pasaribu.

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