The star-nosed mole is a ferocious, deadly predator. With the 25,000 sensory organs on the 22 appendages of its nose, this mole can find any insect that has foolishly ventured into its underground dominion. The Smithsonian quotes biologist Kenneth C. Catania:

The star-nosed mole’s “nose” is not an olfactory organ, but a skin surface that mediates touch. Innervated by more than 100,000 sensory neurons, the star is probably the most sensitive and highly acute touch organ found on any mammal. Under a scanning electron microscope, the skin surface resolves into a cobbled landscape covered with tens of thousands of tiny epidermal domes. Each is about 60 µm in diameter, and each contains a circular disk in its center. Known as Eimer’s organs, these sensory protrusions cover the entire surface of the star’s 22 appendages. In total, a single star contains about 25,000 domed Eimer’s organs, each one served by four or so myelinated nerve fibers and probably about as many unmyelinated fibers. This adds up to many times more than the total number of touch fibers (17,000) found in the human hand—yet the entire star is smaller than a human fingertip.

At the link, you can watch a video of this hunter at work.

Link | Photo: gordonramsaysubmissions

If you have a website, then you're probably familiar with Google Analytics, the free and incredibly useful web analytics service offered by Google.

Well, our friends over at Visual.ly has created a really nifty service that slices and dices your website's Google Analytics traffic data and email you everything you need to know on a weekly basis, in form of this pretty infographic. (Yes, that's Neatorama's real traffic data).

Best of all, you can sign up for free over at their site: Link - Thanks Tal!

(YouTube link)

A hovercraft is great for golf because 1. it beats walking, 2. it won't damage the course like a regular cart, and 3. it's really cool. And from what I've seen, a big part of golf is one-upping the other players. -Thanks, Brian!

Photographer Marko Popadic took this marvelous photo of a butterfly inside the eye socket of a human skull. Titled Oki ("eye" in Croatian), the butterfly's wing looks eerily like an eye staring out of the lifeless void. Link - via Mighty Optical Illusions

It's a nearly life-size Pinkie Pie! Elise's enormous pony plush stands 55 inches tall. No, alas, she does not support my an adult's weight. "That would have required her to have a solid frame inside of her, making her dramatically less cuddly." Well, then, Elise demonstrated a proper sense of priorities.

Link

That's the way I burn calories, too! Just think of all the weight you don't gain because you can't eat that pizza. This Twaggie was illustrated by David Barneda from a Tweet by Lois Lane. Catch the funniest illustrated Tweets every day at Twaggies, and if you see one that particularly relates to your life, you can have it put on a t-shirt! Link

You're probably familiar with the Snellen Eye Chart at your eye doctor's office. I once memorized it, thinking that would stop the optometrist from prescribing me some badly needed but oh, so dorky glasses.

It didn't work - he wasn't fooled and I have to wear glasses since fourth grade. But enough about me, feast your eyes on these strange eye charts, courtesy of Dark Roasted Blend: Link - Thanks Avi!

Wait, Was That Slutty? Hand Sanitizer

Are you guilty of participating in questionable behavior? We are not here to judge. Go ahead and wipe your hands and your conscience clean with the Wait, Was That Slutty? Hand Sanitizer from the NeatoShop. This relaxing hand sanitizer kills 99.9% of germs on contact and helps to gently restore your purity.   

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more grat Health & Wellness items. 

Link

If you aren't strong enough in the Force to choke someone, then Vadering is the next best thing. This rapidly growing photo meme shows one person jumping up in the air while the other (presumably) pretends to hold him or her there with the Force.

Link -via Nerd Approved

(Image credit: Flickr user CR Artist)

Ol' Jay burst into the BRI during a winter storm. "Man, it's really coming down out there, but this stormy weather reminds me of a seven-letter word. Each time you remove one letter, you have another common word; remove another letter and you have another word. You don't even have to rearrange the letters. It works all the way down until you're left with one letter, which is also a word." What is the seven-letter word?

Continue reading when you're ready to see the answer.

Highlight below this sentence for the answer.

SNOWING

SOWING

SWING

SING

SIN

IN

I

___________________

The article above was reprinted with permission from the Bathroom Institute's book Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Do you want to fly on Samoa Air? You'll now be charged by your weight instead of the number of seats that you need. Company executive Chris Langton explained:

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the concept of the future. We always weigh the mass that is on an aircraft. And that always has to pay for the transportation, it doesn't matter whether you are carrying freight or people.  Anyone who travels at times has felt they have been paying for half of the passenger next to them. The standard width and pitch of the seat are changing as people are getting a bit bigger wider and taller than they were 40-50 years ago.

Would it help to suck in my gut before the weigh-in?

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Samoa Air

This is one happy dog. He's happy because someone is throwing chicken nuggets at his face. Wouldn't that make you happy, too? See the full sequence of six images of this happy dog. Link -via Buzzfeed

(YouTube link)

Doctor Puppet is an animated webseries featuring the characters from Doctor Who, in stop-motion form. The first episode is entitled The Red X. The second episode is available as well. Continue reading to see it.


Doctor Puppet Episode 2 - The Conjunction of Eleven

(YouTube link)

Follow future episodes at the YouTube channel. Link -via Daily of the Day

Disney has officially announced the expected sequel to the 2003 hit Finding Nemo, and it makes so much sense because it's called Finding Dory. Ellen DeGeneres will star as the voice of Dory, the character you'd expect to be lost in the first place because she has a short-term memory problem.

DeGeneres offered a quip to accompany the news.  “I have waited for this day for a long, long, long, long, long, long time,” she said. “I’m not mad it took this long. I know the people at Pixar were busy creating ‘Toy Story 16.' "

Finding Dory is scheduled to be released in November of 2015. Link

You know those commenters who take several minutes out of their day to not only complain about how you wasted 30 seconds of their time, but imply that those precious 30 second are worth more than any admission price or the hours someone spent creating free content for their entertainment? This comic from Funny or Die is worth every second it takes to read it -and more! Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you don't know a sanitation worker personally, and have never done the work yourself, you probably don't know much about the guys who take away the rubbish. New York University anthropologist Robin Nagle spent years researching the occupation, from following New York Department of Sanitation workers to training and taking the exam to become one herself. Then she wrote a book, Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City.

Sanitation workers, it turns out, have twice the fatality rates of police offers, and nearly seven times the fatality rates of firefighters. And their work has similarly life-or-death consequences in the long term, as Nagle shows by taking a look back at New York City's history. "A study done in 1851," Nagle writes, "concluded that fully a third of the city's deaths that year could have been prevented if basic sanitary measures had been in place."

The Atlantic has a short interview with Nagle about her experiences learning about the workers we only notice when their work doesn't get done. Link -via Digg

Photo: L. Sanchis et al

The rings you see above don't exactly make the small ball inside invisible to the eye, but it does make it undetectable to sonar:

José Sánchez-Dehesa, an electrical engineer at the Polytechnic Institute of Valencia in Spain, and his colleagues pursued a different method: Instead of preventing sound waves from hitting an object — in this case an 8-centimeter plastic sphere — they built a cloak to eliminate the scattered waves left in the sphere’s wake.

Using computer algorithms, the researchers came up with a design made up of 60 rings of various sizes that form a cagelike structure around the sphere. Simulations indicated that sound waves scattering off the sphere and the ringed cloak would interfere with each other and cancel out. (Noise-cancelling headphones exploit this phenomenon by emitting sound waves that minimize ambient sounds in a room.)

Because the cloak did not need to steer sound waves in complicated ways, Sánchez-Dehesa and his team built it out of plastic with the help of a 3-D printer. They hung their creation from the ceiling of an echo-free chamber, pointed a speaker at it and played a range of sound frequencies. For most frequencies, the sphere scattered an easily detectable amount of sound. But at 8.55 kilohertz — an audible high pitch — the cloaked sphere became imperceptible to the sensors behind it.

Link - via PopSci

This is a guaranteed way to get the grandkids to visit! Steve and Jeri Wakefield of Dallas, Texas, had the world's best treehouse built around the pecan in their backyard nine years ago, when their two grandsons were preschoolers. The tree grows through the house, but does not bear the weight. As the boys grew, they added play equipment to the structure. Now that the grandsons are grown, the neighborhood children use the treehouse. It has several furnished rooms (with air conditioning), which you need to see at Houzz. Link  -via Everlasting Blort

(Image credit: Sarah Greenman)

Superman Cookie Jar

Do strange visitors and villainous individuals keep stealing your cookies?  Protect your snacks with the Superman Cookie Jar from the NeatoShop. No one will suspect that this mild-mannered cookie jar holds your most precious sweet treats.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Cookie Jars and fantastic Superman items. 

Link

The San Francisco Museum of Art has a restaurant called the Blue Bottle Coffee Bar. You may remember its cake modeled after a Piet Mondrian painting. That's only one of several snacks that it offers that look like famous works of abstract art. Roy Scarbrough asks, "But can they do that for a Caravaggio?" Well, not yet.

Link -via Foodbeast | Photos: San Francisco Museum of Art

A Swedish study tells us what common sense should have already: the elderly, both men and women, should ride women's-style bicycles. The upper crossbar that adds stability to high-speed bikes contributes to accidents when mounting or dismounting.

Four out of ten of the people seriously injured or killed in single-vehicle accidents involving a bike is aged over 65-years-old, according to data compiled by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI).

Hip injuries are one of the most common types of injuries incurred when and these often occur at low speeds or when the elderly are getting on or off their bikes.

Researchers at the institute have thus come to the conclusion that it would be preferable if men switched to the traditional low-crossbar design of ladies' bikes when they get older.

The researchers added that the health benefits of bike riding still outweigh the risk of injury for the elderly. Maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of the labels for "mens" and "women's" bikes and come up with terms that just indicate whether the style has a high crossbar. Link -via Arbroath  

This awesome absinthe skeletal spoon comes from Crazy Pig Design features the slogan "Absinthe Perd Nos Fils" (or "Absinthe kills our sons"). It's a special order item but it's a perfect match for the Skellington Skull and Crossbones Decanter and Glass from the NeatoShop, don't you think?

If you like that, check out more absinthe posters and accessories over at Dark Roasted Blend: Link - Thanks Avi!

Speculation about the first Star Wars movie to be made by Disney offered April Fools Day pranksters opportunities to cast anyone they wanted. ReadJunk announced the news that Justin Bieber would portray Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode VII.

William Shatner posted a Fox News press release on his Facebook page that announced that Disney had contacted the Shat about a role in the upcoming film, quoting him as saying "The whole thing may be one of the biggest mistakes of my career. What do I know about playing a Jedi?"

But the most intriguing of them all was the announcement from George Takei:

Friends, I am thrilled to announce that I'll be starring in the Star Wars reboot directed by JJ Abrams. I'll be playing Master Ceti Maru, a member of the Jedi High Council. The new film, entitled "Star Wars: Galactic Empire," is greenlit and will begin filming sometime early next year. It is truly a moment for The Star Alliance. Thanks to all my fans for their decades of support.

Alas, it was all for naught, as yesterday was April Fool's Day. As one commenter put it: "Prank or no, the result is, I now have a picture of George Takei as a Jedi. Already a win." 

-via The Daily Dot and Daily of the Day.

Nothing makes you feel good quite like a snazzy outfit. Katie Bradley's four tortoises are the best dressed in town, thanks to a wide assortment of crocheted cozies. 

Link -via Craft

(YouTube link)

Ronan the sea lion is said to be the first non-human mammal to keep a musical beat without other cues. Sure, humans and birds can do it, but they also sing. Ronan was trained to do this, but once she got the hang of what the researchers wanted, she can synch her "dancing" to new songs with different beats. Link

While many people were heading the their family's house for Easter or Passover last weekend, plenty of nerds, including myself, skipped the holidays and instead celebrated pop culture at WonderCon, the smaller cousin of the San Diego ComicCon. While there was plenty to see and do at the convention, as usual, one of the highlights was the cosplay. Here are some of the highlights from this year's event.

As the convention was right next door to Disneyland, there was an even bigger proportion of kids compared to the average convention, which also meant even more adorable kids cosplaying. This little one was an AT-ST complete with a built-in sound effect from the film that played every time he took a step.

This youngster made quite an impressive Princess Leia, complete with a plush R2-D2 backpack and yarn braids.

Rainbow Brite was quite cute, but it was her friends Twink and Starlite that really took center stage. Twink was especially adorable as she was just so darn proud of those sparkly shoes.

Tiny Daryl was there, ready to take care of any roving zombies, including those in his own family.

Just like there are more kids than usual because Disneyland is next door, there are also more Disney character cosplays. This Belle was particularly adorable because she was so excited about everything going on at the event -especially her sonic screwdriver and the giant cow at one of the booths.

Cinderella was much more reserved than Belle, but she still seemed to be having a great time and she too enjoyed the giant cow plush.

Darkwing Duck was ready to stop any evil-doers in their tracks, and with great style as well.

There were even new Disney characters in the mix, including the characters from their new Paperman film.

Not all of the Disney cosplay is so traditional. This Cruella de Vil was a delightfully fresh take on the classic villain.

This Buzz Lightyear costume took a lot less material than the original and was certainly a lot more comfortable and funky.

There are always tons of Star Wars costumes at conventions, but in this setting, it was only fitting for R2 to take on a little more of the Disney spirit.

Naturally, there were plenty of other Star Wars mash up costumes as well. Including this rather nice set of steampunk Boba Fetts.

The famous R2-D2 Ballerina was also there, along with fellow dancers Han and C-3PO.

While there were plenty of fantastic costumes there, this beautiful Queen Amidala dress might have been one of the most elaborate outfits at the convention.

Enjoy a little cross-series fun? Then you would have loved seeing the female version of The Doctor playing with R2-D2.

You see all kinds of TARDIS dresses these days, but this was certainly the first flapper TARDIS I've seen and also the first pregnant TARDIS as well.

Speaking of rare Doctor Who costumes, you see plenty of Tens, Elevens and Fours, but seeing someone go as Number Five was a refreshing change.

I've always wanted to wear the poofy dress Kaylee wore to the fancy ball and I can't say how thrilled I was to actually see someone else wearing this great dress.

This year, Adventure Time was really popular amongst cosplayers, especially the Ice King. Here are two of them hanging out with Gunter outside of the convention.

Here's another Ice King errr..Queen.

Not all the Adventure Time costumes were the Ice King...here is Marceline with a gender swapped Fionna.

This Grumpy Cat was the only meme-related costume I saw, but even if there were others, this would still be the best.

There were tons of Ghostbusters and a few Stay Pufts, best of all, they were all hanging out together at one point.

Like most conventions, there were plenty of comic book costumes, including this great Power Girl warrior costume.

There was also this great Wonder Woman ballerina, although I can't imagine her dancing well with those boots.

These two had a unique take on Wonder Woman and Cat Woman as well.

While Ghost Rider went in a more standard costume style, the result was still impressive.

Overall, the convention was a blast and the costumes were certainly up to par and impressive, even if the event is relatively small compared to many others out there. For more great photos, check out my post over at Rue The Day.