Popeye the frog
We love amazing animals! A family was having spinach for lunch when they noticed an odd looking leaf in the bowl. After a quick poke of the fork, they realised that the spinach leaf was actually a European tree frog that had managed to survive a trip from the continent in a sealed, plastic salad bag. Lucky for the frog, the family were vegetarian and named him Popeye. Today, Popeye is happy and safe with an animal welfare officer.
Mini Black Hole
NASA scientists have just identified the smallest black hole ever found. It’s the size of a large city, which is tiny in space terms. Still, if you were to go near it, your body would be stretched into a ‘strand of spaghetti’ by its pull. Black holes happen when a star runs out of fuel and collapses on itself due to gravity. This new black hole has the mass of 3.8 Suns and is about 15 miles across, which makes it one of the smallest objects ever discovered outside our solar system. Amazingly, Albert Einstein had an equation that predicted that a black hole with 3.8 times the mass of our Sun would be only 15 miles across. Genius!
Dolphin Superhero
On the coast of New Zealand, a dolphin named Moko came to the rescue of a beached whale and her calf. The two pygmy sperm whales were beached on a sand bar, a shallow area where many sea animals get stuck. Rescuers tried unsuccessfully to push mother and son back into the water - the and the whales made sounds of distress. Just when the rescuers thought they would have to put the whales down to save them a slow and painful death, Moko showed up - a friendly dolphin famous for pushing kayaks and playing with swimmers in the area. To the rescuers' amazement, Moko helped guide the whales through the narrow channel to deeper waters, where they were safe again.
Boy wonder
Brazilian lawyers are dealing with quite a shock: an 8-year-old boy named Joao Victor has just passed the law school entrance exam. Joao said that it's his dream to become a federal judge, so he studied for a week and sat the exam, just to see how he would do. He said it was 'easy.' While he is already two years ahead of his peers in school, officials are wondering whether young Joao is a genius or the Brazilian exams are too easy. It's likely to be a bit of both, but no matter how you look at it, it's got to be embarrassing for those white-haired lawyers in Brazil...
Encyclopaedia of Life
This week marked the publication of the first chapter of the Encyclopaedia of Life, an online database of every animal and plant known to man. The Encyclopaedia is scheduled to be completed in 2017 and will include about 1.8 million species. Just imagine that: a guide to every living thing in the entire world. And we thought we spent too much time online now...
Want to learn more? Visit www.eol.org
