A snake with a foot was found in China.

      Dean Qiongxiu found a snake with a "claw" or a "foot" crawling around on the floor. Naturally, upon seeing such an unusual specimen she beat it to death with her shoe, and kept the snake preserved in a bottle of alcohol.

               The snake has been sent to the Life Sciences Department at China's West Normal University in Nanchang for an autopsy, so we can figure out how this mutation happened.

There’s a forest in Japan famous for suicides!

           It’s called Aokigahara, or the Sea of Trees and every year nearly 100 people hang themselves among its dense trees. The forest lies at the northwest base of Mount Fuji and because the trees are so densely packed, there is a renowned absence of animals or wind, resulting in an eerie silence. 

           The forest has always been linked with demons and death throughout Japanese mythology. Every year, usually around March, people walk into the forest with a rope and little else to find a tree to end their life. The forest is so densely packed however, that the government has admitted there are most likely many bodies that are never found. 

            In 1960 the novel “Nami no Tō” consisted with two lovers ending their lives in the forest and ever since suicide rates have skyrocketed. The government has begun placing posters in both Japanese and English throughout the area urging people to reconsider; yet many do not. Every year the government sends a search body of police to find the hanging bodies and has ceased publishing the figure to deter others from following suit.

A snail can sleep for 3 years....

      It is no secret that snails need moisture to stay alive. Because many snails live in dry climates, they have developed a few tricks to survive through dry spells. One of them is extremely long hibernation. 

Even though some snails can even dig underground to get away from the dry air, this might not be enough to keep them alive.

          If the situation is too hot and dry, snails can find a place to hibernate for up to three years until the climate is more suitable for them. Because snails can live for fifteen years, this is a good portion of their life, but not as much as other living things. 

Here's some other facts about snails and how they manage to gather up all the moisture they need to survive:

• Snails are mostly nocturnal, so that the light of day doesn’t burn them out as badly. 
• Because they are hermaphrodites, they don’t need to worry about finding a mate in the dry air. 
• The opening of the snail shell is covered with a slimy gel that prevents much air passage.

Scientists have found soft tissue on dinosaurs that is nearly 70 million years old!

      A Tyrannosaurus rex was recently found in Montana with a shattered leg bone. As paleontologists studied the specimen, one scientist did something that was slightly out of the ordinary. Dr. Mary Schweitzer took fragments of the bone and submerged them in acid in her laboratory. 
       What she discovered was astonishing. The specimen contained bits of tissue, red blood cells, and more. Before this, it was thought impossible that these elements would survive this long. This is the first observation of its kind and scientists around the world are baffled by the findings. 
      The findings could potentially lead to new insights on how dinosaurs evolved, how their muscles and blood vessels worked, and could even settle the debate on whether the animals were warm-blooded, coldblooded –or both.
 Why was this information just discovered? Scientists say it’s so difficult to find and procure the bones in the first place that most did not even think to destroy them in acid! No word on whether they'll be able to get enough DNA out of this tissue to create a theme park, though.

A Russian woman gave birth to 69 children!

     

               

             In the 1700s there was a woman who birthed 69 children. She completely holds the record for most children born to one woman. In total, she had 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets!

            Out of the 69 children, 67 of them survived past their infancy. This information has been in circulation since the 1800s, and there have been doubts about how true the claims are. Nevertheless, the information presented was good enough for the Guiness Book of World Records to include this woman in their record books.

A river shoots red fireballs into the air

        A river in Thailand randomly shoots red fireballs into the air. No one knows why.

        About 70 - 100 km downstream from Vientiane, capital of Laos, the Mekong River does something really strange. At night, the river produces red fireballs that rise up into the air and disappear without making any noise. The balls are usually small, but some have been observed to be the size of basketballs. While it might seem mysterious and remote to most of us, the area along the river is heavily populated with homes and roads, and people have gotten used to it.

          People from the area confirm to witnessing the fireballs their whole life and that their parents and grandparents did too. So far there is no scientific explanation for the phenomenon. There are, however, myths about the fireballs have been formed over the years. The most famous is of a naga, dragon or snake, which crawled through the mountains where the Mekong is now. The naga continues to pass through the area, but now underwater, and like a good dragon it spits fireballs into the air from the river bottom.

At the end of every October, a festival is held in celebration of the mysterious fireballs. Tens of thousands show up every year, but the balls are random and some years aren’t even witnessed during the festival.

Wedding of two snakes - Nearly 1,000 people in Cambodia attended

        Chamreun, a 16-foot, 200 lb python tied the knot with her groom, Krong Pich, a smaller male python. The marriage was held in Village One in the Kandal province near Phnom Penh, drawing a crowd of nearly 1,000 humans. The wedding ceremony was intended to bring about good luck for the village.

       The ceremony lasted for 2 hours, complete with Buddhist monks blessing the newlywed snakes, live music, and the wedding guests showering them with flowers.