This newspaper has attracted many attentions from around the world - Spain, England, Finland, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, USA, and some countries in Africa. It's become very well known and sells some 7,000 copies a month. But 7,000 seem to be quite a small number to a newspaper agency. For this newspaper, it's a big achievement compare with it's size. Vossa Senhoria is a weekly Brazilian newspaper recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's smallest newspaper.

Vossa Senhoria is 2.5 cm wide by 3.5 cm tall. Despite of its small size, it has a kids' section, a columnists, it talks about political issues, poetry, together with some pictures and advertisement too. Altogether it has 16 pages. It was created in 1935 by the printing worker and self-teaching journalist Leônidas Schwindt, who saw the small size as a solution for creating a quality low-cost newspaper. They got 5 workers working for the world's smallest newspaper. Everything is all hand made. Folding the newspaper alone requires three persons.

This tiny newspaper cost about US$2.00 each, US$25.00 if subscribed annually and the company promise to deliver anywhere in the world.

Source : www.vossasenhoria.com.br

Birds that barks naturally

We knew from visiting the zoo and TV that parrots has a special talent of mimicking human speech. Parrots have been kept as pets for thousands of years, and the African Grey parrot was highly popular in Greek and Roman times. Meanwhile, Macaws, which are a parrot-like bird, can also be taught some speech if you have patience, but are not as chatty as a true parrot. Cockatoos are the real performers, often ruffling their beautiful head crest before repeating something you might not want to be overheard by the kids. The common parakeet or budgie, can also be taught by repetition to imitate specific things, including words and sentences but they will often pick up sounds on their own, such as a whistling kettle, or a dog barking.

But when it comes to barking, nothing can match a new species of bird discovered only a decade ago. The species was discovered in June 1998 in the Andes, Ecuador by ornithologist Robert S. Ridgely, Director of the Center for Neotrpical Ornithology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The new species now named Antpitta avis canis Ridgely is about the size of a duck, is one of the largest birds discovered in the last 50 years. Appeared in black and white and with long legs, it startled Robert by barking like a dog! Amazingly, the bark is a natural sound, and not a mere learned imitation. 30 of these barking birds were found. It went undetected for so long because it lives in remote parts and, of course, it doesn't sing and the barking might only be heard during breeding season

Source : www.sciam.com

Toad's strange style of raising young

The Surinam Toad or Pipa pipa is a species of frog in the Pipidae family. It is usually found in northern South America. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests, swamps, freshwater marshes. These frogs are almost exclusively aquatic. The appearance of the toad is somewhat like a leaf. It is almost completely flat, and colored in a mottled brown. Feet are broadly webbed while the fronts has E.T. like fingers. These quadripartite fingertips are one of the characteristics that distinguish Pipa pipa from other species. They usually grow to about 4-6 inches.

What's bizarre is their remarkable reproductive habit and method. Mating begins when the male makes a tickling call while in the water. The male will grasps the female from above and around the waist in inguinal amplexus. The female then initiates vertical circular turnovers while they're together. The male clasps the female with his forelimbs wrapped in front of her hindlimbs, and they raise off the floor of the stream or pond and swim to the surface of the water to get air. At the top of the arc, they flip, now floating on their backs, and the female releases 3-10 eggs which fall onto the male's belly. Completing their arc, they flip to their original position, bellies to the ground. The male now loosens his grip and permits the eggs to roll onto her back while he simultaneously fertilizes them. This spawning ritual is repeated 15-18 times. Roughly 100 eggs are laid and fertilized.

Amazingly, the eggs sticks only to the female's back, possibly due to a cloacal secretion. They do not stick to the male's belly nor to other eggs already on the female's back. Hours after fertilization, the eggs will sink into the female's skin. Skin grows around the eggs, which become enclosed in a cyst with a horny lid. During development, the young grow temporary tails, which are apparently used in the uptake of oxygen. After 12-20 weeks, the young eventually emerge from the mother's back at the time of molting, that is, when the mother sheds her skin. By now, they're fully developed, each about an inch long. They don't have to live as a tadpole in the outside world just as other frogs/toads does, thus increased their chances or survival! Truly unbelievable.


Source : http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu

Fish with feets

It may looked like some mythical creature from a movie, or created by an image manipulation program. Looked like a fish with feets, this is a real creature and in fact it's quite a common species and even sold as pets in some countries!

This creature is an Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) or "Mexican Walking Fish". The Axolotl (pronounced Ax-oh-lot-ul) is an amphibian, is the best-known of the Mexican neotenic mole salamanders belonging to the Tiger Salamander complex. Although they are native to Mexico, Axolotls have become popular as exotic pets around the world. In captivity, they are housed in an aquarium and can have a range of colours. Ordinarily, amphibians undergo metamorphosis from egg to larva (the tadpole in frogs is a larva), and finally to adult form. The Axolotl, along with a number of other amphibians, remains in its larval form throughout its life. This means that it retains its gills and fins, and it doesn't develop the protruding eyes, eyelids and characteristics of other adult salamanders.

The animal is completely aquatic, and although it does possess rudimentary lungs, it breathes primarily through its gills and to a lesser extent, its skin. Some scientist may consider the Axolotls a backward step in evolution, because the Axolotl is descended from salamanders. Axolotls are used extensively in scientific research due to their ability to regenerate most body parts, ease of breeding, and large embryos. They are commonly kept as pets in the United States, Great Britain (under the spelling Axlotl), Australia, Japan (Known as Wooper Rooper) and other countries.

Source : www.axolotl.org

Autopsy went horribly wrong

In Caracas, Venezuela A 33-year-old man who had been declared clinically dead woke up in the morgue after feeling excruciating pain when medical examiners started to autopsy his body.

The confusion started after ambulance workers responded to a crash between a lorry and a car near the town of La Victoria. Rescuers attending the scene filled in the wrong form and instead of requesting treatment for injuries, they requested an autopsy instead. Venezuela's highways police confirmed that the two hospital forms look almost identical and can be easily confused. This mistake almost cost Carlos Camejo's life.

When examiners begin to autopsy Carlos Camejo's body, they realized something went wrong as he started to bleed. Examiners quickly stitched up the cut on his face. According to Camejo, "I woke up because the pain was unbearable." His wife, who had been told he had died, later found him lying on a hospital trolley in a corridor. She discovered the autopsy form stuffed into his trouser pocket. Later, Camejo showed the newspaper his facial scar and a document ordering the autopsy.


Source : BBC News

Vampire bats - facts or fiction?

You've seen vampire bats on your TV screen. Does it really exist, or is it just a mere myths or legend? Believe it or not, vampire bats do exist. There are only three known species in Central and South America.

Vampire bats usually feed on the blood of large birds, cattle, horses, pigs, and sometimes human. However, they do not literally suck blood. The front teeth, lips and tongue are highly specialized, its canine and cheek teeth like a barber's shear to clip away the hairs. Then a piece of skin is removed by the razor-sharp V-shaped front teeth, much like using a spoon to scoop ice cream out of a cup.

During this process, the animal's saliva, which contains an anticoagulant, is released and the resulting wound bleeds freely, enabling the vampire to feed, using its highly specialized lower lip and tongue. The saliva also consist some sort of anesthesia thus its victim cannot feel a thing when it's feeding. The grooves in the lower lip and underside of the tongue form a straw-like structure enabling the bat to suck up the blood rather than lap it. Usually vampire bats will not go for human blood, unless you're camping nearby its inhabitants. Don't be surprise the next morning, you'll find a large wound on your body.

However, the vampire bat may not be as evil as we portrait it. They do have some positive value in medicine. A potent clot-busting substance originally extracted from the saliva of vampire bats are being use as stroke and heart attack medication without increasing the risk for additional brain damage, according to research which appeared in the issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Unbelievable obesity

Manuel Uribe Garza a 42-year-old man from Monterrey, Mexico. As a small boy, Uribe was a chubby kid and weighed more than 250 pounds as an adolescent. In 1992, he said his weight began ballooning further. He has been recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's heaviest man has also been certified by doctors as weighing 1,235 pounds.

After being unable to leave his bed since 2001, doctors has helped him to loose 395 pounds since he began a high-protein diet a year ago. He now weighs about 840 pounds.

Although still unable to leave his bed, he celebrated the milestone with six people pushed Uribe's wheel-equipped iron bed out to the street as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered. Then, a forklift lifted him onto a truck and the 41-year-old rode through the streets of San Nicolas de los Garza, a Monterrey suburb.

With dozens of reporters and photographers in tow, Uribe traveled along, passing the town's plaza and church and waving at clusters of people eager to get a glimpse of him. Uribe has also been featured on "World's Heaviest Man," a television documentary about his bedridden life and attempts to lose weight.

He even has his own website and has started the Manuel Uribe Foundation to spread the word that weight loss for obese people is possible - and permanent. Manuel says his aim to get down to 120kg, or 264lb. It means losing a further 260kg, or 572lb.

Source : BBC News
Source : www.msnbc.msn.com