Japanese scientist Sayaka Wakayama has successfully cloned mice from cells frozen for 16 years. That could open the doors to reviving history in a big way.

Could scientists now clone woolly mammoths, which went extinct thousands of years ago? Entire mammoth carcasses have been found frozen in Siberia. The DNA is likely highly degraded, but as we say at The Worldwide Scoop, you never know till you try…

Unfortunately, author Michael Crichton, who popularized the idea of cloning extinct species back to life in Jurassic Park, died this November 4th, just before Dr. Wakayama made his announcement. And there’s no confirmation to the rumor that Crichton’s DNA has been preserved in a ball of amber…

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Sir Edmund Hillary, the first European to conquer Mt. Everest, had brought back hair samples from an ape-like creature he claimed to have sighted during his adventure. For years, they were stored by a museum in the UK and quietly forgotten.

Then came the discovery of giant “dragon teeth” in the stores of Chinese apothecaries. These teeth were identified as belonging to gigantapithecus: a giant prehistoric ape that had once roamed this area.

Now come the mande barung hairs. Preliminary microscopic testing has been conducted by primate expert Ian Redmond, who noted, “We now know for definite that these hairs do not belong to Asiatic black bear, they do not belong to a wild boar and they do not resemble hairs from various species of macaque monkeys. These hairs remain an enigma.”

Now it’s up to DNA testing to see if the abominable is identifiable…

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The small Canadian island village of Gabriola has been thoroughly creeped out by a morbid discovery — make that, discoveries: five shoe-encased feet that have washed up on its normally peaceful shores over the past year.

While police have DNA’d the severed appendages, they have no matches. Or clues.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer told reporters that disarticulated feet occasionally pop up in the oceans, since rotting bodies tend to fall apart at the joints. Rubber sneakers keep them afloat, sole-side up.

But where are the bodes that come with the feet? And why are they all right feet?

No one knows, but the Worldwide Scoop will keep you posted when we find out more.

(Random photo of foot courtesy of Creative Commons.)

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Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to take a leak and finding this in your toilet: the head of a snake. A living snake. Attached to six feet more of living snake.

That’s what the residents of one Australian apartment discovered today: a six-foot-long black-headed python in their toilet. While snakes are not uncommon in the city of Darwin, Australia, they’re not exactly common in apartment plumbing — particularly up on the 10th floor of a high-rise building, which is where this one was found.

A professional reptile catcher was called in to wrangle and capture the serpent. “When I saw it I was pretty shocked,” he said. “I had to give him a wash because he was wet and a bit smelly.” Fortunately, no one was harmed, not even the snake. We can only imagine what could have happened…

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Despite the temptation, the Worldwide Scoop staff politely declined these servings of Chateau de Cat Corpse — we’ll happily stick to Red Bull and vodka.

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In the journal “Medical Hypotheses,” Swedish scientist Jarl Flensmark claims that “Heeled footwear… led to the occurrence of the first cases of schizophrenia.” He adds, “The oldest depiction of a heeled shoe comes from Mesopotamia, and in this part of the world we also find the first institutions making provisions for mental disorders … In the beginning, schizophrenia appears to be more common in the upper classes.” His explanation?

“During walking, synchronised stimuli from mechanoreceptors in the lower extremities increase activity in cerebellothalamo-cortico-cerebellar loops through their action on NMDA-receptors. Using heeled shoes leads to weaker stimulation of the loops. Reduced cortical activity changes dopaminergic function, which involves the basal gangliathalamo-cortical-nigro-basal ganglia loops.”

If that sounds like Swedish to you, The Worldwide Scoop has provided a quickie translation: Walking in heels causes your calves to tense in an unusual way. This prevents the neuroreceptors in your calves from releasing the hormone dopamine at normal levels. Dopamine regulates brain activity, and has been linked to schizophrenia in some patients.

Flensmark does NOT mention that the body also produces dopamine in response to sexual activity. And research conducted by our Woldwide Scoopers reveals that women in high heels tend to be more sexually active than women in, say, flats. Does that contribute to Flensmark’s theory or contradict it? We invite our readers to conduct research on their own — and to keep us posted.

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Numerous other cursi have been found, but this one has drawn particular attention because of its proximity to Stonehenge and because no artifacts or remains have ever been discovered in it. According to archaeologist Julian Thomas of the University of Manchester, this suggests that the cursus was used for something sacred or evil. Says Thomas, “Sanctified or cursed? We really don’t know.” In other words, when it comes to the cursus, scientists are foiled again.

In related news, scientists now theorize that Stonehenge was a burial ground for a dynasty that ruled England for 500 years around the time Egypt’s pyramids were being built. According to archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, Stonehenge was the “Domain of the Dead” where the ancients honored their fallen rulers. Who were these ancient people and their kings? “Lord of the Rings” fans might want to speculate, but no one really knows. The Worldwide Scoop will keep you posted with anything we find out.

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