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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
Hi light
Have you ever heard of a Chimera? It was a mythological fire-breathing creature composed of the parts of three animals: a lion, a serpent and a goat. What about the griffin? It was a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. Do you remember all those cool hybrid creatures from Avatar: The Last Airbender? Sadly all the creatures are just legends and fantasies. But wait! What do you get when you cross a lion with a tiger? A liger! That’s not a joke, they actually exist! We’ve all heard of the mule (the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse) and maybe even the hinny (the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey). Not all animals can be crossbred though. You’ll never see a ponkey (pig and monkey). This is because the two animals must belong to the same family of animals. Here are a few of the most interesting animal hybrids that actually exist. Move over mules, there are much more interesting characters in the mixed animal game.
Savannah cats
Savannah cats are hybrids of domestic house cats and African servals (a mediumsized, large-eared wild African cat), similar to the wolf-dogs in the canine world. These hybrid cats have been described as more dog-like in their behavior than cat-like. They like swimming, walking on a leash and even playing fetch on occasion. They are often compared to dogs in their loyalty. I don’t know about you but I’m waiting for the Cheetah and Tiger hybrid house cats. Toygers and Cheetohs!
Tigons
Tigons are the offspring of a male tiger and a female lion (a lioness). They are usually yellowish-brown in colour with flame shaped stripes along their backs and down their legs. Male tigons often show signs of a mane, though it is shorter and shaggier than a lion. The tigon can “speak” both tiger and lion, often chuffing and roaring. The tigon is a rather small cat, usually weighing in at about 350 pounds. The history of the tigon and the liger may go back farther than we know. However, we know that it goes back at least to 1837 when a princess of India gave Queen Victoria a tigon as a gift. Various other big cat hybrids have been created too, including leopons (a leopard and a lion mix), jaguleps (a jaguar and leopard mix), and even lijaguleps (a lion and jagulep mix).
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Ligers
What do you get when you combine the wisdom and ferocious fighting abilities of Lion King’s Mufasa with the cunningness of Jungle Book’s Sher Khan? You get a Liger - The largest cat in the world! Ligers are the cross of a male lion and a female tiger, and they are the largest of all living cats and felines. The biggest liger in world is “Hercules” from Miami, who weighs roughly 410 kilograms. The biggest liger in reported history however weighted more than 800 kilograms! Lions and Tigers on the other hand usually weigh around 250-300 kilograms! Interestingly enough, the liger is about the same size as the prehistoric American Lion, making the animal the closest thing to a real life Jurassic Park as we will ever get in the next couple of years.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
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Hi light Grolar bears
In 2006, a hunter shot and killed a polar bear, or so he thought. Government officials inspected the kill and noticed that it had the thick white coat like a polar bear but it had long claws, a humped back, a shallow face and brown patches which are all characteristics of a Grizzly. Tests showed that the bear was a hybrid! The Grolar bear seems like a pretty impossible cross-breed. Grizzly bears prefer land while Polar bears thrive nicely on ice and water, but in certain inhabitable ice-cold parts of Canada there are places where the two species live together. Size wise, the Grolar bear is somewhat larger than a Grizzly but smaller than a Polar bear. They have a long neck ending with a bigger head, large claws and a smooth fur, making it look pretty much like a cartoon character! Still, this is one beast you don’t want to meet in the woods.
Zebroids
Zorses, Zonkeys, Zonys, Zetlands, Zedonks, and, of course, Zebrasses. Zany, right? A zebroid is the offspring of a cross between a zebra and a horse or a donkey. There are zorses, zonkeys, zonies and a host of other combinations. The point, other than general curiosity, was to create a beast of burden that could work harder under hot weather than traditional mules, horses or donkeys.
Wholphins
A cross between a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, wholphins are hybrids that have been reported to exist in the wild. There are currently two in captivity, both at Sea Life Park in Hawaii. The wholphin’s size, color and shape are intermediate between the parent species. Even their number of teeth is mixed; a bottlenose has 88 teeth, a false killer whale has 44 teeth, and a wholphin has 66.
Beefalo
Beefalo are the offspring of domestic cattle and American bison. Crosses also exist between domestic cattle and European bison (zubrons), and yaks (yakows). They are named beefalo because they produce meat which is lower in fat and cholesterol than normal beef.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
4 Spyglass-Telescope Supplies needed: • Paper cup (the bottom of the cup has to be bigger than a toilet paper roll) • Toilet paper roll • Paint and brush • Construction paper • Scissors • Glue • Black marker
Instructions: 1. Paint the toilet paper roll and paper cup. You can paint it any colour you like. 2. Once they are dry, trace around the toilet paper roll on the bottom of your cup. Cut out the hole (this is where the roll will be inserted). 3. Next you need to make a ring out of paper. Trace around the bottom of your cup. Place the toilet paper roll in the center of this tracing, and trace around the roll. 4. Cut out your ring. It should look like the picture. 5. Spread some glue around one end of the toilet paper roll and glue on the ring (the ring will stop the toilet paper roll from coming out of the hole in the cup). 6. Once the glue is dry, insert the toilet paper roll into the hole in the cup. Insert the end that does not have the ring attached. Now you can move you spyglass-telescope in and out. Draw on some black lines around your scope if you wish. Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start. It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!
Eye see you!
Babies away!
5
The giant eyeball from a mysterious sea creature that washed ashore on Pompano Beach, Florida, has been tracked down. Marine biologists say they’ve got the owner of the giant eyeball narrowed down to two possibilities — a swordfish or a giant squid. Heather Bracken-Grissom, an assistant professor in the marine science program at Florida International University in Miami, started discussing the eyeball with colleagues soon after pictures hit the internet. They say the eyeball’s lens and pupil are similar in shape to that of a deep sea squid, whose eyes can easily be dislodged. It could also belong to a large swordfish, who’s eyes are often assumed to be smaller than they appear because most of the eye is hidden inside the head. The eyeball’s owner won’t be conclusively known until the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St Petersburg can finish analysing it. SOURCE: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
Necessity is the mother of invention and so this lazy new dad has built the world’s fastest motorised pram to save the effort of having to push it. Plumber Colin Furze added a powerful engine to his silver metal pushchair, giving it an incredible top speed of 50mph. But the 33-year-old says it’s too powerful to go at top speeds with baby son Jake. He spent four weeks and £450 (Rs69,336) designing and making the pushchair, which has a 125cc motorbike engine hidden between the wheels. Furze uses an accelerator and brake levers to control the speed, gears to go up hills, and the handle to steer. “It is rather scary to drive but I’ve had lots of envious looks from mums and dads, especially when they are pushing their babies up hills,” he said. He added: “Hopefully one day I’ll be able to take Jake for a proper ride in it but I’m not sure if my girlfriend Charlotte would be very happy about that! It is really unstable when it goes at top speed and if you hit a rough bit in the road you are in danger of falling off, but so far I’ve managed not to crash.” He was determined to build the fastest pushchair in the world and applied to Guinness to set the record as there wasn’t one already in place. “I needed to go at least 30mph to do the record and I managed to do much better than that which is fantastic,” he added. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK
Ultimate green car up for grabs
Le-go
This is a special treat for the environmentally conscious lot — a visual treat to be precise. An Australian man has put what he describes as the “ultimate green car” up for sale on eBay. The 1998 Mitsubishi Magna is completely covered with astro turf! The owner, who gave his name as Tim, placed it on the auction site with a starting bid of just one Australian dollar. But it has now garnered a number of bids, with the price now standing at AUS$51 (Rs5,052). Tim says he used 20sq metres of astro turf to cover the car’s bad paint job about six months ago. “The paint job was botchy and we needed something to cover it and someone suggested Astro Turf,” he said. “It cost about $500 (Rs47,697) to do and a lot of work and glue went into it. We went insane with the amount of glue and cutting we had to do but it worked out really well and everyone always smiles when they see the car.” In his eBay advert Tim writes: “It draws more attention than a Ferrari (plus you don’t look like a douche),” he wrote. He added: “Since you are awesome you won’t care that it doesn’t come with rego or safety certificate, but it does come with spare astro turf.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK
Daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s historic skydive from the edge of space has been recreated — in Lego. Baumgartner broke the sound barrier after jumping from a helium balloon 128,000 feet above Roswell, New Mexico. That proved the inspiration for a one minute 44 second video recreating his achievement at 1/350th the size of the real thing. The Lego video, created to promote the Model Maker Fair which is taking place in Vienna later this month, has notched up an incredible 2.5 million views on YouTube. Featuring a small army of Lego models, the clip condenses the 43-year-old’s two-hour ascend in a capsule attached to a helium balloon into just 30 seconds before his leap into the history books. The Lego skydiver is then seen freefalling towards the ground before its tiny parachute opens in time for a safe landing. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK
Call at your own risk If you’re seen using this phone booth, it is safe to assume that the call was really urgent. People in a tourist resort are complaining they have to hang on like acrobats to use a new phone booth — to avoid falling over the sea wall. Callers say they have to hold onto a bar in the booth, in Sanya, southern China’s Hainan Island, to make calls if they want to avoid tumbling over backwards. And they complain that they even have to tiptoe along the edge of the wall to reach the public phone booth, owned by China Telecom, in the first place. Residents suspect that the phone booth was designed this way for the convenience of advertisers wanting to promote their products on the road-facing side. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK
Claws out! This is a cat fight of epic proportions: UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s cat Larry was sent packing by MP George Osborne’s moggy Freya in Downing Street with the police being forced to step in to break up the fullscale fight. The pair had to be separated and retreated spitting to their respective political homes. Freya the silver tabby appeared to have the best of the confrontation, while Larry, who has white and tabby markings, was ordered back inside No 10 to cool down. It is not known what caused fur to fly between the feline residents of Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street. Larry was appointed to the post of ‘Chief Mouser’ to the Cabinet Office nearly two years ago, after being adopted from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Meanwhile, Freya was reunited with the Osborne family over the summer after going missing from their former home in Notting Hill, west London, three years ago. She had been living rough and was recognised and returned to the family only after being taken to the vet by a kind neighbour, where she was identified from a microchip beneath her skin. Asked about the apparently frosty relationship between Larry and Freya, a No 10 spokesman said: “They co-exist.” SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
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Did you know?
s n i g i r O d r o W Turn a Blind Eye “Officials turn a blind eye to the smuggling of...” Have you ever read this phrase in a newspaper and wondered what it meant? No, this doesn’t mean that the officials are blind in one eye. It simply means that someone is knowingly ignoring something. This phrase is said to have originated from the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Admiral Horatio Nelson was leading the British fleet against the Danish and Norwegian navies. The Chief Commander of the British fleet at that time was Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. Nelson and Parker had many disagreements over tactics. At a point during the Battle, Parker signalled Nelson, by using flags, to pull back. Nelson, however, believed he could win the battle if he pursued forward. He is reported to have said, “You know Foley, I have only one eye, and I have a right to be blind sometimes. I really do not see the signal.” These words were printed in Nelson’s biography 8 years later. This phrase is quite commonly used now. The phrase, ‘to turn a deaf ear’, also has the same meaning.
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Welkom Mire se vjen Wellkumma Ahlan wa sahlan Menjuah-juah! Horas! Maayong pag-abot Velkommen Welkom Bonvenon Tere tulemast Tervetuloa Bienvenue Willkommen Aloha Selamat datang Yōkoso Hwangyong-hamnida Salve Selamat datang Velkommen Dobro požalovat Karibu Vaangha
Cool facts Cows have four stomachs. An anteater is nearly 6 feet long, yet its mouth is only an inch wide. A grasshopper can leap 20 times the length of its own body. At birth, baby kangaroos are only about an inch long—no bigger than a large water bug or a queen bee. The smell of a skunk can be detected by a human a mile away. There is a butterfly in Africa with enough poison in its body to kill six cats! Cats have lived with people for only 7,000 years. A black panther is really a black leopard. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
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Fun & games
Want to be hi five’s artist of the week? Send your drawing with your name and age to: hifive@tribune. com.pk
THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 21, 2012
Help the rhino find it’s way to the shrub
SOURCE: PRINTACTIVITIES.COM
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