geekosystem

A 33-year-old British man has been arrested after leaving a severed deer head at the checkout counter of a Tesco grocery store in England earlier this month. He also left the innards of a deer -- presumably the same one, though we can't be positive -- in one of the store's aisles, prompting what was likely the store's least pleasant page for a cleanup.

The picture above shows Socks, the Internet famous Shetland pony known for his sweet dance moves like moonwalking. He's in the middle of a paternity battle at the moment with a claim that he sired little Scamp. It turns out Socks isn't Scamp's father, but this all-pony Jerry Springer episode doesn't end there. Further testing found out who the father was, and Socks is reportedly not happy about it -- even though he's a pony.

I was walking through the Phillipsburg Mall in Phillipsburg, New Jersey the other day with my family and stumbled across the single greatest doghouse ever to exist in history. I present you with "Bow Wowser's Castle" by artist Sam Boglioli. There were a bunch of dog houses around the mall, but none of the others were geek-themed, so I didn't bother taking pictures of them.

Octopi are great swimmers, but they're pretty weird about how they do it. The cephalopods get around via a strange swimming technique known as sculling, which uses all eight of their rubbery legs. Unfortunately for researchers working to recreate this movement in robots, octopi around the world have failed to leave thorough notes on just how sculling works. That means a European team working to build a robotic octopus is trying to recreate the movement from scratch, with...oh, let's call it varying degrees of success. 

Dear cats all over the world, please consider this a public service announcement. What you see right here -- a cat being terrorized by a stoat that seemingly has the power to be in all places simultaneously -- is what it feels like every time you get the midnight crazies and decide to treat the humans who feed, shelter, and (occasionally, during ill-advised bouts of misplaced affection) clothe you as if we are prey. We don't know what's going on, and it's all happening at once, and it's just utterly terrifying and confusing.

Life in the wilderness is no bowl of cherries, and animals aren't exactly known for graciously sharing their food. One exception, though, may be Canadian pikas. A recent study from the University of Alberta shows that the little mammals actually prefer leftovers sometimes, choosing to dine on patches of vegetation that have already been grazed on -- and thus also pooped on -- by caterpillars. Exactly why isn't understood yet, but researchers suspect that the caterpillars' leavings may act as a sort of seasoning for the plants.

Researchers at Michigan State University have confirmed that a two-headed bull shark discovered in 2011 is, in fact, exactly what it appears to be -- one shark with two heads, and not a pair of conjoined twin sharks. I mean, I guess I thought we could tell that just by looking at how freaky it is, but hey, good to know, right?

Need something to brighten your Monday morning? A seal pup's life basically turned into a Disney movie this weekend when the adorable critter got lost discovered in a Swedish forest, four miles from the open sea it calls home. Don't worry, though! A good-hearted hunter found the pup and returned it to its home, demonstrating that every once in a while, things just end up working out the way you hope they will.

No matter what your job might be, the fact is that none of us loves Monday mornings, a time of the week generally marked by sitting in the car for an awkward period of time while saying things like "Okay. This again. This again for five days. I can do this," and trying pretty hard to actually believe them. Take heart, though! Whatever you do for a living, it is probably not as bad as the dung beetle's job, which involves a lot rolling, fighting over, and eating dung. Pushing and eating balls of poop around is even a dung beetle's idea of a romantic night out on the town. Come enjoy Ze Frank's latest take on the horrors and strangeness of the natural world in the video below and start your Monday off right by reminding yourself there are way worse fates than fighting the morning commute. You could have a dung ball instead of a car, for example.

Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew, and other times we don't bite at all and just try to swallow an entire mouse. Everyone's tried to swallow a whole mouse before, right? No? Well, Socks sure has. He's an 8-week-old kitten who is adorable because he is a kitten, but he is also a remorseless killing machine. Socks, despite the fact that his teeny tiny wittle kitten mouth wasn't yet big enough, swallowed an entire mouse, but the tail became lodged in his throat. I can has Heimlich?

Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology didn't know what to expect when they started researching a new type of skin cell they discovered in 2007, but what they may have found is impressive and adorable -- skin cells in furry animals that are specially designed to register the sensation of petting or stroking. These new cells could expand our entire understanding of petting animals, and redefine cuddling as we know it. Keep reading to learn more about the cells and see video of them in action on all sorts of animals.

Now that we live in a society whose cultural output is dominated by videos of kittens, people's gut reaction to cats is largely "Aaaawwwww." That makes it easy to forget that every cat on Earth is a nearly perfect machine built for the sole purpose of murdering small animals. Every now and again, we get a reminder of the fact, and the latest one is an estimate published in the journal Nature Communications this week suggesting that domestic cats in the United States are responsible for the deaths of 3.7 billion birds and  more than 20 billion small mammals every year. Doing that math, it appears that literally every second your beloved pet is not in you lap, it is snuffing out tiny lives with mind-boggling efficiency.

Remember that sharply dressed monkey gallivanting about a Canadian IKEA, putting employees and store patrons on edge? Course you do, how can anyone not remember something as poignant as that? Well, in an obvious push to dethrone North America as the world's preeminent purveyor and manufacturer for viral and productivity-killing videos, Russia has presented its own version of the aforementioned primate in a coat. As much as it pains us to admit this, Mother Russia's snow-loving simian might just exceed the IKEA monkey in the lose-your-mind-over-the-unbridled-cuteness department. Honestly, how do you expect the IKEA monkey to compete with a tail warmer and monkey-sized scarf?

The really quite excellent Ze Frank is back, reciting poignant facts about strange animals in dulcet tones, and making our workdays the better for it. This time, Frank has set himself to educating us on the tarsier, a task he manages with admirably little giggling, considering how weird these things are. For example, did you know that tarsiers are mighty hunters, and the only entirely carnivorous primate? This fact should not leave you intimidated by tarsiers, unless you are an insect, lizard, or small bird, which our audience research metrics suggest that you are not. So, no need to worry -- just watch the video below and enter your weekend more educated on all matters tarsier-related.

The human race has accomplished plenty since the day we first learned to wield tools such as a hammer and chisel. We've constructed towns, bustling cities, and -- most importantly -- the roadways that allow us to commute from one urban center to the next. Not that this interconnected network of paved ground does us any good since mankind has still failed to grasp the simple concept of traffic safety, namely crossing the street without ending up as roadkill. Traffic police in Romania are fed up with pedestrians' blatant disregard for designated crosswalks, opting to instead dash across busy streets at their own, oftentimes fatal, detriment. In an effort to raise awareness of this sheer idiocy, traffic police have released a series of TV ads highlighting the citizens that understand the function of those big white lines painted on the pavement are for: Stray dogs.