Cannibals Can Teach Us
Researchers studying the human-brain-eating Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea reported in a June journal article that they have identified the specific “prion”-resistance gene that appears to offer complete protection against mad cow disease and perhaps other neurodegenerative conditions such as dementias and Parkinson’s. The tribe customarily dined on relatives’ brains at funerals (although has abandoned the practice) and consequently suffered a major 1950s epidemic that wiped out 2% of the tribe annually. According to the lead researcher, survivors, with the specific resistance gene, demonstrated “a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans.”
Recurring Themes (All-New Episodes!)
■Spouses often disagree politically and vote accordingly, but occasionally one runs for office against the other—as is the case in Bremerton, Wash., where Councilmember Roy Runyon is being challenged by his wife, Kim Faulkner. Both were mum as to reasons and in fact filed their registration papers together at the same time in May. Said Runyon: “We’re different people. She might have a different approach.”
■The most recent exposition of people who tattoo their eyeballs, at the International Tattoo Festival in Caracas, in February, featured the phenomenon's founder, Mr. Luna Cobra, who said it all started when he tried to create “bright blue” eyes, as in the 1984 film Dune. (Pigment is injected, permanently, so that it rests under the eye’s thin top layer, the conjunctiva.) Asked what the process feels like, devotee Kylie Garth told BBC News, “It was mentally intense,” resembling an eye poke, pressure and “a bit of sand”—but “no pain.” Mr. Cobra urged young people to get their jobs before trying eye tats, since “you’re going to look frightening forever to the majority of people you encounter.”
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■Once again, in May, lawyers went to court trying to persuade a judge that some rights under the U.S. Constitution be extended to intelligent apes (here, chimpanzees, as “autonomous and self-determining beings” at least as perceptive as, for example, severely mentally ill people, who retain rights while institutionalized). Lawyers are once again asking for a writ of habeas corpus (now available only to humans) to take Hercules and Leo out of a lab and into a sanctuary. (Adding to the discussion, in the week after the court hearing, a Harvard professor and colleagues, writing in the journal Current Anthropology, hypothesized that chimps could cook foods if given the chance. Tests revealed that they resist raw food when they are able to place it into a device that made it taste better—which in theory makes them more intelligent than children who eat cookie dough.)
Updates on Previous News of the Weird
Backyard firing ranges are legal in Florida (as News of the Weird reported last year), and in March a Florida House committee voted to keep it that way, shooting down legislation to outlaw them even in urban and residential areas. (Firing on private property is legal except if shooting over a public right-of-way or an occupied dwelling, and “negligent” gunfire, though illegal, is only a misdemeanor.) In 2014, one Florida legislator, originally from Alaska, said even in that liberty-conscious state, residents in urban Anchorage do not have rights that Floridians have.
A News of the Weird Classic (January 2011)
Biologists Studying Rare Species Have to Be Fast: Researchers learned from reports in early 2010 of a new monkey species in Myanmar, with a nose so recessed that it habitually collects rainfall and constantly sneezes. However, according to an October (2010) National Geographic dispatch, by the time scientists arrived to investigate, natives had eaten the monkey. (The sneezing alerts hunters.) Similarly, researchers studying a rare species of Vietnamese lizard learned of a sighting in November (2010), and a two-man team from La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif., rushed to Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province. However, on arrival they found the lizards being routinely served in several restaurants’ lunch buffets.
© 2015 CHUCK SHEPHERD
