I know you’ve been wondering what the earth will look like in 250 million years. Well, wonder no more.

No really, go check it out.

Did you know that under ideal conditions a single cell of the phytoplanktonic cyanobacterium Gomphosphaeria Kützing 1836 could reproduce to cover the entire world armpit deep in its progeny in only 4.5 days? That’s our armpits, by the way, not Gomphosphaeria’s; even if it had armpits, which it doesn’t, they’d be so close to the ground that you could probably smear me thinly enough to bury the Earth to that height. But I’d rather you didn’t.

You’ve got to love brontosaurs, right? I mean, I preferred a good diplodocus myself, mainly beacuse of the model one I got from the British Natural History Museum almost 30 years ago (we went back there 8 years ago and they were still selling them), but you can’t go far wrong with a brontosaur.

Well apparently you can, cus they don’t exist. Or didn’t exist. Whatever. The Straight Dope has the, um, straight dope.

Listening to a podcast talking about Bonobo chimps (you know, the ones that do the sex all the time). The researcher working with them told a story about collecting fecal samples from 4 female chimps. She started with just one, which quickly got the idea and started bringing her a sample each day so that the researcher didn’t have to bother, um, ‘obtaining’ one. The researcher understandably thought this was great, and wondered if she could get the others to be so cooperative. This turned out to be no problem, as the first chimp taught the others what to do without the researcher having to do anything.

Funny enough, but four years later the researcher walked into a different zoo where the daughter of the original chimp now lived. The daughter, who had never had to supply a sample for the researcher or anyone at her current zoo, saw the researcher, wandered off, and came back with a sample.