Real Hamster: Hot hamster sex. Maybe not safe for work.

The Penguin Conspiracy: Revealing the shocking truth... that penguins are plotting to take over the world

Yoga Kitty: Instructional yoga videos for you and your cat

The Sydney Morning Herald has labelled that photo of Munchkin the Monster cat (see below) a hoax (thanks to Steve Wilson for pointing this out to me). Still, I can't see how the hoax was done.

Meet Munchkin the Monster Cat, who seems to be related to Snowball. Is Munchkin for real. Honestly, I don't know. I'm looking for answers. (Thanks to Mara, who thinks Munchkin is fake, for sending this image).

At last we have definitive scientific proof that ducks' quacks DO echo. Now hopefully researchers will press ahead and perform echo tests on the full range of barnyard sounds: moos, oinks, barks, cock-a-doodle-doos, etc.

Croydon residents can rest easy. Signs alerting them to the danger of a crocodile inhabiting a local pond were just a prank.

When I first saw this picture I thought, 'that can't be a real animal, it's got to be a hoax.' But apparently it's real. It's an angora rabbit. What an odd-looking creature. More pictures can be found here. (link via Geisha asobi blog)

How do you know if your house has a mold problem? Well, you could hire a mold-sniffing dog to find out. But be warned. Mold Consultants, LLC says the mold-dog industry is a scam.

A Japanese newspaper scooped its rivals by revealing a serious environmental problem—that foxes were eating the eggs of the endangered loggerhead sea turtle. It even had pictures of the foxes eating the eggs. Until it turned out that the only reason the foxes were standing there by the eggs was because the cameramen had lured them there with ham.

A visitor (Joanna) asks: I heard about a historical practice that could possibly be a hoax. I visited the Freakatorium in NYC today, and they had on display a mummified cat that they claim was walled into "A New York City Building" to ensure its stability. Now, they assured me that although they had hoaxes in this museum, the cat thing was certainly real, although they were fuzzy on the dates and the location it was found in. I found some references to this practice in medieval times... However, I can't imagine this happening as late as the 1800's, when this practice supposedly took place in New York. Any thoughts on this?
My Answer: I'm not an expert on this kind of folklore, but a little bit of research seems to confirm that this practice of walling up cats in buildings did occur during medieval times. Apparently the cat was thought to be a kind of good luck charm that would ward off evil spirits by being entombed in the building. As for something like this occurring in New York City during the 1800s, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story in 1842 called 'The Black Cat' in which he describes a cat being walled up in a house. This might be where the folks at the Freakatorium got their idea. But otherwise I don't think that an awful lot of 19th-century New Yorkers were busy walling up cats (though, of course, there may have been one or two such individuals).

If you go to the movies this summer, you just might be lucky enough to see footage of this intriguing tall-tale creature: the Antennalope. These creatures (antelopes with antennae on their heads) are "bred to instantly relay radio signals as they frolic." They constantly roam the country in herds, instinctively migrating to where radio signals are weakest, thus helping to make possible a truly mobile national phone network. The antennalopes are featured in ads for Nextel that play before movies. They appear to be related to the Jackalope.