Sideswipe
Overpopulation warning
In July 1968, American ethnologist John B Calhoun built a “mouse utopia”, a metal enclosure 3m square with unlimited food, water and nesting material. He introduced four pairs of mice, and within a year they had multiplied to 620. But after that the society began to fall apart — males became aggressive, females began neglecting their young, and the weaker mice were crowded to the centre of the pen, where resources were scarce. After 600 days the females stopped reproducing and the males withdrew from them entirely, and by January 1973 the whole colony was dead. Even when the population had returned to its former levels, the mice’s behaviour had remained permanently changed. There were no predators in the mouse universe; the only adversity was confinement itself. Calhoun felt that his experiment held lessons as to the potential dangers of human overpopulation.
Dad stories
When my dad first asked my mum on a date he had a full 70s-style moustache. When he picked her up for their first date he no longer had a moustache. He told her he just didn’t like having facial hair any more. In reality he had burnt it off the night before taking flaming shots of tequila.
Getting a pair of lambs up north
A reader writes: “We are trying to get two rare-breed Finnish ram lambs from Canterbury to Northland. We’d like to fly them here but can’t get advice from Air NZ. Can anyone help or offer alternative transport please? A bit of background — we have Finns but need new bloodlines and it is extremely hard to find purebred Finnish Landrace sheep of good quality. We found these two lambs so we tried to arrange transport. Air NZ say on their website that they’ll fly any cargo, anywhere but don’t fully explain how to do it and their staff are struggling to answer the phone or understand the request. Trucking would be too hard on the lambs and Pet Transporters just want to look after domestic animals. After two weeks we’re on the verge of giving up but then thought one of your readers might have a solution.”
Tweet of the Day
“Can’t believe it! There’s a minor typo on Page 26 of the instruction manual for the Bosch SPV25CX00G dishwasher. Check it out if you get a chance! (don’t have time to check the trending topics so apologies if everyone’s already talking about this)” (by @Michael1979)