Nepal’s only zoo has opened a new “honeymoon suite” for its two one-horned rhinos in the hope of persuading the endangered pair to breed for the first time.
Kancha, 20, and 22-year-old Kanchi have lived together in captivity for most of their adult lives, but have never bred – something the zoo’s manager Sarita Jnawali attributes to the quality of their enclosure.
She hopes that their new, much larger home, which features mud rather than concrete floors and two large ponds for them to wallow in, will persuade them to finally start mating.
Ace Development Bank chief executive Siddhant Raj Pandey said, “We learned that the reason these two had not bred was their environment so we decided to build them a new enclosure. We understand there are signs of them becoming quite amorous.” (AFP)
Friday the 13th
Sceptical staff at a tourist attraction have set out to prove once and for all there is nothing unlucky about Friday the 13th.
Tourists visiting The York Dungeon were urged to laugh in the face of superstition as glass mirrors were smashed, a black cat made an appearance and umbrellas were opened indoors.
The experiment begin the moment visitors walked into the dungeons – under a huge ladder, past a set of upside-down horseshoes and across the path of a black cat. (PA)
From singleton to supermum
A lonely meerkat who struggled to find a mate has gone from singleton to supermum, giving birth to quadruplets.
Staff at Twinlakes Park in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, were running out of ideas to find female meerkat Lilly a partner after a male lined up to come to the park fell through. In a last-ditch attempt they set up lonely heart’s website meerkatmatch.com for the three-year-old.
Park bosses were contacted by the breeder of a two-year-old male from Cambridge, named Mr Darcy by staff, who hit it off with Lilly immediately. They said they were delighted to hear the pitter patter of tiny paws, with quadruplets named Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Stumpy-Mo. (PA)
Smelly bills
Paying bills usually stinks, but gas bills from a utility firm in Washington state will include something truly odorous this month – the stench of rotten eggs.
As part of a safety campaign, Puget Sound Energy is including a scratch-and-sniff pamphlet with its billing statements to remind customers of what leaking gas smells like.
Natural gas is odourless, but providers add a chemical to the gas that has a distinctive, sulphur-like aroma similar to rotten eggs so leaks can be detected. (PA)
Pupil-less school
A primary school is being kept open at a cost of up to £110,000 despite not having any pupils.
The local council cannot close Ysgol Capel Iwan until it has finished a statutory consultation process, even though the classrooms are empty.
The head teacher will be at the school near Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, at the start of term next month in case any children turn up. (PA)
Pea germinates in man’s lung
The diagnosis for Ron Sveden, 75, was devastating. X-rays showed a dark mass in the lung of the emphysema-sufferer and doctors concluded it could be a tumour.
But to the astonishment of the Cape Cod, Massachusetts man, and his doctors, biopsies on the mysterious mass revealed it was in fact a half an inch long pea sprout.
The germinated pea was removed without event, and Mr Sveden recovered without incident. Mr Sveden’s doctors said it was not unusual for small particles of food to pass into the lungs, but it was surprising that the pea had been able to sprout in such an environment.
“I must have ate something and it went down the wrong way, that’s all they could tell,” he said. (AFP)
Rubik’s Cube solution
An international team of researchers using computer time lent to them by Google has found every way the popular Rubik’s Cube puzzle can be solved, and showed it can always be solved in 20 moves or less
The study is the latest attempt by Rubik’s enthusiasts to figure out the secrets of the cube, which has proven to be altogether far more complicated that its colours might suggest.
At the crux of the quest has been a bid to determine the lowest number of moves required to get the cube from any given muddled configuration to the colour-aligned solution.
The research, published online, ends a 30-year search for the most efficient way to correctly align the 26 coloured cubes that make up Erno Rubik’s 1974 invention. (AFP)