Worth a thousand words

Sometimes when you read an interesting headline you wish they had a picture going along with them, other times you would have been happier if they hadn't. Here are two examples I noticed recently from each camp; one is hilarious, the other is horrifying.

Let’s start with the more palatable example first:

‘Drunken elk trapped in an apple tree in Sweden’

You just know it’s going to be gold. Drunken animals are always a favourite, and apparently this is quite a common occurrence for elks who go searching for fermenting apples and other fruit (that is the drunkenness is common, not the getting stuck in trees part).

No need to worry about the old girl, according to the BBC she was liberated from the grip of the tree, and spent the night recovering in a local residents front yard.

Now to the less savoury example. The headline that caught my eye was:

‘Caterpillars Infected with Melting Virus’

Regrettably I can’t find the article this originates from, but I went one better and saved the original source, an article in the journal nature (Via RichardDawkins.net).

That’s was what piqued my interest, and here is what freaked me out when I followed the link:

That’s right, an actual melting caterpillar, like something from a horror film, right before it lands on the shrieking comic relief foil.

What’s more the caption describes the event being witnessed in the picture by saying that “Caterpillars infected with baculovirus climb to the tops of trees, where they melt and drip the virus onto the foliage below”.

So it’s not just a virus that makes you melt (if you happen to be a caterpillar), but also one that takes your caterpillar mind and turns you into a zombie for its own benefit.