What’s Happening Wed: New mammalian species discovered

Scientists have recently discovered a new mammalian species in South America. Called the olinguito, it is related to the olingo. In fact, an olinguito has been on display at the Smithsonian for many years, hiding “in plain sight” before scientists realized that it is a smaller (and dare I say cuter?) species than the olingo. They are calling it a cross between a teddy bear and a cat, and that sounds pretty accurate to me, with maybe a bit of Ewok thrown in. Wood Sprite wants one, of course. Just look at that cute little face!

Some students in Denmark did a study to see if wifi was harmful to living beings and discovered, in two separate trials, that plants may be killed when placed next to wifi. Their teacher reminds everyone that this is a high school experiment and not a conclusive study by a lab, but boy, does it make you want to see actual lab studies done, doesn’t it?

Even with Merida and Katniss among us, most movies are still lacking in female characters and failing the simple Bechdel Test (where two females have a conversation in a film that’s not about a male—that’s it!). My second-favorite film of 2013, The Croods, which features female characters as half its cast, still fails the test (not to mention it leaves the saving people and the intelligence to strictly the male characters). Geena Davis of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media says that we are training children from a young age to not seeing females take up half the space, and that perhaps the big reason why we only have women in 17% of leadership positions is because we only see them that much in our own media.

(And if media makers want to argue that such movies “sell better,” visit the link again; films that pass the test reap a whopping $4-plus billion while movies that don’t bring in just over $2 billion.)

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia