for those of you who do not know I will be moving in the next week, good thing is it is still here in lawrenceville.  not that I like Ga but I have spent over 15 years here in ga and over 12 years in the place I am at now. 

I don’t think I am to sad about leaving this house, as much as I am about how many memories I have added up here.  but that happens I guess, it has given me a chance to go through all my old stuff and toss it out. 

there is a few things I still should get rid of, but I will deal with that when I have to.

for those of you who have seen my little room know just how much crap I have, 30 years of crap is a lot…yes I am a pack rat.  and damn the posters I have, I remember getting every poster and remember what was going on in my life when I got everyone of them. some I did throw out but most I kept. 

my room so far

I am starting to get better, I won’t go into details, but I am feeling a lot better. im moving around better, which means I can start tring to loose a little weight, don’t get me wrong I will still always be a big guy, I simply don’t want to be a “flippen” big guy. 

I still have a long long way to go, but I will get there. 

they still don’t know what’s going on but it is narrowed down to a few things.

my cats are doing great as is my brother, and my mom seems to be doing a lot better

I guess I shall end this here for now, ive got a few things to do

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A new viral video shows a man getting struck by lightning during a rainstorm. The bright flash knocks him flat and scorches the ground beneath him. For about a minute, he’s out cold. Then his leg twitches, he comes to, rolls over, stands up and walks away. A few seconds later, he is struck again. And, again, a few seconds after that, he recovers.

However, lightning experts say the video, which appears to be security camera footage, is very likely a hoax.

The first sign that the video might be fake, according to Vladimir Rakov, electrical engineer and co-director of the University of Florida Lightning Research Group, is that people almost never survive direct lightning strikes like the one shown in the video. "The chance of survival in the case of a direct strike is essentially zero," Rakov told Life’s Little Mysteries. That’s because lightning bolts emanating from storm clouds convey a gigajoule of energy, he explained — which is about enough to melt a ton of steel.

The vast majority of the 240,000 people who survive lightning strikes worldwide each year do not actually get hit directly. "They are struck by ‘side flashes,’" Rakov said. "Lightning might strike a building near them, for example, and there’s a side flash that jumps to them carrying a small fraction of the original lightning bolt’s energy. In that case, they can survive and even walk away."

Side flashes are much less powerful than direct strikes, but they nonetheless convey a huge amount of energy. How do people survive getting struck by them? It turns out most of their electric charge passes in an arc around a victim’s body.

"This is called a flashover. The full lightning current doesn’t flow through the human body, because bodies have an extremely high impedance," Rakov said. Because the person’s body essentially resists the flow of current, an electric arc will form from the person’s head to the ground. "Most of the current will flow along that arc over the surface of his body," Rakov said. "Only 5 amps typically flow through him." Five amps — enough to run an electric heater — is a significant but usually nonfatal amount of current.

While it’s extremely rare that someone survives a direct lightning strike, those who do can typically thank this same flashover effect. People wearing slick wet raingear with the hood up, for example, have been known to survive getting struck when the current travels around them through their raingear rather than down through their bodies.

Real, or real fake?

The man in the video seems to receive direct lightning strikes rather than side flashes. "If it were a side flash, there should have been some indication of the direct flash which produced the side flash," said Bill Rison, an electrical engineer and lightning physicist at New Mexico Tech.

So is this an extremely rare case of a man surviving two direct lightning strikes? Probably not, the experts say. Instead, this may be a doctored video. "Each flash appears in only one frame of the video, with no saturation or blooming of the camera," said Rison, who specializes in designing lightning observation equipment "A lightning flash at nighttime, when the lens is wide open, would probably saturate the camera." If the video were real, then rather than appearing in one brightly lit frame, each bolt would cause the video to go white for a few frames.

"The images look very realistic, but the sequence of events is very hard to believe to be actually occurring," Rakov said. Martin Uman, an electrical engineer also at the University of Florida Lightning Research group, concurs. "There were trees and a bus to the left of the guy in the first strike that would likely have been hit instead of him," Uman said. "The video is probably a fake."

How might the video have been created? "It could have been simulated with footage of laboratory discharges overlaying the footage of the person walking," Rakov suggested.

• What’s Ball Lightning?
• What Does It Take to Survive a Bullet to the Brain?
• 6 Paranormal Video Hoaxes

Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover.

Quaker Oats

By Ryan MacClanathan, business producer at msnbc.com

The Soggies have finally won: Cap’n Crunch is quietly sailing into retirement.

Long derided by health experts for its high sugar content – a single serving contains 12 grams – the cereal is no longer being actively marketed by Quaker, DailyFinance reports. It appears parent company PepsiCo is forcing the good Cap’n to walk the plank.

Cap’n Crunch was once the No. 1 breakfast cereal, but pressure from the White House and health activists is having an effect on how PepsiCo and other food companies peddle their products to kids. Sales of the cereal were down 6.8 percent in 2010.

Last year, PepsiCo vowed to reduce added sugar per serving by 25 percent and saturated fat by 15 percent in its products over the next 10 years.

"PepsiCo is no longer marketing Cap’n Crunch cereal directly to children. In a sense, you could say that they have retired Cap’n Crunch, and that’s a good thing," Jennifer Harris, of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, told DailyFinance. "Unfortunately, children continue to view hundreds of ads per year for high-sugar cereals from General Mills, Kellogg’s and Post Foods."

The critics have a point: Children cereals contain 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium when compared with adult cereals, according to the Rudd Center research. The average preschooler has viewed more than 500 television ads for such cereals.

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By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:12 PM on 28th February 2011

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Her nicknames may include ‘wolf girl’ and ‘monkey face’.

But 11-year-old Thai girl Supatra Sasuphan today insisted that she was after being officially recognised as the world’s hairiest girl.

Although the schoolgirl from Bangkok has faced merciless teasing at school, Supatra says being given a Guinness World Record for her hair has helped her become extremely popular.

‘I’m very happy’: Supatra Sasuphan, 11, is one of only 50 people ever to have Ambras syndrome which makes  hair grow all over her face. She has now been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records. 

‘I’m very happy to be in the Guinness World Records! A lot of people have to do a lot to get in,’ she said. ‘All I did was answer a few questions and then they gave it to me.’

Supatra is one of just 50 known sufferers of Ambras Syndrome – caused by a faulty chromosome – to be documented since the Middle Ages. Before the disease was understood, sufferers were branded ‘werewolves.’ 

She has thick hair growing over her face, ears, arms, legs and back. Even laser treatment has failed to stop the hair growth.

But while most sufferers have been shunned, Supatra has gradually been embraced by her community, and became a popular and outgoing child.

‘One of the most popular girls in school’: Supatra with classmates at Ratchabophit school, where she says getting the record for world’s hairiest girl has helped her win more friends.

They don’t tease me anymore: doctors tried to remove Supatra’s hair with laser treatment but it quickly grew back

She said: ‘There were a few people who used to tease me and call me monkey face but they don’t do it any more.

‘I’m very used to this condition. I can’t feel the hair as it has always been like this. I don’t feel anything.

‘It does sometimes make it difficult to see when it gets long.I hope I will be cured one day.’

In other ways Supatra is the same as other children her age – she loves swimming, dancing to her favourite music and playing with friends.

But more than anything, Supatra loves perching in front of the TV at her tiny one-bedroom family home in Pranakom, on the outskirts of Bangkok, to watch cartoons.

Happily families: Suptara with her sister 15-year-old Sukanya, left, her father Sammrueng and mother Somphon

Still attracting stares: strangers look at Supatra on the streets of Bangkok, but her neighbours say her sweet nature quickly won over her local community

She said: ‘I like to watch anything on TV, whatever is, I like having it on. I like to watch Bugs Bunny.’

The bubbly little girl is also determined not to let her condition prevent her from leading a normal life.

She said: ‘I like to study maths so I can be good at it and teach it to younger children so they can do it too.

‘I want to become a doctor so I can help patients when they get injured.

‘I want to help people who get hurt and help cure people.’

But Supatra’s future didn’t always look so promising. When she was first born she had to undergo two operations just to breathe.

Her father Sammrueng, 38, said: ‘We found out Supatra’s condition when she was born – we did not know before.

‘She was not very healthy because her nostrils were only one millimetre wide. For the first three months she was kept in an incubator to help her breathe.She was in the hospital for a total of ten months. We were very worried about her.’

Time for a trim: Supatra’s hair grew longer as she got older and her mother now cuts it with scissors, above

Outgoing child: Supatra  during a PE lesson with classmates

Supatra has another operation when she was two-years-old and can now breathe normally.

But when Sammrueng and his wife Somphon, 38, brought Supatra home to live with them and their other daughter Sukanya, now 15, they faced more problems.

‘When neighbours first saw Nat they asked what kind of sin I had done. I was very worried about what she would be when she grew up because of other children teasing her,’ he said.

But Supatra’s sweet nature quickly won over people in her community.

Sammrueng, a jewellery maker, said: ‘She gets along with others really well and is very generous. She has a lot of friends.

‘She is just the same as any other little girl her age.

‘But her teeth grow slowly and she can’t see very well."

Doctors tried to remove the hair with laser treatment when she was two-years-old but despite numerous sessions it kept growing back as thickly as before.

Supatra’s hair has got increasingly thicker as she has grown up so her mother has to cut it back regularly for her.

She uses baby shampoo to wash her hair as she is allergic to stronger brands.

Sammrueng said: ‘I still hope one day she will be cured. We will do anything we can if it will help her.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361409/Supatra-Sasuphan-hairiest-girl-Wolf-child-says-Ambras-syndrome-makes-popular.html#ixzz1FKxEJOau

By David Murphy

I suppose we’ll never see a MySpace Smith or a Quora Doe (unless it’s in a first-person sci-fi shooter on a gaming console), but Facebook can now add yet another "first" to its already impressive series of accomplishments: First child.

Facebook didn’t have a baby. Rather, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram is reporting that 20-something Jamal Ibrahim has decided to name his daughter "Facebook" Jamal Ibrahim in honor of the service that helped anti-government protests overthrow Egyptian dictator Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak.

"The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook," reads an English translation of the paper as supplied by TechCrunch. "’Facebook’ received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name-a name that shocked the entire world."

Although Facebook wasn’t the only service in use by Egyptians during the roughly three weeks of protests within the country, it’s certainly the service that’s received the most widespread follow-up in the aftermath. Roughly 5 million of the country’s citizens have active Facebook accounts, and the company saw more than 32,000 different groups and 14,000 new pages pop up on the service within approximately the last two weeks of January.

And that even includes a new page for Egypt’s current ruling organization, the Supreme Council of the armed forces—launched, "as part of our belief that fruitful cooperation with Egyptian youth in the coming period will surely lead to the security and stability for our beloved Egypt," said Field Marshal and interim Egyptian leader Hussein Tantawi.

We have yet to hear reports of anyone naming children "Twitter" in support of that service’s use during international protests. For what it’s worth, the aforementioned Supreme Council of the armed forces doesn’t even have its own Twitter page yet, let alone namesake.

During a keynote at Mobile World Congress, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that focusing on whether Twitter, Facebook, or other social-networking services were responsible for the successful uprising in Egypt takes away from what the people in that region accomplished.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

The year 2010 had its share of bizarre moments, none more so than some, more unusual crimes and the even more whacky disguises. Here are the five best.

Image 1 of 4

Conrad Zdzierak, 30, used a £450 ($700) silicon mask in an audacious string of six bank robberies in April Photo: SPLASH NEWS

Image 1 of 4

A comination photograph showing a young Asian male (L) with his face partially obscured by authorities and what appears to be an elderly white man (R). Authorities said a young Asian male was intercepted by border agents in Vancouver after boarding a flight from Hong Kong disguised as the elderly white man. Photo: EPA

Image 1 of 4

CCTV footage released by police showed the 6ft 2in gunman dressed as the Star Wars bad guy complete with mask, dark cape and camouflage trousers. Photo: NYPD

Image 1 of 4

This man nicknamed the ‘Geezer Bandit’ wears prescription glasses and appears to be in his 70s, has robbed seven banks Photo: AP

By Andrew Hough 7:45AM GMT 01 Jan 2011

* A white bank robber is alleged to have attempted to fool US police by wearing a Hollywood special effects mask and gloves that disguised him as a black man. According to police reports, Conrad Zdzierak, 30, is alleged to have used the £450 silicon mask in an audacious string of six bank robberies in Ohio. Five of the robberies took place on the same day, April 9. Police in Springdale, Ohio released CCTV footage from the banks, appealing for public help in finding what they believed was an African-American male.

* An Asian male disguised himself as an elderly white man using a silicone mask and successfully board a flight from Hong Kong to Canada. The unnamed man boarded the Vancouver-bound flight on October 29. At some point during the flight, he went into the bathroom and took his mask off, emerging as the young, Asian man. Authorities said they were tipped off by the man’s hands, which looked too young compared to the rest of him.

* An armed robber was hunted by police after dressing as the Star Wars movie character Darth Vader during a bizarre raid on a New York bank in broad daylight. Police said the bandit entered the Chase bank branch on Long Island, brandishing a semi-automatic pistol before demanding money from staff. CCTV footage released by police showed the 6ft 2in gunman dressed as the Star Wars bad guy, with a costume complete with mask, dark cape and camouflage trousers. Customers and bank staff initially thought the raid was a joke, with one witness thinking the costume was so amusing he starting joking with the bandit.

* A man was being hunted by police in October after he raided a bookies in a Power Rangers disguise. The masked raider struck at the William Hill bookmakers in Sacriston, County Durham. He threatened two female staff members before making off with cash. The women were unharmed but left in shock after their ordeal. The robber, described as 5ft 2ins and 5ft 4ins tall, was wearing a blue tracksuit with a white stripe across the chest and a blue hood. His Power Rangers mask was silver grey below the nose and around the neck, and black above it.

* Then a more simple ‘disguise’. Police in California were in April trying to track down an elderly man who has robbed seven banks in the San Diego area. The grey-haired man, nicknamed the "Geezer bandit", waited patiently in line before approaching a bank teller at the California Bank and Trust teller in Vista, showing his handgun and passing over a note demanding cash. The FBI said that the teller handed over an undisclosed number of notes, which the placed in his personal organiser, and then calmly walked out of the bank. Believed to be in his seventies, the man wears prescription glasses and a baseball cap during the heists. He was described as roughly 5ft 10ins tall. It is not known if he was caught.

Best criminal disguises of 2010 – Telegraph

CREATIVE SOB’s

Team WordPress.com + Stats Helper Monkeys
January 2nd, 2011, 02:11am

Your 2010 year in blogging

Happy New Year from WordPress.com! To kick off the year, we’d like to share with you data on how your blog has been doing. Here’s a high level summary of your overall blog health:

Minty-Fresh™

Blog-Health-o-Meter™

We think you did great!

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa has 296 steps to reach the top. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2010. If those were steps, it would have climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa 4 times

In 2010, you wrote 12 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 58 posts. You uploaded 19 pictures, taking up a total of 671kb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

Your busiest day of the year was November 14th with 18 views. The most popular post that day was Something Nice.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, tips-tools-tutorials.com, studentloansinterest.org, google.com, and twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hulk youtube, youtube hulk, you tube hulk, youtube the hulk, and hulk you tube.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts and pages in your Site Stats.

1

Something NiceNovember 2010
1 Like on WordPress.com,

2

YouTube – Hulk Vs. Wolverine TrailerJanuary 2009
3 comments

3

A Monkey Riding a Parrot? It Happens!November 2010

4

Strange and Funny: 53 Crazy LawsOctober 2010

5

Newly Discovered Tree Looks Like Darth VaderDecember 2010
1 comment

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2010. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

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See you in 2011!

If you liked what you saw in this summary and want to know more about how your blog is doing, you can always visit your Site Stats, where our helper-monkeys are working day and night to provide you with pages and pages of detail on how your blog is doing.

If you have any feedback on this email, please click here for a very short survey (in English). We would love to hear from you.

Thanks for flying with WordPress.com in 2010.
We look forward to serving you again in 2011! Happy New Year!

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Cassini Spacecraft Photos Show Saturn’s ‘Blue Moon’ in All Its Glory
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 24 December 2010
06:54 am ET

A NASA spacecraft has snapped some of the best-ever pictures of Saturn’s moon Rhea, yielding clues about the satellite’s recent tectonic rumblings.

NASA’s Cassini probe captured the images — some of which shine bright in blue-and-green false color —on two recent flybys of Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon. The photos show dramatic fractures cutting through craters on Rhea’s surface, suggesting the satellite’s interior churned and rumbled not too long ago, scientists said. [New Cassini photo of Rhea]

The pictures also reveal that Rhea bears a closer resemblance to another Saturn moon, Dione, than previously thought, researchers said.

"These recent, high-resolution Cassini images help us put Saturn’s moon in the context of the moons’ geological family tree," Cassini team member Paul Helfenstein of Cornell University said in a statement. "Since NASA’s Voyager mission visited Saturn, scientists have thought of Rhea and Dione as close cousins, with some differences in size and density. The new images show us they’re more like fraternal twins, where the resemblance is more than skin deep. This probably comes from their nearness to each other in orbit."

Looking for rings

Cassini scientists designed the two flybys — which took place in November 2009 and March 2010 — in part to search for a ring thought to encircle Rhea, researchers said. The photos were released this week.

During the March flyby, the Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach to Rhea’s surface so far, swooping within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the moon. Based on the probe’s observations, scientists have now concluded that Rhea — which is 949 miles (1,528 km) across — doesn’t currently have a faint ring above its equator.

The two recent close encounters nonetheless yielded unique views of other features on the moon, researchers said. Some images, for example, show a web of bright, wispy fractures resembling features that were first spotted on another part of Rhea by NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981.

At that time, scientists thought the wispy markings on the trailing hemispheres of Rhea and its neighboring moon Dione were possible cryovolcanic deposits, or the residue of icy material erupting from volcanoes. Trailing hemispheres are the sides of moons that face backward in their orbit around a planet.

The low resolution of Voyager’s images prevented a closer inspection of these regions, however. But since July 2004, Cassini’s cameras have captured pictures of the trailing hemispheres of both satellites several times, at much higher resolution.

These images have shown that the wispy markings are actually exposures of bright ice along the steep walls of scarps, or long cliff lines. The features actually result from tectonic activity, not cryovolcanism, researchers said.

Recent tectonic rumblings

In November 2009, Cassini’s cameras captured Rhea’s trailing hemisphere with unprecedented resolution. Scientists combined images taken about one hour apart to create a 3-D image of the moon’s terrain, revealing a set of closely spaced troughs.

The 3-D image also shows uplifted blocks interspersed through the terrain that cut through older, densely cratered plains. While the cratered plains imply that Rhea has not experienced much internal activity since its early history — as that would have repaved the moon — the new photos suggest that some regions have ruptured in response to tectonic stress more recently, researchers said.

Troughs and other fault topography cut through several large craters, for example. These big craters are not too scarred with smaller craters, indicating that they are comparatively young. In some places, material has moved downslope along the scarps and accumulated on the flatter floors, researchers said.

A mosaic of the March 2010 flyby images shows bright, icy fractures cutting across the surface of the moon, sometimes at right angles to each other. A false-color view of the entire disk of the moon’s Saturn-facing side reveals a slightly bluer area, likely related to different surface compositions or to different sizes and fine-scale textures of the grains making up the moon’s icy soil, researchers said.

Making better maps

The new images have also helped scientists make better maps of Rhea, including the first cartographic atlas of features on the moon complete with names approved by the International Astronomical Union.

And the mapping work will go on. Cassini will continue to chart the terrain of Rhea and other Saturnian moons with ever-improving resolution, especially for terrain at high northern latitudes, until 2017, researchers said.

"The 11th of January 2011 will be especially exciting, when Cassini flies just 47 miles (76 km) above the surface of Rhea," said Thomas Roatsch, a Cassini imaging team scientist based at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin. "These will be by far the best images we’ve ever had of Rhea’s surface — details down to just a few meters will become recognizable."

Via Space.com

(Dec. 17) — "Star Wars" conventions are usually held in major cities, but from now on, devoted fans may want to gather smack dab in the middle of a forest — at Redwood National Park, to be precise.
Several weeks ago, the national park, located just north of Eureka, Calif., opened its first new hiking trail in 10 years, and it appears the Force is strong with the brand-new path.
Redwood enthusiast Richard Stenger, of the Humboldt County Convention and Visitors Bureau, told AOL News that a major surprise awaits imaginative visitors on the trail: a giant redwood tree that resembles Darth Vader’s iconic mask from "Star Wars."

Richard Stenger, Redwoods.info

If you look closely, imaginative minds might see Darth Vader’s mask etched into this massive redwood tree discovered on a new trail at Redwood National Park in Northern California. May the Force be with you.

"When you look at the tree from a certain angle, it looks just like Darth Vader. It’s a very big, dark redwood, too, so that adds to the visual. We think the tree is likely a survivor of fires and lightning strikes, which would explain its scars and dark appearance," Stenger said.
Stenger said the Darth Vader Tree, as it’s being called, can be found roughly halfway through the three-mile Berry Glen Trail — not too long a trek for die-hard "Star Wars" fans.
However, since the path hasn’t been open for long, not many people know about the tree yet.
"Maybe by next year, we’ll have ‘Star Wars’ fans lining up to take pictures with it," Stenger said with delight. "If George Lucas wants to take a look at it, I’m sure our park rangers would be more than happy to take him to it."
Though the Darth Vader Tree is certainly the latest lord of the redwoods, Stenger assured there are plenty of other odd and strange trees worth checking out in Northern California redwood country.
Stenger said that if you head 30 minutes south of Eureka to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, you’ll come across a bizarre breed of trees known as albino redwoods, or "forest ghosts."

Richard Stenger, Redwoods.info

Albino redwoods, which lack typical green pigmentation in their needles, are very rare around the world. Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California boasts at least six of these glistening white trees.

Like albino animals, these trees lack pigmentation, so their needles are snowy white instead of green. Stenger said albino redwoods grow in the deepest, darkest parts of the redwood forest, so they really stand out among the rest.
"They sort of glisten like a white Christmas tree. There are only 50 or so of these in existence, and at least six of them can be found at Humboldt Redwoods State Park," he said.
Stenger said Humboldt County is also home to the world’s tallest trees, including a reclusive redwood known as Hyperion, which towers high above at 379 feet tall.
"It’s six stories taller than the Statue of Liberty and is the world’s tallest living tree. It’s at an undisclosed, remote location that’s hard to get to, but that keeps the tree protected," Stenger said.
There’s also the 365-foot Tall Tree within Redwood National Park, which Stenger said used to be the world’s tallest tree before Hyperion came along.
He guessed that Tall Tree is about 900 years old, completely normal in redwood years.
"It’s not uncommon for redwoods to be 900 to 1,500 years old. In some cases, they even surpass 2,000 years. Redwoods are super trees. They can withstand almost any element."

While the Darth Vader Tree may be the coolest conifer you’ve seen today, the "Star Wars" redwood isn’t the only wacky plant to make headlines this year.
Back in August, a 100-year-old tamarind tree in Thailand became an instant Internet sensation. It supposedly boasted branches that looked like the open legs of a naked woman.
But after some serious sniffing around by locals, the sexually suggestive tree turned out to be nothing but a big, fat viral hoax.
Well, at least the Darth Vader Tree is the real deal.
And if you just can’t see it, try harder. As Darth Vader himself would say, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."

A Monkey Riding a Parrot? It Happens!

Updated: 11 hours 7 minutes ago

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David Moye Contributor

AOL News

(Nov. 19) — The phrase "I’ve got a monkey on my back" is being taken literally among animals in captivity.
Recently in San Agustin, Colombia, a lazy monkey started doing the animal kingdom’s version of shacking up with a male and female parrot at a countryside hotel.
The owners of the hotel says the squirrel monkey eats and plays with his bird-brained roommates.

Best Buddies

Alejandro Jaramillo, Solent News / Rex / Rex USA

90 photos

This lazy monkey hitches a ride to the top of a tree — by sitting on the back of a parrot. The squirrel monkey, which lives with a male and female parrot at a hotel in Colombia, was photographed by Alejandro Jaramillo after it hopped onto the macaw. These kinds of bizarre inter-species friendship aren’t unheard of, but they aren’t common.

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Best Buddies

This lazy monkey hitches a ride to the top of a tree — by sitting on the back of a parrot. The squirrel monkey, which lives with a male and female parrot at a hotel in Colombia, was photographed by Alejandro Jaramillo after it hopped onto the macaw. These kinds of bizarre inter-species friendship aren’t unheard of, but they aren’t common.

Alejandro Jaramillo, Solent News / Rex / Rex USA

Alejandro Jaramillo, Solent News / Rex / Rex USA

On the other hand, the monkey doesn’t exactly go bananas about exerting himself when he doesn’t have to, so he often hitches a ride to the tree tops by sitting on the back of one of the birds.
The hotel owners, who own the birds, tolerate the monkey most of the time, but, according to photographer Alejandro Jaramillo, they do have to occasionally throw water at him to get him off the birds.
Lazy monkeys haven’t quite become an epidemic — yet! — but they are more common than you might think.
For instance, at the Fukuchiyama City Zoo in Kyoto, Japan, a baby monkey named Miwa has been palling around with a young boar named Uribo since they both lost their moms in June.

Kazuhiro Nogi, AFP / Getty Images

A baby monkey named Miwa rides a young boar named Uribo in Fukuchiyama City Zoo in Kyoto, Japan, on Oct. 19. Both have been sheltered by the zoo since June after losing their mothers.

But is this kind of rainbow connection, peace-love, we-are-all-one attitude common in nature?
Well, sort of, and not really.
Dr. Jason Chatfield, the staff veterinarian and general curator of Jungle Island, a Miami-based theme park that hosts a variety of wild animals, says this sort of inter-species friendship is unusual in the wild.
"Honestly, the law of the jungle is, only the strong survive, and primates tend to travel in packs," Chatfield said. "If one mother dies, the other mother will adopt the dead mother’s child."
Chatfield says there might some friendships between animals that have formed in the wild, but he’s never heard of them.
"Usually, these partnerships only happen in captivity," he said. "And it has to happen when the animals are young and raised together so that they can overcome their natural instinct to kill. This wouldn’t happen if they were adults."
Since these inter-species friendships only form in captivity, they might seem "unnatural," but Chatfield won’t speculate on whether they are right or wrong.
"I can’t say whether they are a positive or negative aspect of being in captivity, but I will say this: Animals do better with a friend even if it isn’t from the same species."
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A Monkey Riding a Parrot? It Happens!