This Week’s Odd and Amusing Environmental News Roundup

To help you ease into the weekend, here are links to a few lighter stories that caught my attention this week. A two-headed lizard with sibling rivalry issues, applying deodorant to landfills, a water aerobics class disrupted by a crocodile, and more.

--Each year, Creative Review asks a different person to create a cover image based on a capital ‘A’ for the annual May. This year’s letter was grown in an immunology lab, using pollen cells. The folks over at Nature’s Great Beyond blog suggest a name for the new font: “Cell-vetica”.

-- Biologists have found a two-headed lizard…with sibling rivalry issues: It eats from both heads, but apparently the head that’s bigger has tried to attack the smaller one.

--Deodorant covers up body odor, so why not apply it to smelly landfills? That’s what Beijing is doing. “After a dousing from the spray—which is made from plant extracts—the rubbish is then covered with odour-eating sheets,” the BBC reports.

--Many people will use the flimsiest excuses to avoid exercising, but the women in an Australian water aerobics class merely waited for a ranger to collect the crocodile swimming in their pool before getting on with their training. [Photo: Benchill, Wikimedia Commons]

--Here’s the description from a popular YouTube video posted on Monday, April 19: “One squirrel lies dead in the road but his friend fights off the crows who come to eat him.” That’s right, a squirrel drives off a murder of crows. Aw, sweet. Or is it? Given that squirrels are omnivores (check out this squirrel eating a bird), this critter might be protecting its meal, not its buddy’s body.