Yahoo! News (among other sources) carries a story from October 21st about Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi of the Kano Plains of Nigeria who has built a working helicopter over the last 8 months using scrap aluminum and parts from a Honda Civic, an old Toyota and from the remains of a crashed Boeing 747.

This inventor has had no formal training in flying and his helicopter has never flown higher than 7 feet of the ground. In an interview, he talks about how the machine works:

“You start it, allow it to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin. The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goes and once you reach 300 rmp you press the joystick and it takes off,”

Mubarak is ambitious however and has embarked on a new project to build a better helicopter that will be able to make 3 hour flights. He hopes to get support for his project from the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) and other Nigerian government bodies.

(as seen on www.afrigadget.com)

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Saving The World's Rarest Amphibians

TheZoological Society of London's EDGE program is dedicated to the conservation of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered animal species that "have few close relatives on the tree of life and are often extremely unusual in the way they look, live and behave, as well as in their genetic make-up." EDGE has just launched a conservation and fundraising initiative focused on amphibians. Here is the list of the first ten amphibians that the group is working to protect:

1) Chinese giant salamander, (salamander that can grow up to 1.8m in length and evolved independently from all other amphibians over one hundred million years before Tyrannosaurus rex) seen here, photo from International Cooperation Network for Giant Salamander Conservation

2) Sagalla caecilian (limbless amphibian with sensory tentacles on the sides of its head)

3) Purple frog (purple-pigmented frog that was only discovered in 2003 because it spends most of the year buried up to 4m underground)

4) Ghost frogs of South Africa (one species is found only in the traditional human burial grounds of Skeleton Gorge in Table Mountain, South Africa)

5) Olm (blind salamander with transparent skin that lives underground, hunts for its prey by smell and electrosensitivity and can survive without food for 10 years)

6) Lungless salamanders of Mexico (highly endangered salamanders that do not have lungs but instead breathe through their skin and mouth lining)

7) Malagasy rainbow frog (highly-decorated frog that inflates itself when under threat and can climb vertical rock surfaces)

8) Chile Darwin’s frog (a frog where fathers protect the young in their mouths, this species has not been officially seen since around 1980 and may now be extinct)

9) Betic midwife toad (toads that evolved from all others over 150million years ago – the males carry the fertilised eggs wrapped around their hind legs)

10) Gardiner’s Seychelles frog (perhaps the world’s smallest frog, with adults growing up to just 11mm in length – the size of a drawing pin)

(seen on www.boingboing.net. Link to Zoological Society page, Link to EDGE program)

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