Feral Pigs and Blue M&Ms: Bizarre News for the Week of August 3, 2009

With news of feral pigs in the Caribbean and the health benefits of blue M&Ms, it was an interesting week for bizarre headlines and weird, sometimes shocking stories. Quite a few headlines caught my attention over the past few days, each one stranger than the last. Here's a look at two weird recent headlines that made me go hmm...

Apparently, feral pigs have washed up on the beaches of a Caribbean island. Weird headlines last week screamed sensational stories of wild pigs taking over Caribbean beaches, but the truth of the story is a lot milder. It turns out these "feral" or domesticated pigs gone wild that have come to live on the island called Big Major Spot in the Bahamas are quite a hit with the locals.

The friendly feral pigs love to lounge around on the beach in the sun and will swim out into the water to greet the locals who come to feed them. This sweet story of feral pigs peacefully interacting with locals and tourists was such a treat, and the truth of this tale was quite different than the misleading headlines about wild pigs invading a Caribbean island.

In a bit of news that's harder for me to swallow, blue M&Ms are being hailed for their health benefits. After glancing at a few weird headlines that proclaimed blue M&Ms could have medicinal purposes, I wondered what those health benefits could be. Would my love of chocolate and M&Ms make me smarter, or could chowing down on some M&Ms make me live longer?

Delving deeper into this strange story, I found out that a compound similar to the blue food dye contained in some foods like Gatorade and yes, blue M&Ms could help reduce spinal cord injuries. Researchers have studied the effects on rodents for now, but I feel smug when I purchase my favorite M&Ms, which bizarre headlines are now calling a wonder food with healing powers!

On a more serious note, photos turned up online of rats that had been subjected to this testing, and while injured rats treated with test injections could move again, their bodies had been turned blue as a side effect of the dyes. Laboratory animals that didn't receive the test injections of blue dyes did not regain the ability to move and were permanently paralyzed.

The issue of animal cruelty was never mentioned in the stories that discussed these experiments on rats. I was astonished that in this day and age, we take the torturing of laboratory animals so lightly. As amusing as the blue M&M super food story was, I was truly shocked and horrified by the pictures of what my mind perceived as animal torture.

These are some thoughts on the past weeks strange headlines; the amusing, and the shocking and disturbing. This just in: Florida family discovers they are the only tenants in a 32 story high rise building, and a woman sues her college for $70,000 in damages because she can't find a job. (In my opinion, if every college graduate sued their alma mater over the inability to land a job, the college system and the economy might collapse!)

Looks like another weird and wacky week of head scratching headlines!

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1200059/pigs-sea.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/5921266/Blue-MandMs-mend-spinal-injuries.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2009/08/blue_mms_and_the_power_to_heal.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32265981/?GT1=43001

http://www.longislandpress.com/2009/08/01/florida-highrise-has-32-stories-but-just-1-tenant/