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it is a pre-radar aircraft detection and localisation system .. using the sound of the aircraft engines and reflecting it into the listeners ears - the large distance between the artificial "ears" (parabolic sound mirrors) improves angular resolutin
on
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Number 7 is a hearing amplifier, it looks like.
i think its so that you can hear things far away, 1 for each ear
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I'm with anonymous #2 on this one. It looks like the guy from picture nubmer 7 is standing on a beach, listening to the sound of the waves.
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as an addition to my first commetn (aircraft detection)
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/ear/ear.htm
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I'm with Anonymous. In fact, here's a great article about the whole "anti-aircraft listening device" genre:
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=486
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#7 is a machine built to locate armies by sound. It was common before the radar
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Many examples of the kind of machines seen in #7 are found on
http://www.museumwaalsdorp.nl/en/airacous.html
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wow... thanks for the links... very interesting
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#7 is a Aucostic Location Device. It was used to detect airplanes before radar. I saw one in England a few years back. You can also learn about it here: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=486
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BTW, if you are wondering about the asymmetry of the acoustic receptors in 7, it might have been made to mimic Barn owls, which have no pinnas (external ear) but can still localize sounds in the vertical direction very well, thanks to asymmetric ears, one pointing up and the other down, http://www.wonderquest.com/owl-hearing.htm
shows an example about 1/3 of the way down.
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The little girl is wearing one of the first machines used for permanent wave hairstyling. They were used back in the 1920's or 1930's. They were cumbersome and uncomfortable, and sometimes painful! No, I don't know this personally, just remember seeing one on a film of an old newsreel!
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Number 1 is a wax cylinder recording machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder
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those are great! i expecially like the yellow truck one. well guess what.
im now a co-editor to: www.moillusions.com
isnt it great!!
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I love your site. It's got some of the most incredible and fun images all in one place that I like to see. I wanted to point out that the off-white six wheel bug with a soft top is an obvious Photoshop job. The back wheels are duplicated and are rotated in exactly the same position, and aren't casting a shadow. Also the front bumper's reflections don't reflect into each other because they're duplicated, and the fender lights as well.
I know, cool image. ...just being picky.
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That beige one with the 2 axles in back is one of the worst bits of Photoshop fakery I've seen! Look at where there should be a shadow under the wheels!
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Nitpick: Neither a Jetta nor a Type 2/Microbus is a Beetle.
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Hey guys, thanks for the tip about the Beetle, modified using Adobe (tm) Photoshop (tm) software :)
I've removed the pesky bug
cheers
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I remember when I was a kid you could order a Rolls Royce or a 1940's Ford nose for a Beetle from the Sears catalog.
There was a Continental style engine bay cover as well. The sales pitch was that the fake spare tire hump provided space for a 50% bigger carburetor.
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That fence like beetle is from Croatia.
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Some are cute, some are hilarious! People are getting bored with the beetles.. I guess vw has to do something with it. We have a vw beetle and is still in good running condition. My dad even bought a
vw beetle rainguards last week.
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VW is a great car. The 5 cylinder has plenty of power and the handling is better than similar cars. The design of the new
VW Bettle parts is a classic, very unique; cuts into the rear headroom a little, but whatever. My only slight problem with the car is that I wish it handled better. Maybe upgrading the suspension on this concept would be great... I know VW has had some reliability problems in the past, but I honestly think that these redesigns will be Volkswagen's savior.
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I believe that some of the hotrods were actually 1930s Fiats. This one is definately not a VW Bug:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/148/423856000_12447e5217.jpg
I've seen a couple of hot rods at major car shows that were made out of the old Fiats.
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Love VW. In Cornwall, England we have the 'Run to the Sun' (RTTS) festival held in Newquay every year on the May Bank Holiday. Motorheads and in particular VW enthusiasts enjoy a long weekend of sun, sea, music and motors. There are so many many modded Beetles on the road it's unreal. If you have never been and like VW then it's a must. Thanks for sharing Avi :)
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Here are some pictures from last years 'run to the sun' festival:
http://www.coolcarsandgirls.com/2009/05/rtts-cool-cars-and-van-pictures.html
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its me again!
the second one from the bottom seems fake.
love the site keep up the great work!
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The second one from the bottom is Bryce Canyon, not the Grand Canyon.
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i just found this blog , and i must say that i really enjoyed it! i will be coming back for more wonderful & wierd things :)!
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Impressive pics, Nature is amazing, ain't it? :D
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Most (if not all) of those unattributed pics are from Webshots. I recognized them right away since I see them on my screensaver all the time!
Love the site, btw!
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I am amazed that I actually have lightning photographs of my own. The circumstances were strange— basically, an Independence Day fireworks celebration that was pushed a little ahead and condensed because of a storm rolling in... and then the lightning started, much to my glee.
My favorite two are
here and
here. And due to the fact that I was on a riverbank at the time with a three-inch tripod (yes, lying on the ground), I'm very pleased with the results.
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what city is that in the 6th one?it looks like a postcard i seen of downtown singapore about 10 years ago.
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I saw a stranger ligthnig strike: the sky was blue, and at the horizon, there was one little cloud, and suddenly there was a clear, HUGE ligthning strike in this cloud, and seconds later, there was an huge BAN G! I was really frigthened.
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amazing ones.
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Strange, architecture reminds me somewhat of the anthroposophical buildings like the Goetheanum...
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As always interesting finds
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Among your pictures is a tower in Vienna I live quite near by. I've always liked it for its gloomy, threatening look, and in summer it always gave nice shade to the people hanging out in the park it's in. Unfortunately, time has worn it down, and last year it threatened to collapse. While there had been plans by a company to turn it into a data-center, I don't think it'll last that long. Right now they are just trying to stop it from collapsing.
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Check out this one. One huge ugly block. http://www.technik-kultur.de/wiki/index.php?title=Bunker_-_zweckentfremdet
It held 18.000 people and is still maintained as an emergency shelter.
It is across the street from where I live. It is now called the Mediabunker and is used by Photostudios, a music shop and bands for practice rooms. It also has a club at the top.
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Someone should have put these towers up hitler's ass.
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Very interesting. I am surprised someone hasn't turned one into a house of some kind.
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Dude great blog that architect Leo Winkel should of designed the World trade Center. I hope you can visit my website
ONLINE SHOPPING MALLbest regards John
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As a child i was always interested by the german bunkers in the channel islands such as these
http://www.festungguernsey.supanet.com/Fortification.htm
cheers for the post
NTS
http://notstraight.wordpress.com/
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We have couple of those towers in Sarajevo too, I know about them since I was a child but newer know the purpose of those old buildings. Looks exactly the same as those on pictures.
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Hello,
I recall seeing these in the railyards near Kaiserslautern too. I also remember seeing one in Vienna - I'm not sure if it is the one you posted, but it had building built around it. It was almost like they were mushrooms that had grown up around a tree or something
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Hehe, the one they turned into a bus stop (with the Loto-Sign in front of it) is actually located in my hometown of Stuttgart in Germany (Stuttgart-Feuerbach). My father always told me how he had to hide there and in other shelters when the bomb alarm went off during the last months of war...
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A tower that is used for antiaircrfat guns and searchlights would not seem to be a safe refuge in an air raid...
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They look like rocket ships skyward pointed, poised to lift off. But they are the opposite; heavy, not light, built to stay, not go.
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I like the analogy...
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I often went passed the one in Feuerbach, but I never could figure what it was. I'll have to go and look again... Thanks!
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Wow those things are interesting. That is definitely a fun bit of useless knowledge.
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Useless knowledge? I find them to be a facinating and somewhat hidden aspect of the war. We all know about Londoners hiding in the tubes during the Blitz, but no one seems to remember how badly Germany was bombed. This goes to show Germany's way of protecting it's people.
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i wonder if there was any specifical order in the position asignated to people. i mean, upper floors seems much more dangerous than base. and taking in account that if u come first, the latest people entering the tower would push you up, its a potetial crisis. what u think? anybody knows about behavior in shelters in WWII?
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A tower of this type (locally known as "Spitzbunker") survives to this day in Bremen. It is located next to what used to be a car and truck factory up to the 1960s, so I suspect it was intended for the workers. Nowadays, it sports advertising for an oil company.
I have always liked this bunker, because it looks like a rocketship. Whereas the enormous concrete cubes scattered throughout the city are just ugly, even if they commission artists to paint the walls.
Most municipal authorities are not exactly happy about huge slabs of concrete occupying real estate that could be used for better purposes. But those bunkers were built to withstand bomb hits and often did, so they are very difficult to demolish.
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Excellent! Could we also see the existing Fascist architecture that was built in Italy by the Fascists?
Did Franco build any in Spain?
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So strange. I traveled all over Germany for five years while I was stationed there in the US Air Force during the 90's and I never saw a WinkelTurm. I never even knew they existed.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_round_tower
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Great shots as usual
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Absolut great shots.
Have a look here for some more pics of a crane incident:
http://home.planet.nl/~willysplekje/Berging%20BKF%20kraan%20Strandheem%20Opende/home.html
(Mobile crane was hired to lift a sunken dredging-boat, but then flipped over so something really big was needed to get the other crane out)
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Gravity is the only reason anything falls!! Cranes fall over primarily due to two major factors. The most important being improper set up the second being operator error which is due largely to a lack of quality training and a push in the industry to have these machines do more than they were designed to do.
Ultimately these machines when properly maintained, inspected and operated in a safe manner by people who have been sufficiently trained will perform exactly as designed over and over again without mishap. It is not the equipement that is so fallible but the people who run them.
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Irony (n).: The excavator arm sticking out of the hole in the ground like some kind of post-apocalyptic monument. Also, the bulldozer picture is funny in a Hitchhiker's kind of way.
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i think most modern cranes are equipped with GPS reporting systems, that communicate back to the manufacturer where and when they were overloaded. so they can avoid the operator saying 'it was a light load....honest'!
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of course they fall because of lousy opperators. cranes are great machines and makes things much easier. anyway, about gravity - curtains in the last picture hangs like in normal windows, not like it should, if it was'nt fake :)
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Some awesome shots there, love the one with the bulldozer and the guys head lol! All reminds me of my time after college working on a building site, working around the cranes terrifyed me!
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First off great blog, it's one of the sites I visit daily!
But the pictures in this post of the hanger being filled with foam, are actuallly of the fire suppression system. It is designed to fill the hanger with fire retarding foam in the event of a fire.
gtrz Nils
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Was going to comment the same thing Nils said, the system released the foam by accident.
Nice pictures nevertheless!
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Your blog is awesome.
However, the pic with the turret, isnt that a plane beeing de-iced?
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I believe the first twelve pictures are fire-suppression foam tests / accidents. Then there's a shot of a pressure-rinsing system, a de-icing rig, and a flight crew scraping snow / ice off their aircraft.
Aircraft doused in fire-suppression foam aren't squeaky-clean. The stuff dries to a nasty film and can damage finishes, wiring, exposed bare metal, etc.
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I've seen the photos of the fire-retardant foam incident before, but they're great photos and loved seeing them again. From memory the base is a USAF base in California and most of their aircraft were parked outside ready for training exercises. The day happened to be a fairly windy one as well. Also, the foam used is extremely corrosive. Naturally, most of the planes were touched by the foam, so all aircraft need at least a wash, and the ones closer to the hangar needed deeper maintenance.
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Brilliant photographs!! How fun.
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I believe that the foam pictures are the result of fire-supressing foam. As seen in the pictures it suffocates the source before it can do any significant damage. I'm not sure how well it works as an aircraft cleaner, though I'm sure it takes quite a while to clean up.
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Fun photographs, but from personal account (I am former USAF member), this is fire foam. "Bird baths" are more like a hose-rigged gantry that the jets drive through for their post-flight washes.
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The very first photo happened like this: The hangar was equipped with a device for mixing soap concentrate and water for mopping the floor. The manager shouted to the man doing the work, "Don, turn off the machine." Don hears, "Don't turn off the machine." Thus, you get what we have here. It was a case study in the human factors course I got in the Air Force. There is also a picture of the hangar before it happened.
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As for the string of photos from the hangar full of foam: That was a test, the intent was to operate the system momentarily to check its operation. Obviously, no-one planned that the system would refuse to shut off, hence the people on the maintenance stands climbing to save their hides. There is a video somewhere of it all happening.
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Thank you Jim, great info!
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The foam pictures are actually from an Air Force base just east of Rapid City, SD. You guys are right in that they were running a test 'fire' on the newly automated system when the system wouldn't shutdown. There are also pictures of one of the cameraman's truck parked outside that had his windows down, and after they opened the hangar doors to let the foam pour out it filled and covered the truck. I have the full set of pics on an external harddrive somewhere.
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Haha! When did the incident happen at Ellsworth? I'd lived there 14yrs and hadn't heard of it. Love the B-1 very much. :D
I collect nose art of the b-1b lancer, trying to find images of all the various work. So when I saw the b-1b in the first image, I tried to determine which one it was. :P
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I found video!
AFFF Foam Test Ellsworth AFB POL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpOwkchy9Bw
...and the sequel...
AFFF Aftermath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxNGokWXZaY
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This is one great blog. I read most of the stuff here. Great article!
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wow. I'm surprised the Canadian military hasn't snapped up some of those retired A-90's, they must be going for a deal.
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I am totally blown away by these intrepid Russian (Soviet Union? Eastern bloc?)engineers--I had no idea these kinds of planes existed.
Thanks for another fantastic and informative post!
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Great article, but just for clarity's sake it should be stated that the ship in the last two pictures is clearly a hydrofoil, which is nothing at all like the ground effect aircraft the majority of the post describes.
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Great job and a good theme. And thanks for the mention.
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The VVA-14M was actually used in the video game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
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The ekranoplan program and other commercial WiG (Wing in Ground-effect) projects were effectively scuttled by the discovery that rogue waves were not only real but much more common than had been believed, rendering cargo or passenger WiG vehicles at risk of destruction due to their inability to climb out of ground effect, where either a ship or a true aircraft would be able to survive/avoid the wave.
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Thank you for this rogue wave info... makes sense.
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The photo of the Orlyonok carrying "2 tanks" is looks like a
BTR-60, an Armored Personal Carrier (APC, a battlefield taxi). The important distinction being that an APC is smaller and weighs about a quarter what a tank of that era weighed (10 tons vs 40). Important when considering the Orlyonok's carrying capacity.
Pet peeve of mine when people call every rolling metal box a "tank".
This has been your Internet Pedant comment for the day.
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Schwern - loved the comment, thanks. Info added.
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I am still baffled by the lack of interest in these sort of craft...
The ability to increase shipping efficiency by unheard of numbers through the use of some large scale WIG would have a very profitable effect. Also, Russia achieved these feats during the Cold War, and mostly through their great insight into aeronautics. Despite what many may want to believe, Russian aircraft have generally always surpassed their western counterparts, only finding themselves beaten in ability when financial situations become involved (that being something the U.S. never had a problem with).
As for the crashes of ekranoplans that may cause many to hesitate their development, the poor avionics (something that Russia, during the Cold War, severely lacked) can be a good reason of crash. A western avionics system, I would imagine, could greatly improve the safety and performance of ekranoplans.
In the end of it all, it just leaves me confused as to why ekranoplans suffer this fate, I suppose this money people would gain just isn't enough to break down those West-East cultural boundaries. The Cold War is over people, please, get over it for the sake of much of scientific progress...
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Sadly, your Youtube video no longer works.
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Replaced the video, thanks
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I'd never heard of these! They are so cool! I wish someone would start a line of plastic models (like the cars and airplanes I put together as a kid) of all of these - I'd certainly get into them (age 59, female, yes - geek). What an opportunity to provide some history and background with the model building instructions...
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I believe Zvezda has ekranoplan models available...
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A magnificent waste. Rough seas stop it cold because they break up the high pressure area under the wings. So where the hell were they going to deploy it?
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As much as they havent proved useful they are just awesome looking things! It's always nice to see engineering where people have dared to throw sense out of the window and build something mad, bad and crazy.
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HA HA i wonder how it must feel for the mom to have a spiny hedgehog comg out of their...well you know what.
just wanna say great site! i visit everyday and ure site is like my source of entertainment and knowlegde everyday keep up the great work!
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Hedgehogs are indeed neat little pets. On occasion, we host
a guest 'hog here in the office.
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Wow!! I never saw baby hedgehogs before.
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awwwwh. still: look like foreskin with spikes to me.
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You've done it. You've beaten cuteoverload.com for cuteness of hedgehogs.
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oh i am flattered
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OMG they were so cute I've never seen baby Hedgehogs ..I wish I could hold one, too bad they get big and then you dont find them cute anymore..lol...
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They are so adorable. I should know. I breed hedgehogs. So baby hedgehogs are a common sight in my house. YOu can visit my hedgehog website at hedgehogs4u.com. I am located in NC and I do not ship, so if you are interested please do not ask me to ship my hedgies. Thankyou!!!
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I've never seen them when small before!! they like ugly no-fur dogs ^^
well, I'm from the north of Spain and i've hosted some hedgehogs at my garden, most of them as big as a hand or more. They never stayed with us mora than a few weeks but returned many times, no meaning about our german Shepard dog (they ate his food!!)
Once we found a really small one, not so bigger than the displayed on the article but with developed spikes. He probably was left by his mom. We tried to feed him but he died in 2 weeks.
The are wild animals; can´t hold in a place and have to live on their own, doing what they want, going where they feel like to.
Nice article! Wonderful site! I follow you daily.
PS: nice trick to touch them: rub them from head to back, they will relax spikes.
And remember, no snails or slugs at home with a hedgehog around!
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OMG!!! I have never seen baby hedgehogs before! I had no idea they were so cute! I've seen cute baby animals before but these lil cuties take the cake!!!:)
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Oh god they are so cute, I leave a giant pile of wood at the bottom of my garden and there's a hedgehog or two hibernating under there - I hope one day there'll be the pitter patter of baby hedgies.
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1 Comments:
As usual entertaining and amazing
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