Man Let Lethal Snakes Bite Him 200 Times

Would you let some of the world’s deadliest, most potent venomous snakes, including black mambas, taipans and cobras, bite you 200 times?

No? What if the risk of death was almost zero — save a stint in the ICU after lapsing into a coma — and your sacrifice would improve the odds of survival for about 120,000 people who die every year from snake bites?

Meet Tim Friede, 57, of Two Rivers, Wisconsin. He’s been a fan of snakes since he was 5. A citizen scientist whose intellectual curiosity makes up for what he lacks in degrees, he wondered: What if, by injecting himself with carefully calibrated doses of venom over time, he could develop an immunity to 16 species of venomous snakes?

It worked, and the results are promising for the development of a powerful antivenom. Deadly snakes aren’t a big problem in Friede’s corner of the world, but he told a New York Times reporter that he is proud “to make a difference for people that are 8,000 miles away, that I’m never going to meet, never going to talk to, never going to see, probably.”

• Read more: Watch As Citizen Scientist Invites A Deadly Black Mamba To Bite Him

Speaking Of Snakes …

All Carletta Andrews wanted was a nice dinner out with her husband at a Sandston, Virginia, restaurant. The last thing she expected was to be traumatized by her margarita.

“I leaned in to take a sip and I noticed something hit me in the forehead and I looked at my husband, like, ‘What was that?’” Andrews told a reporter for news station WRIC. “When I turned around, I saw the snake in my margarita.”

The snake had begun to coil around the straw.

“I kept saying please don’t let it go in my purse,” she said. “I left shaking, I was traumatized.”

• Read more: Woman Traumatized By Her Margarita

Notorious ‘Pooper’ Arrested

Police in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, say they have arrested the notorious Delaware County “pooper,” who became a social media sensation after leaving a pile of her feces on another motorist’s vehicle.

The video showed the 44-year-old woman get out of her car at an intersection, stride to the front of another vehicle, squat over the hood, and defecate before returning to her car. Cries of disbelief can be heard on the video.

Police said the woman’s actions stemmed from an earlier road rage incident. She was charged with indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, depositing waste on a highway and related counts.

• Read more: Road Rage Escalates To Bizarre Pooping Incident

‘I Do, I Do And I Do’

Floridian Henry Betsey Jr. could spend more than a dozen years in prison and pay thousands of dollars in fines for secretly marrying three women in three different counties, according to reports.

It was fairly easy for the Seminole County man to pull off the deception, a county clerk explained. Couples applying for marriage licenses must disclose if they’ve been married before and, if so, how the marriage ended. They must swear the information is correct. But it’s an honor system, and no one checks.

Betsey met each of his wives on dating applications and married them in different counties. Each of the women took Betsey’s last name after their courthouse marriages, according to reports.

• Read more: FL Man With 3 Wives Faces Bigamy Charges

Bears Have Too Much Fun

If bears could talk, one in Connecticut almost certainly would’ve gleefully shouted “Whee!” while sailing down a slide on a children’s playhouse in Simsbury.

A widely circulated video shows the black bear climbing the ladder to the playhouse, exiting via the slide and landing on all fours with a thud.

It’s not all that surprising the bear stopped for some fun. As black bear populations rise in Connecticut, so do human encounters. In Simsbury, bears have shown up at parades and other gatherings, and have broken into people’s homes.

• Read more: Watch Video Of This Fun-Loving Bear

Seal’s Beat Is Hard To Beat

The seal Ronan is as good as any human drummer in any band when it comes to keeping the beat, according to new research at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where the pinniped lives.

Ronan first made a splash in 2013 when researchers at the Long Marine Laboratory found she could bob her head to a beat and even adjust to new music. Some critics questioned whether her timing was as precise as a person’s.

The new research published in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports shows Ronan rivals or exceeds most humans in her ability to keep the beat, regardless of the tempo of the music.

“She is incredibly precise, with variability of only about a tenth of an eyeblink from cycle to cycle,” said Peter Cook, a researcher with the university’s Institute of Marine Sciences and a neuroscientist at the New College of Florida, according to UC Santa Cruz.

• Read more: Seal Keeps Beat Better Than Most Humans, Study Shows