World’s Oldest Cheese Found On 3,600-Year-Old Chinese Mummies Made With ‘Ancient Technology’

Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe to be the world’s oldest cheese. The astonishingly well-preserved cheese was buried beneath China's Taklamakan Desert some 3,600 years ago and affixed to the chests and necks of ancient Chinese mummies—a yummy snack for the dead to nibble on during their journey into the afterlife.

According to Discovery News, the mummies were first discovered in 1934 by a Swedish archaeologist at a 17th-century B.C. burial site known as the Small River Cemetery No. 5, which lies in the barren, dry desert of China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. But the cemetery’s location was quickly forgotten, and it wasn’t until the early 2000s that a Chinese expedition, aided by GPS, could pinpoint the site’s whereabouts again.

Upon excavation of the Bronze Age cemetery, archaeologists were met with a fascinating sight. They discovered around 200 mummies, still clad in the clothes they were buried in. These mummies were entombed in upside-down boats and covered in cowhide. The graves were also adorned with large, 13-foot-tall wooden poles with flat blades painted black and red. According to the New York Times, these poles are believed to be mostly phallic symbols.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/worlds-oldest-cheese-found-3600-year-old-chinese-mummies-made-ancient-technology-1558756

Animal Sex: How Tasmanian Devils Do It

Animal Sex: How Tasmanian Devils Do It - For the most part, Tasmanian devils are solitary animals that only come together to breed, which usually occurs between February and April (late summer and early fall in Australia).

Not completely unlike the popular Looney Tunes character, Tasmanian devils are best known for their growly, aggressive behavior — a disposition they actually maintain in the bedroom.

For the most part, Tasmanian devils are solitary animals that only come together to breed. "But they also socialize or semi-socialize if they come across a large carcass to feed on," Tamara Keeley, a wildlife reproductive biologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science.

Wild devils in Tasmania tend to mate between February and April (late summer and early fall in Australia). Females have three estrous cycles in this period — if they don't get pregnant during their first cycle, they have two more tries before the breeding season is over. [Animal Sex: 7 Tales of Naughty Acts in the Wild]

To attract mates, both males and females scent-mark the ground, rocks and trees using the scent glands near their anus. "They drag their bums across the ground," Keeley said, adding that they also scent-mark objects by rubbing their faces against them.

Female devils prefer to mate with the largest, most dominant males. If multiple males show up at a female's door, they will battle for the right to mate with her.

But coming out on top doesn't guarantee the female's affection — a male also has to physically force his potential mate into submission. "A female will test the male to see if he is good enough for her standards," Keeley said. In fact, females are known to reject small males vocally and physically.

Once a female accepts a male, he will bite the scruff of her neck and drag her back to his den, where he will further assert his dominance by pushing and nudging her. The pair will then mate for a few minutes to over an hour.

To make sure the female has his babies, the male will guard her until she's no longer in estrous (a week or so later), before he moves on to find another mate. The pair will not eat during this lockdown, though the male may escort the female out of his den to drink water, Keeley said. If the female tries to escape, the male will chase her down and drag her back home.

As can be expected, males aren't always 100 percent successful at keeping females all to themselves. Indeed, a litter of pups can have multiple fathers, suggesting females do sneak away from their captors to mate with other males.

Intelligence is Sexy????

So the mind in the same way can be working as a great fitness indicator. Its complex and costly behaviors such as art and language might be advertising our fitness to potential mates. If sexual selection favored the minds that advertised high fitness, our creative intelligence could have evolved not because it gives us any survival advantage, instead because it is so difficult to be achieved and do not help more than moderately in our survival. It is not only humans that use complex behavior to advertise their fitness. Songbirds’ fitness indicators are repeated complicated melodious songs. Fruitflies do little dances in front of one another to reveal their genetic quality. To understand better, all these fitness indicators are what advertisements are to products. They are costly, excessive and luxurious. Dancing, language, humor, creative intelligence, all are evolutionary luxuries, none of them helped more than moderately to our survival. As fascist as it may sound, all these in the very end is another way to say “I am fit, my genes are good, mate with me”.