Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd (40 page)

Disorder:
Nocturnal Sleep-Related Eating Syndrome

What is it?
Just what it sounds like. People with this condition get up in the middle of the night, sleepwalk to the refrigerator, and pig out. Some people with NSRED do it often enough to gain a significant amount of weight, yet have no knowledge that they’re eating until the next morning when they find the mess in
the kitchen. Foods eaten tend to be high-fat, high-sugar snacks, and sometimes odd combinations like hot dogs with peanut butter. As many as nine million people in the United States are believed to have it.

Disorder:
Two Feet–One Hand Syndrome

What is it?
This strange condition is highlighted by dryness and scaling on the soles of both feet, and on the palm of one hand only. It’s caused by a fungal infection and can recur several times with or without treatment. But it always affects just one hand. Researchers can’t figure out why.

Disorder:
Alien Hand Syndrome

What is it?
People with this disorder believe that one of their hands has a mind of its own. They can feel the hand and use it normally, but it will sometimes do things seemingly of its own volition and without the person even being aware of it. The “alien” hand can even act
against
the other hand, with one example being someone buttoning their shirt with their right hand while the left hand unbuttons the shirt at the same time. It most frequently occurs in people who have had brain surgery, strokes, or brain infections. You may have seen a comic portrayal of the syndrome if you’ve seen
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
, in which Peter Sellers’ character’s hand acts on its own (like giving an involuntary Nazi salute).

Disorder:
Anosgnosia

What is it?
This is an unusual reaction some people have to
hemiplegia
—the left- or right-side paralysis that often accompanies strokes. Affected people appear to be unaware of and will deny—vehemently—the paralysis. They can see and speak and retain their normal mental abilities, but they are unable to accept that half their body can’t move. Some go so far as demonstrating that they
can
move by waving their arm around…except that it’s not really moving. And they aren’t trying to deceive anyone; they actually believe they’re moving. The weirdest part: Some even deny the disability in
other
anosgnosia sufferers, insisting
they
aren’t paralyzed, either.

Disorder:
Body Integrity Identity Disorder

What is it?
BIID could be the most bizarre disorder in the medical world. People affected by it feel that one of their limbs, or part of it, does not belong on their body—and actively seek to get rid of it. They often can identify an exact spot where the limb “stops being theirs,” and sometimes request needless amputations. But it’s nearly impossible to get a doctor to remove one of your limbs simply because you no longer want it, so many victims simulate amputation, binding and hiding the unwanted limb, even to the point of fooling neighbors and employers for years. In the worst cases, people actually try to amputate the limbs themselves, sometimes with guns. In the late 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith of the Falkirk Royal Infirmary in Scotland caused a worldwide controversy when he performed elective amputations on people with BIID. “We have a number of individuals who have deliberately injured themselves,” he said, “with train tracks and shotguns and have achieved amputation this way.” That, he said, is far worse than his operations. But after public outcry, the hospital announced that Smith would no longer be performing amputations on people with the disorder.

*       *       *

In 2006 the British newspaper
The Guardian
reported that every year several Japanese tourists in France get what is called “Paris Syndrome.” What’s that? A severe psychological reaction to rude French people. “In Japanese shops, the customer is king,” explained Bernard Delage, who helps Japanese families settle in France, “whereas here, store clerks hardly look at them.” The symptoms can be extreme: In 2006 four people had to be “rescued” by the Japanese embassy in Paris and taken back home, including two women who locked themselves in their hotel room when they thought there was a plot against them. “Fragile travellers can lose their bearings,” says psychologist Herve Benhamou. “When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover, it can provoke an emotional crisis.”

Remember the mullet? That quintessential ’80s haircut (think MacGyver, or Billy Ray Cyrus) was short on the top, long in the back…and ridiculed by people all over the world, as you’ll see here.

•
France:
Coupe à la Waddle
(named after a famous 1980s footballer who sported the ’do)

•
French Canadian:
coupe Longueuil

•
Sweden:
hockeyfrilla

•
Norway:
hockeysveis

•
Czech Republic:
colek
(“newt”)

•
Poland:
Czeski pi karz
(“Czech football player hair”)

•
Romania:
chica

•
Australia:
Freddie Firedrill
(as if the haircut was interrupted by a fire alarm)

•
Chile:
chocopanda
(referring to the typical haircuts of ice cream sellers)

•
Colombia:
greña paisa

•
Turkey:
aslan yelesi
(“lion’s mane”)

•
Brazil:
Chitãozinho e Xororó

•
Croatia:
fudbalerka
(referring to the soccer-player haircuts of the 1980s)

•
Denmark:
bundesliga-hår

•
Finland:
takatukka
(“rear hair”)

•
Germany:
vokuhila
(short for
vorne kurz, hinten lang
“short in the front, long in the back”)

•
Greece:
laspotiras (“mud-flap”)

•
Hebrew:
vilon
(“curtain”)

•
Argentina:
Cubano

•
Japan:
urufu hea
(“wolf hair”)

•
Puerto Rico:
playero
(“beachcomber”)

•
Serbia:
Tarzanka
(“Tarzan”)

•
Italy:
capelli alla tedesca
(“German-style hair”), or
alla MacGyver
(hair that resembles Richard Dean Anderson’s from the TV show)

•
American terms:
B&T (bridge and tunnel), ape drape, Tennessee top hat, Kentucky waterfall, Missouri compromise

It’s pretty amazing that after thousands of years of studying and keeping records of all the creatures with whom we share this planet, we still find new ones all the time. Here are some recent findings.

B
ACKGROUND

In December 2005, a team of scientists from the United States, Indonesia, and Australia launched an expedition into the Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea. “It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said co-leader Bruce Beehler. “It’s beautiful, untouched, unpopulated forest. There’s no evidence of human impact or presence up in these mountains.” Not even the native New Guineans were familiar with the area. “The men from the local villages came with us,” Beehler said, “and they made it clear that no one they knew had been anywhere near this area—not even their ancestors.” The expedition discovered dozens of previously unknown plant and animal species, including 20 new frog species, one of which grows to only about 14 millimeters in length, four new butterfly species, and five new palm species. Some of the animal examples:

THE SMOKY HONEYEATER.
Just 10 minutes into the trip Beehler saw a small honeyeater, a common bird in Australia and New Guinea—but this one was different. It had bright orange patches on either side of its face, which at the bottom hung down in flaps, like a chicken’s “earlobes.” “And then I suddenly woke up and saw that it was a new species,” he said. “That’s something we’ve never seen before. So that was pretty darned exciting.” Though long known to locals, it was the first new bird species discovered by Western scientists in New Guinea in more than 60 years.

BERLEPSCH’S SIX-WIRED BIRD OF PARADISE.
Ornithologists only knew this bird existed from skins kept by the 19th-century German ornithologist Hans von Berlepsch. Several expeditions had been launched to find it, and not one had, so the
bird’s habitat remained a mystery. But the second day into their trip Beehler and the other scientists watched in amazement as a male performed a mating dance for a female—right in their camp. That was another amazing thing about the trip: The area is so remote that many of the animals had likely never seen humans, and therefore were unafraid of them. The bird was named for Berlepsch, as well as the six wire-like feathers on the head of males which can be raised up for a mating display.

THE GOLDEN FRONTED BOWER BIRD.
Famed scientist and author Jared Diamond rediscovered this species—also previously known only through late 19th century records—in 1979. But there were no photographs—until Beehler took one. And the photo showed it doing something odd: It was placing a blueberry on a stick protruding from a “bower” of sticks that it had made. Many other of the protruding sticks already had blueberries attached to them. Scientists concluded that the bird was decorating the bower to attract a mate.

THE GOLDEN-MANTLED TREE KANGAROO.
Yes, that says “Tree Kangaroo.” Believe it or not there are several species of these jungle-adapted, marsupial relatives of the kangaroo, some of which live in Northeast Australia and the rest in New Guinea. The newest—and rarest—member is the Golden Mantled, which was also found during the joint expedition. They have kangaroo-like faces, reddish-gold fur, and long, striped tails. And they jump from tree to tree…like kangaroos.

LONG BEAKED ECHIDNA.
The expedition also found two new species of echidnas, or “spiny anteaters.” It was a remarkable find, because echidnas are
monotremes
, a primitive type of mammal that lays eggs—and there are only three other monotremes known on Earth: the platypus, and two other echidna species. Echidnas are small (10 to 15 pounds), have light or dark brown fur, and have sharp spines like porcupines. They also have long, hairless, tubular snouts, with which they dig in the ground to eat earthworms (this species doesn’t eat ants). Incredibly, when scientists found the first two specimens, they allowed the scientists to pick them up and carry them back to camp to study them, completely unafraid.

Adults can do some pretty odd things trying to recapture the carefree fun of a lost childhood.

S
HOOT ’EM UP

Did you ever play “Assassin” in high school? That’s the game where every player gets a squirt gun and instructions to kill another participant. Your mission: Kill your target before the person who has you as a target finds and kills you. When you kill someone, their intended target becomes your target, and the game continues until only one person—the winner—is still standing.

Assassin used to be limited to school yards, but that was until 2004, when a 29-year-old New York securities lawyer named Franz Aliquo got bored with his daily routine. “I began thinking I had a hell of a lot more fun when I was a kid,” Aliquo told an interviewer in 2005. “And I thought, ‘What is stopping me from having fun like that now?’” That year he and and a friend from high school, graphic designer Yutai Liao, decided to create a version of Assassin that adults could play on city streets during lunch breaks, after work, and on weekends. They called the game StreetWars and organized their first tournament on the streets of New York City.

Having people run around New York waving (squirt) guns and blasting each other on city streets is a little bit much, especially after the 9/11 attacks. To avoid potential problems, Aliquo and Liao went to the New York police department to get permission to play the game, and also asked for help in drawing up the rules, to reduce the risk of public disturbances or being mistaken for real gun-toting thugs. On the advice of the police, Aliquo and Liao limited the number of participants and required players to use only brightly colored squirt guns and Super Soakers that look nothing like real firearms. (Water balloons are allowed, too.) They also declared subways, buses and bus stops, and other forms of public transportation off limits. And to prevent the risk of participants
losing their jobs, they also declared the one-block radius around players’ workplaces as no-kill zones, too.