California wildfires?

Presidential candidate debates?

No water in Georgia?

:::::yawn::::

Why pay attention to such piddly stuff when you can scan the news for really relevant stuff like old crabs and fish that live in trees?

Here’s the best of what October had to offer in obscure news:

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Young athletes find playing for coaches who stress personal improvement, having fun and giving maximum effort is far more important and has a bigger impact on them than a team’s won-loss record.

In Case You Missed It: Mr. Miyagi was right!

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Fighting with family members can increase your risk of heart disease and such coronary events as heart attacks or chest pain.

In Case You Missed It: Tell us something we don’t know.

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A derivative of broccoli-sprout extract protects the skin against the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.

In Case You Missed It: Yeah, but it turns your skin green.

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The first prehistoric fish that made its way onto land looked around and saw a full range of colors, including wavelengths of light that human eyes cannot see.

In Case You Missed It: I spy with my prehistoric eye…

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An ocean quahog clam discovered off the coast of Iceland is believed to be the oldest living animal ever found. The number of rings on the clam’s shell show its age to be between 405 and 410 years old.

In Case You Missed It: Someone grab the oldest bottle of cocktail sauce.

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The mangrove killifish, found in the Caribbean, can modify its biological makeup so it can breathe air and live in trees for months at a time.

In Case You Missed It: We were here first, fishy. Get your own oxygen.

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Two-thirds of women over the age of 40 are the primary providers for their families.

In Case You Missed It: Honey, can I borrow the credit card? I need to buy a carburator.

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Fossil tracks belonging to large, carnivorous dinosaurs called Theropods, have been found near Inverloch, seaside village in Victoria, Australia. The newly discovered footprints, each about 14 inches long and showing two to three partial toe-prints, reveal the animals survived in polar climates when the outback was still joined to Antarctica and close to the South Pole.

In Case You Missed It: Therapod, hereapod, everywhereapod-pod.

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A wasp which attacks a highly invasive bamboo-like plant called giant reed or Arundo donax weed has been found in southern California, saving the federal government time and money that would have been spent to import the insect from Europe.

In Case You Missed It: Wasps get the best weed.

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Overweight women who face employment weight bias could be victims of sex discrimination. Women also are 16 times more likely than men to report weight discrimination in the workplace.

In Case You Missed It: She ain’t heavy, she’s my co-worker.

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Ethanol-based products can provide protein for fish feeds at a lower cost than the soybean-corn combinations commonly used.

In Case You Missed It: That’ll be a relief to Mrs. Paul.

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The mass spawning each spring of hard corals along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, during which millions of corals release eggs and sperm for a week, is synchronized by a gene known as Cry2 in the corals’ DNA that can detect moonlight.

In Case You Missed It: Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water…

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A primitive crab species from the Prosopidae family that lived 150-million years ago has been discovered. Cycloprosopon dobrogea, which lived during the Jurassic period, was found by researchers from Kent State University and the University of Bucharest, Romania.

In Case You Missed It: Mmmmmm, Jurassic crab.

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Brazilian and Argentine paleontologists unearthed the skeleton in Patagonia, where the animal lived an estimated 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous. Dubbed Futalognkosaurus dukei the dinosaur was as tall as a four-story building. From nose to tail it was longer than a pair of tractor trailer trucks laid end-to-end.

In Case You Missed: That’s one gigantic duke.