One thing that hasn’t changed all that much over the years is animal traps. Sure, they’ve come along, but the ones used many years ago were effective, too. Take, for instance, the “gopher stick.” The stick was a trap that humans made to catch animals using a stick, a string, and a snare.
Gophers were, and still are, a nuisance, as they like to eat up all of the crops in one’s garden. Besides them being pests, they were also eaten in those days as a source of protein. The apparatus worked by capturing the gopher as they came out of their hole. Hundreds of years later, around 1900, the first gopher trap would be patented by Zephyr Macabee.
Frozen Fish
Now, it may be pretty commonplace to find fish that are frozen during winter. After all, fish can’t exactly get up and walk out of the river when winter hits. But this time, scientists didn’t just find a fish; they found one that froze while it was eating…another fish. Lucky for us, a fisherman found this and reported it.
During the winter time, fish tend to swim to the bottom of their watery home since when it freezes over, the warm water typically descends. So, they usually gather in schools and hang out near the bottom until it starts to get warmer outside. In this case, the water froze so quickly that not all the fish made it.
The Woolly Rhino
As often as it is that someone seems to stumble upon a woolly mammoth (so often that there are literally mammoth tusk hunters) it isn’t so often that one finds a woolly rhino – especially not a baby one. But that’s exactly what happened to a hunter in Yakutia, Russia, in September of 2015. Scientists claimed that the rhino was only about 18 months old when she died.
Yakutia, which is more commonly called “Sakha,” has some of the lowest temperatures in the world – so you can imagine that it would be pretty hard for a baby animal to survive in the winters out there, even with a thick coat of fur. The little woolly was named “Sasha."
Incan Sacrificial Rites
One of the main Gods that the Incans worshipped was their sun God – Inti, who they believed was responsible for the crops that were provided to them (well, they weren’t completely wrong – plants do need the sun to grow.) But in their minds, Inti needed blood to do his work, and they believed he wanted the blood of children.
In 1995, scientists discovered the frozen remains of a girl between the ages of 11 and 15 up on Mount Ampato in Peru. That same year, a few archaeologists led an expedition in that area and found two more mummified children, all of which they determined had been a part of these Incan sacrifices.
Ice on a Plane
This one is a little easier to imagine in the sense that planes do crash on a regular basis, and of course, it’s bound to happen over tundra-like areas. This is what occurred to the military members on the C-124 plane that crashed into a mountainous area in Alaska in 1952. The plane would be deemed missing for decades until it was found many years later…
In total, 52 people lost their lives in that crash, including 41 passengers on board and 11 crew. Sometimes, rescuers are able to descend and search for survivors. However, the area was considered to be much too dangerous, so they were unable to search through the debris. The plane was ultimately found in 2012.