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Here's your weekly digest of the most weird, true and funny news from the across the world.
>> Hedgehog-themed cafe in Tokyo to promote the animal’s softer side
As if cafes themed around cats, rabbits, owls, hawks and even snakes weren’t enough in a country that loves all things cute, Tokyo residents wanting to spend time with animals have a new choice -- a hedgehog-themed cafe.
Customers at Harry -- a play on harinezumi, the Japanese word for hedgehog -- have been lining up to spend time at a bright room in the Roppongi entertainment district where 20 to 30 hedgehogs of different breeds scrabble and snooze in glass tanks.
For ¥1,000 (Rs 610) on weekdays and ¥1,300 (Rs 796) on holidays customers can spend an hour playing with, and cuddling -- carefully -- the prickly mammals, which have long been sold in Japan as pets despite not being native to the country.
>> Museum devoted to poo opens in the UK
A museum dedicated to excrement, with examples from the animal and human world, has been thrown open to the public.
The exhibition at the Isle of Wight Zoo in Britain features faeces from animals, such as elks and lions, as well as a human baby. “Poo is all around us and inside us, but we ignore it,” said the museum’s co-curator Daniel Roberts.
Twenty illuminated resin spheres show off the different types of faeces with facts hidden behind toilet lids on the museum walls.
>> New dating service helps you sniff out your perfect mate
Love at first whiff is the idea behind ‘Smell Dating’, a New York matchmaking service that promises to help single people sniff out their perfect match by breathing in the odours from dirty T-shirts.
Each of its first 100 clients received a T-shirt to wear for three days straight without bathing. The clients then mailed the T-shirts back the ‘Sweat Shop’ at NYU, where they were cut into swatches. Smell Dating then sent batches of 10 mixed swatches back to the clients to sniff this week.
A match will be made if one client likes the scent of another and the olfactory attraction is mutual.
>> Chinese inventor builds $50,000 Scarlett Johansson Robot
We all have our celebrity crushes, right? But can you imagine what you’d do if you ever met them? Can you imagine having them become a part of your everyday life?
Ricky Ma realised his childhood dream at the age of 42, by successfully constructing a life-sized robot from scratch on the balcony of his home.
The fruit of his labours of a year-and-a-half and a budget of more than $50,000, is a female robot prototype he calls the Mark 1, modelled after, none other than Scarlett Johansson.
>> Meet Venus, the two faced cat
Venus is a five-year-old cat whose fur is black on one side and orange on the other.
She has become an internet sensation and has a just under one million likes on her Facebook page and 6,73,000 followers on Instagram.
Some people have speculated that Venus and her unusual face are fake, suggesting her owner has simply painted one side of her face.
However, these claims were taken on by Venus’ website where her owners (pretending to be Venus) wrote: ‘I’m 100 per cent natural. No makeup at all. Not even eyeliner.’
>> 'Putin Café' with 'Obama toilet paper'
Vladimir Putin has inspired a new cafe in Russia’s city of Krasnoyarsk, where his face is spread across the walls, besides a picture of him riding a bear adorning the menu.
The new dining establishment, appropriately called ‘Cafe President’, is co-owned by Putin admirers Dmitry Zhdanov and Svetlana Lautman and also features a few tributes to other Russian figures, such as first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.
Photos of the cafe, published by pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, show that the Russian President is still the main inspiration.
The café also has photos of United States President Barack Obama, but on toilet papers and doormats.