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Indonesian province’s bizarre annual ritual of digging up its dead to give them a wash, groom and dress them in new clothes

They say the dead live on in our hearts and minds - but in one Indonesian province, the deceased continue to walk the earth in a rather more literal, zombie-like fashion. 

Families in Toraja in South Sulawesi dig up the bodies of their dead relatives before washing, grooming and dressing them in fancy new clothes. 

Even dead children are exhumed - two of these photos show the skeleton of a baby wrapped in a print dress with a doll laid next to it. 

Damaged coffins are fixed or replaced, and the mummies are then walked around the province by following a path of straight lines. 

The ritual is called Ma'nene, or The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses.

 According to the ancient Torajan belief system, the spirit of a dead person must return to his village of origin. 

So if a person died on a journey, the family would go to the place of death and accompany the deceased back home by walking them back to the village.

In the past, people were frightened to journey far, in case they died while they were away and were unable to return to their village.read more

Dormice in Britain 'vulnerable to extinction'

Britain's native dormouse has declined by more than a third since the year 2000 according to a new report by wildlife charity, the People's Trust for Endangered Species.

The State of Britain's Dormice report also shows that hazel dormice are extinct in 17 English counties.

The researchers assessed more than 100,000 records gathered from across the UK over 25 years.

The report says the dormouse is now vulnerable to extinction in Britain.

Since 1998 trained volunteers around the country have been gathering data on the tiny hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius). It is one of the longest-running small mammal monitoring projects in the world.

The creatures live mainly in hedgerows and woods, weaving ball-like nests in the undergrowth from bark in the summer and hibernating on or near the ground in winter between October and May.read more

Ticks found on 'one third' of dogs, researchers say

Almost a third of dogs checked at random across the UK were found to be carrying a tick, researchers say.

The finding comes from the largest survey of ticks in dogs.

Researchers also found that the risk of an animal picking up a tick is as great in urban areas as in rural ones.

Ticks can carry a range of diseases including Lyme disease, and also a parasite discovered in the UK for the first time earlier this year that is potentially fatal to dogs.

Lyme disease has the potential to cause serious health problems, such as meningitis and heart failure.

In the most serious cases, it can be fatal.

Almost 15,000 dogs from across the UK were examined in the study, which was carried out by Bristol University last year.read more

Scientists in search for hottest life forms

SCIENTISTS will start drilling off Japan this month to seek the hottest place where life can survive in an uncharted realm deep below the seabed.

Drilling under the Nankai Trough in the Pacific Ocean will be part of a project by 900 experts to map carbon underground, hoping for clues to everything from the origin of life on Earth to the formation of oil and gas.

Previously, microbes have been found living at a torrid 121 degrees Celsius around a volcanic vent on the seabed in the Pacific Ocean off the United States.

Scientists will now drill into rocks where temperatures reach 130 degrees in a two-month trip off southern Japan starting on Monday, said Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, of the University of Bremen in Germany who led the scientific proposal for the mission.

He reckoned life was likely to exist at temperatures around a maximum 85 to 90 degrees beneath the surface. He said there was probably less food in such rocks, heated by the molten core of the Earth, than near volcanoes on the seabed.

“But we’ve been surprised in these systems before. I wouldn’t bet any money on it,” he told reporters.

Water in the Nankai Trough is 4.7 kilometers deep and the scientists will drill another 1.2km into the Earth. Researchers reckon it is easier to prevent contamination of samples on a drilling ship than on land.

Scientists say they are discovering vast amounts of carbon-based life in the little understood subterranean zone.read more

Surprise! Giraffes fall under 4 species, not one

For centuries, scientists believed all giraffes fall under one species.

But genetics now show the lanky creatures are not one species, but rather four different ones, changing the game for the world's tallest mammals.

The new findings appeared in the journal Current Biologythis week, highlighting the need for further studies of the four genetically isolated species, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, which was part of the research.

Until now, the gentle African mammals were all classified under the Giraffa camelopardalis species.read more

Does Weather Affect Joint Pain?

The skies are clear blue, but your ankle starts flaring up with arthritispain. Could a storm be looming? You feel it in your bones, but is it just an old wives' tale? Or can joint pain actually predict weather changes?

Believe it or not, your weather forecasting might have some validity, thanks to the effects of barometric pressure changes on your body.

It's common for people to blame increased pain on the weather, according to Robert Newlin Jamison, PhD, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher who has studied weather's effects on chronic pain patients.

"Everyone's got an aunt who complained that her knee or ankle would flare up. Or Uncle Charlie's shoulder would give him trouble and he would say, ‘Oh, the weather's changing,'" he says.

But Jamison, who is also the chief psychologist at the Pain Management Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, has seen patients worry about being ridiculed. "For whatever reason, people with chronic pain are real shy about saying it, because they think other people think they're nuts," he says.read more