Marmots are usually shy and don’t like interacting with people, but a colony of Alpine marmots in Austria has taken a liking to a teenage boy who has been visiting them ever since he was three years old.

Matteo Walch, a 14-year-old boy from Innsbruck, first made international news headlines back in 2012, when photos of him literally rubbing noses with marmots from a colony in Groslocker , in the Austrian Alps, went viral. He was eight-years-old at the time, but he had been visiting his furry friends every year since age three, and for some unknown reason they had taken a liking to him. The boy’s mother, who took the pictures of Matteo and the marmots, says that the large rodents are not afraid of him because they understands that he loves them and would do nothing to hurt them. Six years after wowing the world with his uncanny bond with marmots, Matteo Walch still visits his cuddly friends and they are closer than ever.

Read More »

While still technically in its infancy, the vlogging (video content) industry is incredibly competitive, but while some creators rely on tech or entertainment skills to capture viewers’ attention, one young girl from rural China has become an international star by filming herself perform daily chores.

Li Ziqi is often referred to as an internet phenomenon in China. The 29-year-old not only has millions of dedicated fans in her home country, as well as the approval of the Chinese government for promoting Chinese traditional values, but she has also amassed a following of millions outside her country’s borders. And she’s done it all by gracefully leveraging an impressive array of skills that range from cooking to furniture making, while painting a perfect fairy tale image for her audience. And in a time when Chinese viewers are getting more fed up with work stress and pollution every day, Li Ziqi provides the perfect escape.

Read More »

A Kenyan woman recently made international news headlines after allegedly selling her husband to the woman he was cheating on her with for just $17.

After catching her husband with another woman right in their matrimonial bed, Edna Mukwana, reportedly kicked him out of their home and prevented him from returning for a week, before offering to sell him off to his mistress for 2,000 Kenyan shillings. It’s unclear whether she actually expected a reply from her husband’s lover, but when she got the counter offer of 2,000 shillings she decided to take it. She used the money to buy her children new clothes for the new year.

Read More »

Videos of a Chinese groom humiliating his bride by playing an X-rated video of her cheating with another man to their wedding guests have been circulating on Chinese social media, sparking a heated debate.

The unverified footage, believed to have been recorded by guests at a wedding in Fujian province, comprises three videos – one of the two newlyweds walking down the aisle, and two explicit clips showing the bride and her brother-in-law. In the first video, as the newlyweds walk down the aisle, an MC can be heard saying “now we are going to show you the videos of how the newlyweds grew up”, but instead a sex video featuring his bride and another man is projected onto the screen behind them… “You thought I didn’t know?” the man asks his bride, who throws her bouquet at her, as both their families try to separate them. The other two clips show the young woman sleeping with her sister’s husband.

Read More »

Over the years we’ve featured some impressive hyper-realistic art on Oddity Central, but when it comes to animal portraiture, I’m pretty sure Canadian artist Nick Sider takes the cake.

Nick Sider knew he wanted to be an artist since he was just 5-years-old, but it took him another 20 years to build up the courage to dedicate his life to painting. At the age of 25, he quit his job and started teaching himself how to paint with acrylic paints. Looking at his works, you would think Nick has decades of experience behind him, but he’s actually only 31-years-old, so to say that he made up for lost time in just six years would be a serious understatement.

Read More »

Ukrainian-Russian art duo Asya Kozina and Dmitriy Kozin are taking paper craft to new heights with their elaborate and flamboyant wigs made entirely out of paper.

Inspired by Baroque and Rococo wigs, the talented couple and art duo create their own modern wigs out of pristine white paper. The unique choice of material only makes their creations stand out even more, so it’s no wonder that their amazing headgear has been getting a lot of attention both within the art world but also on social media. Looking at some of their most recent creations it’s really not that hard to see why people are so impressed with Asya and Dmitriy’s work – it’s really unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

Read More »

A friendly New Year’s Eve soccer match between teams representing two rival cartels in a Mexican prison turned into a bloodbath after a controversial tackle escalated into a gun fight.

For over a decade, Cieneguillas, a medium-security prison in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, has been home to hundreds of dangerous criminals representing no less than six of Mexico’s main drug cartels. In an attempt to relieve the pressure of the rivalries between these criminal organizations, the prison leadership authorized a soccer game between teams representing Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, on New Year’s Eve, but what was meant to be a friendly celebration abruptly turned into a deadly shootout, and not the penalty kind…

Read More »

When it comes to ultra-realistic, hand-drawn or painted anamorphic illusions, you’d be hard pressed to find someone better than German artist Stefan Pabst. Just take a look at some of his work and you’ll be rubbing your eyes in amazement.

Born in Russia, Stefan Pabst has been living in Germany since he was 15-year-old. In 2007, he started painting and drawing portraits, but quickly got bored with it and began looking for a way to somehow traverse the 2D border of a sheet of paper. As he continued to explore the limits of his talent, Pabst stumbled upon the art of anamorphic illusions, and he hasn’t looked back since. Although he continues to create commission portraits, the German artist has become much more known for his mind-blowing optical illusions.

Read More »

While most 11-year-olds are mostly concerned with school, video games, and surfing the web, Timofey Klevakin, a boy from rural Russia, is busy training in the gym and breaking weightlifting records.

Ever since he was five years old, Timofey was interested in weightlifting, watching his father train at a makeshift gym in their home village of Shalya, in the Ural mountains. Noticing his boy’s interest, Arseny Klevakin started training him, despite his wife’s protests over concerns that he was too young. At the age of six, during a regional weightlifting competition, Timofey managed to amaze attendants and judges by deadlifting a 55-kilogram barbell. He’s been working hard ever since, and the now 11-year-old is getting ready to break the national deadlift record for his weight class by lifting a 105-kilogram barbell.

Read More »

Designer Aroussiak Gabrielian has given the phrase “grow your own food” a whole new meaning by creating a wearable vegetable garden that can accommodate dozens of different crops fueled by the wearer’s own urine.

Dubbed Posthuman Habitats, Gabrielian’s project was inspired by the vertical, soilless gardens of French botanist Patrick Blanc, and consists of a vest covered with a layer of moisture retention fabric onto which microgreens seeds are directly placed. Apparently it takes about two weeks for the germinated seeds to grow to a level where they can be harvested. And since plants need sustenance to grow, the wearable gardens use the wearer’s urine as irrigation, after it’s treated using a process called forward osmosis.

Read More »

Rather than improve his noodle recipe, a restaurant owner in China’s Guangxi Province would lace his noodles with opium to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more.

The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Automonous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t vouch for was a bowl of noodles at a local restaurant. That’s how police ended up making a surprise visit to the noodle shop in question, where they took a packet of snail powder which tested positive for morphine.

Read More »

Japanese YouTuber Marina Fujiwara managed to put a smile on the faces of single people this holiday season with a smart light bulb that lights up whenever couples break up on social media.

As a single person, there is nothing worse than watching happy couples doing couple things during the winter holidays, like doing holiday shopping together, walking through the street hand in hand, and, obviously, posting photos of themselves online. Luckily, a young Japanese inventor has come up with a way of making other single people feel better about their situation with the help of a simple yet ingenious device – a smart light bulb that lights up whenever someone breaks up with their partner via social media.

Read More »

A group of scientists from ETH Zurich and FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland recently filed a patent for a process that makes chocolates shimmer in rainbow colors without using food coloring.

The story of shimmering rainbow chocolate began on the corridors of a university building, when food scientist Patrick Rühs, materials scientist Etienne Jeoffroy and physicist Henning Galinski started chatting about chocolate during their coffee break. The main focus of their discussion is whether it would be possible to make chocolate in other colors than brown and white, and if so, how. Intrigued by the complexity of the topic, they started looking into chocolate, its properties and what makes it brown. Then they started conducting playful experiments in the kitchen of ETH University.

Read More »

A self-described cybernetics enthusiast from Utah recently made news headlines after having his Tesla 3 key embedded in his hand, allowing him to unlock it just by holding his hand close to the car.

Ben Workman has four computer chips embedded in his hands that allow him to perform different actions, from locking and unlocking his Tesla and the doors at his workplace, to logging into his computer and even sharing contact information. He has always been fascinated by technology and was eager to become a real-life cyborg as soon as the option became available, but he had trouble finding someone willing to perform the procedure at first. He was turned down by a veterinarian, a doctor and a piercing studio for his first two implants, so he eventually convinced a family member to do it.

Read More »

Japanese visual artist Atsushi Adachi can make just about anything out of newspaper clippings, but his most impressive works yet are a series of miniature battleship replicas perfect to the tiniest of details.

We’ve seen people make impressive miniature models out of cardboard or matchsticks, but Atsushi Adachi finds newspapers to be the perfect medium. He considers them a sort of time machine, as they embody society’s values of that certain period, so by building models of various things using newspapers from that era, he is able to open a window into the past.

Read More »