Study finds we can ‘hear’ hand gestures

A new study has concluded that people are able to hear hand gestures in others’ speech. Wim Pouw, a cognitive scientist at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, found people who listened to an audio recording of someone saying “ahh” could accurately replicate the speaker’s hand gestures, at the right tempo, without any visual clues.

Prank pizza deliveries leave man unable to sleep

A man in Antwerp says he has been left unable to sleep because for the last nine years, delivery drivers have been arriving on his doorstep with pizzas and kebabs he hasn’t ordered. Jean Van Landeghem said: “I cannot sleep anymore. I start shaking every time I hear a scooter on the street.” He says that when he discovers the culprit, “it will not be their best day.”

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Rare marsupial keeps raiding booze cupboard

An Australian hotel has found that a burglar who kept triggering security alarms at its alcohol store was actually a rare and endangered animal: a northern quoll. “Every night at two, three, four in the morning we'd be getting these calls from our alarm company, so I'd drag myself out of bed, go to the bottle shop and no one was there,” said an employee. Eventually, CCTV cameras caught the endangered, tree-climbing marsupial in the act. “Clearly, he likes having a drink at the hotel,” joked the staff member.

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