Thursday 22 September 2011

'Mail' Readers Smarter Than 'Mail' Reporters - Official!

Mail runs 'What the hell is this!?' story:



Readers reply in the comments:



*sigh*

12 comments:

Macheath said...

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Mail's newsroom!

I try to avoid it where possible but it is a tempting source of blogging material - I could give it up anytime, though, honstly!

Actually it's looking more and more as if the paper is complied by a bunch of not-very-bright media students on work experience under the dominion of a celebrity-obsessed Mr Big - there's probably a white cat involved somewhere too.

Curmudgeon said...

I thought cus-cus was something you had with Moroccan food ;-)

Mick Turatian said...

I thought it was Malcolm Rifkind!

Pavlov's Cat said...

Very unusual for The Mail to admit not knowing , the subs normally just take a wild stab in the dark



wv. comical (honest)

Angry Exile said...

Doubly embarrassing for the Chinese zoologists if it turns out to be a female. Being a marsupial the cuscus has a pouch, and animal you come across that has her own built in handbag is likely to be from Oz/PNG. Of course we should let them off if it's a male because the tell tale signs - a tendency to lie on its back, scratch its balls, belch, fart and barrack for the North Queensland Cowboys - aren't as well known.

Sue said...

I'm actually surprised at how many readers the Mail has in Auz and NZ, who'd have thunk it?

Twenty_Rothmans said...

I hate couscous. Girly food.

Oh bugger Curmedgeon beat me to it.

Curmudgeon said...

There was once a rather gullible and trusting young lady where I worked. For some reason the conversation got round to the similarity between cus-cus the animal and couscous the food. So I suggested that the one was ground up to produce the other. She looked at me for several seconds before the penny dropped and she said "they don't!" ;-)

blueknight said...

My first guess was a Quoll.
Must try harder?

JuliaM said...

"Actually it's looking more and more as if the paper is complied by a bunch of not-very-bright media students on work experience..."

Tell you what, doesn't it look like that's increasingly true of all MSM..? ;)

"Doubly embarrassing for the Chinese zoologists if it turns out to be a female. Being a marsupial the cuscus has a pouch, and animal you come across that has her own built in handbag is likely to be from Oz/PNG."

I'm pretty sure the 'Mail' has run this sort of story before, and it turned out to be some sort of easily-identifiable primate.

Not as easily-identifiable as that, though!

"So I suggested that the one was ground up to produce the other."

Heh! Had the same conversation in my office... ;)

"My first guess was a Quoll."

They are superficially similar. It's the coloration.

Angry Exile said...

Behaviour's going to be quite different though. Not seen a cuscus but if it's a possum type marsupial I'd guess it'll be pretty timid. Quolls are the same family as the Tasmanian Devil, and the only one I've seen (in a zoo - I'd be very lucky to see a wild one) had a similarly vicious temper. Didn't seem to want the dead mice it had been given for lunch but I took all the hissing and growling to mean that it very much wanted to see everyone looking at it dead and horribly maimed. Probably not a good pet except for someone who really hates their children.

Pavlov's Cat said...

ut I took all the hissing and growling to mean that it very much wanted to see everyone looking at it dead and horribly maimed.

Sounds like every Honey Badger I've ever seen