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-A supplied undated video screenshot obtained Thursday, December 2, 2021 shows a female Pygmy Hippo Calf at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. (AAP Image/Supplied by Taronga Conservation Society Australia) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

The new female Pygmy Hippo Calf at Taronga Zoo in Sydney (AAP Image/Supplied by Taronga Conservation Society Australia)

A ridiculously cute and chubby newborn pygmy hippo will make her public debut at Sydney's Taronga Zoo in time for the school holidays.

The yet-to-be named baby was born to mum Kambiri and dad Fergus last month and is the first pygmy hippo calf to arrive at the harbourside zoo in more than four years.

She is spending most of her time in an off-exhibit nursery den, under the watchful eye of her mum, learning to walk and swim.

Taronga Unit Supervisor of Ungulates Gabe Virgona said the pair have a shallow pool in their den.

"They were initially hesitant, but just yesterday the calf took her first step into the water. Although it may not seem like a big step to some, it is a massive milestone for mum and calf," she said.

Pygmy hippos are native to West Africa and are generally solitary animals, only coming together for breeding.

There is estimated to be between 2000 to 3000 pygmy hippos remaining in the wild - classifying the species as endangered, with numbers continuing to decline in the wild.

Kambiri and her calf are expected to make their first public appearance in the coming weeks.

© AAP 2021

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ikea GingerbreadHome

If you make a gingerbread house each year for Christmas, get excited!

Because now you can bake and build edible IKEA furniture to put inside it and turn it into a proper home!

The furniture giant has just released 6 free cookie stencil designs that you can use to make mini gingerbread versions of its iconic furniture pieces.

The Gingerbread Höme range includes the BILLY bookcase, the STRANDMON chair and the MALM bed frame.  

ikea furniture stencils

And yes, assembly is still required, but you don’t need an Allen key and you can eat any mistakes or at least put a creative spin on how they end up looking.

Maybe they'll turn out better than your attempts to put the real furniture together...

Each design in the Gingerbread Höme range comes with easy-to-follow instructions – just print, cut out the templates, trace around them, bake, assemble, and decorate.

ikea Makinghouse

You can download the stencils and instructions on the IKEA website here.

If you’ve got a store nearby, you can head in and grab their gingerbread dough and baking glue as well! And some of those meatballs... they're always amazing.

And finally, make sure you create a gingerbread man to go inside! He'll be living the dream!

Images: IKEA/supplied

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We love a good mind-trick, and this one will leave you baffled for the rest of the day. 

Remember the green or brown beanie? The blue and gold dress? The girl in the concrete?

There's a reason these optical illusions have gone viral: they mess with our minds in ways we can't even explain! Sometimes they do more than just make us see things that aren't there... they can actually break our brains!

One such illusion is The Ames Window.

Watch as Deane Hutton, host of the old-school kid's program The Curiosity Show, hangs a trapezoid shape with windows cut out vertically from a wire.

You'll notice that as the shape turns in circles, you'll actually just think that it's tilting back and forth.

"Whichever way you look at that, your brain will tell you that the long end is nearer to you," Deane says.

"But now I put back near my body, now it's nearer to me, but it still looks as if its nearer to you, doesn't it?"

"Because you're used to seeing things bigger when they are closer to you."

"Now you know that it's turning around in circles, in fact if you look at it from above you can see that it's turning around in a circle."

"But now your brain is doing something strange, it's telling you that it's not going around in a circle but it's oscillating, in other words it's turning part way, stopping, and then going back the other way."

He then throws a pen in the mix to really send you into a tizzy.

So what the heck is going on here?

Well, your brain is trying to make sense of the conflicting information it's receiving. The trapezoid shape tells your brain that the object is 3D, while the windows tell it that the object is 2D. So your brain ends up missing some of the movements.

The illusion was first discovered by psychologist Roger Ames in 1973, and it's still baffling researchers to this day. Some have even suggested that the illusion could be used to help people with dementia or Alzheimer's, as it can help to stimulate their brains despite the damage already done.

The Ames Window optical illusion will literally break your brain if you stare at it long enough. So don't fight it, just let it happen, and enjoy the ride that is confusion and chaos!

Desperate for more baffling mind-tricks?

Check out the circles below, looks like they're moving around the screen, right?

Wrong! The circles are actually stationary in the exact horizontal and vertical position that they begun in. The arrows and colours trick your mind into thinking the whole circle is moving.

Same goes for these damn diamonds.

Okay, that's enough for one day. I think I need a lie down.

Image (drewcoffman.eth / Twitter)

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wagyu steak

A steak enthusiast has shared the story of his dinner party gone wrong, after his refusal of cooking a $120 steak to well done led to a fight between friends when a guest complained about the rawness of the meat. He took to Reddit to ask if he was in the wrong, or if the guest was the one out of line, leaving opinions divided.

@Poecifer posted the story of his ‘extravagant Friendsgiving’, explaining that he takes his steak very seriously, buying A5 Wagyu beef for his 10 guests. He says the average steak for him takes 4-5 to prepare and cook writing:

"So, we did a bit of an extravagant Friendsgiving this year as I lucked into a strip loin of A5 Wagyu for a price that was unorthodox levels of cheap (My friend works for a high-end meat distributor and received it as a gift) it was a tight-knit event with only 10 of us there, mostly couples including my friend who only started dating a girl within the last couple months. We had an array of dishes but I was responsible for cooking the meat. Steak is about the closest thing I have to a religion and I take it very seriously.

The average steak for me takes about 4-5 hours to prepare and cook from the sous vide to the cast iron, to plate though sometimes I take as much as 3-4 months butter aging or dry aging my meats to be certain that they are perfect. These were genuine A5 so I only sous vide them after cutting them into two inch steaks. There was pretty perfectly enough for one each but I also made jerk chicken, mandarin duck breast, and a nice cut off cherry jalapeno salmon. I had quite the spread. I sous vide them to medium-rare to be sure the fat was well-rendered but informed them that if absolutely necessary, I'd bring them up to medium on request."

He then reveals that the guest, who is the new girlfriend of his long-time friend was mortified when she saw the colour pink when the steak was cut, even saying that they’ll get sick from it. He continues to write:

"Well, here comes the new girl to the group. She sees the first person cut into their steak and sees pink and she is just mortified. Immediately she acts him of eating raw meat and stresses that the steak should be, "Brown all the way through or else you'll get sick." I informed her that this wasn't the case and that these steaks were actually cooked to the ideal temperature for the cut."

After informing the guest it was the ideal temperature for that type of meat, the guest demanded he cook hers until it was brown all the way through. When he refused, it started a fight and the guest even tried to stick the steak in the microwave in which the host quickly grabbed the plate out of her hand. He writes:

"She immediately demanded that I cook hers till it was brown all the way through and I firmly said, "Not a chance." She proceeded to get angry and yell that it was her steak and she should have it how she liked. I told her that there were plenty of other meats to choose from as well as a plethora of side-dishes that she could have but her steak was not being made well-done in my house. She said, “F***ing a******." Then she got up and started to stick the steak in the microwave. I shot up and grabbed it out of her hand first at which point half of the steak fell onto the ground. My dogs quickly got to it to which I said, "Well, at least it went to someone who wouldn't s**t on a good steak." From there, there was definitely tension from that end of the table. They ate a little bit then hurriedly left.”

After the altercation, the host explains that the ordeal has caused his long-time friend and the girlfriend to block him on social media as well as the rest of the guests who attended the dinner. The unhappy guest even went to the lengths of asking her boyfriend to ask the host to pay $25 for dry cleaning her dress. He continues to explain:

"Since then, my long-time friend and his new girlfriend have blocked me on social media and my phone number. They've even gone so far as to block the rest of the people at the table and cut off all ties. Yesterday I received a PayPal invoice from my old friend for $25 that just said, "Pay for dry cleaning of her dress." I don't think anything actually spilled on her, I think it's just more drama but as of now I'm ignoring it and, unfortunately, probably washing my hands clean of an old friend. AITA here?”

The host has also added that the menu was sent weeks in advance and that if a guest wanted a steak cooked well done that he would’ve gone to the supermarket to buy a cheaper cut. He says:

"I should've stated that a menu was sent weeks in advance with the express point that if someone wanted their steak cooked to a higher temperature I'd really go to the grocery store and get some USDA Prime for them."

The menu states specifically, "These steaks will be prepared medium-rare (warm pink center) at two inches thick. At request, I will cook the steaks to medium but due to the quality of the meat, they will not be prepared to a higher temperature. If you would like your steak cooked beyond this temperature, please reach out and I will get you a prime cut of steak to prepare especially for you. Please like this comment to confirm that this is okay."

"One person reached out, I got him a 60 day dry aged prime strip. I cooked it medium-well as per his request. He loved it.”

The story divided the internet’s opinion, gaining over 5K comments on Reddit at the time of writing.

Some people sided with the host, backing him up saying wagyu needs to be cooked in a certain way writing, "This has come up before because Redditors don't know what wagyu looks like or how to cook it. Google Wagyu and you'll see that it is raised to be rippled with fat. If you overcook it all that fat will drain out of it and you'll be left with a gnarled and much shrunken piece of meat. Serving it that way is ruining it and what it exists for. The cook is absolutely correct to suggest that someone who wants it that way should not have wagyu at all, any more than you should serve well-done sushi or pasta cooked to the mushiness of Spaghetti-Os. It's not pretentiousness, it's competence.”

Others were on the guest's side, however, saying she should be able to eat her food how she wants. They wrote, “… people can eat food prepared how they want. Who is he to dictate how this girl eats her steak?” Another replied, "Exactly, it's literally her taste. Not mine, or most everybody else's, hers. Like I don't get it, but you're not hurting anything. She already had it, he had to unsuccessfully take it back from her - ruining it completely in the process.”

A lot of other commenters weren’t on either side, expressing that both the host and guests were in the wrong.

"She was a terrible guest and you were an obnoxious host. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t even eat meat above a medium rare temp, but when you choose to cook for someone, you don’t get to dictate how they eat it. You’re gifting them a dish and they can do how they will with it in the manner they enjoy it. The fact you’d rather have a dog eat the meat than the guest is pretty telling how inconsiderate and controlling of a host you are.”

"This guests sounds like she was rather unpleasant and rude with her requests, but OP sounds very pretentious. As long as OP got to enjoy his perfect steak, as did his friends who could appreciate it, why did he care how she chose to enjoy hers? It was her steak at that point, given to her. If she wanted to cook it to cardboard, and slather it in A1 - who cares. No one else would be eating it, and it was already on her plate. She also clearly stated she wasnt comfortable eating a pink steak, so leave her be (even if you secretly thought she was uncultured swine.) OP went WAY too far by snatching her steak off of her plate (who would even be eating that steak at that point). He then ended up throwing the steak to the floor and letting his dogs eat it.”

"OP - get over yourself. She was a rude guest, but you were a horrible host who ruined your own party by being a controlling AH.”

When replying to how he handled the situation, he does admit he reacted poorly saying, "I'm not saying I was in the right. I saw her shoving that steak in the microwave and I reacted, albeit poorly."

Image Credit: (NPDstock / Shutterstock.com)