Top 5 most wacky stories of 2011
Carlos Valluna winnows a batch of roasted ants to get rid of legs and wings.
What makes a good story? Sometimes we cover a story because it is tragic. Other times it's scandalous, heartwarming or even — if we're lucky — groundbreaking. And then there are times when a story is just too weird and wild to pass up. Here are GlobalPost's top 5 most wacky stories of 2011.
1. In northern Colombia, a hunt for gourmet big-butt ants
Nothing says yummy like the butts of big ants. At least that's what some in northern Colombia say. They consider these brown, cockroach-size insects a delicacy and eat them roasted and salted like peanuts. One chef serves beef tenderloin and pork cutlets drizzled in ant sauce.
2. India's injectable vasectomy
An Indian engineer named Sujoy K. Guha has brought India one step closer to solving its population crisis. He is on the brink of creating a surgery-free, injectable vasectomy for men — and it's reversible. "The fact that it does not involve cutting a body part and throwing a piece away carries a lot of psychological impact," Guha said.
3. India opens restaurant for vultures
Indians aren't only busy with reversible, injectable vasectomies. They have also created a restaurant specifically for vultures. South Asia's vultures began dying off two decades ago after a painkiller used to treat animals became popular among farmers but was deadly to the scavengers. In an effort to save the vultures from extinction, the state of Maharashtra embarked on a project to create a safe space where the birds can eat, mingle and table hop without accidentally being poisoned to death.
4. South Africa biker T-boned by antelope (VIDEO)
A South African mountain biker was racing in the savannah of KwaZulu-Natal province this October when out of seemingly nowhere a large antelope charged into the biker, took him out and then kept on running. As our correspondent in Johannesburg wrote, this was surely an "only in Africa" moment. Magically, the entire episode was caught on video by another biker, and both the antelope and the biker lived to tell the tale.
Read more and watch the video.
5. Nando’s pulls controversial dictators ad after Zimbabwe threats
A South Africa-based fast-food chain named Nando's created a holiday commercial, called "Last Dictator Standing," that showed Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe frolicking with dead dictators. In the ad, Mugabe sits alone at a dinner table in the ad, reminiscing over good times with former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and others. But not everyone found the ad quite so funny. A notorious youth militia loyal to Mugabe threatened Nando's, which decided to stop airing the commercial.