A couple dining at a restaurant finds pearl inside oyster

A couple dining on oysters at a New Jersey restaurant made an unusual discovery inside one of the shellfish — a pearl.

Anton and Sheryl Schermer of Tenafly, said they were having dinner at Stern & Bow in Closter when they discovered the pearl.

Anton Schermer said he had eaten the oyster and found the pearl inside his mouth.

The couple gifted their find to the restaurant, which said it plans to frame it for display. Restaurant workers said the pearl was the first found inside an oyster at the eatery.

World’s oldest sloth

Guinness World Records announced a 50-year-old sloth living in a German zoo is officially the oldest-known member of her species.

The record-keeping organisation said Paula, a two-toed sloth, was caught wild in South America and was estimated to be at least two years old when she was brought to the Halle Zoo in Saxony-Anhalt in 1971.

Officials said sloths typically live about 20 years in the wild, and average 30-40 years in captivity.

“Paula is still fine, but you can see she is old,” Jutta Heuer, a zoo curator and an authority on sloths in Europe, told Guinness. “The hair is light and not so compact. The claws grow in different ways — the same as with elderly people. Of course, she moves slowly and is very relaxed.”

A dream job to watch Disney movies

A website is celebrating the upcoming release of Disney+ by offering a ‘dream job’ opportunity for five fans looking to make $1,000 by watching 30 movies in 30 days.

The website said the five selected applicants will each receive $1,000, a year’s subscription to the new streaming service and a selection of Disney-related movie watching supplies, including a blanket, cups and a Pixar popcorn popper.

The $1,000 will be deposited directly into the winners’ bank accounts.

“It’s up to you if you keep ’em there or cash out the $1,000 in coins, then dive into them a la Scrooge McDuck,” the website states.

Applications, which are being accepted through November 7, consist of answering a list of questions on the contest website and making a video review of a Disney movie.

Driving reduces stress in rats!

The scientists at the University of Richmond’s Lambert Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory said they trained two groups of rats to operate the ‘rat-operated vehicle,’ or ROV, which works by having the rats push down on a copper bar that propels the tiny car forward.

The rats were rewarded with cereal when they drove to the end of the enclosure.

Kelly Lambert, head of the laboratory and lead author of the story, said the group of rats raised in an ‘enriched’ environment with toys and ladders, were better able to drive than the group of rats raised in a plain lab cage. She said the rats with more activities had greater neuroplasticity — the ability of their brains to grow and change over time — due to having more stimulation.

Lambert said the study could have implications for how researchers approach depression and other mental illnesses in humans.

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 2nd, 2019