Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.

With a heavy but happy and wonder-ously stinky heart, I’m sharing that my time here on The Butter has come to an end. As I mentioned last time, I’ve had to trim my outside projects to focus on a couple of book projects during my sabbatical. But not before ending this column with my favorite specimen of all time from the plant world, Amorphophallus titanium — the corpse flower.

The corpse flower has the largest inflorescence in the world, with the flower averaging 8 to 10 feet tall. It only grows in the wild in Indonesia, but several botanical gardens here in the U.S. have had much success growing them indoors. In 1937, the New York Botanical Gardens was the first in the country to successfully display one in full bloom. Each bloom only lasts about 24 hours, and indoors they only bloom every eight years or so.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.

Here in Western New York, August means mosquitoes. It also means corn, means mosquitoes, means blueberries, means humidity, and means mosquitoes. Mostly mosquitoes. Seriously! I just counted five while having a coffee on my deck at 7:30 in the morning. What I wouldn’t give to have a little potoo bird (or three) in my backyard to catch those blood-thirsty beasties!

Alas, the potoo (POT-too) only resides in central and south America, where they gobble up said mosquitoes and termites. Fully grown potoos are a little over a foot tall, and their traffic-light eyes make them look like they are seeing something horrifying. (You might have also recognized the potoo as the star of its very own “weird stuff I do” meme.)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.

This week gives us a little tough dear from the island of Madagascar. I say tough because zoologists thought it was extinct back in 1937, due in part to the unfortunate folklore surrounding these little guys. Legend has it that the aye-aye were/are harbingers of death, and if you saw one, you were supposed to kill it on the spot. But sure enough, after regrouping and laying low (or in their case, laying waaay high in their spherical nests, way up in the tree crowns of forests), the aye-aye were found again in 1957 — and they are still doing their best to shed their “endangered” status.

The Daubentonia madagascariensis is not actually a rodent, though I know it’s tempting to call it one if you’re just looking at the crazy-long bottom teeth and the squirrel-pouf of a tail. The aye-aye is actually the largest nocturnal primate in the world at about five pounds and just a little over a foot long. Think of the aye-aye as a very, very specialized form of lemur. And like the lemur, the aye-aye has a surprisingly solid vertical jump as it moves from tree to tree, searching for its favorite dinner: fruit, insects, and various fungi.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.

The semester is over, my final grades are turned in, and one of the first things I like to do to herald summer is to have a little dance party. This year? I’m partial to the smooth beats of my original Thriller album. This was the first album I bought with hard-won allowance, so I get a wave of nostalgia when I hear “Baby Be Mine,” or “P.Y.T.” Go on and jam out for a bit. I’ll wait.

Ahem. Which is why I thought the Lophorina superba—not the Lesser nor the Greater, but the Superb bird-of-Paradise—would be a fantastic and timely choice for this week’s column. I mean, check out the moves on this guy. Can’t you just picture him boppin’ along to “P.Y.T” too?