Weekly Fun: Japanese Officials Wore Fake Bellies to Understand Pregnancy

by Lolly Page

Every week, our editorial team dugs up the funniest and the most ridiculous bits of news and prepares a compilation of life stories and situations, chucklesome videos, amusing texts, memes, and a variety of jokes and wisecracks to make you grin from ear to ear. Reading our selection of Weekly Fun stuff without a doubt equals having a whale of a time.

Japanese officials wore fake bellies to understand how pregnant women feel

Three male members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party took part in a social experiment: they wore seven-kilogram jackets for two days.

In jackets imitating a pair of breasts and a baby bump, the officials went to work and the store, slept, and did household chores. They were allowed to remove the load only during the plenary sessions of the government.

The experiment began quite recently, but officials have already admitted that the extra weight really burdens them: the stomach prevents them from walking, turning around, bending over, and doing many other things.

Twitter users clarified that the jacket only partially imitates pregnancy. For instance, the officials do not feel abdominal pain, do not suffer from dizziness, toxicosis, and other symptoms. But still, they hope that the experiment will at least provide some results.

People confuse sea monsters with erect penises of whales

Comedian James Felton researched the sources and tweeted a short thread about how the sea monster legends might have appeared. Sailors could mistake the erect penises of whales lying on their backs for giant snakes, lizards with long necks, and other monsters.

According to him, people came up with creepy details about this phenomenon over time, until a legend appeared about the Kraken that was taking whole ships down to the bottom of the sea.

The fact that people saw the "serpent's tail" at a sufficient distance from its "body" speaks of observing not one excited whale, but several. The penises of some whale species can be easily mistaken for sea serpents – they can be as long as 1.8 meters.