One man's emphysema is another man's pea plant, if one New Yorker's story is to be believed. A doctor supposedly pulled a pea plant out of his lungs--after it had germinated and grown to half an inch long.

Haters gonna hate--and sometimes those haters work for chemical company Syngenta. One researchers way to get at 'em? Spit some DMX rhymes, harassing-email style, which is how Tyrone Hayes needled the company, maker of an herbicide that Hayes says feminizes male frogs. In August, Syngenta revealed released 102 pages of smackdown-filled emails sent by the biologist over the years.

What's on a chimp's sexy times playlist? Nope, not Marvin Gaye. The sound of crunching, ripping leaves, that's what. Researchers found that male chimps signal their sexual openness to females by sitting and ripping up leaves until the female notices their readiness for action--a use of leaves that actually fits the definition of a tool.

Iran has joined the space race a few decades late, but successfully sent a rat, two turtles, and a handful of worms up with it's Kovoshgar 3 rocket in February. The animals will live out their lives on the space capsule; maybe the cosmic rays will produce some space mutant ninja turtles!

It's debatable whether entertainment like TV makes humans happier, but according to a Russian farmer, having the TV set to a peaceful outdoor scene helps perk up his cattle. He's rigged one half of his barn with 40-inch LCDs set to a scene of the Swiss alps and says it makes his cows "happy and productive."

Awesome plan, or best plan ever? To fight the invasive brown snake in Guam, American Naval Facilities Command at Marianas is dropping Tylenol-laced dead mice over the island to poison the snakes, which are wreaking havoc by invading people's homes and biting them in their sleep.

We here at Discoblog have seen some weird research studies conducted in the name of science. This is one of our favorites from this year: researchers studying the antidepressant properties of semen. Supposedly, women who have sex without condoms are less likely to be depressed!

Platypodes (yes, that is supposedly the proper way to pluralize the platypus...) are some of the weirdest creatures mother nature has ever created. Recent research indicates that the male's venom, which it ejects from the spur on its heel, contains over 80 different toxins in 13 different classes. Bet you didn't even know there were that many classes of animal toxins.

A case study so ironic that commenters accused us of buying into an urban legend: lungs that carry the ghost of the illness (a peanut allergy) that killed the donor. The allergy was transferred via the donor's white blood cells and almost killed the recipient...at a transplant support group meeting...after she ate a peanut butter cookie.

How can someone without a vagina become pregnant? If she's stabbed in the abdomen after performing oral sex, setting free the sperm from her stomach. Yes, you read that right.

And if there was a weirder science story this year, prove it by telling us in the comments.