Miscellaneous

Uhm ... ew?

A British student, Daniel Bennett, is involved in a legal battle with the university where he's a grad student, Leeds University. Over 77 pounds of lizard shit.

He had collected the samples from remote areas of the Philippines as part of an investigation into the rare Butaan lizard.

The animal - a close relative of the Komodo dragon - was assumed extinct for more than 100 years and little is known about it.

Mr Bennett spent five years investigating their diet, population size and behaviour by sifting through excrement found on the jungle floor.

He then won a scholarship at Leeds where he was paid to analyse more samples at the university's faculty of biological sciences.

But two years into his PhD he returned from fieldwork to find his collection had been "accidentally" thrown away by technicians clearing space in a laboratory.

Eighteen months after finding that he was missing his ginormeous bag of lizard shit, the University issued a formal apology and offered Bennett £500. He declined the cash, and now that he's completed his thesis, he's suing the school.

Over lizard shit.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).