Goodness knows, we at AtAT aren't typically hurting for, shall we say, "imaginative" explanations for strangeness in the world of Apple. Heck, when Apple reversed its Super Bowl commercial plans, we were the first to blame aliens. And the cancellation of Mac cloning, that was because of aliens, too. The killing of the Newton project? Aliens. (Okay, so perhaps "imaginative" isn't quite the right word...) And yet, we're at a loss to explain one particularly bizarre factoid, pointed out by Apple Recon. We're not talking about Disney-Apple connections, or the imminent world domination by FireWire, or any of that stuff (since that's all easily explained once you start considering alien-human hybrids and secret government cloning projects). No, the thing that's got us stymied is mammals.org.

It's not often we urge our viewers to switch channels, but flip over to mammals.org and then come right back. Eerie, isn't it? For some unknown reason, the domain name mammals.org is mapped to Apple's web server. And it's not just some random yokel who registered the domain name and had it mapped to Apple's site without their knowledge, or anything... According to the InterNIC database, mammals.org is registered to Apple themselves. Okay, raise your hand if "Huh?" It was exciting to discover that Apple had registered macmate.com and myapple.com, but this mammals.org thing just freaks us out to no end.

So, uh, any ideas? The best we've been able to come up with is Apple's secret attempt to gene-splice an iMac and a Furby, creating a new mammalian life form altogether that will be the designer pet of choice among hip urbanites with a penchant for "cute yet disturbing;" the mammals.org web site will eventually become a sort of Internet users' group for owners of the new creatures to swap cute anecdotes, grooming tips, dietary considerations, and the like. Beyond that, we're at a loss. After all, even aliens wouldn't come up with something quite this weird...