From a gigantic jack-o'-lantern to the dirty secret of flying amphibians...

Your weekly roundup of offbeat stories from around the world.

 Till death do them part 
India's top court has denied a man a divorce 40 years after his marriage broke down after his wife said she did not want to die with the "stigma" of being a divorcee.

Supreme Court judges admitted the marriage was "beyond salvation" since Paramjit Kaur Panesar, now 82, refused to move with her husband to Chennai in 1984 when he was posted there by the Indian Air Force.

Divorce remains taboo in India and it has taken Nirmal Singh Panesar, now 89, 27 years to get the case through the country's glacially-slow court system, after filing for "desertion".

Flying Frog on white background. Native to Vietnam Biosphoto / Michel Gunther (Photo by Michel Gunther / Biosphoto / Biosphoto via AFP)

 Fooled by the stool 
Young flying frogs may have another surprising talent. Scientists believe they can disguise themselves as turds to escape predators.

Researchers from the University of Vienna suspect juvenile Wallace's flying frogs change colour to fool birds into believing that they would make a deeply unappetising snack.

The foxy amphibians who glide from branch to branch through the jungles of Southeast Asia developed the excremental camouflage so they would be "considered inedible", said researcher Susanne Stueckler.

Before you pooh-pooh the idea, tests in a Vienna's zoo -- billed as the "first experimental exploration of a vertebrate masquerading as animal droppings" -- show the trick seems to work.

You can never be too fat 
To the land of the super-sized, where epic overeating is being celebrated in Alaska, with the Fat Bear Week 2023 title going to the bulkiest brown bear in a national park.

"She's beauty and she's grace, she stuffed so much salmon in her face," rapped the US National Park Service on Instagram as they eulogised a gargantuan female called 128 Grazer, who has fattened herself up with unusual gusto before hibernation.

"You will wear the crown! You ate the crown!" it added.

Auman funeral home employees and volunteers load the casket of 'Stoneman Willie' (James Murphy), during his funeral service in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 7, 2023. - "Stoneman Willie" died in a Pennsylvania jail more than 100 years ago after being arrested for pickpocketing. Upon his arrest, he provided a fake name, and later died of kidney failure at the Berks County Prison. The body has been on display to visitors since 1895, but after an investigation of his mummified remains, he has been identified. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

Oh my gourd 
But even Grazer would be defeated by the monster American pumpkin that has just squashed the world record for a gigantic gourd.

Minnesota farmer Travis Gienger's orange beast is as heavy as a hippo, hitting the scales at 1.247 tonnes at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival in California. The new record landed him $30,000 prize money, leaving the Italian holders of the title crying into their zuppa di zucca.

 Willie gets his last rights 
An American town has finally buried its oldest resident, the mummy of an alleged thief called "Stoneman Willie" who had been a local celebrity for over a century.

Generations of schoolchildren in Reading, Pennsylvania had been taken to see the preserved corpse of the man who died in the town's jail in 1895.

When his body wasn't claimed, the local undertakers accidentally mummified him while experimenting with a new formula, and displayed him afterwards in an open casket to drum up custom.

"Fast-forward 128 years and he's still here," funeral home director Kyle Blankenbiller told AFP.

"He's been gawked at enough," he added, saying laying him to rest was the "reverent, respectful thing to do".

Large crowds turned out to bid Willie -- whose real name was James Murphy -- adieu, with his coffin carried to the cemetery in a Harley Davidson motorcycle hearse.