title: Cetacea

text: In the 20th century perceptions of cetaceans changed. They transformed from monsters into creatures of wonder, as science revealed them to be intelligent and peaceful animals. Hunting was replaced by whale and dolphin tourism. This change is reflected in films and novels. For example, the protagonist of the series Flipper was a bottle-nose dolphin. The TV series SeaQuest DSV (1993–1996), the movies Free Willy, and the book series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams are examples.


title: Cetacea

text: Whales and dolphins have been kept in captivity for use in education, research and entertainment since the 19th century.


title: Cetacea

text: Beluga whales were the first whales to be kept in captivity. Other species were too rare, too shy or too big. The first was shown at Barnum's Museum in New York City in 1861. For most of the 20th century, Canada was the predominant source. They were taken from the St. Lawrence River estuary until the late 1960s, after which they were predominantly taken from the Churchill River estuary until capture was banned in 1992. Russia then became the largest provider. Belugas are caught in the Amur Darya delta and their eastern coast and are transported domestically to aquaria or dolphinaria in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi, or exported to countries such as Canada. They have not been domesticated.


title: Cetacea

text: As of 2006, 30 belugas lived in Canada and 28 in the United States. 42 deaths in captivity had been reported. A single specimen can reportedly fetch up to US$100,000 (GB£64,160). The beluga's popularity is due to its unique color and its facial expressions. The latter is possible because while most cetacean "smiles" are fixed, the extra movement afforded by the beluga's unfused cervical vertebrae allows a greater range of apparent expression.


title: Cetacea

text: The orca's intelligence, trainability, striking appearance, playfulness in captivity and sheer size have made it a popular exhibit at aquaria and aquatic theme parks. From 1976 to 1997, fifty-five whales were taken from the wild in Iceland, nineteen from Japan and three from Argentina. These figures exclude animals that died during capture. Live captures fell dramatically in the 1990s and by 1999, about 40% of the forty-eight animals on display in the world were captive-born.


title: Cetacea

text: Organizations such as World Animal Protection and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation campaign against the practice of keeping them in captivity.


title: Cetacea

text: In captivity, they often develop pathologies, such as the dorsal fin collapse seen in 60–90% of captive males. Captives have reduced life expectancy, on average only living into their 20s, although some live longer, including several over 30 years old and two, Corky II and Lolita, in their mid-40s. In the wild, females who survive infancy live 46 years on average and up to 70–80 years. Wild males who survive infancy live 31 years on average and can reach 50–60 years.


title: Cetacea

text: Captivity usually bears little resemblance to wild habitat and captive whales' social groups are foreign to those found in the wild. Critics claim captive life is stressful due to these factors and the requirement to perform circus tricks that are not part of wild orca behavior. Wild orca may travel up to in a day and critics say the animals are too big and intelligent to be suitable for captivity. Captives occasionally act aggressively towards themselves, their tankmates, or humans, which critics say is a result of stress. Orcas are well known for their performances in shows, but the number of orcas kept in captivity is small, especially when compared to the number of bottlenose dolphins, with only forty-four captive orcas being held in aquaria as of 2012.


title: Cetacea

text: Each country has its own tank requirements; in the US, the minimum enclosure size is set by the Code of Federal Regulations, 9 CFR E § 3.104, under the "Specifications for the Humane Handling, Care, Treatment and Transportation of Marine Mammals".


title: Cetacea

text: Aggression among captive orcas is common. They attack each other and their trainers as well. In 2013, SeaWorld's treatment of orcas in captivity was the basis of the movie "Blackfish", which documents the history of Tilikum, an orca at SeaWorld Orlando, who had been involved in the deaths of three people. The film led to proposals by some lawmakers to ban captivity of cetaceans, and led SeaWorld to announce in 2016 that it would phase out its orca program after various unsuccessful attempts to restore its revenues, reputation, and stock price.


title: Cetacea

text: Dolphins and porpoises are kept in captivity. Bottlenose dolphins are the most common, as they are relatively easy to train, have a long lifespan in captivity and have a friendly appearance. Bottlenose dolphins live in captivity across the world, though exact numbers are hard to determine. Other species kept in captivity are spotted dolphins, false killer whales and common dolphins, Commerson's dolphins, as well as rough-toothed dolphins, but all in much lower numbers. There are also fewer than ten pilot whales, Amazon river dolphins, Risso's dolphins, spinner dolphins, or tucuxi in captivity. Two unusual and rare hybrid dolphins, known as wolphins, are kept at Sea Life Park in Hawaii, which is a cross between a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale. Also, two common/bottlenose hybrids reside in captivity at Discovery Cove and SeaWorld San Diego.


title: Cetacea

text: In repeated attempts in the 1960s and 1970s, narwhals kept in captivity died within months. A breeding pair of pygmy right whales were retained in a netted area. They were eventually released in South Africa. In 1971, SeaWorld captured a California gray whale calf in Mexico at Scammon's Lagoon. The calf, later named Gigi, was separated from her mother using a form of lasso attached to her flukes. Gigi was displayed at SeaWorld San Diego for a year. She was then released with a radio beacon affixed to her back; however, contact was lost after three weeks. Gigi was the first captive baleen whale. JJ, another gray whale calf, was kept at SeaWorld San Diego. JJ was an orphaned calf that beached itself in April 1997 and was transported two miles to SeaWorld. The calf was a popular attraction and behaved normally, despite separation from his mother. A year later, the then whale though smaller than average, was too big to keep in captivity, and was released on April 1, 1998. A captive Amazon river dolphin housed at Acuario de Valencia is the only trained river dolphin in captivity.


title: Cetacea

text: Here is a list of all the cetaceans that have been taken into captivity for either conservation, research or human entertainment and education purposes currently or in the past, temporarily or permanently.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The "'" ("Horst Wessel Song"; ), also known by its opening words "'" ("Raise the Flag", ), was the anthem of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 1930 to 1945. From 1933 to 1945, the Nazis made it the co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first stanza of the "".


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The lyrics to "Horst-Wessel-Lied" were written in 1929 by "Sturmführer" Horst Wessel, the commander of the Nazi paramilitary "Brownshirts" ("Sturmabteilung" or "SA") in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. Wessel wrote songs for the SA in conscious imitation of the Communist paramilitary, the Red Front Fighters' League, to provoke them into attacking his troops, and to keep up the spirits of his men.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Wessel was the son of a pastor and educated at degree level, but was employed as a construction worker. He became notorious among the Communists when he led a number of SA attacks into the Fischerkiez, an extremely poor Berlin district, which he did on orders from Joseph Goebbels, who was then the Nazi "Gauleiter" (regional party leader) of Berlin. Several of these incursions were only minor altercations, but one took place outside the tavern which the local German Communist Party (KPD) used as its headquarters. As a result of that melee, five Communists were injured, four of them seriously. Communist newspapers accused the police of letting the Nazis get away while arresting the injured Communists, while Nazi newspapers claimed that Wessel had been trying to give a speech when Communists emerged and started the fight. Wessel's face was printed together with his address on Communist street posters. The slogan of the KPD and the Red Front Fighters' League became "strike the fascists wherever you find them."


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Wessel moved with his partner Erna Jänicke into a room on Große Frankfurter Straße. The landlady was the widowed Mrs Salm, whose husband had been a Communist. After a few months, there was a dispute between Salm and Wessel over unpaid rent. Salm requested Wessel's partner to leave but Jänicke refused. Salm appealed to Communist friends of her late husband for help. Shortly thereafter on 14 January 1930, Wessel was shot and seriously wounded by two Communist Party members, one of whom was Albrecht "Ali" Höhler. Wessel died in hospital on 23 February from blood poisoning, which he contracted during his hospitalisation. Höhler was tried in court and sentenced to six years' imprisonment for the shooting. He was taken out of prison under false pretenses by the SA and shot dead three years later, after the Nazi accession to national power in 1933.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi "Gauleiter" and owner and editor of the newspaper "Der Angriff" (The Attack), had made several attempts to create Nazi martyrs for propaganda purposes, the first being an SA man named Hans-Georg Kütemeyer, whose body was pulled out of a canal the morning after he attended a speech by Hitler at the Sportpalast. Goebbels attempted to spin this into an assassination by Communists, but the overwhelming evidence showed it to have been suicide, and he had to drop the matter. Thus, Goebbels put considerable effort into mythologizing Wessel's story, even as the man lay dying. He met with Wessel's mother, who told him her son's life story, his hope for a "better world", and his attempt to rescue a prostitute he had met on the street. Goebbels saw Wessel as an "idealistic dreamer".


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Wessel himself had undergone an operation at St. Joseph's Hospital which stopped his internal bleeding, but the surgeons had been unable to remove the bullet in his cerebellum. Wessel was brought to his mother's home to die. In his diary, Goebbels described Wessel's entire face as being shot up and his features distorted, and claimed that Wessel told him "One has to keep going! I'm happy!" After a period where his condition stabilized, Wessel died on 23 February.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Goebbels consulted Hermann Göring and others in the party on how to respond to Wessel's death. They declared a period of mourning until 12 March, during which party and SA members would avoid amusements and Wessel's name would be invoked at all party meetings. Wessel's unit was renamed the Horst Wessel Storm Unit 5.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: From a mashup of fact and fiction, Goebbels' propaganda created what became one of the Nazi Party's central martyr-figures of their movement. He officially declared Wessel's march, renamed as the "" ("Horst Wessel Song"), to be the Nazi Party anthem, which aided in promoting Wessel as the first of many in the Nazi cult of martyrdom. Wessel was buried on 1 March 1930. Contrary to Nazi claims, there were no attacks on the funeral procession. His funeral was filmed and turned into a major propaganda event by the NSDAP. The "Horst Wessel Song" was sung by the SA at the funeral, and was thereafter extensively used at party functions, as well as sung by the SA during street parades.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: When Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the "Horst Wessel Song" became a national symbol by law on 19 May 1933. The following year, a regulation required the right arm be extended and raised in the "Hitler salute" when the (identical) first and fourth verses were sung. Nazi leaders can be seen singing the song at the finale of Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 film "Triumph of the Will." Hitler also mandated the tempo at which the song had to be played.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Some Nazis were extremely sensitive about the uses to which the "Horst Wessel Song" was put. For instance, a bandleader who wrote a jazz version of the song was forced to leave Germany, and when Martha Dodd, the daughter of William E. Dodd, at the time the US ambassador to Germany, played a recording of an unusual arrangement of the song at her birthday party at the Ambassador's residence in 1933, a young Nazi who was a liaison between the German Foreign Ministry and Hitler's Chancellery, turned off the record player, announcing "This is not the sort of music to be played for mixed gatherings and in a flippant manner." The song was played in some Protestant places of worship, as some elements of the Protestant Church in Germany had accepted the Horst Wessel cult, built as it was by Goebbels on the model of Christian martyrs of the past.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: With the end of the Nazi regime in May 1945, the "Horst Wessel Song" was banned. The lyrics and tune are now illegal in Germany, with some limited exceptions. In early 2011, this resulted in a Lower Saxony State Police investigation of Amazon.com and Apple Inc. for offering the song for sale on their websites. Both Apple and Amazon complied with the government's request, and deleted the song from their offerings.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: A special marine commando unit within the Chilean Navy uses the same melody as the Horst-Wessel-Lied with different lyrics called "Himno de la Agrupación de Comandos IM no. 51".


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The words to the "Horst Wessel Song" were published in September 1929 in the Nazi Party's Berlin newspaper, "Der Angriff" (The Attack) which Joseph Goebbels owned and ran.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The "Rotfront", or "Red Front", was the "Rotfrontkämpferbund", the paramilitary organization of the Communist Party of Germany. The Nazi SA, also known as the "brown shirts" and the Communist Red Front fought each other in violent street confrontations, which grew into almost open warfare after 1930. The "reactionaries" were the conservative political parties and the liberal democratic German government of the Weimar Republic period, which made several unsuccessful attempts to suppress the SA. The "time of bondage" refers to the period after the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, in which the victorious powers imposed huge reparations on Germany, stripped her of her colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, some of which became League of Nations mandates, gave parts of Germany to Belgium, Denmark, France, Poland, and Lithuania, and occupied the Rhineland.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The line is technically ambiguous. It could either mean "Kameraden, die von Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen wurden" ("Our comrades who were shot dead by the Red Front and Reactionaries") or "Kameraden, welche die Erschießung von Rotfront und Reaktion durchführten" ("Our comrades who have shot the Red Front and Reactionaries dead"). In spite of this obvious syntactic problem, which was mentioned by Victor Klemperer in his "LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii", the line was never changed. The following line (March in spirit within our ranks) however indicates that the aforementioned comrades are deceased, advocating the first interpretation.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: After Wessel's death, new stanzas were added, composed in his honour. These were frequently sung by the SA but did not become part of the official lyrics used on party or state occasions.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: After Wessel's death, he was officially credited with having composed the music as well as having written the lyrics for the "Horst Wessel Song". Between 1930 and 1933, however, German critics disputed this, pointing out that the melody had a long history. "How Great Thou Art" is a well-known hymn of Swedish origin with a similar tune for example. Criticism of Horst Wessel as author became unthinkable after 1933, when the Nazi Party took control of Germany and criticism would likely be met with severe punishment.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The most likely immediate source for the melody was a song popular in the Imperial German Navy during World War I, which Wessel would no doubt have heard being sung by World War I veterans in the Berlin of the 1920s. The song was known either by its opening line as or as the "", after the German cruiser , which is mentioned in one version of the song's lyrics. The opening stanza of the song is:


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: In 1936, the German music critic Alfred Weidemann published an article, in which he identified the melody of a song composed in 1865 by Peter Cornelius as the "Urmelodie" (source-melody). According to Weidemann, Cornelius described the tune as a "Viennese folk tune". This appeared to him to be the ultimate origin of the melody of the "Horst Wessel Song".


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: During the 1930s and 1940s, the "Horst Wessel Song" was adapted by fascist groups in other European countries.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: One of the marching songs of the British Union of Fascists, known as "The Marching Song" or "Comrades, the Voices" was set to the same tune, and its lyrics were to some extent modelled on the song, though appealing to British Fascism. Instead of referring to martyrs of the party, it identifies Britain's war dead as those marching in spirit against the "red front and massed ranks of reaction".


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: In modern Croatia, members of various far-right movements consider the adaptation written by Jan Zadravec, called "Hrvatski Stijeg" (The Croatian Banner), to be their unofficial anthem.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: In modern Greece, Golden Dawn, an extreme right-wing party, uses the "Horst Wessel Song" with Greek lyrics in its gatherings or events such as the occasional public distribution of food "to Greeks only", while its leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, often uses the song's key stanzas (e.g. "The flags on high!") in his speeches.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The All-Russian Fascist Organisation, founded in 1933, largely consisted of émigrés of the White Movement. It was led by Anastasy Vonsiatsky and was based in Connecticut, USA. The organisation dissolved after the United States entered World War II. Vonsyatsky was arrested for violating the 1917 Espionage Act.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The fascist Lapua Movement and its successor Patriotic People's Movement of Finland sang a song to the tune of Horst Wessel Lied, translated by Otto Al’Antila:


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Before 1933, the German Communists and the Social Democrats sang parodies of the "Horst Wessel Song" during their street battles with the SA. Some versions simply changed the political character of the song:


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: "Der Stahlhelm", or "The Steel Helmet", was a nationalist veterans' organisation closely aligned with the German National People's Party.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: These versions were banned once the Nazis came to power and the Communist and Social Democratic parties prohibited. However, during the years of the Third Reich the song was parodied in underground versions, poking fun at the corruption of the Nazi elite. There are similarities between different texts as underground authors developed them with variations. Below are several versions.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: Wilhelm Frick was the Interior Minister, Baldur von Schirach was the Hitler Youth leader and Heinrich Himmler was head of the SS and police.


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: In the first year of Nazi rule radical elements of the SA sang their own parody of the song, reflecting their disappointment that the socialist element of National Socialism had not been realised:


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: One of the best-known parodies was included in Bertolt Brecht's play "Schweik in the Second World War" (1943). Hanns Eisler composed a score for the "Kälbermarsch" (Calves' March):


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: After Nazi Germany's capitulation on 8 May 1945, which ended World War II, as well as Germany's occupation of Eastern Europe, Germany was divided into four occupation zones (British, French, US-American and Soviet). In the Soviet zone, a version of 'Die Preise hoch' became popular, targeting Communist functionaries:


title: Horst-Wessel-Lied

text: The most notable English-language parody was written by Oliver Wallace to a similar melody and titled "Der Fuehrer's Face" for the 1942 Donald Duck cartoon of the same name. It was the first hit record for Spike Jones. The opening lyrics give the flavor of the song:


title: Slot machine

text: A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively as one-armed bandits because of the large mechanical levers affixed to the sides of early mechanical machines and the games' ability to empty players' pockets and wallets as thieves would.


title: Slot machine

text: A slot machine's standard layout features a screen displaying three or more reels that "spin" when the game is activated. Some modern slot machines still include a lever as a skeuomorphic design trait to trigger play. However, the mechanics of early machines have been superseded by random number generators, and most are now operated using buttons and touchscreens.


title: Slot machine

text: Slot machines include one or more currency detectors that validate the form of payment, whether coin, cash, voucher, or token. The machine pays out according to the pattern of symbols displayed when the reels stop "spinning". Slot machines are the most popular gambling method in casinos and constitute about 70% of the average U.S. casino's income.


title: Slot machine

text: Digital technology has resulted in variations in the original slot machine concept. As the player is essentially playing a video game, manufacturers can offer more interactive elements, such as advanced bonus rounds and more varied video graphics.


title: Slot machine

text: The "slot machine" term derives from the slots on the machine for inserting and retrieving coins. "Fruit machine" comes from the traditional fruit images on the spinning reels such as lemons and cherries.


title: Slot machine

text: Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York developed a gambling machine in 1891 that was a precursor to the modern slot machine. It contained five drums holding a total of 50 card faces and was based on poker. The machine proved extremely popular, and soon many bars in the city had one or more of them. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, which would spin the drums and the cards that they held, the player hoping for a good poker hand. There was no direct payout mechanism, so a pair of kings might get the player a free beer, whereas a royal flush could pay out cigars or drinks; the prizes were wholly dependent upon what the establishment would offer. To improve the odds for the house, two cards were typically removed from the deck, the ten of spades and the jack of hearts, doubling the odds against winning a royal flush. The drums could also be rearranged to further reduce a player's chance of winning.


title: Slot machine

text: Because of the vast number of possible wins in the original poker-based game, it proved practically impossible to make a machine capable of awarding an automatic payout for all possible winning combinations. At some time between 1887 and 1895, Charles Fey of San Francisco, California devised a much simpler automatic mechanism with three spinning reels containing a total of five symbols: horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell; the bell gave the machine its name. By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was considerably reduced, allowing Fey to design an effective automatic payout mechanism. Three bells in a row produced the biggest payoff, ten nickels (50¢). Liberty Bell was a huge success and spawned a thriving mechanical gaming device industry. After a few years, the devices were banned in California, but Fey still could not keep up with the demand for them from elsewhere. The Liberty Bell machine was so popular that it was copied by many slot machine manufacturers. The first of these, also called the "Liberty Bell", was produced by the manufacturer Herbert Mills in 1907. By 1908, many "bell" machines had been installed in most cigar stores, saloons, bowling alleys, brothels and barber shops. Early machines, including an 1899 Liberty Bell, are now part of the Nevada State Museum's Fey Collection.


title: Slot machine

text: The first Liberty Bell machines produced by Mills used the same symbols on the reels as did Charles Fey's original. Soon afterward, another version was produced with patriotic symbols, such as flags and wreaths, on the wheels. Later, a similar machine called the Operator's Bell was produced that included the option of adding a gum-vending attachment. As the gum offered was fruit-flavored, fruit symbols were placed on the reels: lemons, cherries, oranges and plums. A bell was retained, and a picture of a stick of Bell-Fruit Gum, the origin of the bar symbol, was also present. This set of symbols proved highly popular and was used by other companies that began to make their own slot machines: Caille, Watling, Jennings and Pace.


title: Slot machine

text: A commonly used technique to avoid gambling laws in several states was to award food prizes. For this reason, several gumball and other vending machines were regarded with mistrust by the courts. The two Iowa cases of "State v. Ellis" and "State v. Striggles" are both used in criminal law classes to illustrate the concept of reliance upon authority as it relates to the axiomatic "ignorantia juris non excusat" ("ignorance of the law is no excuse"). In these cases, a mint vending machine was declared to be a gambling device because the machine would, by internally manufactured chance, occasionally give the next user several tokens exchangeable for more candy. Despite the display of the result of the next use on the machine, the courts ruled that "[t]he machine appealed to the player's propensity to gamble, and that is [a] vice."


title: Slot machine

text: In 1963, Bally developed the first fully electromechanical slot machine called Money Honey (although earlier machines such as Bally's High Hand draw-poker machine had exhibited the basics of electromechanical construction as early as 1940). Its electromechanical workings made Money Honey the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout of up to 500 coins without the help of an attendant. The popularity of this machine led to the increasing predominance of electronic games, with the side lever soon becoming vestigial.


title: Slot machine

text: The first video slot machine was developed in 1976 in Kearny Mesa, California by the Las Vegas–based Fortune Coin Co. This machine used a modified Sony Trinitron color receiver for the display and logic boards for all slot-machine functions. The prototype was mounted in a full-size, show-ready slot-machine cabinet. The first production units went on trial at the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. After some modifications to defeat cheating attempts, the video slot machine was approved by the Nevada State Gaming Commission and eventually found popularity on the Las Vegas Strip and in downtown casinos. Fortune Coin Co. and its video slot-machine technology were purchased by IGT (International Gaming Technology) in 1978.


title: Slot machine

text: The first American video slot machine to offer a "second screen" bonus round was Reel ’Em In, developed by WMS Industries in 1996. This type of machine had appeared in Australia from at least 1994 with the Three Bags Full game. With this type of machine, the display changes to provide a different game in which an additional payout may be awarded.


title: Slot machine

text: Depending on the machine, the player can insert cash or, in "ticket-in, ticket-out" machines, a paper ticket with a barcode, into a designated slot on the machine. The machine is then activated by means of a lever or button (either physical or on a touchscreen), which activates reels that spin and stop to rearrange the symbols. If a player matches a winning combination of symbols, the player earns credits based on the paytable. Symbols vary depending on the theme of the machine. Classic symbols include objects such as fruits, bells, and stylized lucky sevens. Most slot games have a theme, such as a specific aesthetic, location, or character. Symbols and other bonus features of the game are typically aligned with the theme. Some themes are licensed from popular media franchises, including films, television series (including game shows such as "Wheel of Fortune"), entertainers, and musicians.


title: Slot machine

text: Multi-line slot machines have become more popular since the 1990s. These machines have more than one payline, meaning that visible symbols that are not aligned on the main horizontal may be considered as winning combinations. Traditional three-reel slot machines commonly have one, three, or five paylines while video slot machines may have 9, 15, 25, or as many as 1024 different paylines. Most accept variable numbers of credits to play, with 1 to 15 credits per line being typical. The higher the amount bet, the higher the payout will be if the player wins.


title: Slot machine

text: One of the main differences between video slot machines and reel machines is in the way payouts are calculated. With reel machines, the only way to win the maximum jackpot is to play the maximum number of coins (usually three, sometimes four or even five coins per spin). With video machines, the fixed payout values are multiplied by the number of coins per line that is being bet. In other words: on a reel machine, the odds are more favorable if the gambler plays with the maximum number of coins available. However, depending on the structure of the game and its bonus features, some video slots may still include features that improve chances at payouts by making increased wagers.


title: Slot machine

text: "Multi-way" games eschew fixed paylines in favor of allowing symbols to pay anywhere, as long as there is at least one in at least three consecutive reels from left to right. Multi-way games may be configured to allow players to bet by-reel: for example, on a game with a 3x5 pattern (often referred to as a 243-way game), playing one reel allows all three symbols in the first reel to potentially pay, but only the center row pays on the remaining reels (often designated by darkening the unused portions of the reels). Other multi-way games use a 4x5 or 5x5 pattern, where there are up to five symbols in each reel, allowing for up to 1,024 and 3,125 ways to win respectively. The Australian manufacturer Aristocrat Leisure brands games featuring this system as "Reel Power", "Xtra Reel Power" and "Super Reel Power" respectively. A variation involves patterns where symbols pay adjacent to one another. Most of these games have a hexagonal reel formation, and much like multi-way games, any patterns not played are darkened out of use.


title: Slot machine

text: Denominations can range from 1 cent ("penny slots") all the way up to $100.00 or more per credit. The latter are typically known as "high limit" machines, and machines configured to allow for such wagers are often located in dedicated areas (which may have a separate team of attendants to cater to the needs of those who play there). The machine automatically calculates the number of credits the player receives in exchange for the cash inserted. Newer machines often allow players to choose from a selection of denominations on a splash screen or menu.


title: Slot machine

text: A bonus is a special feature of the particular game theme, which is activated when certain symbols appear in a winning combination. Bonuses and the number of bonus features vary depending upon the game. Some bonus rounds are a special session of free spins (the number of which is often based on the winning combination that triggers the bonus), often with a different or modified set of winning combinations as the main game and/or other multipliers or increased frequencies of symbols, or a "hold and re-spin" mechanic in which specific symbols (usually marked with values of credits or other prizes) are collected and locked in place over a finite number of spins. In other bonus rounds, the player is presented with several items on a screen from which to choose. As the player chooses items, a number of credits is revealed and awarded. Some bonuses use a mechanical device, such as a spinning wheel, that works in conjunction with the bonus to display the amount won.


title: Slot machine

text: A candle is a light on top of the slot machine. It flashes to alert the operator that change is needed, hand pay is requested or a potential problem with the machine. It can be lit by the player by pressing the "service" or "help" button.


title: Slot machine

text: A coin hopper is a container where the coins that are immediately available for payouts are held. The hopper is a mechanical device that rotates coins into the coin tray when a player collects credits/coins (by pressing a "Cash Out" button). When a certain preset coin capacity is reached, a coin diverter automatically redirects, or "drops", excess coins into a "drop bucket" or "drop box". (Unused coin hoppers can still be found even on games that exclusively employ Ticket-In, Ticket-Out technology, as a vestige.)


title: Slot machine

text: The credit meter is a display of the amount of money or number of credits on the machine. On mechanical slot machines, this is usually a seven-segment display, but video slot machines typically use stylized text that suits the game's theme and user interface.


title: Slot machine

text: The drop bucket or drop box is a container located in a slot machine's base where excess coins are diverted from the hopper. Typically, a drop bucket is used for low-denomination slot machines and a drop box is used for high-denomination slot machines. A drop box contains a hinged lid with one or more locks whereas a drop bucket does not contain a lid. The contents of drop buckets and drop boxes are collected and counted by the casino on a scheduled basis.


title: Slot machine

text: Free spins are a common form of bonus, where a series of spins are automatically played at no charge at the player's current wager. Free spins are usually triggered via a scatter of at least three designated symbols (with the number of spins dependent on the number of symbols that land). Some games allow the free spins bonus to "retrigger", which adds additional spins on top of those already awarded. There is no theoretical limit to the number of free spins obtainable. Some games may have other features that can also trigger over the course of free spins.


title: Slot machine

text: A hand pay refers to a payout made by an attendant or at an exchange point ("cage"), rather than by the slot machine itself. A hand pay occurs when the amount of the payout exceeds the maximum amount that was preset by the slot machine's operator. Usually, the maximum amount is set at the level where the operator must begin to deduct taxes. A hand pay could also be necessary as a result of a short pay.


title: Slot machine

text: Hopper fill slip is a document used to record the replenishment of the coin in the coin hopper after it becomes depleted as a result of making payouts to players. The slip indicates the amount of coin placed into the hoppers, as well as the signatures of the employees involved in the transaction, the slot machine number and the location and the date.


title: Slot machine

text: Low-level or slant-top slot machines include a stool so the player may sit down. Stand-up or upright slot machines are played while standing.


title: Slot machine

text: Optimal play is a payback percentage based on a gambler using the optimal strategy in a skill-based slot machine game.


title: Slot machine

text: Payline is a line that crosses through one symbol on each reel, along which a winning combination is evaluated. Classic spinning reel machines usually have up to nine paylines, while video slot machines may have as many as one hundred. Paylines could be of various shapes (horizontal, vertical, oblique, triangular, zigzag, etc.)


title: Slot machine

text: Persistent state refers to passive features on some slot machines, some of which able to trigger bonus payouts or other special features if certain conditions are met over time by players on that machine.


title: Slot machine

text: Roll-up is the process of dramatizing a win by playing sounds while the meters count up to the amount that has been won.


title: Slot machine

text: Short pay refers to a partial payout made by a slot machine, which is less than the amount due to the player. This occurs if the coin hopper has been depleted as a result of making earlier payouts to players. The remaining amount due to the player is either paid as a hand pay or an attendant will come and refill the machine.


title: Slot machine

text: A scatter is a pay combination based on occurrences of a designated symbol landing anywhere on the reels, rather than falling in sequence on the same payline. A scatter pay usually requires a minimum of three symbols to land, and the machine may offer increased prizes or jackpots depending on the number that land. Scatters are frequently used to trigger bonus games, such as free spins (with the number of spins multiplying based on the number of scatter symbols that land). The scatter symbol usually cannot be matched using wilds, and some games may require the scatter symbols to appear on consecutive reels in order to pay. On some multiway games, scatter symbols still pay in unused areas.


title: Slot machine

text: Taste is a reference to the small amount often paid out to keep a player seated and continuously betting. Only rarely will machines fail to pay even the minimum out over the course of several pulls.


title: Slot machine

text: Tilt is a term derived from electromechanical slot machines' "tilt switches", which would make or break a circuit when they were tilted or otherwise tampered with that triggered an alarm. While modern machines no longer have tilt switches, any kind of technical fault (door switch in the wrong state, reel motor failure, out of paper, etc.) is still called a "tilt".


title: Slot machine

text: A theoretical hold worksheet is a document provided by the manufacturer for every slot machine that indicates the theoretical percentage the machine should hold based on the amount paid in. The worksheet also indicates the reel strip settings, number of coins that may be played, the payout schedule, the number of reels and other information descriptive of the particular type of slot machine.


title: Slot machine

text: Volatility or variance refers to the measure of risk associated with playing a slot machine. A low-volatility slot machine has regular but smaller wins, while a high-variance slot machine has fewer but bigger wins.


title: Slot machine

text: Weight count is an American term referring to the total value of coins or tokens removed from a slot machine's drop bucket or drop box for counting by the casino's hard count team through the use of a weigh scale.


title: Slot machine

text: Wild symbols substitute for most other symbols in the game (similarly to a joker card), usually excluding scatter and jackpot symbols (or offering a lower prize on non-natural combinations that include wilds). How jokers behave are dependent on the specific game and whether the player is in a bonus or free games mode. Sometimes wild symbols may only appear on certain reels, or have a chance to "stack" across the entire reel.


title: Slot machine

text: Each machine has a table that lists the number of credits the player will receive if the symbols listed on the pay table line up on the pay line of the machine. Some symbols are wild and can represent many, or all, of the other symbols to complete a winning line. Especially on older machines, the pay table is listed on the face of the machine, usually above and below the area containing the wheels. On video slot machines, they are usually contained within a help menu, along with information on other features.


title: Slot machine

text: Historically, all slot machines used revolving mechanical reels to display and determine results. Although the original slot machine used five reels, simpler, and therefore more reliable, three reel machines quickly became the standard.


title: Slot machine

text: A problem with three reel machines is that the number of combinations is only cubic – the original slot machine with three physical reels and 10 symbols on each reel had only 10 = 1,000 possible combinations. This limited the manufacturer's ability to offer large jackpots since even the rarest event had a likelihood of 0.1%. The maximum theoretical payout, assuming 100% return to player would be 1000 times the bet, but that would leave no room for other pays, making the machine very high risk, and also quite boring.


title: Slot machine

text: Although the number of symbols eventually increased to about 22, allowing 10,648 combinations, this still limited jackpot sizes as well as the number of possible outcomes.


title: Slot machine

text: In the 1980s, however, slot machine manufacturers incorporated electronics into their products and programmed them to weight particular symbols. Thus the odds of losing symbols appearing on the payline became disproportionate to their actual frequency on the physical reel. A symbol would only appear once on the reel displayed to the player, but could, in fact, occupy several stops on the multiple reel.


title: Slot machine

text: In 1984, Inge Telnaes received a patent for a device titled, "Electronic Gaming Device Utilizing a Random Number Generator for Selecting the Reel Stop Positions" (US Patent 4448419), which states: "It is important to make a machine that is perceived to present greater chances of payoff than it actually has within the legal limitations that games of chance must operate." The patent was later bought by International Game Technology and has since expired.


title: Slot machine

text: A virtual reel that has 256 virtual stops per reel would allow up to 256 = 16,777,216 final positions. The manufacturer could choose to offer a $1 million jackpot on a $1 bet, confident that it will only happen, over the long term, once every 16.8 million plays.


title: Slot machine

text: With microprocessors now ubiquitous, the computers inside modern slot machines allow manufacturers to assign a different probability to every symbol on every reel. To the player, it might appear that a winning symbol was "so close", whereas in fact the probability is much lower.


title: Slot machine

text: In the 1980s in the U.K., machines embodying microprocessors became common. These used a number of features to ensure the payout was controlled within the limits of the gambling legislation. As a coin was inserted into the machine, it could go either directly into the cashbox for the benefit of the owner or into a channel that formed the payout reservoir, with the microprocessor monitoring the number of coins in this channel. The drums themselves were driven by stepper motors, controlled by the processor and with proximity sensors monitoring the position of the drums. A "look-up table" within the software allows the processor to know what symbols were being displayed on the drums to the gambler. This allowed the system to control the level of payout by stopping the drums at positions it had determined. If the payout channel had filled up, the payout became more generous; if nearly empty, the payout became less so (thus giving good control of the odds).


title: Slot machine

text: Video slot machines do not use mechanical reels, but use graphical reels on a computerized display. As there are no mechanical constraints on the design of video slot machines, games often use at least five reels, and may also use non-standard layouts. This greatly expands the number of possibilities: a machine can have 50 or more symbols on a reel, giving odds as high as 300 million to 1 against – enough for even the largest jackpot. As there are so many combinations possible with five reels, manufacturers do not need to weight the payout symbols (although some may still do so). Instead, higher paying symbols will typically appear only once or twice on each reel, while more common symbols earning a more frequent payout will appear many times. Video slot machines usually make more extensive use of multimedia, and can feature more elaborate minigames as bonuses. Modern cabinets typically use flat-panel displays, but cabinets using larger curved screens (which can provide a more immersive experience for the player) are not uncommon.


title: Slot machine

text: Video slot machines typically encourage the player to play multiple "lines": rather than simply taking the middle of the three symbols displayed on each reel, a line could go from top left to the bottom right or any other pattern specified by the manufacturer. As each symbol is equally likely, there is no difficulty for the manufacturer in allowing the player to take as many of the possible lines on offer as desire – the long-term return to the player will be the same. The difference for the player is that the more lines they play, the more likely they are to get paid on a given spin (because they are betting more).


title: Slot machine

text: To avoid seeming as if the player's money is simply ebbing away (whereas a payout of 100 credits on a single-line machine would be 100 bets and the player would feel they had made a substantial win, on a 20-line machine, it would only be five bets and not seem as significant), manufacturers commonly offer bonus games, which can return many times their bet. The player is encouraged to keep playing to reach the bonus: even if they are losing, the bonus game could allow them to win back their losses.


title: Slot machine

text: All modern machines are designed using pseudorandom number generators ("PRNGs"), which are constantly generating a sequence of simulated random numbers, at a rate of hundreds or perhaps thousands per second. As soon as the "Play" button is pressed, the most recent random number is used to determine the result. This means that the result varies depending on exactly when the game is played. A fraction of a second earlier or later and the result would be different.


title: Slot machine

text: It is important that the machine contains a high-quality RNG implementation. Because all PRNGs must eventually repeat their number sequence and, if the period is short or the PRNG is otherwise flawed, an advanced player may be able to "predict" the next result. Having access to the PRNG code and seed values, Ronald Dale Harris, a former slot machine programmer, discovered equations for specific gambling games like Keno that allowed him to predict what the next set of selected numbers would be based on the previous games played.


title: Slot machine

text: Most machines are designed to defeat this by generating numbers even when the machine is not being played so the player cannot tell where in the sequence they are, even if they know how the machine was programmed.


title: Slot machine

text: Slot machines are typically programmed to pay out as winnings 0% to 99% of the money that is wagered by players. This is known as the "theoretical payout percentage" or RTP, "return to player". The minimum theoretical payout percentage varies among jurisdictions and is typically established by law or regulation. For example, the minimum payout in Nevada is 75%, in New Jersey 83%, and in Mississippi 80%. The winning patterns on slot machines – the amounts they pay and the frequencies of those payouts – are carefully selected to yield a certain fraction of the money paid to the "house" (the operator of the slot machine) while returning the rest to the players during play. Suppose that a certain slot machine costs $1 per spin and has a return to player (RTP) of 95%. It can be calculated that, over a sufficiently long period such as 1,000,000 spins, the machine will return an average of $950,000 to its players, who have inserted $1,000,000 during that time. In this (simplified) example, the slot machine is said to pay out 95%. The operator keeps the remaining $50,000. Within some EGM development organizations this concept is referred to simply as "par". "Par" also manifests itself to gamblers as promotional techniques: "Our 'Loose Slots' have a 93% payback! Play now!"


title: Slot machine

text: A slot machine's theoretical payout percentage is set at the factory when the software is written. Changing the payout percentage after a slot machine has been placed on the gaming floor requires a physical swap of the software or "firmware", which is usually stored on an EPROM but may be loaded onto non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) or even stored on CD-ROM or DVD, depending on the capabilities of the machine and the applicable regulations. In certain jurisdictions, such as New Jersey, the EPROM has a tamper-evident seal and can only be changed in the presence of Gaming Control Board officials. Other jurisdictions, including Nevada, randomly audit slot machines to ensure that they contain only approved software.


title: Slot machine

text: Historically, many casinos, both online and offline, have been unwilling to publish individual game RTP figures, making it impossible for the player to know whether they are playing a "loose" or a "tight" game. Since the turn of the century, some information regarding these figures has started to come into the public domain either through various casinos releasing them—primarily this applies to online casinos—or through studies by independent gambling authorities.


title: Slot machine

text: The "return to player" is not the only statistic that is of interest. The probabilities of every payout on the pay table is also critical. For example, consider a hypothetical slot machine with a dozen different values on the pay table. However, the probabilities of getting all the payouts are zero except the largest one. If the payout is 4,000 times the input amount, and it happens every 4,000 times on average, the "return to player" is exactly 100%, but the game would be dull to play. Also, most people would not win anything, and having entries on the paytable that have a return of zero would be deceptive. As these individual probabilities are closely guarded secrets, it is possible that the advertised machines with high return to player simply increase the probabilities of these jackpots. The casino could legally place machines of a similar style payout and advertise that some machines have 100% return to player. The added advantage is that these large jackpots increase the excitement of the other players.


title: Slot machine

text: The table of probabilities for a specific machine is called the Probability and Accounting Report or PAR sheet, also PARS commonly understood as Paytable and Reel Strips. Mathematician Michael Shackleford revealed the PARS for one commercial slot machine, an original International Gaming Technology "Red White and Blue" machine. This game, in its original form, is obsolete, so these specific probabilities do not apply. He only published the odds after a fan of his sent him some information provided on a slot machine that was posted on a machine in the Netherlands. The psychology of the machine design is quickly revealed. There are 13 possible payouts ranging from 1:1 to 2,400:1. The 1:1 payout comes every 8 plays. The 5:1 payout comes every 33 plays, whereas the 2:1 payout comes every 600 plays. Most players assume the likelihood increases proportionate to the payout. The one mid-size payout that is designed to give the player a thrill is the 80:1 payout. It is programmed to occur an average of once every 219 plays. The 80:1 payout is high enough to create excitement, but not high enough that it makes it likely that the player will take their winnings and abandon the game. More than likely the player began the game with at least 80 times his bet (for instance there are 80 quarters in $20). In contrast the 150:1 payout occurs only on average of once every 6,241 plays. The highest payout of 2,400:1 occurs only on average of once every 64 = 262,144 plays since the machine has 64 virtual stops. The player who continues to feed the machine is likely to have several mid-size payouts, but unlikely to have a large payout. He quits after he is bored or has exhausted his bankroll.


title: Slot machine

text: Despite their confidentiality, occasionally a PAR sheet is posted on a website. They have limited value to the player, because usually a machine will have 8 to 12 different possible programs with varying payouts. In addition, slight variations of each machine (e.g., with "double jackpots" or "five times play") are always being developed. The casino operator can choose which EPROM chip to install in any particular machine to select the payout desired. The result is that there is not really such a thing as a high payback type of machine, since every machine potentially has multiple settings. From October 2001 to February 2002, columnist Michael Shackleford obtained PAR sheets for five different nickel machines; four IGT games "Austin Powers", "Fortune Cookie", "Leopard Spots" and "Wheel of Fortune" and one game manufactured by WMS; "Reel 'em In". Without revealing the proprietary information, he developed a program that would allow him to determine with usually less than a dozen plays on each machine which EPROM chip was installed. Then he did a survey of over 400 machines in 70 different casinos in Las Vegas. He averaged the data, and assigned an average payback percentage to the machines in each casino. The resultant list was widely publicized for marketing purposes (especially by the Palms casino which had the top ranking).


title: Slot machine

text: One reason that the slot machine is so profitable to a casino is that the player must play the "high house edge and high payout" wagers along with the "low house edge and low payout" wagers. In a more traditional wagering game like craps, the player knows that certain wagers have almost a 50/50 chance of winning or losing, but they only pay a limited multiple of the original bet (usually no higher than three times). Other bets have a higher house edge, but the player is rewarded with a bigger win (up to thirty times in craps). The player can choose what kind of wager he wants to make. A slot machine does not afford such an opportunity. Theoretically, the operator could make these probabilities available, or allow the player to choose which one so that the player is free to make a choice. However, no operator has ever enacted this strategy. Different machines have different maximum payouts, but without knowing the odds of getting the jackpot, there is no rational way to differentiate.


title: Slot machine

text: In many markets where central monitoring and control systems are used to link machines for auditing and security purposes, usually in wide area networks of multiple venues and thousands of machines, player return must usually be changed from a central computer rather than at each machine. A range of percentages is set in the game software and selected remotely.


title: Slot machine

text: In 2006, the Nevada Gaming Commission began working with Las Vegas casinos on technology that would allow the casino's management to change the game, the odds, and the payouts remotely. The change cannot be done instantaneously, but only after the selected machine has been idle for at least four minutes. After the change is made, the machine must be locked to new players for four minutes and display an on-screen message informing potential players that a change is being made.


title: Slot machine

text: Some varieties of slot machines can be linked together in a setup sometimes known as a "community" game. The most basic form of this setup involves progressive jackpots that are shared between the bank of machines, but may include multiplayer bonuses and other features.


title: Slot machine

text: In some cases multiple machines are linked across multiple casinos. In these cases, the machines may be owned by the manufacturer, who is responsible for paying the jackpot. The casinos lease the machines rather than owning them outright. Casinos in New Jersey, Nevada, Louisiana, Arkansas, and South Dakota now offer multi-state progressive jackpots, which now offer bigger jackpot pools.


title: Slot machine

text: Mechanical slot machines and their coin acceptors were sometimes susceptible to cheating devices and other scams. One historical example involved spinning a coin with a short length of plastic wire. The weight and size of the coin would be accepted by the machine and credits would be granted. However, the spin created by the plastic wire would cause the coin to exit through the reject chute into the payout tray. This particular scam has become obsolete due to improvements in newer slot machines. Another obsolete method of defeating slot machines was to use a light source to confuse the optical sensor used to count coins during payout.


title: Slot machine

text: Modern slot machines are controlled by EPROM computer chips and, in large casinos, coin acceptors have become obsolete in favor of bill acceptors. These machines and their bill acceptors are designed with advanced anti-cheating and anti-counterfeiting measures and are difficult to defraud. Early computerized slot machines were sometimes defrauded through the use of cheating devices, such as the "slider", "monkey paw", "lightwand" and "the tongue". Many of these old cheating devices were made by the late Tommy Glenn Carmichael, a slot machine fraudster who reportedly stole over $5 million. In the modern day, computerized slot machines are fully deterministic and thus outcomes can be sometimes successfully predicted.


title: Slot machine

text: Skill stop buttons predated the Bally electromechanical slot machines of the 1960s and 1970s. They appeared on mechanical slot machines manufactured by Mills Novelty Co. as early as the mid 1920s. These machines had modified reel-stop arms, which allowed them to be released from the timing bar, earlier than in a normal play, simply by pressing the buttons on the front of the machine, located between each reel.


title: Slot machine

text: "Skill stop" buttons were added to some slot machines by Zacharias Anthony in the early 1970s. These enabled the player to stop each reel, allowing a degree of "skill" so as to satisfy the New Jersey gaming laws of the day which required that players were able to control the game in some way. The original conversion was applied to approximately 50 late-model Bally slot machines. Because the typical machine stopped the reels automatically in less than 10 seconds, weights were added to the mechanical timers to prolong the automatic stopping of the reels. By the time the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverages Commission (ABC) had approved the conversion for use in New Jersey arcades, the word was out and every other distributor began adding skill stops. The machines were a huge hit on the Jersey Shore and the remaining unconverted Bally machines were destroyed as they had become instantly obsolete.


title: Slot machine

text: In the United States, the public and private availability of slot machines is highly regulated by state governments. Many states have established gaming control boards to regulate the possession and use of slot machines and other form of gaming.


title: Slot machine

text: Nevada is the only state that has no significant restrictions against slot machines both for public and private use. In New Jersey, slot machines are only allowed in hotel casinos operated in Atlantic City. Several states (Indiana, Louisiana and Missouri) allow slot machines (as well as any casino-style gambling) only on licensed riverboats or permanently anchored barges. Since Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi has removed the requirement that casinos on the Gulf Coast operate on barges and now allows them on land along the shoreline. Delaware allows slot machines at three horse tracks; they are regulated by the state lottery commission. In Wisconsin, bars and taverns are allowed to have up to five machines. These machines usually allow a player to either take a payout, or gamble it on a double-or-nothing "side game".


title: Slot machine

text: The territory of Puerto Rico places significant restrictions on slot machine ownership, but the law is widely flouted and slot machines are common in bars and coffeeshops.


title: Slot machine

text: In regards to tribal casinos located on Native American reservations, slot machines played against the house and operating independently from a centralized computer system are classified as "Class III" gaming by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), and sometimes promoted as "Vegas-style" slot machines. In order to offer Class III gaming, tribes must enter into a compact (agreement) with the state that is approved by the Department of the Interior, which may contain restrictions on the types and quantity of such games. As a workaround, some casinos may operate slot machines as "Class II" games—a category that includes games where players play exclusively against at least one other opponent and not the house, such as bingo or any related games (such as pull-tabs). In these cases, the reels are an entertainment display with a pre-determined outcome based on a centralized game played against other players. Under the IGRA, Class II games are regulated by individual tribes and the National Indian Gaming Commission, and do not require any additional approval if the state already permits tribal gaming.


title: Slot machine

text: Some historical race wagering terminals operate in a similar manner, with the machines using slots as an entertainment display for outcomes paid using the parimutuel betting system, based on results of randomly-selected, previously-held horse races (with the player able to view selected details about the race and adjust their picks before playing the credit, or otherwise use an auto-bet system).


title: Slot machine

text: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia place no restrictions on private ownership of slot machines. Conversely, in Connecticut, Hawaii, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Tennessee, private ownership of any slot machine is completely prohibited. The remaining states allow slot machines of a certain age (typically 25–30 years) or slot machines manufactured before a specific date.


title: Slot machine

text: The Government of Canada has minimal involvement in gambling beyond the Canadian Criminal Code. In essence, the term "lottery scheme" used in the code means slot machines, bingo and table games normally associated with a casino. These fall under the jurisdiction of the province or territory without reference to the federal government; in practice, all Canadian provinces operate gaming boards that oversee lotteries, casinos and video lottery terminals under their jurisdiction.


title: Slot machine

text: OLG piloted a classification system for slot machines at the Grand River Raceway developed by University of Waterloo professor Kevin Harrigan, as part of its PlaySmart initiative for responsible gambling. Inspired by nutrition labels on foods, they displayed metrics such as volatility and frequency of payouts. OLG has also deployed electronic gaming machines with pre-determined outcomes based on a bingo or pull-tab game, initially branded as "TapTix", which visually resemble slot machines.


title: Slot machine

text: In Ontario, 4 April 2022 saw the re-introduction of the online gambling market. This became possible when the Canadian Criminal Code was amended to allow single-event wagering August 2021. The province is expected to generate about $800 million in gross revenue per year.


title: Slot machine

text: In Australia "Poker Machines" or "pokies" are officially termed "gaming machines". In Australia, gaming machines are a matter for state governments, so laws vary between states. Gaming machines are found in casinos (approximately one in each major city), pubs and clubs in some states (usually sports, social, or RSL clubs). The first Australian state to legalize this style of gambling was New South Wales, when in 1956 they were made legal in all registered clubs in the state. There are suggestions that the proliferation of poker machines has led to increased levels of problem gambling; however, the precise nature of this link is still open to research.


title: Slot machine

text: In 1999 the Australian Productivity Commission reported that nearly half Australia's gaming machines were in New South Wales. At the time, 21% of all the gambling machines in the world were operating in Australia and, on a per capita basis, Australia had roughly five times as many gaming machines as the United States. Australia ranks 8th in total number of gaming machines after Japan, U.S.A., Italy, U.K., Spain and Germany. This primarily is because gaming machines have been legal in the state of New South Wales since 1956; over time, the number of machines has grown to 97,103 (at December 2010, including the Australian Capital Territory). By way of comparison, the U.S. State of Nevada, which legalised gaming including slots several decades before N.S.W., had 190,135 slots operating.


title: Slot machine

text: Revenue from gaming machines in pubs and clubs accounts for more than half of the $4 billion in gambling revenue collected by state governments in fiscal year 2002–03.


title: Slot machine

text: In Queensland, gaming machines in pubs and clubs must provide a return rate of 85%, while machines located in casinos must provide a return rate of 90%. Most other states have similar provisions. In Victoria, gaming machines must provide a minimum return rate of 87% (including jackpot contribution), including machines in Crown Casino. As of December 1, 2007, Victoria banned gaming machines that accepted $100 notes; all gaming machines made since 2003 comply with this rule. This new law also banned machines with an automatic play option. One exception exists in Crown Casino for any player with a VIP loyalty card: they can still insert $100 notes and use an autoplay feature (whereby the machine will automatically play until credit is exhausted or the player intervenes). All gaming machines in Victoria have an information screen accessible to the user by pressing the "i key" button, showing the game rules, paytable, return to player percentage, and the top and bottom five combinations with their odds. These combinations are stated to be played on a minimum bet (usually 1 credit per line, with 1 line or reel played, although some newer machines do not have an option to play 1 line; some machines may only allow maximum lines to be played), excluding feature wins.


title: Slot machine

text: Western Australia has the most restrictive regulations on electronic gaming machines in general, with the Crown Perth casino resort being the only venue allowed to operate them, and banning slot machines with spinning reels entirely. This policy had an extensive political history, reaffirmed by the 1974 Royal Commission into Gambling:


title: Slot machine

text: While Western Australian gaming machines are similar to the other states', they do not have spinning reels. Therefore, different animations are used in place of the spinning reels in order to display each game result.


title: Slot machine

text: Nick Xenophon was elected on an independent No Pokies ticket in the South Australian Legislative Council at the 1997 South Australian state election on 2.9 percent, re-elected at the 2006 election on 20.5 percent, and elected to the Australian Senate at the 2007 federal election on 14.8 percent. Independent candidate Andrew Wilkie, an anti-pokies campaigner, was elected to the Australian House of Representatives seat of Denison at the 2010 federal election. Wilkie was one of four crossbenchers who supported the Gillard Labor government following the hung parliament result. Wilkie immediately began forging ties with Xenophon as soon as it was apparent that he was elected. In exchange for Wilkie's support, the Labor government are attempting to implement precommitment technology for high-bet/high-intensity poker machines, against opposition from the Tony Abbott Coalition and Clubs Australia.


title: Slot machine

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, every establishment in the country that facilitated poker machines was shut down, in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, bringing Australia's usage of poker machines effectively to zero.


title: Slot machine

text: In Russia, "slot clubs" appeared quite late, only in 1992. Before 1992, slot machines were only in casinos and small shops, but later slot clubs began appearing all over the country. The most popular and numerous were "Vulcan 777" and "Taj Mahal". Since 2009, when gambling establishments were banned, almost all slot clubs disappeared and are found only in a specially authorized gambling zones.


title: Slot machine

text: Slot machines in the U.K. are categorised by definitions produced by the Gambling Commission as part of the Gambling Act of 2005.


title: Slot machine

text: Casinos built under the provisions of the 1968 Act are allowed to house either up to twenty machines of categories B–D or any number of C–D machines. As defined by the 2005 Act, large casinos can have a maximum of one hundred and fifty machines in any combination of categories B–D (subject to a machine-to-table ratio of 5:1); small casinos can have a maximum of eighty machines in any combination of categories B–D (subject to a machine-to-table ratio of 2:1).


title: Slot machine

text: Category A games were defined in preparation for the planned "Super Casinos". Despite a lengthy bidding process with Manchester being chosen as the single planned location, the development was cancelled soon after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. As a result, there are no lawful Category A games in the U.K.


title: Slot machine

text: Category B games are divided into subcategories. The differences between B1, B3 and B4 games are mainly the stake and prizes as defined in the above table. Category B2 games – Fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) – have quite different stake and prize rules: FOBTs are mainly found in licensed betting shops, or bookmakers, usually in the form of electronic roulette.


title: Slot machine

text: The games are based on a random number generator; thus each game's probability of getting the jackpot is independent of any other game: probabilities are all equal. If a pseudorandom number generator is used instead of a truly random one, probabilities are not independent since each number is determined at least in part by the one generated before it.


title: Slot machine

text: Category C games are often referred to as fruit machines, one-armed bandits and AWP (amusement with prize). Fruit machines are commonly found in pubs, clubs, and arcades. Machines commonly have three but can be found with four or five reels, each with 16–24 symbols printed around them. The reels are spun each play, from which the appearance of particular combinations of symbols result in payment of their associated winnings by the machine (or alternatively initiation of a subgame). These games often have many extra features, trails and subgames with opportunities to win money; usually more than can be won from just the payouts on the reel combinations.


title: Slot machine

text: Fruit machines in the U.K. almost universally have the following features, generally selected at random using a pseudorandom number generator:


title: Slot machine

text: It is known for machines to pay out multiple jackpots, one after the other (this is known as a "repeat") but each jackpot requires a new game to be played so as not to violate the law about the maximum payout on a single play. Typically this involves the player only pressing the Start button at the "repeat" prompt, for which a single credit is taken, regardless of whether this causes the reels to spin or not. Machines are also known to intentionally set aside money, which is later awarded in a series of wins, known as a "streak". The minimum payout percentage is 70%, with pubs often setting the payout at around 78%.


title: Slot machine

text: Japanese slot machines, known as or pachislot from the words "pachinko" and "slot machine", are a descendant of the traditional Japanese pachinko game. Slot machines are a fairly new phenomenon and they can be found mostly in pachinko parlors and the adult sections of amusement arcades, known as game centers.


title: Slot machine

text: The machines are regulated with integrated circuits, and have six different levels changing the odds of a 777. The levels provide a rough outcome of between 90% to 160% (200% for skilled players). Japanese slot machines are "beatable". Parlor operators naturally set most machines to simply collect money, but intentionally place a few paying machines on the floor so that there will be at least someone winning, encouraging players on the losing machines to keep gambling, using the psychology of the gambler's fallacy.


title: Slot machine

text: Despite the many varieties of pachislot machines, there are certain rules and regulations put forward by the , an affiliate of the National Police Agency. For example, there must be three reels. All reels must be accompanied by buttons which allow players to manually stop them, reels may not spin faster than 80 RPM, and reels must stop within 0.19 seconds of a button press. In practice, this means that machines cannot let reels slip more than 4 symbols. Other rules include a 15 coin payout cap, a 50 credit cap on machines, a 3 coin maximum bet, and other such regulations.


title: Slot machine

text: Although a 15 coin payout may seem quite low, regulations allow "Big Bonus" (c. 400–711 coins) and "Regular Bonus" modes (c. 110 coins) where these 15 coin payouts occur nearly continuously until the bonus mode is finished. While the machine is in bonus mode, the player is entertained with special winning scenes on the LCD display, and energizing music is heard, payout after payout.


title: Slot machine

text: Three other unique features of Pachisuro machines are "stock", "renchan", and . On many machines, when enough money to afford a bonus is taken in, the bonus is not immediately awarded. Typically the game merely stops making the reels slip off the bonus symbols for a few games. If the player fails to hit the bonus during these "standby games", it is added to the "stock" for later collection. Many current games, after finishing a bonus round, set the probability to release additional stock (gained from earlier players failing to get a bonus last time the machine stopped making the reels slip for a bit) very high for the first few games. As a result, a lucky player may get to play several bonus rounds in a row (a "renchan"), making payouts of 5,000 or even 10,000 coins possible. The lure of "stock" waiting in the machine, and the possibility of "renchan" tease the gambler to keep feeding the machine. To tease them further, there is a "tenjō" (ceiling), a maximum limit on the number of games between "stock" release. For example, if the "tenjō" is 1,500, and the number of games played since the last bonus is 1,490, the player is guaranteed to release a bonus within just 10 games.


title: Slot machine

text: Because of the "stock", "renchan", and "tenjō" systems, it is possible to make money by simply playing machines on which someone has just lost a huge amount of money. This is called being a "hyena". They are easy to recognize, roaming the aisles for a "kamo" ("sucker" in English) to leave his machine.


title: Slot machine

text: In short, the regulations allowing "stock", "renchan", and "tenjō" transformed the pachisuro from a low-stakes form of entertainment just a few years back to hardcore gambling. Many people may be gambling more than they can afford, and the big payouts also lure unsavory "hyena" types into the gambling halls.


title: Slot machine

text: To address these social issues, a new regulation (Version 5.0) was adopted in 2006 which caps the maximum amount of "stock" a machine can hold to around 2,000–3,000 coins' worth of bonus games. Moreover, all pachisuro machines must be re-evaluated for regulation compliance every three years. Version 4.0 came out in 2004, so that means all those machines with the up to 10,000 coin payouts will be removed from service by 2007.


title: Slot machine

text: Electronic slot machines can malfunction. When the displayed amount is smaller than the one it is supposed to be, the error usually goes unnoticed. When it happens the other way, disputes are likely. Below are some notable arguments caused by the owners of the machines saying that the displayed amounts were far larger than the ones patrons should get.


title: Slot machine

text: Two such cases occurred in casinos in Colorado in 2010, where software errors led to indicated jackpots of $11 million and $42 million. Analysis of machine records by the state Gaming Commission revealed faults, with the true jackpot being substantially smaller. State gaming laws did not require a casino to honour payouts in that case.


title: Slot machine

text: On October 25, 2009, while a Vietnamese American man, Ly Sam, was playing a slot machine in the Palazzo Club at the Sheraton Saigon Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it displayed that he had hit a jackpot of US$55,542,296.73. The casino refused to pay, saying it was a machine error, Mr Ly sued the casino. On January 7, 2013, the District 1 People's Court in Ho Chi Minh City decided that the casino had to pay the amount Mr Ly claimed in full, not trusting the error report from an inspection company hired by the casino. Both sides appealed thereafter, and Mr Ly asked for interest while the casino refused to pay him. In January, 2014, the news reported that the case had been settled out of court, and Mr Ly had received an undisclosed sum.


title: Slot machine

text: Natasha Dow Schüll, associate professor in New York University's Department of Media, Culture and Communication, uses the term "machine zone" to describe the state of immersion that users of slot machines experience when gambling, where they lose a sense of time, space, bodily awareness, and monetary value.


title: Slot machine

text: Mike Dixon, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, studies the relationship between slot players and machines. In one of Dixon's studies, players were observed experiencing heightened arousal from the sensory stimulus coming from the machines. They "sought to show that these 'losses disguised as wins' (LDWs) would be as arousing as wins, and more arousing than regular losses."


title: Slot machine

text: Psychologists Robert Breen and Marc Zimmerman found that players of video slot machines reach a debilitating level of involvement with gambling three times as rapidly as those who play traditional casino games, even if they have engaged in other forms of gambling without problems.


title: Slot machine

text: Eye-tracking research in local bookkeepers' offices in the UK suggested that, in slots games, the reels dominated players' visual attention, and that problem gamblers looked more frequently at amount-won messages than did those without gambling problems.


title: Slot machine

text: The 2011 "60 Minutes" report "Slot Machines: The Big Gamble" focused on the link between slot machines and gambling addiction.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Sweating sickness, also known as the sweats, English sweating sickness, English sweat or sudor anglicus in Latin, was a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England and later continental Europe in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485. The last outbreak occurred in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished. The onset of symptoms was sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Sweating sickness epidemics were unique compared with other disease outbreaks of the time: whereas other epidemics were typically urban and long-lasting, cases of sweating sickness spiked and receded very quickly, and heavily affected rural populations. Its cause remains unknown, although it has been suggested that an unknown species of hantavirus was responsible.


title: Sweating sickness

text: John Caius was a physician in Shrewsbury in 1551, when an outbreak occurred, and he described the symptoms and signs of the disease in "A Boke or Counseill Against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate, or Sweatyng Sicknesse" (1552), which is the main historical source of knowledge of the disease. It began very suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), dizziness, headache and severe pains in the neck, shoulders and limbs, with great exhaustion. The cold stage might last from half an hour to three hours, after which the hot and sweating stage began. The characteristic sweat broke out suddenly without any obvious cause. A sense of heat, headache, delirium, rapid pulse and intense thirst accompanied the sweat. Palpitation and pain in the heart were frequent symptoms. No skin eruptions were noted by observers. In the final stages there was either general exhaustion and collapse or an irresistible urge to sleep, which Caius thought was fatal if the patient were permitted to give way to it. One attack did not produce immunity, and some people suffered several bouts before dying. The disease typically lasted through one full day before recovery or death took place. The disease tended to occur in summer and early autumn.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Thomas Forestier, a physician during the first outbreak, provided a written account of his own experiences with the sweating sickness in 1485. Forestier put great emphasis on the sudden breathlessness commonly associated with the final hours of sufferers. Forestier claimed in an account written for other physicians that "loathsome vapors" had congregated around the heart and lungs. His observations point towards a pulmonary component of the disease.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Transmission mostly remains a mystery, with only a few pieces of evidence in writings. The illness seemed to target young men and favour the wealthy or powerful, earning itself nicknames such as "Stoop Gallant" or "Stoop Knave" (indicating the proud were forced to 'stoop' and relinquish their proud status).


title: Sweating sickness

text: The large number of people in London to witness the coronation of Henry VII may have increased the spread of the disease.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The cause is unknown. Commentators then and now have blamed the sewage, poor sanitation, and contaminated water supplies. The first confirmed outbreak was in August 1485 at the end of the Wars of the Roses, leading to speculation that it may have been brought from France by French mercenaries. However, an earlier outbreak may have affected the city of York in June 1485, before Tudor's army landed, although records of that disease's symptoms are not adequate to be certain. Regardless, the "Croyland Chronicle" mentions that Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby cited the sweating sickness as reason not to join Richard III's army prior to the Battle of Bosworth.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Relapsing fever, a disease spread by ticks and lice, has been proposed as a possible cause. It occurs most often during the summer months, as did the original sweating sickness. However, relapsing fever is marked by a prominent black scab at the site of the tick bite and a subsequent skin rash.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The suggestion of ergot poisoning was ruled out due to England having much less rye (the main cause of ergotism) than the rest of Europe.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Researchers have noted symptoms overlap with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome and have proposed an unknown hantavirus as the cause. Hantavirus species are zoonotic diseases carried by bats, rodents, and several insectivores. Sharing of similar trends (including seasonal occurrences, fluctuations multiple times a year, and occasional occurrences between major outbreaks) suggest the English sweating sickness may have been rodent borne. The epidemiology of hantavirus correlates with the trends of the English sweating sickness. Hantavirus infections generally do not strike infants, children, or the elderly, and mostly affect middle-aged adults. In contrast to most epidemics of the medieval ages, the English sweating sickness also predominantly affected the middle aged. A criticism of this hypothesis is that modern day hantaviruses, unlike the sweating sickness, do not randomly disappear and can be seen affecting isolated people. Another is that sweating sickness was thought to have been transmitted from human to human, whereas hantaviruses are rarely spread that way. However, infection via human contact has been suggested in hantavirus outbreaks in Argentina.


title: Sweating sickness

text: In 2004, microbiologist Edward McSweegan suggested the disease may have been an outbreak of anthrax poisoning. He hypothesized that the victims could have been infected with anthrax spores present in raw wool or infected animal carcasses, and suggested exhuming victims for testing.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Numerous attempts have been made to define the disease origin by molecular biology methods, but have so far failed due to a lack of DNA or RNA.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Sweating sickness first came to the attention of physicians at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII, in 1485. It was frequently fatal; half the population perished in some areas. The Ricardian scholar John Ashdown-Hill conjectures that Richard III fell victim the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field and that this accounted for his sleepless night and excessive thirst in the early part of the battle. There is no definitive statement that the sickness was present in Henry Tudor's troops landing at Milford Haven. The battle's victor Henry VII arrived in London on 28 August, and the disease broke out there on 19 September 1485; it had killed several thousand people by its conclusion in late October that year. Among those killed were two lord mayors, six aldermen, and three sheriffs.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Mass superstition and paranoia followed the new plague. The Battle of Bosworth Field ended the Wars of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York. Richard III, the final York king, was killed here and Henry VII was crowned. As chaos, grief, and anger spread, people searched for a culprit for the plague. English people started to believe it was sent by God to punish supporters of Henry VII.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The sickness was regarded as being quite distinct from the Black Death, the pestilential fever, or other epidemics previously known because of its extremely rapid and fatal course, and the sweating which gave it its name. It reached Ireland in 1492, when the "Annals of Ulster" record the death of James Fleming, 7th Baron Slane from the "pláigh allais" ["perspiring plague"], newly come to Ireland. The "Annals of Connacht" also record this obituary, and the "Annals of the Four Masters" record "an unusual plague in Meath" of 24 hours' duration; people recovered if they survived it beyond that 24-hour period. It did not attack infants or little children. English chronicler Richard Grafton mentioned the sweating sickness of 1485 in his work "Grafton's Chronicle: or History of England". He noted the common treatment of the disease was to go immediately to bed at the first sign of symptoms; there, the affected person was to remain absolutely still for the entire 24-hour period of the illness, abstaining from any solid food and limiting water intake.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The ailment was not recorded from 1492 to 1502. It may have been the condition which afflicted Henry VII's son Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Arthur's wife, Catherine of Aragon, in March 1502; their illness was described as "a malign vapour which proceeded from the air". Researchers who opened Arthur's tomb in 2002 could not determine the exact cause of death. Catherine recovered, but Arthur died on 2 April 1502 in his home at Ludlow Castle, six months short of his sixteenth birthday.


title: Sweating sickness

text: A second, less widespread outbreak occurred in 1507, followed by a third and much more severe epidemic in 1517, a few cases of which may have also spread to Calais. In the 1517 epidemic, the disease showed a particular affinity for the English; the ambassador from Venice at the time commented on the peculiarly low number of cases in foreign visitors. A similar effect was noted in 1528 when Calais (then an English territory) experienced an outbreak which did not spread into France. The 1528 outbreak, the fourth, reached epidemic proportions. It broke out in London at the end of May and spread over the whole of England, save the far north. It did not spread to Scotland, though it did reach Ireland where Lord Chancellor Hugh Inge was the most prominent victim. The mortality rate was very high in London; Henry VIII broke up the court and left London, frequently changing his residence. In 1529 Thomas Cromwell lost his wife and two daughters to the disease. It is believed several of the closest people to Henry VIII contracted the sickness. His love letters to his mistress, Anne Boleyn, reveal that physicians believed Anne had contracted the illness. Henry sent his second-most trusted physician to her aid, his first being unavailable, and she survived. Cardinal Wolsey contracted the illness and survived.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The disease suddenly appeared in Hamburg, spreading so rapidly that more than a thousand people died in a few weeks. It swept through eastern Europe causing high mortality rates. It arrived in Switzerland in December, then was carried northwards to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and eastwards to Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. Cases were unknown in Italy or France, except in the English-controlled Pale of Calais. It emerged in Flanders and the Netherlands, possibly transmitted directly from England by travellers; it appeared simultaneously in the cities of Antwerp and Amsterdam on the morning of 27 September. In each place, it prevailed for a short time, generally not more than two weeks. By the end of the year, it had entirely disappeared except in eastern Switzerland, where it lingered into the next year. The disease did not recur on mainland Europe.


title: Sweating sickness

text: The last major outbreak of the disease occurred in England in 1551. Although burial patterns in smaller towns in Europe suggest that the disease may have been present elsewhere first, the outbreak is recorded to have begun in Shrewsbury in April. It killed around 1,000 there, spreading quickly throughout the rest of England and all but disappearing by October. It was more prevalent among younger men than other groups, possibly due to their greater social exposure. John Caius wrote his eyewitness account "A Boke or Counseill Against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate, or Sweatyng Sicknesse". Henry Machin also recorded it in his diary:


title: Sweating sickness

text: The "Annals" of Halifax Parish of 1551 records 44 deaths in an outbreak there. An outbreak called 'sweating sickness' occurred in Tiverton, Devon in 1644, recorded in Martin Dunsford's History, killing 443 people, 105 of them buried in October. However, no medical particulars were recorded, and the date falls well after the generally accepted disappearance of the 'sweating sickness' in 1551.


title: Sweating sickness

text: Between 1718 and 1918 an illness with some similarities occurred in France, known as the Picardy sweat. It was significantly less lethal than the English Sweat but with a strikingly high frequency of outbreaks; some 200 were recorded during the period. Llywelyn Roberts noted "a great similarity between the two diseases." There was intense sweating and fever, and Henry Tidy found "no substantial reason to doubt the identity of "sudor anglicus" and Picardy sweat." There were also notable differences between the Picardy sweat and the English sweating sickness. It was accompanied by a rash, which was not described as a feature of the English disease. Henry Tidy argued that John Caius's report applies to fulminant cases fatal within a few hours, in which case no eruption may develop. The Picardy sweat appears to have had a different epidemiology than the English sweat in that individuals who slept close to the ground and/or lived on farms appeared more susceptible, supporting the theory that the disease could be rodent borne, common in hantaviruses. In a 1906 outbreak of Picardy sweat which struck 6,000 people a commission led by bacteriologist André Chantemesse attributed infection to the fleas of field mice.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard () or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos) is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa. This duck belongs to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. Males have purple patches on their wings, while the females (hens or ducks) have mainly brown-speckled plumage. Both sexes have an area of white-bordered black or iridescent blue feathers called a speculum on their wings; males especially tend to have blue speculum feathers. The mallard is long, of which the body makes up around two-thirds the length. The wingspan is and the bill is long. It is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks, weighing . Mallards live in wetlands, eat water plants and small animals, and are social animals preferring to congregate in groups or flocks of varying sizes.


title: Mallard

text: The female lays 8 to 13 creamy white to greenish-buff spotless eggs, on alternate days. Incubation takes 27 to 28 days and fledging takes 50 to 60 days. The ducklings are precocial and fully capable of swimming as soon as they hatch.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is considered to be a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Unlike many waterfowl, mallards are considered an invasive species in some regions. It is a very adaptable species, being able to live and even thrive in urban areas which may have supported more localised, sensitive species of waterfowl before development. The non-migratory mallard interbreeds with indigenous wild ducks of closely related species through genetic pollution by producing fertile offspring. Complete hybridisation of various species of wild duck gene pools could result in the extinction of many indigenous waterfowl. This species is the main ancestor of most breeds of domestic duck, and its naturally evolved wild gene pool has been genetically polluted by the domestic and feral mallard populations.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard was one of the many bird species originally described in the 1758 10thedition of "Systema Naturae" by Carl Linnaeus. He gave it two binomial names: "Anas platyrhynchos" and "Anas boschas". The latter was generally preferred until 1906 when Einar Lönnberg established that "A.platyrhynchos" had priority, as it appeared on an earlier page in the text. The scientific name comes from Latin "Anas", "duck" and Ancient Greek πλατυρυγχος, "platyrhynchus", "broad-billed" (from πλατύς, "platys", "broad" and ρυγχός, "rhunkhos", "bill"). The genome of "Anas platyrhynchos" was sequenced in 2013.


title: Mallard

text: The name "mallard" originally referred to any wild drake, and it is sometimes still used this way. It was derived from the Old French ' or ' for "wild drake" although its true derivation is unclear. It may be related to, or at least influenced by, an Old High German masculine proper name "", clues lying in the alternative English forms "maudelard" and "mawdelard". "Masle" (male) has also been proposed as an influence.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards frequently interbreed with their closest relatives in the genus "Anas", such as the American black duck, and also with species more distantly related, such as the northern pintail, leading to various hybrids that may be fully fertile. This is quite unusual among such different species, and is apparently because the mallard evolved very rapidly and recently, during the Late Pleistocene. The distinct lineages of this radiation are usually kept separate due to non-overlapping ranges and behavioural cues, but have not yet reached the point where they are fully genetically incompatible. Mallards and their domestic conspecifics are also fully interfertile.


title: Mallard

text: Genetic analysis has shown that certain mallards appear to be closer to their Indo-Pacific relatives, while others are related to their American relatives. Mitochondrial DNA data for the D-loop sequence suggest that mallards may have evolved in the general area of Siberia. Mallard bones rather abruptly appear in food remains of ancient humans and other deposits of fossil bones in Europe, without a good candidate for a local predecessor species. The large Ice Age palaeosubspecies that made up at least the European and West Asian populations during the Pleistocene has been named "Anas platyrhynchos palaeoboschas".


title: Mallard

text: Mallards are differentiated in their mitochondrial DNA between North American and Eurasian populations, but the nuclear genome displays a notable lack of genetic structure. Haplotypes typical of American mallard relatives and eastern spot-billed ducks can be found in mallards around the Bering Sea. The Aleutian Islands hold a population of mallards that appear to be evolving towards becoming a subspecies, as gene flow with other populations is very limited.