Weekly World News would like you to meet the world’s smallest rodent, the pygmy jerboa.

At barely an inch long (about 47 mm, to be exact), the pygmy jerboa is one of the smallest mammals in the world. While there are a few different species spread out across Central Asia and China, it is best loved in Kazakhstan, where it is featured on postal stamps!

Scientists believe their dimunitive size is due to the species seperating off from the larger rodent family about eight million years ago, and settling in the lands it now resides in today.

Without further ado, the weirdest creature you will see today:

ASTANA – Kazakhstan is attempting to be the first nation to publicly welcome extraterrestrial visitors!

According to Express K, a Kazakh newspaper, the Republic of Kazakhstan is preparing to build the world’s first UFO base and alien embassy. It is being reported that the government has allocated a large portion of land near the city of Almaty for the project. The plans include a UFO landing pad, guesthouse and translation service. How the translation program will be created was not made clear.

Ufologists are applauding the government, which openly believes that contact with extraterrestrials is inevitable and is attempting to establish the nation as forward-thinking. Others are criticizing the project as being an obvious tourism ploy.

So why Kazakhstan, of all places? It has long been rumored that an underwater UFO base exists in the Derbent Hollow of the Caspian Sea, which sits on Kazakhstan’s border. This has even been confirmed by the head of neighboring Azerbaijan’s national Aerospace Agency, Fuad Gasimov, who worked for the old USSR science academy while they were secretly monitoring UFO activity.

According to a Baku Sun newspaper article published in 2002, Gasimov said the Soviet organization charted UFOs. “The organization sent an expedition to Baku and the Absheron Peninsula, where they discovered UFOs bases around the Nardaran and Pirshagi districts and around the Siyazan water spring. The entrances to these bases, he says, are found deep underground.”

Will these visitors come out of the dark and begin publicly visiting Kazakhstan? Or is this all just a publicity ploy?