January 2010
22 posts
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SEAL SAVES DROWNING DOG
Chris Hinds, a court warrants officer, was out walking his own dogs when he saw the alsatian-cross injured and whimpering at the edge of the River Tees in Middlesbrough England. As he approached, it panicked and plunged into the river only to be swept away by the fast-flowing tide. Mr Hinds, sent his son to call the fire brigade and RSPCA from his mobile phone in his car parked nearby. He stayed...
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“The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete...”
– Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928
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'NUTHIN UP MY SLEEVE...'
In the journal Animal Behaviour, biologist Michael Steele at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania examines squirrels’ caching of nuts. While they made a show of digging a hole in the ground and covering it with dirt and leaves when watched, one time out of five they were faking and nothing was buried.
The proportion of phony caching increased after the squirrels saw their nuts being filched...
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“The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.”
– Henry David Thoreau
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Animal Minds →
bstriddy:
When we gaze into the eyes of our beloved pets, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they’re experiencing something close to human emotions? Or, on the contrary, is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN’T feeling something like that?
In this hour of WNYC’s excellent science program Radiolab, they take a look at the scientific thought on...
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G'MA ELEPHANTS DON'T MISS A THING!
‘The passions you see right in front of you if you just watch a social group of elephants. There’s competition, there’s play, there’s tons of fun. There are attachments among them. And the oldest female in an elephant family group is called the matriarch. She makes most of the decisions, unless you could say that the youngest baby makes most of the decisions. She follows...
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MOMMA DUCK GRABS COP'S PANT LEG FOR HELP!
Don’t mention “bird brains” to Ray Petersen, because after what happened this week, he won’t hear a word of it.
Petersen, a community police officer for Granville Downtown South, was walking in the 1500-block Granville Street (directly under the Granville Bridge) Wednesday morning when a duck came up and...
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“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
– Albert Schweitzer
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DOES YOUR DOG HAVE A WHITE TIP AT THE END OF IT'S...
Border Collies were bred with a white tail carried in an upward swirl for a cool reason. It is known as the “shepherd’s lantern” because many times the bobbing tip of a tail would be all that would lead the shepherd home in the dark after a long day’s work!
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I AM THE LAST POULTRY FARMER
My name is Frank Reese and I’m a poultry farmer. It’s what I ‘ve given my whole life to. I don’t know where that comes from. I went to a little one-room country school. Mother said one of the first things I wrote was a story titled, “Me and My Turkeys.” I just loved the beauty of them, the majesticness. I like how they strut. I don’t know. I don’t...
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CAN'T YOU JUST HEAR THE BABY PANDA GIGGLES?! →
Check out this darling vid!
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“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter...”
– St. Francis of Assisi
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FAMILY DOG SAVES BOY FROM COUGAR ATTACK →
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Highways Help Pigeons Find Their Way Home
In recent years, anecdotal evidence had suggested that some pigeons were following highways when they were homeward bound. To test this theory, Peter Lipp of the University of Zurich and his colleagues outfitted a number of birds with miniaturized GPS devices that tracked their movements. The researchers analyzed data collected from more than 200 flights (about 50 kilometers long) made in the...
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Orca Helps Trainer Help His Sick Baby
Thirty years ago, at a now defunct marine park in Palos Verdes, California, a baby orca took ill. The illness itself was nothing noteworthy, but what happened afterward had a profound impact on all who witnessed it. The staff had used a forklift and stretcher to hoist the 420-pound infant out of the main tank for emergency medical care. In a remarkable act of trust, the baby’s parents,...