Stories tagged animals
There has been much hype lately about the ethics of chromosomal testing during the Bejing Olympics. Rather than sending a man to compete as a woman (as the Germans did in the Berlin games),
An ostrich going for the gold
Courtesy swh they should have entered an ostrich or perhaps a rhino. Check out the link above to read about high performing animals that would give our athletes a run (or swim) for their money.
Tags : Check it out, readers, a unicorn (deer thing) has been found in the country we call Italy.
Get some maidens over there and capture it! Or Tom Cruise! (I don't really remember how that movie went.)
Anyway, sorry, but I've already called dibs on the horn. I need it for my magic spells.
Cuttlefish eye: The highly developed organ can take in information during its embryonic stage.
Courtesy sophmattgunnerCuttlefish embryos peering out from inside their eggs are able to identify their prey, and remember them after they’ve hatched, according to a research team at the University of Caen Basse-Normandy, France that has documented the remarkable feat.
Cuttlefish are cephalopods related to squid and octopus, and their eyes are considered some of the most developed in the animal kingdom.
The research team led by Ludovic Dickel harvested wild cuttlefish eggs and placed them inside a series of tanks containing sea water. Cuttlefish eggs are translucent but enclosed in a black ink in their early stages. But this protective cover clears eventually as the eggs develop. Some of the eggs were set up in plain view of crabs, a favorite prey of adult cuttlefish. The crabs were partitioned in glass compartments with varying degrees of clarity, and the embryos could neither smell nor hear them, only see them. Other eggs were placed in tanks without any exposure to crabs.
Cuttlefish on the prowl
Courtesy richard lingAfter hatching, the infant cuttlefish were removed immediately away from the crabs before the hatchlings had a chance to see them, and allowed to develop in isolation. After seven days, they were set free inside tanks containing both crab and shrimp, another favorite cuttlefish food.
Remarkably the cuttlefish that had been exposed as embryos to the crabs preferred to eat them. And those with the clearest view of the crabs, had the greatest taste for them. Those with no prior view of the crabs preferred the shrimp.
Other animals have been known to pick up chemical and audio cues during the embryonic stage, but this is the first evidence of visual learning by embryos. The study’s results appear in the journal Animal Behaviour.
Jane Goodall, the internationally-known chimp researcher, will be making a pair of public appreances at the University of Minnesota on Saturday. Here's a link to the details. Both events are free and open to the public.
So cute. So shnuggly. So lethal.: Jax, the mighty hunter, eyes some tasty birdies from his window perch.
Courtesy Gene
As spring approaches (no, really, it is coming! You've got to believe!), house cats everywhere are sniffing at the fresh air coming in under the door, and are just itching to get outside. However, a politician in Boulder, Colorado is trying to pass a law that would require pet owners to keep their cats inside. It may sound funny – or like an unnecessary government intrusion into citizens’ lives—but outdoor cats are a big problem for wildlife. According to the American Bird Conservancy There are some 77 million house cats in America, and a similar number of feral cats. Each year, they kill hundreds of millions of birds, and perhaps a billion small mammals. Many of the prey species are threatened or endangered.
If you own a cat, keep it inside! Or invest in an enclosure so it can enjoy the outdoors without menacing the local wildlife.
Polar bear journey: Como's pair go on sabbatical to Buffalo, N.Y.
We've had a lot of zoo posts lately in the Buzz. There's more happening at Como Zoo this weekend as Saturday marks the final day for polar bears Neil and Buzz to roam their small enclosure for a couple years. While it's getting an extreme makeover, they'll be hanging out with other polar bears in Buffalo, N.Y. Apparently global warming has nothing to do with this polar bear disappearance.
Markisa the orangutan and her new baby: Bonding nicely.
Courtesy Mark RyanA baby orangutan born last month at the Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota is reported to be doing well, and bonding with its mother. Births of captive animals aren't uncommon - the zoo has had fourteen surviving orangutan births in nearly fifty years - but this one is unusual because its delivery was by caesarian section, the first such delivery in the zoo's history.
The yet-unnamed male orangutan was born December 13, and placed in ICU where he was cared for by a medical team from both the Veterinary Medical Center and University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital, Fairview. At first, things were a little hairy (tee hee) for the new baby, but zookeepers and the medical staff kept a close watch and helped the little guy pull through.
In the meantime, the baby's mother, a twenty year-old orangutan named Markisa, was brought back to the zoo so she could recover from her surgery.
Mother and child orangutan
Courtesy Mark RyanWhen time came for reuniting mother and child, doctors and zoo officials were uncertain if Markisa would take to her new offspring since she hadn’t birthed him in the conventional manner. But after a careful and methodical reintroduction process, Markisa has taken her motherly duties to heart.
Interestingly, the zoo’s dominant female orangutan, an ape named Joy, kept trying to sabotage the relationship by offering every object she had to Markisa in exchange for the new baby. But Markisa just wasn’t in the trading mood, and kept signaling “No deal!” Home-wrecker Joy, and her own eight-year-old son, Willy, have since been moved to Busch Gardens in Florida so Markisa and her baby can bond in peace.
About 200 orangutans (the name means “person of the forest”) are in exhibitions throughout the United States. The great apes are native to Sumatra and Borneo, but their populations have been dwindling in recent years due to deforestation of their environment by human endeavors and wild fires.
Orangutan motherhood: The world's toughest job.
Courtesy Mark RyanWhen I read an update about mom and the baby, I went over to the Como Zoo to catch a glimpse of the little fellow. It wasn’t an easy task, as the exhibit lighting is kept low, and Markisa seems very protective of her new son, keeping him cradled closely to her breast. I managed to get a couple shots where you can at least tell he’s there.
On the other hand, Markisa’s recovery from the c-section is apparently coming along just fine. She moved around the exhibit rather effortlessly, and without any show of pain – as far as I could tell – holding her little one in her arms.
If you want further information about Markisa and her baby, check out the news page on the Como Zoo’s website. And if you want to do more than just read about the new baby, you can learn about sponsoring him here, or visit the Como Zoo to see him.
All the signs are there: Wild eyes, disheveled appearance, straw stuck up the nose... How could they not have known what their kitty was up to?
Courtesy melissambwilkinsCosmos Magazine has defied all standards of taste and tradition by releasing a top 13 list of strange animal stories of 2007. Except for top 5’s, odd numbered top lists are frustrating and should be avoided. Top lists numbering over 10 practically defeat the purpose, and choosing 13 is practically tempting fate. They should have just thinned the list. Number 12, at the very least, could easily have been cut.
Still we’ve got some good stories here. The Queensland suggestion to kill invasive cane toads by practicing golf swings on them was pretty sharp, and the cockatoo that tried to hatch chocolate eggs was fun in a depressing way, but, as far as I’m concerned, the “sick” cat who turned out just to be high on its owners’ cocaine takes the cake. Bad kitty! If only there were a DARE program for pets.
New fossil evidence indicates that the ancestors of modern kangaroos walked on four legs, had fangs and climbed trees -- a sobering thought. Meanwhile, scientists studying marsupial flatulence have discovered that kangaroo gas contains no methane, and thus does not contribute to greenhouse gasses. A spokesman for kangaroos said he was glad no kangaroos were involved in changing the Earth's climate.
Sort of the opposite here: And I think I might throw up.
Courtesy Ke WynnIt’s amazing that we ever get anything done in this world, considering how weird it is.
A zoo in Thailand recently began circulating emails containing photos of a female tiger with a littler of piglets. The tigress, according to the email, was heartbroken over the loss of her own cubs, and accepted the piglets, wrapped in tiger skins, as replacements. She has been watching over them ever since, and, apparently, even nursing them.
That alone would have done it for me. “Wrapped in tiger skins”? I wonder where the tiger skins came from? I mean, what, did they just have a whole bunch of dead baby tigers on hand… oh. And piglets nursing from a tiger? There’s something unsettling about that, especially considering that the tiger is probably going to eat those things eventually (that’s what I’d do, at least).
The story doesn’t end there, however. After a worldwide chorus of “aww”s and “OMG!!!!”s, an animal welfare group decided to investigate the source of the pictures. They originally came from The Sriracha Tiger Zoo, home to over 400 tigers (400 tigers!), as well as a handful of other exotic animals, located about an hour outside of Bangkok.
The tiger in the picture turns out to have been raised by pigs herself (something not entirely uncommon in Thailand, at least according to this article) and therefore saw the piglets as part of her family, even without their sharp little striped jackets. The photos (which can be found using the link above) were apparently part of a publicity stunt by the zoo.
Whether or not putting piglets in jackets and tossing them in a tiger cage constitutes animal cruelty is perhaps debatable, but this isn’t the first time the Sriracha Zoo has received scrutiny for dubious behavior. Along with the circus attached to the zoo (a source of debate in itself), Sriracha has been accused of causing 23 tigers to die of bird flu by feeding them infected chicken carcasses (who would have thought it was possible?), as well as breeding tigers, without a license (a tiger-breeding license?), for export to China, where tigers parts are very valuable as ingredients for traditional medicine (a list of various tiger parts and their uses in traditional medicine can be found here. Kind of interesting).
The zoo denies any wrongdoing, although it seems they may have been better off without the tiger/piglet attention. Delightful.
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