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If that last post creeped you out a bit, here’s a great palate cleanser for you. Of course, like many adorable animal videos, you might want to watch it on mute.
Police in Brandenburg, Germany found a plot of marijuana plants. Upon inquiry, they talked to an elderly woman who said she had been feeding the weeds to her pet rabbits.
“The rabbits really like it,” the woman told officers who called on her in the village of Golzow near Belzig, according to Saturday’s Tagesspiegel.
A police officer had seen the healthy, metre-high plants from the road while on his way to work and told his colleagues, who visited the plot’s owner – the elderly woman.
She told them that she had not grown the plants herself, but that they had simply started growing there, and had proven to be excellent rabbit food. Not only did the rabbits love eating the plants, they grew back very quickly after she cut them down, she told the investigating officers.
Officers did not charge the woman, but did cut the plants down. Link
(Unrelated image credit: Flickr member shesaleo)
Is there something about a cute bunny rabbit that brings out the perverse side of toy designers? You’d think so by looking at these! The bunnies on this list are scary, bloody, or dead, and may be disturbing to some readers. To be fair, they are marketed to adults. Shown here are the Killer Bunny Slippers of Caerbannog, the most innocuous image of the lot. Link
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Some of these cases are more bizarre than others. People can fake illness, and can be pretty good at fooling family, friends, and medical practitioners. But the story of Mary Toft was totally over the edge.
Toft captured the imagination of England when she “gave birth” to several rabbits and parts of other animals in the presence of numerous physicians and skeptics. The charade went on for months, perpetuated by daily newspapers, which were still a novelty. And back then, every newspaper resembled the Weekly World News, in which Bigfoot attacks are every bit as newsworthy as local politics.
It’s true that physicians confirmed the story, although they were under political pressure to do so. Read this story and more at Cracked. Link
Whether lazy and mellow or hyperactive and playful, pets enrich our lives by providing us with unconditional love. Some animals offer their owners even more than friendship though. Here are ten incredible animals that managed to rescue their owners from certain death.
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The DeStefanis agreed to watch the pet of some friends who were out of town. Surprisingly, this good deed ended up saving the family’s life. Because the family wasn’t sure how the pup, Bandit, would get along with their other dogs, they kept it in the master bedroom. That day, Rich, the father in the family sterilized a hairbrush by putting a hair brush in a pan with a bunch of water. Unfortunately, everyone forgot about the brush and went to bed without turning off the heat.
When the water evaporated and the plastic started burning, toxic smoke entered the air and filled the house. The family just bought new smoke detectors the day before, but not a single one went off. But Bandit was determined to save the family’s lives. He jumped on the mother’s chest and barked over and over until she woke up. When she did start to stir, she noticed the smoke smell immediately and got the rest of her family and pets out of the house.
The smoke was toxic enough to leave the family with some nasty coughs even a week later, but they if not for Bandit, they may have been a lot worse off.
It’s fairly common for U.S. soldiers stationed overseas to find new best friends when they take in stray pups from the local towns. It is uncommon, on the other hand, for those dogs to repay the favor by saving the life of a soldier. Target and two other strays staying in an army base in Afghanistan managed to save an entire unit when a suicide bomber snuck into the barracks area one night. The three animals barked and snarled at the bomber until he ended up pre-maturely detonating his bomb outside the barracks, killing himself. Everyone inside was fine, but one of the heroic dogs lost his life in the explosion.
Target was adopted by one of the soldiers who witnessed the events that night and she was even featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show when she returned to the states. Unfortunately, the story took a tragic turn when Target escaped her yard and was picked up by the pound. Her owner paid the fine online and came to pick her up on Monday morning, only to find out the shelter accidentally euthanized Target over the weekend. While the shelter claims they are launching a full investigation and putting new measures in place to ensure this never happens again, it cannot bring back the heroic animal who risked her life to save a barracks worth of soldiers.
While most pit bulls are loving family pets and some are even downright heroic, when raised in the wrong environment, any dog can become dangerous. When Cherry Woods was attacked in her yard by two pit bulls, she tried to fight them off, but couldn’t. Her husband also tried to pull the dogs away, but they were too strong for him. Fortunately, Cherry’s cat, Lima, did know how to stop the crazed dogs. He hoped into the fray, clawing, hissing and biting, managing to distract the pit bulls while the husband and wife ran inside and closed the door. Lima was able to escape after this and Cherry made a full recovery after the incident, with Lima at her side the whole time.
Between 1929 and 1945, Okunoshima Island was used by Japan as a site for producing chemical weapons. Now it’s a tourist attraction where people visit feral rabbits that began living there in 1971:
Today, the island is uninhabited, but the remains of the facility buildings, including gas containers and a power plant, are still there.
It is believed that rabbits were first taken to the island in 1971, after an elementary school in Takehara found it difficult to keep the animals at school. According to the Kyukamura Okunoshima resort hotel, most of the visitors to the island consisted of students on school study trips and senior tourists.
However, as the island became known as a rabbit habitat, the hotel began to receive more reservations from young women and families. The rabbits became popular for their adorable gesture asking for food.
Authorities at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the state of Washington have captured a rabbit that sipped water contaminated by radioactivity:
A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, but there is no sign any people were exposed to the animal.
Washington state Health Department workers with the Office of Radiation Protection have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings.[...]
The rabbit trapped at the 300 Area caught the Health Department’s attention because it was close enough to the site’s boundaries to potentially come in contact with people – if it had been caught by a dog or if its droppings were deposited in an area open to the public.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Image: MGM
Imagine landing at the airport and finding that hungry rabbits have eaten your car. Well, not the entire car, just the parts that make it run. That’s happening more and more at the Denver International Airport.
A vacationer returned after a nine day holiday only to find that his brand new VW Jetta would hardly crank. When he got it started he sought the help of the dealer, as anyone would, knowing that it is covered under the bumper to bumper warranty.
The service representative quizzed the owner if he had just picked up the Jetta from DIA and the gentleman responded, “Well as a matter of fact I did.” The culprit, according to the dealer, are rabbits who have combined exercise and a healthy diet to ensure against early onset cardio vascular disease.
The bunnies are feasting on rubber coated wires and other delicacies that may be infused with soy oil during the manufacturing process.
In the case of the VW Jetta, the warranty does not cover damage caused by hungry rabbits. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Flickr users Carly Lesser & Art Drauglis)
Batten down the hatches and prepare for a cuteness overload: rabbit goodness now comes in cup-sized servings. Their dark, violent thoughts are perfectly hidden.
via Buzzfeed
Researchers at Columbia University have regrown the destroyed joints of rabbits by shaping a scaffolding that encourages bones to heal in particular forms:
In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology–a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein–works in rabbits. About a month after the implant, the animals began using their injured forelimbs again, and at two months the animals moved almost as well as similarly aged healthy rabbits. The study is the first to show that an entire joint can be repaired while being used.[...]
In the study, the researchers first imaged the damaged forelimb joint and then created a three-dimensional picture of it, explains Mao, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University Medical Center. They used a bioprinter to “print out” a precisely accurate, three-dimensional copy of the joint, but criss-crossed it with tiny interconnecting microchannels to serve as a scaffold for new bone and cartilage growth. The surgical implantation was the same used to insert titanium implants in people, Mao says.
The top three images on the left show the process working, and the bottom picture shows natural cartilage.
Link via DVICE | Photo: Jeremy Mao
Get the insulin ready, this cute is strong with this one. -via Buzzfeed
Artist Nakisha Elsje VanderHoeven paints animals, most often rabbits. Her latest project is The Rabbit Tarot, consisting of 78 images of the classic cards featuring bunnies. She sells decks of them in her Etsy shop, along with a Tarot book and other Rabbbit Tarot merchandise. Link -via Metafilter
Uterus transplants have been thus far unsuccessful because the transplanted uteri do not maintain a blood supply strong enough to keep a fetus alive. But now British medical researchers may have solved that problem. The Guardian reports:
They have worked out how to transplant a womb with a good blood supply which could mean it lasts long enough to carry a pregnancy to term.[...]
Their most recent study involved five donor rabbits and five recipients, which were operated on at the Royal Veterinary College in London.
Five rabbits received a womb using a “vascular patch technique” which connected major blood vessels, including the aorta.
Of the five, two rabbits lived to 10 months and examinations after death showed the transplants were a success.
Link via Discover | Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Bunnies make great pets, but there’s something about them that’s just so condescending. For those of you who need a few more snarky rabbits in your life, try DisapprovingRabbits.com.
Link Image Via Disapproving Rabbits
For weeks, Armando Del Manso found dead snakes with teeth marks on his property near Cairns, Australia. He assumed his dog was killing the snakes until he saw two rabbits killing another snake!
“We were watching from the veranda with a spotlight, and I thought, who is going to believe this, they’ll think I’m crazy.”
He said the rabbits lived under a pile of wood in the backyard and were around the same size as a household cat.
“These are killer rabbits man,” he said.
“I’ve never ever seen or heard anything like this happening, it could be a breakthrough.”
The rabbits are apparently protecting two baby bunnies. Del Manso is glad to have the rabbits around, as he raises chickens and hasn’t lost any to a snake. Link -via Arbroath
Sylvilagus palustris hefneri is a now-endangered species of rabbit named in honor of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. University of Central Florida graduate teaching assistant Rosanna Tursi is studying the genetic diversity of the species in the Florida Everglades, of which there may be only 300 rabbits remaining.
Hefneri is the most recently recognized subspecies of the marsh rabbit. It’s small with short, dark brown fur and a grayish-white belly. Discovered in 1984, the subspecies was named in honor of Hefner after his organization donated money to support fieldwork on the rabbits. Good for Hef!
His namesake bunnies live in an island environment and are dependent on specific grasses and plants for feeding, nesting and shelter. Population growth and development in their area has led to the death of the bunnies at the hands of vehicles or domestic animals. Their natural habitat also is being destroyed.
(image credit: Rosanna Tursi)
Do you remember when President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit while fishing in 1979? Carter became the butt of many jokes about this incident. Here’s a puzzle from John Tierney based on the incident:
Suppose, the day after attacking President Carter, the rabbit finds itself alone in the middle of the pond, which is perfectly circular. Suppose there is a single Secret Service agent on the edge of the pond, armed with a small net to ensnare the swimming rabbit as it approaches the edge. This net is effective only if the rabbit is still in the water. If the rabbit reaches any point on the edge before the agent does, it can hop away to freedom; if the agent gets there first, the rabbit will be captured.
If the agent runs four times as fast as the rabbit swims, can the rabbit escape? If so, how?
For extra credit: What’s the fastest the agent can run (as a multiple of the rabbit’s speed) such that the rabbit can still escape?
What is your answer? The first correct answer wins a kiss from Alex.
Link via Instapundit
