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Who knew big cats were so into pizza?…Or at least the residual smell of it left on the boxes.
Last year, the folks at Big Cat Rescue showed us how big cats react to catnip. Here they investigate another burning question: will big cats chase a laser dot the way house cats do? Let’s hide and watch. -via The Daily What
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This might just be one of the cutest videos ever. Like humans, chimps are born with a strong maternal instinct and when instinct and friendship are paired up like this, there’s no ignoring the cuteness.
Nature photographer Bobby McLeod captured this excellent shot of a tiger sleeping under a light blanket of snow. His gallery is filled with other great wildlife photos.
Link via Doobybrain
The end of this video shows the homeowners’ rather emphatic ‘no trespassing’ signs. I would imagine that if the tiger is allowed to play outside on a regular basis, they don’t have a problem with solicitors.
via Doobybrain
What is it about interspecies animal friendships that make humans so infatuated? Is it the unlikelihood of the partnerships or the simple cuteness of two different species reflecting so well upon one another? Whatever it is, these adorable animal pairings are simply precious no matter how you look at it.
Perhaps one of the most famous strange animal friendships involves Greg Pike’s three companions, Booger, Kitty and Mousie, who constantly ride on top of one another. His animals were named by a group of school children who Greg gave the opportunity to name.
Pike is a busker who receives monetary compensation from passersby who wish to photograph his bizarre animal trio. He currently resides in San Francisco, but he and his pets previously lived in a small border town in Colorado, Arizona, in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in Santa Barbara, so if you think you may have seen him in person and you happened to be in one of those places, then you almost certainly saw the real act, not an impersonator.
Greg likes to think of them as a symbol of peace, if these three national enemies can get along, why can’t we humans. If you like the act, you can always make a donation via his website.
When Stuart and Caroline Ward bought an owl named Boobah right before her German shepherd, Hazel, gave birth to puppies, they worried the dog would be overprotective of the litter and act aggressive towards the owl. Fortunately, the exact opposite was true. Hazel immediately started to look after her owl friend who took to riding on the dog’s back for rides. The pair soon became inseparable and Boobah even tried to suckle milk from Hazel like the young puppies did.
Many people have seen this image without ever seeing the equally sweet story. The 12 week-old macaque was brought to an animal sanctuary after he was discovered close to death after being abandoned by his mother. After his rescue, his health improved, but he remained listless until he struck up a friendship with an unlikely suspect –a white pigeon. The two were so close keepers almost never found them more than a few feet from one another’s side. The friendship managed to bring the monkey back from the brink and he displayed a whole new attitude.
While some consider cats and dogs to be mortal enemies, it is still fairly common to see the two animals become close friends after living together. As common as cat and dog friendships are, it takes a special bond to capture the interest of a nation, but Cashew and Libby were that close.
Cashew was an older yellow lab that had gone blind and deaf in her old age, but his feline friend, Libby, didn’t let that stand in the way of their friendship. Libby served as a seeing-eye cat for her elderly friend, leading him to his food and watching over him while the pair slept next to each other. The cat would even follow her friend on walks to make sure he got back safely.
After Cashew passed, Libby has shown no interest in other dogs and has been known to hang around at her friend’s favorite nap spots. The cat’s utter loyalty to her friend earner her the Cat of the Year from the ASPCA, a high honor with so many great kitties in the country.
While the header for this one has the makings of a great animal sitcom, it’s actually a true story that warms your heart. It al started when a stray goat and dog were picked up by animal control outside of a wedding chapel in Dallas. They were brought to the East Lake Pet Orphanage, where volunteers soon saw the pair was inseparable. Unfortunately, Texas law requires that abandoned pets must be kept with animals of the same species, so a sheriff’s deputy took away the goat, named Minnelli. If the goat stayed unclaimed, she would have been sold at a livestock auction.
Fortunately, the story already hit the papers and the Dallas County Commissioner assured the public Minnelli would not end up on someone’s dinner table. A few days later, the animal’s owner came forward. The family also owned a three-legged yellow lab and could no longer afford to take care of their animals, so they signed over the rights to all three pets to the East Lake Pet Orphanage.
The shelter received hundreds of adoption requests for the unlikely trio, which they then narrowed down to the five best applicants. Representatives from the shelter visited each home to ensure the pets were given to the best possible candidates. Eventually, they were adopted by Norman and Sandra Williams who owned three acres of land and plenty of other critters to keep their new family members company.
The World Wildlife Fund created augmented reality t-shirts in an effort to raise awareness of the threat that poachers pose to Siberian tigers. When people in trendy clothing stores in Moscow tried on the shirts in front of mirrors, the mirrors displayed images of the wearer getting shot in the chest.
via Gizmodo
Sightings by locals in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan led researchers to look for tigers in higher elevations than they’ve ever been known to reside. Dr. Alan Rabinowitz of Panthera, a big cat conservation organization, and BBC wildlife photographer Gordon Buchanan went up in the mountains and set camera traps above 3,000 meters of elevation. They left the cameras for three months, then found that among many other species, tigers indeed came to have their pictures taken.
This is the only place on earth known to have tigers, leopard and snow leopards all sharing the same valley.
It is remarkable to have these three big cats sharing their range.
Most extraordinarily, the cameras took footage of two wild tigers, one male and one female, a discovery that moved Mr Buchanan to tears.
The next step is to create a preserve that would protect the tigers and other animals. See several videos at BBC News. Link -via the Presurfer
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Learn about the different species of big cats as you enjoy photographs by zoo photographer and “cat whisperer” Akishin Vyacheslav. Shown is a leopard with startling blue eyes. Link -via Digg
Can you get a lion to pose for a portrait? Yes… well maybe not you, but the folks at Big Cat Studio can!
Deadly big cats look more like domestic pets in a stunning new book of feline photographs. Carefully pieced together over a year ‘Big Cat Studio’ lets readers get up close to ocelots, leopards, pumas, lynx, lions and tigers. The cats were photographed in a specially constructed studio at The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We hope that you are going to like it as much as we are. So, take a look and enjoy
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by dra8ana.
If you were impressed with the dog who wet nursed the red panda cubs, just wait till you read about the dog who adopted these tiger cubs. The page also has photos of a dog in the same area that adopted two lion cubs.
What I want to know is why are all these wild animal mothers being so negligent to their young in the first place. Thank goodness for these good natured dogs or these cubs would be in big trouble.
