HOME |
RSS | 
“I’ve got two moles to attack, a cub to feed and a field to frolic in, can we get this line moving already?” Just be patient Mr. Fox, be patient, you’ll get to use the ATM eventually.
First spotted by Ash Warner Via BoingBoing
From wolphins to ligers to beefalos, hybrid animals may not be true species yet, but they are still fascinating both biologically and visually. The Daily Beast has a great article featuring twelve such species with some cool photos to go along with them. Enjoy!
Wildlife experts thought leopards were locally extinct in Afghanistan, but this one was captured snarling at a camera trap in September. The camera trap, set by the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Afghan central highlands, also caught pictures of lynx, wild cats, wolves, red foxes, stone martens, and even a pair of poachers. See them in a gallery at National Geographic. Link
(Image credit: WCS Afghanistan Program)
A Zanesville, Ohio, man who owned a large private menagerie of tigers, lions, bears and monkeys opened the cages to many of the exotic animals then killed himself in his home Tuesday. Around 5:30pm, his neighbors began calling the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office to report sightings of animals wandering off of Terry Thompson’s land.
When police went to investigate, they were met by a herd of about 50 exotic animals, and Thompson’s body in the driveway. “I had deputies that had to shoot animals with their side arms,” said Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz. Soon after, officials from nearby Columbus Zoo came armed with tranquilizers to help locate and rescue as many of the animals as possible. But it didn’t go as planned: ”We just had a huge tiger, an adult tiger that must’ve weighed 300 pounds, that was very aggressive. We got a tranquilizer in it, and this thing just went crazy,” Lutz said. After the incident, he ordered a shoot-to-kill for the remaining animals.
49 of Thompson’s 56 animals were dead and buried on his property, at the request of his estranged wife, by Wednesday morning. Authorities captured a grizzly, three leopards and two monkeys, which were sent to the Columbus Zoo for safekeeping. A baboon possibly infected with hepatitis B was still missing as of Wednesday night.
How did this happen?
Ohio has extremely lax governance over the ownership of exotic animals. The state’s “inadequate regulation” puts it near the bottom of the list in a 2009 report from the Humane Society of the United States. And earlier this year, an emergency rule which “prohibited people convicted of animal cruelty from owning exotic animals” expired, allowing Thompson, who was previously charged with and found guilty of animal cruelty and neglect, to keep his 56 lions and tigers and bears.
Public safety vs. animal protection
Immediately after this story broke, Zanesville residents and national news viewers began calling the sheriff’s office and Zanesville area shelter to ask why the animals–many of them listed as endangered species–were being killed rather than tranquilized or recaptured. The short answer: No time. The longer answer is best explained by Jack Hanna, beloved animal rights activist and director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo:
“[Y]ou can’t tranquilize an animal in the dark. It upsets them … they settle in, they hunker down, they go to sleep. Obviously, we can’t find them in the dark. So what had to be done had to be done. Even a bear came after one of the officers last night, and she was just trying to get out of a car. … No one loves animals more than me, but human life has to come first.”
As night descended on Ohio and liberated exotic animals ran loose, swift and decisive action was needed to protect the human residents of Zanesville; unfortunately, it was at the expense of Thompson’s pets. The Humane Society supports Lutz’s actions and those of his team, and PETA, in a written statement, blamed legislation instead of law enforcement for the deaths.
Preventative action
Over the years, Lutz received “around 35 calls” about Thompson’s farm–all concerning “animals running loose to animals not being treated properly.” He went on to say that his office has “handled numerous complaints here, we’ve done numerous inspections here. So this has been a huge problem for us for a number of years.”
Former governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, imposed the legislation that was allowed by current governor, John Kasich, to lapse in April. Of Thompson, he said, “Someone with a record like this man was not intended to have these animals.” Strickland asserted that Thompson “would almost certainly have had his animals removed by May 1, 2011, if the emergency order had not expired.”
PETA, for its part, has been petitioning Ohio (and a number of other states) for years to institute “an outright ban” on owning exotic animals. The group is currently asking the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to “exercise its authority to declare emergency regulations to prohibit the keeping of exotic animals” as well as petitioning the state to “seize the animals over whom the agency has jurisdiction and see that they are placed in reputable sanctuaries.” Whether Gov. Kasich will comply has yet to be seen.
Is an outright ban on owning exotic animals the right move here, or should there just be stricter limitations on who can keep the animals (and where)?
Sources:
I wouldn’t exactly call it narcissism, but animals like to look at their reflections just like people do. And when a photographer is there to capture the moment, you get double the subjects! See 16 photographs of animals and their reflections in water in a gallery at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user ucumari)
This poor little guy wandered into a woman’s yard in Australia due to it being a particularly hot day, so the woman decided to let him drink from the hose. Apparently koalas don’t understand how hoses work, because he gets more water on his arm than he does in his mouth!
-via BuzzFeed
Previously: Sam gets a Drink
No, I’m not making a lame joke about the band Counting Crows. As it turns out, crows can recognize symbols used as numbers.
A new study suggests that crows can recognize symbols that represent quantities of items. At Japan’s Utsunomiya University, crows were shown two containers. Only the container marked with five symbols contained the food. The researchers trained the crows to identify the food container 70% of the time.
There were only eight crows involved, so it’s not really conclusive, but it’s still interesting.
Link Via BoingBoing
Image Via malfet [Flickr]
If parrots can learn words from humans, it’s only logical that parrots can teach others how to speak those words. As it turns out, it’s been happening so often that many people in Australia claimed to be hearing voices coming from the trees only to eventually discover the words were actually coming from a band of cockatoos that included one previous pet.
Perhaps the most interesting effect of this is that in large Australian cities, the cockatoos keep their vocabulary sharp through frequent interactions with humans. As a result, apparently, if you say hello to a crowd of cockatoos, it’s not unlikely that you’ll get a relatively articulate answer.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’d love to have a conversation with a wild cockatoo, even if it is just a step away from taking over human civilization.
Link Via Geekosystem Image Via rggoldie [Flickr]
If you enjoy how cute this little baby seal is while screaming like a human child, then you’ll also like the other animals that scream like people as seen on BuzzFeed.
Wildlife photographers (and brothers) Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas created the BeetlCam. It’s a remote-control 4-wheel-drive miniature vehicle (toy) with a remote-control camera mounted on top, designed to take pictures of dangerous wild animals. Here we see the gadget in action in Tanzania. It appears to work very well! -via Laughing Squid
Comments Off
A baboon in the Nairobi Orphanage has taken on quite the adorable little charge with this adorable little bush baby. The video is filled with pure cuteness.
Via Cute Overload
Comments Off 
This World Wildlife Fund poster features a ton of hidden animals in the bushes.I know it’s hard to see at this size, but if you click on the link, you can enlarge the picture and try to see them all. How many can you find?
Who knew seal snores were so adorable?
Via BuzzFeed
Photographer Guido Mocafico takes pictures of snakes, but it wasn’t always so. He was once deathly afraid of them!
The first time I photographed a snake up close, I nearly fainted. I’d always found them terrifying, but also fascinating—an attraction-repulsion I think most people experience when they encounter beautiful animals that creep or crawl. My goal with this series is to explore that intersection of human emotions.
Shown are three colorful bush vipers of the same species. See a collection of Mocafino’s snake portraits at National Geographic. Link
(Image credit: Guido Mocafico/Hamiltons Gallery)
The tree named Ochroma pyramidale is better known as the balsa tree, from which we get lightweight wood to make model airplanes. But its flowers are more valuable to many species in Panama, because they bloom at night during the dry season and fill and refill with sweet nectar.
Throughout the night and into the next morning, the trees here and on the mainland nearby will play host to an unusually large and pan-Linnaean cast of characters—mammalian, avian, amphibian, insectile. A few of the customers look familiar: A close cousin of the opossum often seen bumbling around trash cans in the United States turns out to thrive in the tropics and to love the taste of Ochroma juice. Others are gorgeously obscure: If you were to catch a rare glimpse of the olingo, a distant relative of the raccoon, as it slid silently through the branches like an oil spill with feet, you’d realize how alien our planet remains, how poorly we understand its parts.
Read more about this fascinating tree at National Geographic. Link to story. Link to photographs. -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: Christian Ziegler)
Comments Off 
Andrew Evans of National Geographic is on a photo expedition to the Tristan da Cunha island group in the South Atlantic. He expected to get beautiful pictures of wildlife and their natural habitat, but fate took another turn. A cargo ship crossing from Brazil to Singapore crashed on the rocks of Nightingale Island, and began to spill the 800 tons of fuel it was carrying.
The captain and all crew escaped the vessel, but by last Saturday the ship had begun to break up in the heavy surf. The oil slick had spread around the island and then out to sea in the direction of Inaccessible Island.
Our ship, the MV National Geographic Explorer arrived at Tristan Da Cunha yesterday and sailed to Nightingale Island this morning, as intended on our original itinerary with Lindblad Expeditions. Instead of mere bird watching, we were met with the disturbing sight of penguins and seals coated in sticky black oil.
Nightingale Island is home to some 20,000 of the endangered sub-species of Northern Rockhopper Penguin. Sadly, these are the birds that were hit the hardest—thousands are expected to die from the effects of the oil spill. While this spill is relatively minor in comparison to so many in the world today, it represents a major calamity for the fragile birdlife on pristine Nightingale Island and a heavy blow to the small group of islanders of nearby Tristan da Cunha.
Although hundreds of the rockhopper penguins were collected to be cleaned, many more hundreds are left covered with oil, along with seal pups and other wildlife. Read Evans’ report and see more pictures at National Geographic’s Digital Nomad blog. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Andrew Evans/National Geographic)
Let’s just come out and admit it, shall we? The Internet is used to bridge geographical divides, to democratize the spread of information, to create and innovate new ways of entertaining ourselves – and to restore our faith in love by staring for hours at images of cute animals. In that spirit, then, I hereby declare that these twenty unlikely animal pals win at the Internet.
In the Animal Kingdom, friendship often cross the lines of genus and species and results in some oddball inter-special relationships like this.
Defying the laws of nature itself, animal odd couples forge friendships under the most peculiar circumstances. But in the process, they show us that humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom to demonstrate complex emotions and traits.
See what can happen when you have a bobcat for a pet? I’ve been lacerated by domestic cats enough to know that I don’t want to fight a wildcat over dinner. And this one is just a cub! People take in pets stranger than bobcats, however: read the stories of people who keep hippos, tigers, alligators, zebras, and more in The World’s Ten Weirdest Pets. Link
Dawn dishwashing liquid is to go-to soap for cleaning up birds and animals caught in crude oil spills. Wildlife rescue groups swear by it, and have for years. They say it cuts the crude without doing harm to the animal. A company representative says it’s a delicate balance of surfactants that make it so effective.
What the company doesn’t advertise — and these days is reluctant to admit — is that the grease-cutting part of the potion is made from petroleum.
“To make the best product out there, you have to have some in there,” says Ian Tholking of Procter & Gamble. He says less than one-seventh of Dawn comes from petroleum.
“To say Dawn’s horrible because of this, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he says, “and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. Because we’re not trying to do something evil here.”
“I think it’s extremely ironic,” says Martin Wolf, a chemist for Seventh Generation, which makes a dish liquid without petroleum. “Here we are trying to squeeze every last drop of oil we can out of the Earth, and it’s despoiling the Earth. And we’re using that same product that’s messing up the Earth to clean it up.”
Wolf says his company sent a truckload of oil-free detergent to the gulf, but he hasn’t heard whether anyone has used it.
Proctor and Gamble donates supplies of Dawn to animal rescue operations. Link -via Holy Kaw!
(Image credit: Elizabeth Shogren/NPR)
Whooping Cranes began to die out in the 1800s when Americans settled in their nesting grounds. By 1940, there were as few as 22 cranes left. Since then, a major effort has made some progress in saving the whoopers from extinction.
The bird has become the emblematic endangered species, thanks in part to its fierce charisma. Standing nearly five feet tall, it can spy a wolf—or a biologist—lurking in the reeds. It dances with springing leaps and flaps of its mighty wings to win a mate. Beak to the sky, it fills the air with whooping cries. The sole wild flock, listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1967, has slowly expanded. At the same time, conservationists have hatched and bred the birds in captivity and reintroduced them to their former habitat, boosting the total—including captive stock—to more than 500.
However, the cranes are still under great risk. Jennifer S. Holland at National Geographic tells the story of how science and wildlife management brought the birds back from the brink of extinction. Link
(Image credit: Klaus Nigge)
Wildlife experts have found that perfumes made for humans can attract wild animals. Zoos use this knowledge to encourage big cats to explore their habitats. Researchers use perfume to “bait” camera traps, so they can photograph and identify a variety of species. The most successful scent found so far is Obsession For Men. Calvin Klein must be proud! Link -via Everlasting Blort
The pictures we see of birds and other wildlife affected by the Gulf oil spill are heartbreaking. What should we do about them? Some wildlife experts advocate euthanizing instead of cleaning individual birds.
“Kill, don’t clean,” recommends Silvia Gaus, a biologist at NationalPark Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea National Park) in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Unfortunately, despite some short-term success in cleaning birds and releasing them into the wild, few, if any, have a chance of surviving even for a few months, reports Ms Gaus, who has worked as a biologist for 20 years.
“According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent,” Ms Gaus explained. “We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds.”
Blogger and evolutionary biologist GrrlScientist took a closer look at those serious studies and found the survival rate of oiled birds depends on a number of factors, and can be as high as 100% among some populations. She advocates making the effort to clean and release birds.
I disagree with Ms Gaus’s gloomy policy. Because all people use oil or oil-related products in some form, I maintain that it is both ethical and responsible to try to save as many oiled birds and other wildlife as we can. Some wildlife management professionals argue that cleaning oiled birds isn’t worth the monetary cost and effort since little or no impact can be made on a species level. But actually, we don’t know this to be true. Additionally, I ask you; what amount of money and effort is too much, and who should be making those decisions anyway? Further, what do we, as scientists and as a society, gain by trying to save these unfortunate animals? Certainly, I think it is imperative to develop our technology to the best level possible so we can use it to help all birds, whether their populations are doing fine or they are threatened or endangered, so we are capable of helping them in the sad event that they are impacted by an oil spill. This requires that we continually refine and improve our techniques and equipment to do the job properly.
There is much more information on previous spills and bird survival rates at Living the Scientific Life. What do you think? Should we leave oiled birds to their fate, euthanize them, or wash and rehabilitate them one by one? Link
(Image credit: Paul Buck/EPA)
The title of this item was the headline at Fark, and I couldn’t think of any better way to say it. The Big Picture blog has photographs of the Gulf oil spill as it reaches the Louisiana shores. Warning: some pictures may be disturbing. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: REUTERS/Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace)
They may look like the subspecies of an Ewok but they’re actually monkeys with incredible abilities and the strangest habits; food seasoning and hot tub bathing are but a few. See more photos at Environmental Graffiti.
(image credit: Alexandra Boldereva)
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Jeff Wysaski made pie charts to explain how much time wild animals devote to their daily activities. Besides the jellyfish, you can explore the charts of a lion, elephant, spider, and panda. Link -Thanks, Amanda!
A Canada goose landed in a garden in Toms River, New Jersey with an illegal hunting arrow stuck through its chest. The garden happened to belong to retired veterinarian Bernard Levine. Dr. Levine captured the goose and removed the 26-inch arrow, which was lodged six inches deep in the bird’s flesh. Then he took the goose to a bird rehabilitation center.
“This is a smart goose,” said Dr Levine, 82. “He happened to come into the yard of a veterinarian that could take care of him.”
After it recovered at The Raptor Trust, the goose was released last week into a stream in a wooded area on the trust’s property.
“It feels great to see him free and liberated, enjoying life the way a goose should,” Dr Levine said, as the goose preened and waded downstream.
Levine also removed several air rifle pellets from the goose. Link -via Arbroath
Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of the Mount St. Helens eruption that buried the area in ash, flattened trees for miles around, and killed 57 people. A quarter of the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument was set aside as a research area in 1982, so scientists could see how nature alone would reclaim the blast site. National Geographic magazine takes a look at how the area is flourishing now.
A key lesson is the importance of “biological legacies”—fallen trees, buried roots, seeds, gophers, amphibians—that survived the blast, thanks to snow cover, topography, or luck. Ecologists had assumed rebirth would happen from the outside in, as species from border areas encroached on the blast zone. But recovery has also come from within. Starting with a single plant Crisafulli discovered in 1981 on the barren, 3,750-acre expanse known as the Pumice Plain, purple prairie lupines became the first color in a world of sterile gray. In life they were nutrient factories, food for insects, habitat for mice and voles; in death they, and the organisms they attracted, enriched the ash, allowing other species to colonize. Gradually the blast zone began to bloom.
(image credit: Diane Cook and Len Jenshel)
Winston in southern Oregon is where many tourists stop on their journeys north and south along Interstate 5; it’s where Wildlife Safari is. Recently the park acquired some help in the form of Wylie Malek, an autistic young boy people are calling a “natural elephant man.” It seems he’s bonded with the gentle giants, and has had breakthroughs of his own.
The young man’s communication skills have improved through the interactions, his father said, both with the adults at Wildlife Safari and with kids in his classes at Green Elementary. Sometimes it is hard to get the otherwise reserved boy to stop talking about the elephants, his father said. When he recites for the fifth time how much an elephant can eat, his family has to change the subject, Kris Malek joked.
Link | via The Obscure Store and Reading Room | Photo Credit: Robin Loznak
WebEcoist has twelve tales of animals escaping from captivity. Some were recaptured quickly; others weren’t so simple.
When zookeepers found that a Macaw had vanished, they were baffled because they knew his wings were clipped, preventing him from flying away. They later found that did not stop him from fluttering out of the enclosure and catching a ride inside an RV’s engine cabinet.
Link -via Unique Daily
