A lady in Turkey took her two cats to the veterinarian. They've been there before, you can tell, and it isn't a pleasant memory. While one cat gets weighed, the other tries to "rescue" him from the clutches of the evil practitioner.
You may think, "That's anthropomorphizing these cats. Who knows what he's really trying to do?" Well, watch the whole thing and tell me if there's another motivation for what he's doing. -via Tastefully Offensive
April the giraffe at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York, has been pregnant forever, and the zoo's live webcam has been set up to capture the birth since February 23. In that time, hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting to see the birth live. The webcam was taken down temporarily when animal rights activists reported "sexually explicit content" to YouTube, but it was soon restored.
Now it looks as if April has finally gone into labor, because the baby is moving, and April is pacing around as giraffes do. If you haven't already bookmarked the webcam, you might want to do so now to see the birth live. However, the park will no doubt have video of the blessed event viable soon afterward. The park's Facebook page will have updates. -via Fark
(Image credit: Animal Adventure Park)
We all know octopuses and squid are weird. What you might not know is just how weird they are. In fact, these creatues actually use their RNA in a quite different way than practically any other animal on earth:
Stanford University geneticist Jin Billy Li heard about Joshua Rosenthal’s work on RNA editing in squid, his jaw dropped. That’s because the work, published today in the journal Cell, revealed that many cephalopods present a monumental exception to how living things use the information in DNA to make proteins. In nearly every other animal, RNA—the middleman in that process—faithfully transmits the message in the genes. But octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish (but not their dumber relatives, the nautiluses) edit their RNA, changing the message that gets read out to make proteins.
But there is a dropback to the adaptation -it means that octopuses and squid slow down their genome evolution.
You can read more about what these findings mean over on Wired.
You are familiar with the rotating snake illusion. As your eyes move over the image, they appear to move. But if you hold your gaze still in one spot, the movement stops. Now try explaining that to your cat!
Ryan Kotzin printed the illusion out and gave it to his cat Peter. The cat saw the movement and was as mesmerized as any human. After not getting anywhere with the moving snakes, he ate them. -via reddit
Two cheetahs, a mother and daughter, gave birth to large litters in the same week at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, an adjunct of the National Zoo. One was a litter of five; the other cheetah gave birth to seven cubs, but the smallest two did not survive. The remaining ten cubs are doing just fine, and will spend the next 18 months in Virginia. After that, they'll go to other zoos or breeding programs.
The sound on this video begins about halfway through, but even then you'll have to listen closely to hear the tiny cubs hiss. Learn more about the National Zoo's cheetah breeding program at Smithsonian.
Selfie dogs are starting to pop up on social media, and they're setting the standard for all animal internet activity to come, but they need a smartphone to share their selfies- while Lucy carries her selfie around on her ear.
Lucy shook her ear like a Polaroid picture one day and the self portrait just sort of appeared...just kidding- she was born with this odd coloration on her left ear that looks like a thumbnail image of her face.
Lucy was part of a litter delivered at the Lollypop Farm Humane Society in Rochester, New York, and when the ultimate selfie dog's story went viral people found her so ear-resistable she was adopted right away.
-Via Honest to Paws
If you have a pet that is never annoying, noisy or destructive then you are one of the luckiest pet owners on Earth...or you're lying.
Most of us fall right in the middle with pets that are annoying, destructive and noisy on occasion, so we don't hate them enough to put them on the curb with a "Free" sign around their neck.
However, they destroy and annoy at times and for that they must pay, but animal abuse of any kind is despicable and dead wrong, so how do we get revenge without going over the line?
We get back at our pets by mildly annoying them, making them wear hats, wigs or a piece of bread on their head, or better yet just use them as a placemat, they mildly hate that.
Einstein the African grey parrot at Zoo Knoxville is 30 years old today. (They call it his "hatch day.") In honor of the occasion, the zoo released a video of Einstein showing off his impressions, sound effects, and singing. He has quite a repertoire!
Einstein was purchased for the zoo from a breeder in California at the age of 5. The talented parrot is an ambassador for the zoo, has appeared on TV, and even gave a TED talk in 2006. -via Laughing Squid
[Edit 4/6/17 by Alex with information from the zoo - Thanks Amy!]
The cuteness, it burns! This YouTube clip is only 20 seconds long, but that's enough to convince us just how cute Cincinnati Zoo's baby hippo Fiona is when she's dreaming. The hippo, born prematurely 9 weeks ago, is probably dreaming about something yummy to eat seeing how she licks her chops like that!
Take a look:
Then head on to the Cincinnati Zoo's Fiona page for more cuteness. Oh, okay, one more video:*/p
Image: Avi/Wikipedia
We passed through the city of Longview, Washington, on our recent family trip, and my wife noticed that the town is famous for the "Nutty Narrows Bridge," a bridge built solely for squirrels.
In 1963, resident Amos Peters decided that there were too many squirrels flattened by cars when running across the street to the park, so he built a mini-suspension bridge to keep the squirrels safe. A local councilwoman named it the "Nutty Narrows Bridge" after the state's Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the name stuck.
To date, the Nutty Narrows Bridge has the title of the World's Narrowest Bridge and also the World's Narrowest Animal Crossing. It was also the world's first bridge built just for squirrels!
Thanks Tiffany!
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of animal videos on the internet and practically all of them are squee-inducing. That's why it's so darn hard to pick the "best" of all of those videos. Over on The Daily Dot though, one writer was foolish or brave enough to do just that. He ranked 37 of what he says are the definitive best animal videos on the entire net. The list is pretty good actually, but there are some notable omissions -perhaps most notably in my opinion, Hamster on a Piano Eating Popcorn.
I'm sure plenty of you will take issue with some noticably lacking videos that aren't the list either. But even so, there still is a lot to love about this impressive list of incredible animal videos.
Owls are not great nest-builders. It's not uncommon for a nest to fail, and baby owls to fall out. Volunteers from the Dane County Humane Society's Wildlife Center in Wisconsin take it upon themselves to return these fallen owlets to their nests, or even provide a new nest, if they are sure the parents are around to care for the babies. Jenn Jackson posted pictures of two renesting missions, led by John Kraak and Michael Minardi. The first one is in this album. Be sure to read all the captions for the story. Here's a sample.
Mom guarding the insufficient nest, certainly not the worst we've seen.
If you’re new to this I’m pleased to introduced you to the patent pending, incredibly amazing MPJ Device. You may think it is a bucket, but let me be clear; this is a high tech renesting device.
First flight! Up goes the MPJ Device with owl in tow.
Finally, our own rooms!
There are a lot more pictures, so go read the full story. And check out the album for the second mission, too. -via Metafilter
April Fool's Day has turned out to be a shopping spree for pets, featuring products that don't exist across the corporate world. Liberty Games has an arcade game for cats, and another for dogs.
Petco offered a poop-scooping drone.
Florida Atlantic University will allow students to bring pets to school next fall. They even offer a meal plan for pets, 15 campus cat trees, and a video explaining the program. The scheme is only revealed when you register your pet.
Trulia has doghouses for rent.
Analog Watch Co. will make a watch band for you out of your pet's discarded fur.
The candy store Sugarfina unveiled its first boutique candy for dogs, Beef Broth gummy bears.
Puzzlenation launched a line of puzzles for pets.
But the pranks from retail companies don't all involve pets. See a running list of corporate April Fool jokes at Time.
Jellyfish look beautiful while swimming along under the sea, but you usually can't (or don't want to) get close enough to really appreciate their beauty in person.
And watching video footage of them just isn't the same, so how can a jellyfish lover enjoy all that squiggly, squirmy jellyfish fun up close and personal in the comfort of their own home?
They can bring home a JellyTank- a 5-gallon aquarium made just for jellyfish, with colorful, and remote controlled, LED lights that make their gelatinous bodies glow in really cool ways.
It also features "mechanical and biological filtration system" that won't suck the poor jellyfish up into it, and even comes with a Moon Jellyfish to start you off.
JellyTank from Media Whale on Vimeo.
-Via Fatherly
King cobras have a bad reputation, and the mere sight of them makes many people squirm in their seats, so if they saw a king cobra dying of thirst they'd probably say "good riddance".
But the animal lover in this video is from Southern India, where people have learned to live alongside king cobras despite their deadly bite. So when a thirsty king cobra came up to the animal rescue worker looking for a drink he calmly gave the snake some water from a bottle.
From the video description:
The video - shot in Southern India - shows a daring wildlife rescue worker offering water to the snake.
The 12 feet long cobra was rescued from a village in Kaiga township - where it has strayed, apparently looking for water.
Some parts of southern India have been hit by drought, making water scarce. Wildlife officials say the drought has severely affected wild animals in the region.
So when the team of rescue workers found the cobra, the first thing they did was to offer it water.
-Via Mashable
