Welcome to my blog.
All in Animals
Researchers observing the sex lives of the rock hyrax (Procavia capensis) have learned what we all suspected to be true: the best musicians get the girl. According to the study published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, males that sing the most and with rhythm have the best reproductive success.
The long-running war over garbage in Southern Sydney in NSW, Australia has evolved into a battle of wits. On one side are the humans, who want to keep their street-side rubbish bins sealed until the garbage trucks arrive; on the other side are the cockatoos, who want the opposite.
The winner was the stuff of nightmares: a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly. Evolutionary biologist Roberto García-Roa captured the moment when “spores of the so-called ‘Zombie’ fungus infect arthropods by infiltrating their exoskeleton and minds. … Here, they await death, at which point the fungus feeds on its host to produce fruiting bodies full of spores that will be jettisoned to infect more victims—a conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution.”
"We get invited, we show up, and we let the dogs do their work." So says Bonnie Fear, crisis response coordinator for the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry, which sent ten golden retrievers to Uvalde, Texas, site of a school shooting in May.
An enduring and endearing staple of nature shows is the monogamous penguin. The idea that these tuxedo-clad flightless birds mate for life without the occasional affaire de coeur is adorable, but is it true?
Turkmenistan’s Alabay - They really like the Central Asian shepherd dog, also known as the Alabay, in Turkmenistan. A new law recently took effect that restricts export of the beloved native breed and requires puppies to be registered in the government’s pedigree book.
A pair of giant pandas were born this week at the Qinling Panda Research Center in Shaanxi province, southwestern China. The male and female twins are reportedly healthy and definitely adorable.
Japanese researchers have observed a phenomenon that we thought was impossible: a nonhuman animal crying tears of joy. A new study reported in Current Biology this week demonstrated that our canine friends will well up with tears under certain circumstances, and it probably happens more often than we think.
A brown bear got into some hallucinogenic honey in Turkey’s northwestern Duzce province this week. It didn’t go well. The Guardian reported that the female brown bear was found wobbling and whining in the forest, where some good Samaritans rescued her. She had got into some mad honey, or “deli bal” in Turkish, produced by beekeepers who feed their honeymakers a kind of rhododendron nectar that packs a potent neurotoxin.
Australia is rife with invasive species like the feral pig, introduced by European settlers in the late 18th century, now spread across 40 percent of the country and numbering in the tens of millions. Invasives get a foothold because there are few natural predators in their new homes, but in Australia the pigs have at least one enemy: the saltwater crocodile.
Long-tailed macaque monkeys at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Bali have a lot of time on their hands and they’re not wasting it. Apparently the animals, male and female, are using stone tools as masturbatory aids.
“Euthanasia is out of the question,” said Frank Bakke-Jensen, Norway’s Director of Fisheries just a couple of weeks ago, referring to Freya, the 1300-pound walrus who spent much of the summer swimming and sunbathing around Oslo marinas. But that turned out to be a lie, because the authorities just put poor Freya down, claiming that her presence put humans at risk.
Researchers at the University of Konstanz in Germany have been staring intently at baby jumping spiders while they sleep, wondering if the eight-legged children have the capacity to dream. Their conclusion: maybe.
Gillian Anderson, a longtime friend to animals and PETA, turns 54 today with a message for couture giants Michael Kors, Versace, and Jimmy Choo: Stop harvesting hides from alligators, snakes, and lizards.
“Euthanasia is out of the question,” declared Norway’s Director of Fisheries, which was very good news for Freya, the 1300-pound walrus who has been summering in and around Oslo marinas. For months Norwegians have been watching the big mammal eat, sunbathe, and sleep on boats in harbors up and down the country's southeastern coastline. Freya has a preference for inflatables, which sometimes succumb to her prodigious girth and sink.
There’s been at least five shark attacks in the Northeast over the past month, enough to temporarily close a few Long Island beaches to swimming. Shark panic is an annual summer tradition, but perhaps the uptick in bites is a good sign.
In England last week a beagle-mix named Bonnie had an adventure that reads like the plot of a children’s book. It began when the five-year-old pooch went on the lam from her Bolney, West Sussex home, making her escape while her wards were preparing her food.
At the Phoenix Zoo they call them “bloodsicles,” “fishsicles,” or just “frozen food.” In UK zoos “ice lollies” are on the menu. In Spain the celebrity giant panda Bing Xing (which means “star of ice”) slurps watermelon popsicles.
In early June, a homing pigeon named Bob set off from Guernsey in the Channel Islands on a 400-mile route to Gateshead, a flight that’s supposed to take 10 hours. Several days and 4000 miles later, the four-year-old bird showed up on the other side of the pond, very lost in Mexia, Alabama.
For the third time in five years, Fred the labrador has adopted an orphaned brood of ducklings. Fred is the 15-year-old resident dog at Mountfitchet Castle, a living history museum in Essex, England.
