Welcome to my blog.
All in Animal Welfare
Last month beloved Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco met his end when he smashed into a building on Manhattan's Upper West side, but a toxicology report this week confirms he wasn’t long for this world anyway, as the poor guy was rife with poison.
Of all the ways to spend time staring at screens, may we suggest the Netherland's visdeurbel? That’s Dutch for “fish doorbell,” a crowd-sourced system to help migrating fish swim through Utrecht’s canals using an underwater camera and a website.
Every year, Shannon Keith writes a letter to every animal-testing facility in the US, asking them to release their animals to the organization she founded in 2010, the Beagle Freedom Project (unconnected to the group in Wisconsin fighting for beagle rights). She rarely gets a response, so when she wrote to a huge testing laboratory in Nowata, Oklahoma, her appeal was ignored.
Next week three animal-rights activists go on trial for sneaking into a beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin, filming the atrocities therein, and running off with three doggos. That was seven years ago, but now the Dane County district attorney is hauling the three before a judge.
“Is that a pink elephant bathing in the mighty Olifants river?” Theo Potgieter, a guide and safari operator in Kruger National Park, South Africa, recently asked on Facebook. Rhetorical question. Potgieter had heard reports of a pink elephant living in the national park but hadn't seen the rare creature himself, until now. “A handful of sightings have been reported of this young bull in late 2023,” the guide tells media outlet SWNS, “but to my knowledge, there is no footage."
A zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, had to ask visitors to stop tossing coins into enclosures, mainly because a 36-year-old white alligator named Thibodaux had swallowed about $7 in change. Veterinarians at the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium performed surgery on the gator to remove the coins before they caused him serious health issues.
Hundreds of stray dogs are fleeing the Eastern Siberian town of UIan-Ude, near the Mongolian border, because the local government has decided to kill them. The strays’ saviors are Russian dog-lovers – from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and elsewhere – who make the long trek east and brave sub-zero temperatures to rescue the doomed doggos.
A team of scientists – and a couple of lucky television crews – have “discovered” what is being characterized as the world’s largest snake, a giant anaconda. The team, led by biologist Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland, captured and studied several specimens of the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), located in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Something funny is going on with our closest relatives – chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. Like humans, our cousins seem to revel in comedy – slapstick mainly, but comedy nonetheless. The Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior is looking into the fun.
The Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco, who escaped his confines in the Central Park Zoo in February last year, has met a sad end to his legendary life. The magnificent raptor, who became the city’s symbol of defiance and resilience over the course of his twelve months of freedom, was killed when he flew into the side of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
A plan to build a huge wind farm in Washington — the largest ever in the state — will likely end up much smaller than the original proposal to erect hundreds of turbines across 24 miles. That’s because Horse Heaven Hills wind farm would pose a danger to an already-endangered raptor, the ferruginous hawk.
A proposal to build an enormous monkey-breeding warehouse in Bainbridge, Georgia has prompted animal-welfare groups to launch an opposition to the plan. A company called Safer Human Medicine wants to build the country’s largest facility of this type, which would hold up to 30,000 cynomolgus, or long-tailed, macaques bred for experimentation.
Last August there were some very special passengers aboard an Alaska Airlines flight from Atlanta to Seattle: six rare Chilean flamingo eggs. When the eggs’ courier – a zoo official delivering the precious cargo to Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo – had a problem with the incubator, he summoned for help.
Last week scientists and researchers from the Khamai Foundation announced their discovery of five new species of eyelash vipers in the jungles and cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador.
A stingray at the Aquarium and Shark Lab by Team ECCO in Hendersonville, North Carolina is expecting, though we’re not sure exactly how or even with what – there are no males in her tank.
Conditions at Central Park, a humble city-run zoo in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, were not ideal for at least one resident, a 4-year-giraffe named Benito. The young male had only about a half acre to wander within a small enclosure, very few trees to nibble on, and within a climate no giraffe is accustomed to – brutal heat in the summer and freezing cold in winter.
Animal welfare group PETA UK is asking Katie Price to cease and desist owning animals because the “media personality” has had a horrible track record with her pets. The org is offering Price £5,000 ($6,300) if she’ll sign a legally binding agreement promising never to acquire another animal.
Coffee shops around Japan have fully embraced the concept of the animal cafe. First came pet-friendly spots, then cat and dog cafes, then all manner of creature-themed stops, including the latest craze: the pig cafe.
A 55-year-old Asian elephant named Nidia had chronic foot problems: painful fissures on her foot pads, cracked and ingrown toenails, persistent abscesses. She had no appetite and was losing weight. “The veterinarian in charge of Nidia’s care at a wildlife park in Mexico, was desperate,” reports the New York Times.
Last week scientists in Berlin announced they had successfully transferred a northern white rhinoceros embryo into a surrogate mom, the first successful use of a method that they say could save the nearly extinct rhino subspecies.
