Animal Views at Washington Post

Just go there immediately. Awesome pictures of elephants playing in snow (they look like they're laughing!), a baby hippopotamus (ADORABLE), a meerkat (meerkats are awesome), a cat in a Santa hat (NEVER out of season!)... Apparently the Post does this every week! Go go go!!

Fauna feed - various animal news, bad puns

They're back! Goopy stinging groups of gobs given the deceptively poetic name "blooms" are overrunning seas too numerous to name, and costing fishing and tourism industries hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few decades. Jellyfish are swarming all across the globe, a phenomenon I reported on a while ago ("Jellyfish plague punishes the humans"), but never thought was so out of hand, turning fisheries and beaches into "veritable jellytoriums" in the newly invented words of ScienceDaily.

These jellyfish jams can be deadly but usually just stick to disrupting industry, commerce, and infrastructure. "[S]uspicion is growing that population explosions of jellyfish are being generated by human activities," such as pollution and global warming.

In other freaky news, LiveScience reports that a species of Panamanian termite has the world's fastest bite, clocking in at 157 chomp and awe mph. "Because a termite soldier faces down enemies inside a narrow tunnel and has little room to parry and little time to waste, this death blow proves to be incredibly efficient, though it works only over short distances."

The New York Times runs an article about fear among conservatives that the 1972 Endangered Species Act might be used as a "'back door' means of regulating the emission of gases that accelerate climate change."



They've also got a "radical" editorial out calling for a moratorium on bluefin tuna fishing - if only they could show a bit more radicalism (or at least backbone) on topics like the decision to invade Iraq!

For some real radicalism, we turn to PETA, which is "so very excited" to bring us good animal rights news from Bernalillo County, New Mexico. After pressure from citizens, the county council voted on a bill that, among other things, requires better living conditions for farm animals, and bans the sale of cats and dogs in pet stores. (And just a few days ago I found out I have to hate zoos too!)

Lastly, I found an oldish article on the New York Times site about service dogs trained by inmates of the maximum security Bedford Hills women's prison. The majority of the dogs go to Iraq War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (Do not read this article if you don't want to cry, and certainly don't watch the accompanying video - I almost cried and I barely have canine emotions, let alone human ones!)

Beware of Dog (silently judging you)

Many will insist it's unfair to feed one dog and not the others looking on, even if it's your dog and your aunt has brought her smelly unruly doggy brood over for a visit. But however smelly they are, her dogs may in fact be indignant at your invidious gesture, at least judging from a study by the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab, out last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Here," says the abstract, "we investigated whether domestic dogs show sensitivity toward the inequity of rewards received for giving the paw [that's British for "Shake!"] to an experimenter on command in pairs of dogs." They showed that when one dog was rewarded for shaking, and the other wasn't, the neglected one would soon resist the command.


"Our results suggest that species other than primates show at least a primitive version of inequity aversion, which may be a precursor of a more sophisticated sensitivity to efforts and payoffs of joint interactions."

Detractor Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, told AP, "What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well."

They are, agrees evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff, co-author of the forthcoming book Wild Justice, "but it also means they are picking up on what being treated less well means, and that's really important. The animals are aware of being treated less well." No sources care to explain how those two interpretations differ.

"Until recently, psychologists believed most animals lacked the 'sense of self' needed to experience so-called secondary emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, empathy or guilt," says the Times (UK).

Indeed, studies like this may be closing the gap we tend to think separates us from animals. "In two areas, we're unique," says Bekoff. "We're the only species I know of that cooks food and [we have an] incredible propensity for evil."



Meet the clever dogs of the Clever Dog Lab.

In related news, Florida animal welfare officials are warning against giving pets for the holidays, as returning such unwanted "gifts" after they become attached can be detrimental to their health.

"Animals can go through the same emotions people do," says one official.

New Species: Your name here

Ain't found nothin since the last post. Probably something or other long extinct, some kind of bacteria, etc. But here's the really exciting news.

"Starting Monday," reports the Chicago Tribune, "Purdue University researchers will be auctioning off the naming rights to seven recently discovered types of bats hailing from Mexico, South America, Central America and Africa. And if the bats seem too 'last Christmas,' there's also a pair of yet-to-be-named Amazonian turtles up for grabs."

Indeed, "universities and ecological organizations across the country have begun to view the naming rights to new species of birds, bugs and mammals as a way to draw big bucks to fund their research."

Stephen Colbert already caught onto this I guess and made some good sarcastic self-conscious jokes about it. Feigning indignity at the naming of a trapdoor spider after Neil Young, he had the biologist fan who named it on the show for what I'm sure was a snippy chiding. He then proceeded to have a trapdoor spider named after him, no joke: Aptostichus stephencolberti.



John Bickham, Purdue professor who discovered the as yet unnamed bats, "said there are about 1.6 million known species of organisms, estimated to be only 10 percent of what exists on the Earth."

"'We're losing species every minute,' he said. 'People don't really understand the full impact of this. We're really talking about losing the organisms that may be necessary to sustain the foundation on which the Earth is built. And yet we don't even really understand them.'"

Elephants' lifespans drastically cut short by poaching

Absent from my post below ("Zoos News") was a perspective that incorporates conservation and poaching — a glaring omission.

Six suspects stand accused in the US of working with "a trans-Atlantic ring that routinely sneaked ivory, much of it elaborately carved, out of three African countries — Uganda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon — that prohibit such exports and then slipped it past customs agents at Kennedy Airport..." according to the New York Times.

"Poaching elephants for their ivory is still the primary factor in the decline of their populations in Africa, wildlife officials say."

And in National Geographic is an article on the dizzying losses of elephants to poaching in Chad, a "massacre," in the words of one observer, that could wipe out the population within three years. The army helps guards and employees protect elephants in Zakouma National Park, but clashes with poachers can prove fatal.

A serious examination of these majestic megafauna's quality of life in our zoos should of course inquire into their lives at home, and their prospects for conservation there. Questions arise like how to shift priorities in impoverished countries where ordinary people have few options but to poach or starve.

And how do we reverse environmental degradations like global warming so that our friend Knut the polar bear won't be sent home to find all his ice melted?

Zoos News

Lots of news out recently to more or less condemn zoos to animal cruelty's shit list, alongside slaughterhouses, vivisections, and puppy mills. Plenty of controversy, too, of course.

The big seller was out today, under headlines like "Free Dumbo! Zoos are bad for elephants" and "How zoos kill elephants." The New York Times balances it out with "Critical Report on Health of Zoo Elephants Debated," although its two sides are the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Findings from the study in question: "living in a zoo drastically shortens the lives of Asian and African elephants"; "bringing elephants into zoos profoundly impairs their viability." The numbers are hard to dispute, but the representative from AZA casts a smidgen of doubt on them.

There is also a warning out about weight problems affecting elephants' feet in British zoos.

More sadness as the economic downturn pressures the Berlin Zoo to try and send its polar bear superstar Knut packing:

"Like many zoos, the Berlin Zoo is caught in the economic downturn. Knut will need a mate but because of budget constraints, the Berlin Zoo cannot afford to expand his living enclosure. The place he has always called home will most likely have to sell him to another zoo." (I wrote here a little bit ago about the now official recession affecting puppies and kitties.)

There's a really compelling op-ed at the Guardian UK by Craig Redmond, the campaigns director for the Captive Animals' Protection Society. It puts Knut's story in the broader context of a "zoo industry" that "is happy to reap the benefits of money and publicity but not so keen to provide for the lifetime care of animals when they lose their appeal." Again, debatable. A look at the comments is pretty interesting. Redmond also weighs in today on the elephant lifespan study.

Other celebrity zoo critters:

"Colo, the first gorilla ever born in a zoological setting" – Columbia Zoo

New-born elephant baby, Samson, "plays with everything from sticks and leaves to big pumpkins and squash" – Maryland Zoo in Baltimore

Nipper, a dapper penguin from the Tennessee Aquarium, stars in his own commercials.

"Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in California has a White Bengal Tiger named Odin who dives for snacks of red meat...dazzles crowds," etc.

"At the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Patrick the penguin paints. And, for a pretty penny, a piece can be commissioned."

- from ABC News

Pee-waves: Animals and Earthquakes

Ran across an impressive and amusing article in the Washington City Paper tackling the enduring question of animals' and pets' supposed quake-sniffing abilities. Cecil Adams writes that researchers have posited all manner of earthquake-attendant phenomena that might relate to the strange behavior of animals right before a quake - but that also there appears to be no evidence of said "strange behavior."