The puss in books

Fidel enjoys books - Image from the BBC

Fidel is not your average cat. The eight year old black cat lives in Kent in Britain and his home is the local library. Well, his second home, and he visits it when his owners are away at work. Fidel has his favorite blue chair where he basks in the sun the whole day before he returns home to his owners.

Staff at the library say that they initially threw out Fidel when he came everyday but he always returned. Now he is an attraction for people who come to the library. Fidel was adopted from a local sanctuary and now he is the most regular customer at the library, which he has been frequenting for two years.

The Bear: A beautiful movie

Poster of The Bear - Image from Wikipedia

Wow. That is all I can say about this piece of video taken from the movie The Bear also known as L'Ours in French.

I received this link in a forward and I was surprised to read that this movie was not a big commercial success. The last few seconds are very touching and got my eyes wet. The Bear is the story of a baby bear, which loses its mother and is left out in the wild until it is rescued from dangerous elements by a big grizzly. Well, I am definitely going to hunt out this movie and watch it.

Watch the trailer of The Bear

Chanel is a dog, not a perfume

Chanel with Denice - Image from the Telegraph

Chanel wears goggles and jumpers and has a Guinness World Record certificate to her name. Meet the world’s oldest dog as she turns 21, which translates into an amazing 147 years in people years. Denice Shaughnessy, Chanel’s owner, is a retired Army veteran who now works as a school secretary and lives with her husband Karl, a policeman. She adopted Chanel in 1988 from a Virginia shelter when she was just a six week old pup. Chanel and her owner both stay in Port Jefferson Station, New York where she sleeps all day until Denice comes home from work. Chanel used to run three miles with Denice every day when she was younger but today she has to be carried around a lot. But Chanel still enjoys a walk and sometimes Denice finds her walking around in the night.

But despite being pretty healthy for her age, Chanel has her senior problems. The goggles she wears is not to hide her age, but because she has cataracts and is very sensitive to light. She has her jumpers on because she gets cold very fast and in summer she has to wear a tee shirt. Denice keeps her home at a constantly warm temperature and Chanel eats food like boiled chicken and soft pasta that she can eat with her old teeth. “She takes things easy nowadays,” says Denice and well I guess we can forgive her for it.

Watch Chanel

Spot of Understanding: Lizards sunbathe for a reason

Sunbathing is good - Image from Pinkfluff on Flickr

People in the West, especially those who have harsh winters, crave the sun down here in the South of the globe for its heat and fuzziness. But why do lizards like the sun? Apparently, they sunbathe to get enough of vitamin D. A particular species known as panther chameleons set aside sunbathing time depending on how much vitamin D they need. Behavioral ecologist Kristopher Karsten of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas led the study, which will be published in the May/June edition of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

Scientists used to think that lizards dozing in the sun or turtles sitting still on logs were regulating their body temperatures. But now they found that vitamin D is plays a crucial role in reproduction in reptiles and this could be another reason that they sit in the sun. So the next time we see a lizard basking we should follow suit to get plenty of vitamin D.

Read more on the study

Swept away!

The Utleys with Tinker Bell safe and sound - Image from Yahoo News

The Waterford Township in Michigan was hit by strong gusts of wind blowing at 70 mph – so strong that it picked up a chihuahua along. Dorothy and Lavern Utley of Rochester, Michigan had set up outdoor display at a flea market on Saturday and Tinker Bell their chihuahua was standing on the step of their trailer when he was swept away.

The Utleys were so miserable when they didn’t find him anywhere nearby that they sought the help of a pet psychic Lorrie. She took them a mile away from where Tinker Bell last was to a wooded area and found him dirty and hungry but safe. The 72 year old Utleys were more than happy to have their companion back in one piece. They had resigned to the fact that he had gone with the wind.

Chasing butterflies

The butterfly or the moth looked something like this - Image from dpugphoto

Animals seem to be quiet across the world, I couldn't find a story to post. But I have my own story for today. Yesterday I was returning home from work and I stopped at a signal. Suddenly I noticed a pastel green butterfly, or a moth am not sure, flitting across and following it close was a Common Myna. The butterfly did a small dance in the air and then I realized it was trying to escape from the clutches of the myna. But it was too slow and the myna caught it in its beak. I was watching all along with intense excitement cursing myself for being without a camera.

Then the myna dropped the butterfly. Oh! It fell right in the middle of the road and soon got run over by a passing car. Now I could see it's wings flipping in the rush of wind as each vehicle sped by, it's middle pasted to the road. The myna too hadn't lost sight of it. Another myna joined the first one and both began to circle over the dead butterfly. The first one, boldly stopped in the middle of the road, hopped over and tried to take it in its beak again. But just as it came near, a vehicle came whooshing and it quickly flew up.

This happened a couple of times. There was one time when it almost picked up the butterfly and I could see an approaching truck. I found myself muttering, "pick it up, pick it up, go, go!" But it didn't. And then it was time for me to move on. The entire drama had taken place in the space of about 60 to 90 seconds. The signal turned green on my side and the passage of vehicles stopped on the butterfly's side. But sadly, I couldn't see the ending of this enthralling pursuit. That remains a mystery.

Celebrities from the Past - A walking seal?

A reproduction of how Pujilia might have looked - Image from LiveScience

The frozen wastes of the Canadian Arctic is well, not really a waste. Especially if you find some really sweet fossils that give you answers to missing links in evolution. American and Canadian researchers have unearthed the fossilized remains of what they call a ‘walking seal.’ It sheds light on pinnipeds, a group that includes seals, sea lions and walruses. They have named it puijila darwini, a combination of the Inuktitut word for young sea mammal and the name of Charles Darwin. In fact, Darwin had envisioned the existence of such a creature in his book, “The Origin of Species.”

Pujilia’s significance is that it not only provides a glimpse into the earliest stages of evolutionary transition but also that it is now the oldest evidence of a pinniped. The environment in, which the seal lived was also vastly different from the icy landscape that it is today. Devon Island was a warm, coastal forest 20 million years ago during the time of Pujilia with diverse wildlife inhabiting the island. How the pinnipeds shifted from such an atmosphere, from land to sea, will be revealed to some extent by examining Pujilia’s remains.

The expedition was led by paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski from the Canadian Museum of Nature who found the bones of the seal in the Haughton crater on Devon Island in 2007 and her findings have now been published in the journal Nature.

Read more about Pujilia

First frog with artificial leg

Brullie showing off his stitches - Image from Dailymail

There is hope for frogs who have broken their legs. Brullie the bullfrog from South Africa has become the first frog in the world to have an artificial leg bone. Anne Mearns adopted 25 year old Brullie after he was attacked by a dog near her home in Johannesburg.

The giant bullfrog had a shattered lower leg bone and Mearns could not bear to see her pet being lame. So she took him to the vet who was more used to cats and dogs but nevertheless operated on Brullie. He even operated for free! The vet had to insert a tiny steel rod over the snapped right leg bone and now weeks later Brullie has begun hopping around.

Brullie is part of a species that is fast dwindling and found only in a part of South Africa and Mearns, having worked on amphibian preservation for years, knows it. Good for Brullie that she found him.

EndangeRed - Kiwis on the brink of extinction

The flightless kiwi and the stoat (below) - Images from Nat Geo and ABC News respectively

The Scientific American recently published an article about how kiwis are an endangered species. More so, because of predatory stoats. The kiwis are adored in New Zealand and now New Zealanders are sitting up and taking notice of them even more because they are on the verge of becoming extinct. There are five species of kiwi and all of them are endangered and according to the New Zealand Department of Conservation, they are disappearing at the rate of 6% per year. The reason? European stoats, also known as weasels or ermines make delicious meals of kiwi chicks.

Apparently, in the wild, 95% of kiwi chicks do not survive because its not just stoats but also dogs, cats and ferrets too hunt them. Stoats, in fact, were introduced from Europe into New Zealand in the 19th century to combat a rapidly growing rabbit population that was causing environmental damage. But now they have gone beyond the same old diet and are looking for newer dishes in the menu.

Read more about the kiwi

Listen to the call of a kiwi bird

Special Feature: The zoo's role in helping endangered animals

The Red Wolf is on endangered lists - Image from Wikipedia

The Scientific American published an article, which caught my attention. I didn't know that zoos went beyond keeping animals caged and helped much in conservation efforts, but apparently they do. I thought this would make a good special feature on Animalands.

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How Do Zoos Help Endangered Animals?

Dear EarthTalk: Do zoos have serious programs to save endangered species, besides putting a few captives on display for everyone to see? -- Kelly Traw, Seattle, WA

Most zoos are not only great places to get up close to wildlife, but many are also doing their part to bolster dwindling populations of animals still living free in the wild. To wit, dozens of zoos across North America participate in the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s (AZA’s) Species Survival Plan (SSP) Program, which aims to manage the breeding of specific endangered species in order to help maintain healthy and self-sustaining populations that are both genetically diverse and demographically stable.

The end goal of many SSPs is the reintroduction of captive-raised endangered species into their native wild habitats. According to the AZA, SSPs and related programs have helped bring black-footed ferrets, California condors, red wolves and several other endangered species back from the brink of extinction over the last three decades. Zoos also use SSPs as research tools to better understand wildlife biology and population dynamics, and to raise awareness and funds to support field projects and habitat protection for specific species. AZA now administers some 113 different SSPs covering 181 individual species.

To be selected as the focus of an SSP, a species must be endangered or threatened in the wild. Also, many SSP species are “flagship species,” meaning that they are well-known to people and engender strong feelings for their preservation and the protection of their habitat. The AZA approves new SSP programs if various internal advisory committees deem the species in question to be needy of the help and if sufficient numbers of researchers at various zoos or aquariums can dedicate time and resources to the cause.

AZA’s Maryland-based Conservation and Science Department administers the worldwide SSP program, generating master plans for specific species and coordinating research, transfer and reintroductions. Part of this process involves designing a “family tree” of particular managed populations in order to achieve maximum genetic diversity and demographic stability. AZA also makes breeding and other management recommendations with consideration given to the logistics and feasibility of transfers between institutions as well as maintenance of natural social groupings. In some cases, master plans may recommend not to breed specific animals, so as to avoid having captive populations outgrow available holding spaces.

While success stories abound, most wildlife biologists consider SSP programs to be works in progress. AZA zoos have been instrumental, for instance, in establishing a stable population of bongos, a threatened forest antelope native to Africa, through captive breeding programs under the SSP program. Many of these captive-bred bongos have subsequently been released into the wild and have helped bolster dwindling population numbers accordingly.

Of course, for every success story there are dozens of other examples where results have been less satisfying. SSP programs for lowland gorillas, Andean condors, giant pandas and snow leopards, among others, have not had such clear success, but remain part of the larger conservation picture for the species in question and the regions they inhabit.

The San Diego Zoo has a special conservation research center while the Oakland Zoo in California has a page filled with educational resources

Dante the vegetarian cat

Dante the vegetarian cat - Image from Daily Mirror

Heard of a cat grimacing at the sight of fish? Well, two year old Dante is one such and he is now the only vegetarian cat in the UK. Dante was found when he was a starving kitten by Becky Page near Norwich, Britain. Like any normal person she tried to feed him everything that cats like but Dante did not touch the fish or the meat. But one day before she could throw out a plate of vegetables Dante ate the whole serving, licking the plate clean.

Becky tries to put in bits of meat in the vegetables so that Dante stays healthy, but sometimes when he spots them he refuses to eat. Dante’s current favorite foods include melon, bananas, broccoli, rhubarb, asparagus, aubergine and Brussels sprouts. Unlike humans and dogs there are certain nutrients that cats can obtain only from sufficient quantities of meat, which is why experts are extremely baffled at Dante’s preferences. But he seems to be healthy and enjoying his meals filled with fresh fruit and vegetables. He is one cat I would definitely invite for dinner!

Read more about Dante

Spot of Understanding: Chicken heads

A chick figures out the number of objects behind the screen - Image from Science News

Apparently baby chicks are not just cute but also very smart – they can count! Young chickens, which are just a few days old display basic arithmetic skills according to researchers. Rosa Rugani of the University of Trento in Italy demonstrated the chicks’ ability to add and subtract by moving identical objects behind two screens in front of the chicks. Their task was to determine, which screen obscured the most number of objects and the chicks performed with flying colors.

Previously only adult animals have been found to have a basic understanding of mathematics but not in any young animals except humans. At least all those non – vegetarians who relish chickens will hopefully benefit from their brains.

Read the study in detail

Watch a video demo

And now salamander migration

A volunteer holds up a spotted salamander in New Jersey - Image from New York Times

Just last week I had written about how authorities in Taiwan are helping butterfly migration and are taking special precautions to assist the process. Now it’s the turn of salamanders. All over the US from Vermont to Philadelphia, volunteers known as bucket brigades are helping salamanders get across the road over to reach their mating areas. In New Haven, Vermont, 45 people volunteered one night to carry salamanders and other amphibians like frogs and newts across the road assisting their annual migration to mate.

In places like these, rainy nights in early spring are filled with the activity of these beings, hopping and crawling all over the woodlands and roads. But a lot of them end up being squashed on the road by vehicles, which don’t notice them in the night. The volunteers are very organized, even keeping count on a piece of paper like University of Vermont student Kaitlin Friedman. She walked with the other volunteers with flashlights and clipboards, carrying blue-spotted, red-backed and four-toed salamanders and wood frogs across the road even as she noted down the number and species, including the ones flattened on the asphalt. After two hours, the group had counted and helped 589 amphibians and had noted 97 dead ones.

In Massachusetts, tunnels have been put up to help salamanders migrate

Watch a nice video of salamander migration

Get to know spotted salamanders

Book of the Week: Life and Death are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

Image from Fantastic Fiction

This is quite a serious book to read but the reason I am making it a post is because the central characters are all animals. “Life and Death are Wearing Me Out” by Mo Yan is actually a picture of China’s transitions from the Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s to the new fangled capitalist ideas of the 90s.

The chief narrator is Ximen Nao, a rich landowner who is impoverished by the Land Reform Movement begun by Mao. Life becomes really bad and Nao dies and goes to Hell. But he is reborn in a lot of forms, beginning as a donkey and then as an ox, a pig, a dog and a monkey. These characters speak out from their unique vantage points about life in China. Apart from them there are three narrators, Mo Yan himself being one of them, all of which makes it into a pretty hefty volume. But it is unusual to find such a host of colorful characters in a book with a powerful and serious theme as this and I would definitely like to give it a dekko when I go to my neighborhood bookstore next.

Life and Death by Mo Yan has got some good reviews from various sources including The New York Times

Bunny saves the day

Warren and Kacey with Bunny the hero - Image from Newbury Today

Rabbits are not good for just eating carrots and looking cute but also for saving lives as Bunny demonstrated. Warren Taylor and Kacey Leathers, who live in Berkshire, Britain, were sound asleep when they were woken up by repetitive scratching noises on their bedroom door. They discovered Bunny who had come all the way from the kitchen, where she is shut up for the night, standing at the door.

An overwhelming smell of gas filled the air as soon as they opened the door and they realized that one of them had left the gas knob on by mistake. Incredibly, Bunny had somehow managed to open the locked door and alert them to danger. Two year old Bunny is usually obedient, scampering off down immediately as soon as Kacey tells her to. But this time Bunny stuck around until Warren and Kacey discovered their mistake and her disobedience proved to be life saving for them. Cheers to Bunny!

New Species: The smallest frog in the Andes

Image from Scientific American

A frog the size of a dime? Yes, it’s not optical illusion but a real one, which has been discovered in the forests of Peru. At 3,000 metres in the Andes in the Manu National Park, German and Peruvian herpetologists (a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians) heard the croaking of the Noble’s Pygmy Frog. It’s small size left it unseen for such a long time and its brown color camouflaged it perfectly among the leaves.

The midget frog inhabits the cloud forests, that is, the high elevation grasslands in south eastern Peru. More than ten different species of frog have been discovered in these cloud forests in the past two years. But the pygmy frog has some special talents like laying huge eggs that skip the tadpole phase altogether and just hatch into mini replicas of their thumbnail sized parents.

Read more about the pygmy frog

The smallest Indian frog

EndangeRed: Fading songs of the cuckoo

The song of the cuckoo that heralds spring may soon be lost - Image from The Telegraph

There are lots of species that are threatened and are on the endangered list but one would never expect the common cuckoo to be one of them. Well, cuckoos in Britain may soon come on the endangered list as their numbers have dropped by almost 59% since the 1960s. They are now so rare that they could come on the Red List of endangered birds within a month. Their numbers have dropped in a large part due to global warming.

Flocks of cuckoos fly an amazing 6000 miles every year from the UK to Africa to breed and roost. But climate change is making their tedious journey even harder and more so because food and water sources in Africa are drying up. The cuckoo is the only parasitic breeding bird in Europe, laying their eggs in other birds’ nests, but now only around 10,000 to 20,000 breeding pairs arrive in the UK each year according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

Read more about the cuckoo

Watch a video of cuckoos

Spot of Understanding: Crabs do feel pain. And remember it.

Hermit crab - Image from myanimalblog

Ok, we all know by now that animals do feel pain but do we know that they also remember it? Apparently, crabs do. New research from Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland, indicates that crabs not only suffer pain but also retain a memory of it.

The study, carried out by Professor Bob Elwood and Mirjam Appel, observed hermit crabs’ reactions to small electric shocks. They noticed that the crabs reacted rather badly to the shocks and also tried to avoid getting electrocuted again. This throws light on the treatment these poor things receive in the fishing and food industries everyday. They are not given any protection as the common presumption is that they cannot experience pain. I hope at least now people are a bit more sensitive to these crustaceans after reading this research.

Read more on this interesting research

Want to keep hermit crabs as pets? Read all about it here

Protect hermit crabs, join The Hermit Crab Association

Castaway

Sophie with her owner Jan - Image from Times Online

I must say dogs do have some sense of loyalty and more than anything grit. Sophie Tucker, an Australian cattle dog, was happily enjoying a holiday on the sea when calamity struck. She and her owners Jan and Dave Griffith got caught in a storm off Queensland, Australia and Sophie was tipped overboard. She was presumed to have drowned and her owners were flooded with grief.

But unknown to them Sophie survived and swam five to six miles before she was washed ashore on a sparsely inhabited St Bees Island. She survived there on a diet of baby goats until rangers, who patrol the island, spotted her. They thought she was a wild dog and captured her but soon they were contacted by the Griffiths who got the news that a cattle dog had been captured. They soon had an emotional reunion with Sophie who had become quiet violent and had begun to refuse food. But now Sophie, named after a famous American vaudeville star, is happy to be back at home where she has adjusted well to her creature comforts.

Read more

Watch a video of Sophie

Celebrities from the Past: Giant lions roamed the earth once

Skull comparison - Image from the BBC

Imagine going on a safari and being faced with a giant lion prowling around. Well, if we had lived 13,000 years ago it would not be an unimaginable situation. Dr Ross Barnett, compared skulls of lions from different periods at the Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, and discovered that such super-sized lions did roam the plains of Britain and North America.

These humongous beings, which are around 25% bigger, hunted the already huge woolly mammoth and giant deer. They had long legs, which enabled them to sprint faster than modern lions and they lived in an icy environment like the tundra sharing space with animals like the saber tooth tiger and woolly rhinos. They are called the Pleistocene lions, named after the age they lived in. These lions faced a sudden mass extinction 13,000 years ago but their route to extinction is still a great mystery.

Butterfly migration

The Purple Crow butterfly. Below - the safety nets on the Taiwan highway - Images from Chinapost

Today's story is more about thoughtfulness, which I find much lacking in today's world. Taiwan is so sensitive about the population of a certain kind of butterfly in its country that it has closed an entire highway to traffic. From mid-March onwards for about a month thousands of Purple Crow butterflies migrate over this section of the highway towards the north to breed after spending winter down south in the island where its warmer.

The special precautionary actions came after 2007 when many of these butterflies were hit on the highway by speeding vehicles. Since then an entire conservation project was launched and the protective measures include a driving speed limit of 37mph and a two mile road block when the butterfly numbers exceed 500.

The migration in Taiwan, which is only one of two mass butterfly migrations worldwide, offers a beautiful spectacle. Taiwan has one of the highest densities of butterflies in the world and has been named 'Kingdom of Butterflies.' I hope they continue the conservation efforts and I hope to see this someday!

Read more on the migration

SOS from a turtle

A doctor examines Kincaid - Image from NBC Miami

Here is one turtle who has saved her own life. A sick loggerhead sea turtle took the initiative to check herself into a hospital when she was feeling down. The turtle, now named Kincaid by the hospital staff, arrived at the Turtle Hospital in Florida Keys, the only licensed hospital in the world that treats sea turtles.

The Florida Keys hospital is next to the harbor and staff noticed the turtle swimminginto the harbor. Kincaid wasn't given much attention immediately, because people thought she was just lost. But she stuck around for hours not moving from her place before someone noticed that her shell was covered with barnacles and looked emaciated. Finally the staff rowed out into the harbor in dinghies and brought her back and treated her for bacterial infection. She will soon be released back after her medication is over and she is fine enough to swim back.

Loggerhead sea turtles are an endangered species and South Florida has the largest population of loggerheads

Watch Kincaid

Rats and bombshells

Kofi goes out sniffing - Image from The Sun

Rats have had extreme reactions from us. They are either, “yuck” or they are very “cute.” But now we also know they are useful. Kofi, a Gambian rat at the Porfell Wildlife Park and Sanctuary near Liskeard, Cornwall, Britain is being trained by the staff to sniff out landmines. Kofi’s advantage is that he is too small to set off the mines himself, but at the same time his keen sense of smell can be used to detect the bomb casings.

Rats have been trained in Africa to hunt for land mines but Kofi is the first such rat to be trained in Britain. His handler Wendy Winstanley plans to inform the army and the police anti-terror units about her pet’s capabilities. She says that rats have a more heightened sense of smell than dogs and their biggest advantage is that they are much lighter. Kofi’s training process began when he was five weeks old like all other rats that undergo such training. Thirty such sniffer rats are already in use in Mozambique, Africa where they have already proved their worth. I guess Kofi is nothing less.

Little Elke finds mothers

Elke with her 'adoptive mothers' - Image from LA Times

A lot of babies are rejected by parents as soon as they are born, which leads to them ending up in adoption centers. Apparently, this happens in the animal world too. But here the reason is just plain distress. Elke was born to two francois langur monkeys, a rare species, which was brought to the Taronga Zoo in Sydney in an effort to increase the numbers of the endangered species. Saigon and Hanoi, the mother and father respectively, got petrified after the birth of their baby and left it on the ground as soon as it was born. According to senior primate keeper in the zoo, Mandy McLellan, this is quite a common occurrence among primates. She says it, “just comes down to lack of experience; the first one's a bit of a shock.” Elke is now being cared for by the primate keepers who give her a bottle of formula milk every three hours.

Elke is quite a hit in the zoo with her flame-colored fur typical of infants in her species. Although francois langur monkeys are jet black, like Saigon and Hanoi, their infants typically have orange fur. Hopefully Elke will endear herself soon, ironically, to her parents too.

Watch Elke

A little more about Francois Langur monkeys

New Species: 50 newbies discovered in Papua New Guinea

The jumping spider - Image from Conservation International

It sounds like a different world altogether, filled with jumping spiders, striped geckos and chirping frogs. But these are just some of the 50 different species that have been discovered by the environmental group Conservation International in the forests of Papua New Guinea.

"It never ceases to amaze me the spectacular things that are turning up from that island,” says Steve Richards the expedition leader. And it is quite amazing, considering that some of the spider species and the frogs have never been mentioned in science ever before.

Some of the species found have really quirky features. For instance, one of the jumping spiders (Tabuina Varirata) can jump to a height of at least six inches using the blood pressure in their legs! Wish I could see these creatures!

Read more on Conservation International's website

Willie the hero gets the Red Cross medal

Willie the hero - Image from SkyNews

I guess a lot of us would have forgotten about Willie the parrot. I had written about him last year, about his very brave attempt at saving a toddler’s life. Willie, the Quaker parrot, now has been awarded the local Red Cross chapter’s Animal Lifesaver Award in Denver, Colorado.

Willie’s owner Megan Howard was babysitting little Hannah last year in November. She left the toddler alone for a moment and at the precise point she started choking on her breakfast. Willie’s shrill cries of “Mama, baby,” alerted Howard and she came running to do the needful.

Samantha Kuusk, Hannah’s mother, says that recounting the episode even now brings tears to her eyes. Willie, it seems, will not be forgotten for sometime, at least by her.

Pandora's boxed up

Pandora gallops happily in her high-tech attire - Image from Dailymail

Hi readers! Just a note here to check out the brand new collage header for the Animalands blog! I made it with some of the animal images that I have shot (one of them was shot by my friend) so far. The blog looks a bit more colorful now! And now to go on to our story for today.

Pandora is allergic to grass. Now that’s ok if you are a dog but being a horse it’s a bit difficult. The five-year old horse is encased in a specially designed coverall, which prevents her from having any contact with grass and at the same time allows her to roam free in the outdoors. Pandora’s owner Emily Pearce first discovered the horse’s problem when she noticed an itchy lump on the horse’s stomach. When ointments didn’t work, Pearce took her to the vet and got some tests done. By now Pandora was in constant distress with the lumps spreading everywhere.

Today, after Pandora’s diagnosis she is much at peace. She is fed on a special diet of sugar beet chaff and soya oil and is made to swallow about 15 anti-histamine tablets in a day. She cannot be ridden at all times and if it’s a really bad day for her she has to stay indoors the full time. But for now Pandora is happy.

Read more on Pandora

Spot of Understanding - Insects self-medicate

Woolly Bear Caterpillar - Image from National Geographic

If y’all thought we superior humans are the only ones who can medicate ourselves when we suffer injuries, then banish the thought. A team of scientists, led by Michael Singer in the University of Wesleyen, Connecticut, and in the University of Arizona have discovered that the woolly bear caterpillar is the first among insects to self-medicate when sick. These crawlies are prone to falling sick when parasitic flies lay their eggs inside them. And when they do, they simply munch on alkaloid laden plants like the Arizona popcorn flower. They were found to impede the caterpillars’ growth but also improve their overall survival.

Among animals, chimpanzees are known to cure an attack of worms by swallowing rough leaves to unhook the worms from the insides of their stomach. So for insects, who have a ‘less developed central nervous system,’ this is huge.

Read more in NatGeo

The scientifically inclined can read Michael Singer's thesis

Book of the Week - The Face on Your Plate

Image from jeffreymasson

Here’s some solid material for vegetarians to finally make a stronger case for their green inclination. “The Face on Your Plate” by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is an appeal to meat eaters to take a closer look at the food they eat. It is probably difficult to make a non-vegetarian do a double take through a book. But Masson manages it in this book, according to the Los Angeles Times review. After reading the review, I feel I must pick it up more out of curiosity to see how well he defends us vegetarians.

Read more reviews on Jeffrey's website

Celebrities from the Past - Predator X

A recreation of Predator X's jaws - Image from NY Times

I keep reading so many news items about discoveries of fossils that tell a lot about the evolution of animals today that I thought I must begin a new feature that tells these tales. Am not particularly a science freak so I won’t be giving the geeky specs. I will only be giving the news from an interesting angle and keep it short, just enough for us to know that something interesting has been found! Here is the first post of the section.

Can you imagine something with jaws big enough to make snack of a 4x4? Well, scientists have unearthed the fossil of a creature currently named as “Predator X”, in Svalbard, a remote Arctic archipelago. The marine reptile measures a scary 15 meters (50 ft) and roamed the oceans around 145 million years ago according to the team of Norwegian scientists who discovered it. They are thought to belong to group of large, short-necked reptiles known as pliosaurs, which lived during the time of dinosaurs. Expedition leader Jorn Harald Hurum, from the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum has said that the Predator X could easily have chomped up a Hummer. Wow, now that is a huge lunch.

Read more about Predator X

Special Feature: The importance of others from Paulo Coelho's blog

Image from mifamily

The Mousetrap

Very worried, the mouse saw that the farmer had bought a mousetrap: he was out to kill him! He began to warn all the other animals: “Careful with the mousetrap! Careful with the mousetrap!” The hen, hearing his shouts, asked him to be quiet: “My dear mouse, I know that this a problem for you, but it’s not going to have the last effect on me, so stop making such a fuss!”

The mouse went to talk to the pig, which was annoyed because his nap had been interrupted. “There is a mousetrap in the house!” “I appreciate your concern and I sympathize with you,” answered the pig. “So rest assured you will be in my prayers tonight, but that’s the most I can do.”

Lonelier than ever, the mouse went to the cow for help. “My dear mouse, what’s that got to do with me? Have you ever seen a cow killed in a mousetrap?” Seeing that no-one was offering any solidarity, the mouse returned to the farmer’s house, hid in his hole and spent the whole night wide awake, afraid that some tragedy was about to happen.

During the early hours he heard a noise: the mousetrap had caught something! The farmer’s wife went downstairs to see if the mouse had been killed. In the dark she did not notice that the trap had only caught the tail of a poisonous snake; when she drew near, she was bitten. The farmer, hearing his wife screaming, woke up and raced her to the hospital. She was given the proper treatment and then sent home. But she still had a fever. Knowing that there is no better remedy for the sick than a good broth, the farmer killed the hen.

His wife started to recover. As the couple was much loved in the region, all the neighbors came to visit them. Grateful for such a show of affection, the farmer killed the pig to serve his friends a hearty meal.

His wife finally recovered, but the treatment was very expensive, so the farmer sent the cow to the slaughterhouse and used the money from the meat to pay all the medical bills. The mouse saw all this and thought to himself: “I warned them well. Wouldn’t it have been better if the hen, the pig and the cow had understood that one’s problem puts everyone else in danger?”

Paulo Coelho's blog

Mother hen and the puppies

The hen watches over protectively - Image from Ananova

Apparently mother hen is capable of mothering anyone. A hen in Majiaqiao village, Jiashan in Anhui province, China, has adopted two puppies after their mother died of poisoning. What is more heartwarming is that the hen was the mother’s best friend.

Cao Fengying, the owner of the animals, said that the hen and the dog had been very close for two years, always playing together. Sadly, the dog was poisoned just ten days after the puppies were born and now her best friend has taken over the responsibility of bringing up her kids. The hen is very protective of her friend’s children, standing guard and letting them eat first during meal times. Ah if only all friends were like the hen!

Farasi, Swiss of the Year 2008

Farasi with his mom - Image from CBC

Here is the first post after a long time. Ever heard of a hippopotamus being nominated as a person of the year? I guess not. Well, it has happened with Farasi, a hugely popular hippo in Switzerland. He is Basel Zoo’s biggest attraction and was named “Swiss of the Year” in 2008, outdoing Roger Federer even! But Farasi, born on November 6th, is now an excess in the zoo and is in danger of losing his life. If the zoo cannot find a home for Farasi he will become food for the lions. Swiss newspapers have pounced on the cruel intention and have splashed headlines appealing for Farasi’s life.

The problem lies in zoo policies in Europe. While American zoos believe in birth control for their animal populations, European zoos believe that they should be free to do what is natural to them. But the downside is that zoos typically end up killing animals if there is no place for them anywhere. Sad but true.

Probably the press agitation helped. Farasi, whose name means “horse” in Swahili, will continue to live with his mother for another year as he is dependent on her milk. The zoo officials will then look for a home for him, probably another zoo, and I pray that he gets one.

Greetings

My long absence can again be explained by the absence of the computer in my house, which goes on vacation from time to time according to its whim and fancy. I have strong reasons to hope for the arrival of my own personal little notebook, which I know will serve me more ably than the traitor of a machine that lord over all of us at home. I will announce the joyful occasion here as soon as it takes place. Till then, fingers crossed for the stability of that evil machine.

Yours Truly