On 5 May 2005, the Colorado Wildlife Commission agreed to accept the Colorado Wolf Management Working Group’s (CWMWG) policy allowing migrating wolves from Yellowstone National Park and the Arizona-New Mexico borders to roam freely in Colorado. This decision came after a public comment period earlier this year and with a unanimous vote by all 14 members of the CWMWG
A scuba diver was swallowed almost whole by a great white shark yesterday in a Jaws-style attack just offshore from Cape Town
New Jersey is using an anti-terrorism law for the first time to try six animal rights activists charged with harassing and vandalising Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company that made use of animals to test its drugs
The large lump of felted Tinkerbell fuzz has been spun into yarn. The staple was fairly short, but having spun Siberian Husky, I was comfortable spinning the fibre.
The only difficulty was that it had a tendency to felt during handling, so I needed to work on small amounts at a time. The spun yarn was quite unexpected; feeling cool and silky to the touch.
There’s not enough to ply on itself an have enough yarn for a project, so I thought I’d ply it with Tussah Silk. The silk has a natural creamy colour that should set off the grey of Tinkerbell’s fuzz well.
Tinkerbell Fur Ball originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Tinkerbell is Moonbeam’s cat. Moon gathered some of the shed fibre for me and shipped it from Canada to Australia for me to spin.
Tinkerbell’s fur managed to survive the rigours of travelling through Canada Post and then Australia Post and arrived in a large grey felted furball.
I thought that perhaps it had gotten a bit of rough-handling from the postal services, but when I started to work with it I discovered that Tinkerbell fuzz will felt up if you look at it the wrong way.
A 50,000-strong swarm of spider crabs has clustered at the southern end of Port Phillip Bay, delighting Museum Victoria scientists who managed to film the rare gathering. Marine scientists Mark Norman and Julian Finn said the crawling carpet of crabs
covered an area the size of a football ground. Dr Norman said the crabs were normally found in small groups in the bay and Bass Strait. The reason for the mass gathering was not known, but it was likely to be related to breeding
A new monkey species has been found in the highland forests of Tanzania. The monkey was discovered almost simultaneously by two research teams on separate mountain ranges and is the first new African monkey to be found in more than 20 years. It also instantly becomes one of the rarest and most critically endangered primates on Earth
Pedro Luna, an archeologist from the Instituto Nacional de Cultura in the southern city of Cuzco has announced that builders have found the fossil of a giant armadillo — which lived up to 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle — in southern Peru — via Beyond the Beyond
Animal Liberation Victoria‘s ten year fight to shut down the Learmonth puppy farm, the largest in Australia, has ended in victory with Ballarat Council announcing the farm will close at the end of July 2005. The misery is almost over for the dogs, but not for owner Dr Ron Wells who has been called up before the Victorian Veterinary Registration Board and asked to explain cruelty and neglect allegations
Scientists have announced the discovery of an unknown family of rodent sold as food in Laos. The species studied by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society is known locally as kha-nyou
and is thought to have split from other rodent families millions of years ago — via BoingBoing
Scientists believe they have found a wholly new species of mammal deep in the heart of one of the richest, least studied and most endangered wildlife areas on Earth. The discovery of an apparently new kind of fox in the dense forests of central Borneo is an extremely rare event. Only a handful of new mammals have been discovered in the whole world over the past 70 years
A stray nursing dog in Nairobi, Kenya discovered an abandoned baby in a plastic bag and carried her back to its other puppies. It’s not clear how many days the dog took care of the infant before she was found — via BoingBoing
Two animal welfare experts, Dr Temple Grandin of Colorado State University and Dr Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, said they resigned as advisors to fast-food chain KFC after the company asked them to sign an agreement preventing them from speaking publicly about its policies on such issues as animal slaughter
After more than sixty-years, a rare bird believed to have been extinct has been spotted in the Big Woods of Arkansas. A kayaker first reported seeing the ivory-billed woodpecker last year. Scientists have since spotted the bird several times and even caught it briefly on video — via BoingBoing
Thousands of the amphibians have died in recent days in a pond in Hamburg’s Altona district, with their bodies swelling to bursting point. The toads’ entrails are propelled for up to a metre, in scenes that have been likened to science fiction — via meta-roj blog
Professor Jaak Panksepp says that animals other than humans exhibit play sounds that resemble human laughs. These include the panting sounds made by chimps and dogs when they play and chirping sounds observed in rats. This suggests that the capacity for laughter may be a very ancient emotional response that predates the evolution of humankind. Research suggests the capacity for human laughter preceded the capacity for speech — via BoingBoing
If you’ve ever wanted a boar-skin rug, but thought that perhaps pink was the colour for you, you may want to check out the DIY tips from Hemi*Housewife’s recent craft project.
I have to wonder if you can statically charge and stick balloons to the result for a more festive look — via BoingBoing
Young Belyaev foxes, or kits, scamper in a cage in Siberia, Russia, where they are part of a 45-year research project to domesticate foxes. Each generation has been selectively bred for tameness—fearlessness and nonaggression toward humans. By now the foxes in the project behave like pet dogs, barking and wagging their tails at humans.
Also like pet dogs, the domesticated foxes can read
human cues much better than their wild cousins or even tame chimpanzees. The study authors call such behaviour social intelligence. They say its appearance in domesticated foxes may help us better understand how intelligence developed in humans and other animals — via boingboing
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