You can never have too many amusing kitty images, so enjoy The Day Toonses Went Postal. More adorably cute kittens than you can poke a stick at, but this lot should come with a sacchyrine warning.
Also of note is the very pissed off LimeCat, the Cryptic Camouflage Final Exam and the scary Laibach marching kittens.
While it’s not a Yellow Bellied Sugar Glider, it certainly is a bad choice of head gear.
New York’s highest court has heard arguments in the case of a man who has refused to cut his dog’s tail for national competitions. John Hammer contends that the ‘docked-tail‘ standard violates state law against intentionally injuring an animal and constitutes illegal discrimination
A new device called a dog on a chip may combine the benefits of technology and nature by not only detecting dangerous or illicit substances but by providing the electronic equivalent of a dog barking
For decades scientists and farming bodies have been trying to find alternatives to shearing for removing the wool from the sheep’s back. All sorts of weird inventions have come and gone but one, it seems could now be here to stay. Bioclip involves the use of an injection to break the wool. The product is now used commercially on tens of thousands of young sheep and within weeks Bioclip will announce that an international company will distribute the product throughout Australia
A new species of baleen whale has been discovered. The stunning find, made after researchers studied the body shape and genetics of a few leviathan skeletons gathering dust for the last 25 years in a Japanese museum, brings the total number of known species in the main genus of baleen whale to eight
I was walking the pods a couple of months back and ran into a neighbour who always pats the dogs. As he was giving the Husky a pat he asked if I knew anyone with puppies, which was oddly coincidental, as my Husky’s breeder had a litter arrive a few days earlier.
Today I got to pick the little guy up from the airport. My Husky is a half-brother and uncle to the mini pod.
At a juncture in history during which women are seeking equality with men, science arrives with a belated gift to the feminist movement. Male-biased evolutionary scenarios — Man the Hunter, Man the Toolmaker and so on — are being challenged by the discovery that females play a central, perhaps even dominant, role in the social life of one of our nearest relatives. In the past few years many strands of knowledge have come together concerning a relatively unknown ape with an unorthodox repertoire of behaviour: the Bonobo.
The species is best characterized as female-centred and egalitarian and as one that substitutes sex for aggression. Whereas in most other species sexual behaviour is a fairly distinct category, in the Bonobo it is part and parcel of social relations — and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination (although such contact among close family members may be suppressed). And sexual interactions occur more often among Bonobos than among other primates. Despite the frequency of sex, the Bonobo’s rate of reproduction in the wild is about the same as that of the chimpanzee. A female gives birth to a single infant at intervals of between five and six years. So Bonobos share at least one very important characteristic with our own species, namely, a partial separation between sex and reproduction.
Lest this all sound like a non-stop Caligulean orgy, Dr Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta who is the author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, emphasises otherwise:
Sex is there, it’s pervasive, it’s critical, and Bonobo society would collapse without it. But it’s not what people think it is. It’s not driven by orgasm or seeking release. Nor is it often reproductively driven. Sex for a bonobo is casual, it’s quick and once you’re used to watching it, it begins to look like any other social interaction.
Weeks after a groundbreaking scientific study said naval sonar appears to be killing marine mammals, the Bush administration yesterday won House approval to use sonar wherever Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sees fit. Passage next week by the Senate is virtually assured
When Varg the police dog was sent into a Norwegian confectionery factory to track down two intruders, his sense of taste got the better of his sense of duty. The German Shepherd nearly ate himself sick
Three dozen protesters howled and prowled the sidewalk outside the Alaska Board of Game meeting in Spenard on Monday, hoping to raise enough ruckus to stop the board’s planned resumption of aerial wolf kills. Nevertheless, the Game Board today is expected to authorise the first aerial predator control program in Alaska in more than 15 years, using a new state law that allows private pilots to participate
Modern-day medicinal use of leeches is limited to the treatment of blood clotting problems after surgery. Dr Gustav Dobos, from Kliniken Essen-Mitte, and colleagues maintain that leech saliva contains anti-inflammatory substances and other chemicals, which could relieve symptoms of arthritis
One of the oddest phenomena in the natural world — the sudden mass death of lemmings — has been resolved, according to a trio of European biologists. Unexplained population crashes of this rodent of the high northern latitudes have bred the myth that, whenever they become too numerous for the available food, the creatures band together and fling themselves off cliffs in a crazed suicidal rush. However researchers now say the truth is even more complex. Lemming populations, they say, surge spectacularly and fall just as quickly, thanks to the combined feasting of four predators: the stoat, arctic fox, snowy owl and a seabird called the long-tailed skua
Smithsonian naturalist and photographer Kjell Sandved one day found a butterfly with a silvery, gleaming letter ‘F’ woven into the tapestry of its wings. Having found one letter of the alphabet, he wondered whether there might be others butterflies flying around with letters on their wings. His butterfly alphabet quest would take him 24 years
The much-maligned wolf, one of the fiercest predators on the planet, has become an important provider of food for other animals in the few years since it was returned to Yellowstone National Park
Two of three types of GM crops tested in farm scale trials are worse for wildlife than conventional crops, according to the long-awaited results of government trials
A group of men out hunting moose in the eastern Norwegian valley called Oesterdalen had a close encounter with a pack of wolves last Saturday. They snapped digital photos and experts now say the wolves constitute a new family
A new species of frog — named nasikabatrachidae, which is Sanskrit for frog with a nose — has been discovered in the mountains of southern India. The purple, small-headed creature with tiny eyes, protruding snout and a bloated appearance belongs to a new family of frogs that scientists thought had either never existed or had disappeared without trace millions of years ago
Lick me, I’m a macintosh. The title alone is enough reason to read this article about the Apple way of… stuff.
The Joy of Tech – cat comic. Love this comic, I’m sure this is what my cat does/attempts to do when I’m stroking the keys on my iBook instead of him.
I want this tree in front of my house.
I was recently in Bowral and happened upon the lovely Norma Hart from Isabella’s Iris. Many irises did I procure, all in either purple/black — Almost Dark, Black Dragon, Blackout, Duranus, Knighted, Knight Templar — or orange — Close Your Eyes, Montevideo
Three Britons are appearing in court on drug smuggling charges after a large quantity of cocaine was found concealed inside two live Labradors. The drugs had been surgically concealed inside the dogs and were surgically removed. One of the dogs died and the other was recovering
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