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All in Animal Welfare
A group of chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau’s Cantanhez National Park was seen recently sharing a huge piece of fruit containing alcohol. Their little party was being monitored by a research team from the University of Exeter.
Researchers in Florida have been painstakingly collecting the tears of sea turtles for the past couple years. They believe the tears carry a secret that could explain an enduring mystery: how many animals navigate by tapping into the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
On April 11, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake shook Southern California for a few minutes. No big deal, by California standards, but during the tremors the elephants at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were caught on camera displaying their survival plan, namely by forming a protective circle around their young.
A volcano near Anchorage is expected to erupt soon, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Elevated levels of volcanic gas emissions, increased earthquake activity, and ground deformations all point to the likelihood that Mount Spurr, about 80 miles west of the capital, will blow its stack in the coming weeks or months.
In November 2023, a couple took their pet mini dachshund Valerie on holiday to Kangaroo Island, about eight miles off the coast of Adelaide, Australia. While the dog’s owners, Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock, went fishing, Valerie escaped from her pen and disappeared into the bush.
Last week conservationists in the Pacific Whale Watch Association spotted an orca calf with its mom and more than a dozen other killer whales in the Salish Sea, the waters between Seattle and Vancouver. The mother, known to the whale watchers as “Sedna,” comes from a historic line of orcas rescued from SeaWorld.
A US influencer in Australia was filmed snatching a wild baby wombat from its mother last week, and the resultant outrage nearly got the woman deported. Samantha Strable of Montana, a self-described “outdoor enthusiast and hunter” who goes by the name Sam Jones on Instagram, has since issued a (tepid) mea culpa of the incident.
In January, birder and photographer Bill Diller photographed an odd sight: a brilliant orange-red snowy owl, a creature that is normally snow-white with a few flecks of brown. The colorful bird, seen in Huron County, Michigan, has since been dubbed Creamsicle or Rusty by other owl enthusiasts – but no one knows what caused the unusual plumage.
Three baby pigs were stolen from an art exhibition in Copenhagen last week, and that’s the good news. The pigs would have been allowed to starve to death – just as the artist intended – in a misguided attempt to draw attention to animal welfare in Denmark.
A pair of young bison bulls in a UK sanctuary have been taught to self medicate, specifically by vaccinating themselves. The staff at Wildwood Trust in Kent say the animals have been trained to lean into needles, which is less stressful than the typical procedure: shooting darts into them.
A pet deer has been confiscated in Pennsylvania. Tammy Shiery of Fayette County says that she and several neighbors raised the 2-year-old deer from the time they found him as a fawn, but the Pennsylvania Game Commission says that’s illegal.
A family in Omaha, Nebraska made the mistake of leaving an entire tuxedo chocolate mousse cake on their back porch. An opossum found it and that was the end of the cake, and almost the end of the opossum.
A gated community in Argentina – built on a wetland along the Luján River, north of Buenos Aires – is home to about 45,000 wealthy residents and at least 1000 capybaras. The humans who live in Nordelta are about to deploy assorted birth control methods on the growing rodent population.
Five young Mexican spider monkeys are about to make their public debut at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. Rescued at the US-Mexican border in 2023, the babies have been recovering from their ordeal suffered at the hands of smugglers. The zoo will feature their story for educational purposes.
Last week the Centers for Disease Control released some startling information about the bird flu virus, namely that it can be spread between cats and humans. The data appeared briefly online, then vanished.
It’s that time of year again. This weekend animal shelters and zoos around the world are fundraising by encouraging people to perform symbolic acts of vengeance against their exes. The “anti-love” campaigns can take many forms.
A grieving dog who waited for months outside a convenience store in Thailand after his owner died has been adopted – by a Thai princess. The dog, named Moo Daeng, hung around his usual spot outside a 7-Eleven in Nakhon Ratchasima every day after his owner — who was homeless — died in November.
A rare winter storm last week hit Florida’s panhandle, catching many humans unprepared. Also unaccustomed to the frigid temps were hundreds of endangered sea turtles, whose metabolism shut down when their habitat gets too frosty.
In April 2023, Elodie Cappé found an abandoned boar piglet near the rubbish bins on her horse farm in Chaource, France. She tried to release the piglet back into the wild, unsuccessfully, so she named it – Rillette, after the local dish of shredded pork – gave it a pen, and had the boar sterilised and vaccinated.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service under the Biden Administration concocted a plan to save spotted owls in the West by killing off hundreds of thousands of barred owls that have invaded the smaller species’ habitat. Now four lawmakers from rural Oregon are asking the new administration to stop the cull before it can begin.
