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All in Animal Heroes
Balto was a world famous Siberian husky, the lead sled dog in a 1925 mission that delivered life-saving medicine to Nome, Alaska in abominably frigid conditions. Now scientists have analyzed Balto’s DNA to find out what made him so tough.
When we last checked in on actor James Cromwell, he was super-glueing himself to a Starbucks counter to protest the inflated price of plant-based milk. This week he is attending to a new cause: a baby pig that had fallen (jumped?) off a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse.
Zoe, a new-mom orangutan at the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, didn’t know how to breastfeed her newborn. A lactating human zookeeper showed her how. The zookeepers knew Zoe was not was not up to this basic task in 2021 when her first child was born, a baby boy that Zoe would hold at arm’s length, not close enough to feed or bond with. Because Zoe’s own mother had died unexpectedly when she was just nine months old, she never learned these essential skill sets.
Within hours after two huge earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks rocked southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6, rescue teams from around the world began to arrive in the disaster zone. Many first responders have worked nonstop since because that’s what good dogs do.
It turns out The Birds was not Tippi Hedren’s worst animal encounter in a movie. That would be Roar, a film that involved close contact with more than 150 untrained lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. It has entered Hollywood lore as the most dangerous movie ever made.
Joaquin Phoenix turns 48 on Friday (October 28), which means the Academy Award-winning actor has been an advocate for animal rights for a solid 45 years.
The African giant pouched rat, also called the Gambian pouched rat, is a large, nocturnal rodent with terrible eyesight. It is also intelligent and fairly easy to train – mostly to seek out landmines, but its skill set is expanding.
Two animal-rights activists were acquitted this week of felony burglary and theft charges, five years after breaking into one of Smithfield Foods’ factory farms in Utah. After taking damning video footage of the farm’s horrendous conditions the pair departed with two piglets.
Pine Island, Florida, took a massive hit from Hurricane Ian. The overseers of the Malamu Manu Sanctuary, Will Peratino and partner Lauren Stepp, refused to abandon their island compound, choosing instead to save some 275 parrots (and two lemurs) from a horrible fate.
