Clipmarks | jklugman's animals collection

elliot - the cutest primate!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:58:31 GMT

clipped by: boozich

Clip Source: muzich.blogspot.com

Elliott with Safari Park keeper Emma Gatcliffe

Clip Source: muzich.blogspot.com

The hand-reared marmoset with his stuffed monkey

The case for granting apes rights

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:19:19 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Via Andrew Sullivan

Clip Source: www.slate.com

GAP is scientifically honest. And science doesn't show mental parity between great apes and human adults. What it shows, as the group's president acknowledges, is that great apes "experience an emotional and intellectual conscience similar to that of human children." Accordingly, the Spanish proposal doesn't treat apes like you or me. It treats them like "humans of limited capacity, such as children or those who are mentally incompetent and are afforded guardians or caretakers to represent their interests."

GAP's mission statement says great apes are entitled to rights based on their "morally significant characteristics."

they

enjoy a rich emotional and cultural existence in which they experience emotions such as fear, anxiety and happiness. They share the intellectual capacity to create and use tools, learn and teach other languages. They remember their past and plan for their future.

Tags: animals, apes, human-rights

Statistics and the Dancing Cockatoo

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:57:16 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

"On each trial he actually dances at a range of tempos," says Patel. But in each case the slower end of Snowball's range seemed to correlate with the tempo of the music. "When the music tempo was slow, his tempo range included slow dancing. When the music was fast, his tempo range didn’t include these slower tempos," Patel explains.

A statistical check on these variations showed that the correlation between the music’s rhythm and Snowball’s slower movements was very unlikely to have happened by chance. "To us, this shows that he really does have tempo sensitivity, and is not just ‘doing his own thing’ at some preferred tempo," says Patel.

Via Andrew Sullivan

Clip Source: www.nature.com

Genuine ‘dancing’ — the ability to perceive and move in time with a beat – would also require that Snowball adjust his movements to match different rhythmic speeds, or tempos.

Patel and colleagues videoed Snowball ‘dancing’ in one of his favourite spots, on the back of an armchair in the office of Bird Lovers Only. They altered the tempo of the music in small steps, and studied whether Snowball stayed in synch. You can see videos of Snowball dancing to a range of tempos here, here and here .

This wasn’t as easy as it might sound, because Snowball didn’t ‘dance’ continuously during the music, and sometimes he didn’t get into the groove at all. So it was important to check whether the episodes of apparent synchrony could be down to pure chance.

Tags: statistics, teaching-statistics, significance

Spanish Parliament Extends Rights to Apes

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:01:43 GMT

clipped by: pkronfield
clipper's remarks: Next thing, they will be extending rights to the lowest life form on the planet - - militant muslims. Blow up a few trains and what do you get? Ape sh*t!

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

Spain may be better known abroad for bull-fighting than animal rights but the new measures are the latest move turning once-conservative Spain into a liberal trailblazer.

Keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming will also be forbidden and breaking the new laws will become an offence under Spain's penal code.

Tags: loony left

How many words do dogs understand?

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:44:26 GMT

clipped by: fewstingscorpio
clipper's remarks: For other dog owners, we all know soon we have to say W for walk or C for cookie and so on. This must be done only because they learn words fast. As with the examples above, I would obviously say the 'fast part' is associated with positive things...they're not dumb! For the complete article: http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/dogs-understand-words.htm

Clip Source: animals.howstuffworks.com

Dog owners love to gush about canine intelligence. So it would come as no surprise to them that research supports their beliefs that dogs have a profound mental capacity. But how much of our language do dogs really understand? It turns out that the langu

Dog Image Gallery

Sure, most dogs understand the basics --"fetch," "sit" and "stay." But if you have the motivation and patience, you will probably be able to teach your dog even more than 100 words. Stanley Coren, a psychologist who has performed a significant amount of research on the subject of dog intelligence, suggests that average trained dogs know about 160 words [source: Coren]. Some dogs even show a vocabulary as vast as a human toddler's.

Animals have the brain power to understand human language and use their own languages in surprisingly profound ways. We all know parrots can be trained to speak human words. And dogs will react to the word "walk" with a knowing, tail-wagging enthusiasm.

Tags: dogs, pets, training, language, animals, "dog lanuage""animal intelligence""dog intelligenc

Who's the daddy? Swiss zoo in gorilla paternity mix-up

Sat, 31 May 2008 09:01:44 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Just like humans.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Monkey business is clearly afoot in a Swiss zoo after a paternity test revealed one of its gorillas has effectively been cuckolded by a young pretender half his age.

Zookeepers in the northern city of Basel were shocked to discover that Kisoro, a 17-year-old gorilla, is not the father of little Chelewa, instead it is Viatu, another male who is just nine years old.

The situation was "almost unbelievable," and the precocious Viatu has "broken all the rules that apply in gorilla communities," the zoo said in a statement.

Normally only male gorillas aged 12 or over have the right to have sex with females in the tribe.

The facts came to light when the zoo carried out the test as part of the data it keeps on animals born in captivity.

Tags: nature

Chicago reverts to barbarity

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:13:21 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: newsblogs.chicagotribune.com

City Council reverses foie gras ban

Tags: animals, chicago

Tracking the Origin of the Cat

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:27:47 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Cats probably started living close to humans when people evolved from nomadic herding to raising livestock and crops and started storing food, which attracted mice and other rodents. Cats found good hunting there, and humans surely appreciated the sly little predators' help protecting their stocks."There was a mutual benefit," Lyons said.

From there, domesticated cats started to radiate out to different parts of the world, often following humans on their migrations. Today cats can be divided genetically into four broad groups: those from Europe, the Mediterranean, East Africa and Asia.

But Lyons and her colleagues also made surprising discoveries about individual breeds.

The Japanese bobtail, for example, does not seem genetically similar to cats from Japan, indicating the breed may have originated elsewhere.

Despite its name, the Persian, the oldest recognized breed, looks as though it actually arose in Western Europe and not Persia, which today is Iran.

Clip Source: www.wtnrradio.com

Scientists have begun to pull back the feline veil, using the latest molecular tools to get a peek at the origin of the cat.

In one of the most comprehensive explorations of cats' origins to date, Leslie Lyons from the University of California at Davis, and her colleagues spent about five years collecting feline DNA, poking behind the whiskers of more than 1,100 Persians, Siamese, street cats and household tabbies around the world to swab inside their mouths.

The first thing the group did was confirm a report published last June in the journal Science that the domestication of cats about 10,000 years ago appeared to have occurred in an area known as the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from Turkey to northern Africa and to modern-day Iraq and Iran.

"Our data support the Fertile Crescent, specifically Turkey, as one of the origin sites for cats," said Lyons

"Turkey was part of the Fertile Crescent and hence was one of the earliest areas for agricultural development."

Tags: animals

Heartbreaking Nature Story

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:41:50 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: We know that whales are intelligent. Whether they are self aware is another matter. Yet, there is something very poignant about this story.

Clip Source: www.kuro5hin.org

The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep

For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind.

It has received no answer. Nor will it ever.

Whatever the identity of this strange unidentified alien whale, it is, for now, the very definition of poetic, existential loneliness, in both time and space. The whale is somewhere wandering the Northeast Pacific, right now, in a rudderless, aimless track. And right now the lonely beast could be calling out for others of its kind, and finding none, for over 12 years and counting.

Tags: nature, whale, lonely, sad

Kill the cat that kills the bird?

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:30:12 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Interesting article about the conflict between cat lovers and bird watchers. There is good evidence that America's large population of feral cats has decimate bird populations, including endangered species. Bird watchers advocate culling feral cats, which cat lovers do not want to do.

The story focuses on Jim Stevenson, who was tried for shooting and killing a feral cat in defense of some piping plovers, an endangered species.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

In the past decade, at least a dozen studies published in top scientific journals like Biological Conservation, Journal of Zoology and Mammal Review have chronicled the problem of cat predation of small mammals and birds. The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas. At hot spots along the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf Coast, cat predation is a growing threat to shorebirds and long-distance migrants. And as wild habitat becomes more fragmented by human development, even some inland species are under increasing pressure from both house cats and their feral cousins.

Tags: animals, cats, birds

Insatiable Female Sex Demands Leave Males Exhausted

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:10:56 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Choosy males and aggressive females - a role reversal has been found in the sexual behaviour of the topi antelope.

Some males are so forcefully pursued by pushy females that they refuse the advances of previous partners.

According to research published in the journal Current Biology, this helps males conserve their sperm for the possibility of mating with new females.

It is not uncommon to see males collapsing with exhaustion as the demands of the females get too much for them

"[The females must] ensure that they become pregnant, and preferably with a hotshot male, so they must focus all their energies on ensuring that males mate with them in that time,"

These findings are contrary to conventional sexual selection theory which says males are competitive and females are choosy.

Tags: sexual behaviour, topi amtelopes

Let's Kill The Oldest Living Creature

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:25:11 GMT

clipped by: bluebabyrhino

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it.

The team from Bangor University in Wales was dredging the waters north of Iceland as part of routine research when the unfortunate specimen, belonging to the clam species Arctica islandica, commonly known as the ocean quahog, was hauled up from waters 250 feet deep.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

Another clam of the same species had been verified at 220 years old, and a third may have lived 374 years. But this most recent clam was the oldest yet.

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London's Guardian newspaper. "For our work, it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."

Tags: science, news

Ants have a sense of their own mortality

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:00:25 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Ants have a sense of their own mortality

WORKER ants accurately gauge their life expectancy, regardless of their actual age, and take on riskier tasks as they feel their days ebbing away.

In social insects such as ants, bees and wasps, workers change tasks depending on their age. Older workers do the relatively risky foraging outside the nest, while younger ones engage in safer maintenance tasks within it. By extending the workers' average life span, this fine-tuning helps to maximise the fitness of the colony. However, no one knew whether the division of labour in ants was activated by age-related physiological changes or through some other mechanism.

To find out, Dawid Moron and his colleagues at Jagiellonian University in Poland set up 11 lab-based colonies of the ant Myrmica scabrinodis, made up of young worker ants. Within each colony, half of the ants had their life expectancy artificially reduced, either by exposure to carbon dioxide, which acidifies their ...

Tags: ants, biology, mortality

Alex the parrot, zeros, and death

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:07:24 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Dr. Pepperberg reported the result with appropriate understatement: “That zero was represented in some way by a parrot, with a walnut-sized brain whose ancestral evolutionary history with humans likely dates from the dinosaurs, is striking.”

In a well-known essay, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” the philosopher Thomas Nagel speculated about the elusiveness of subjectivity. What was it like to be Alex that last night in his cage? We’ll never know whether there really was a mind in there — slogging its way from the absence of a cork-nut to the absence of Alex, grasping at the zeroness of death.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Next to infinity, one of the hardest concepts to grasp is zero. Toward the end of his life Alex may have been coming close.

In a carnival shell game, an experimenter would put a nut under one of three cups and then shuffle them around. Alex would pick up the cup where the prize was supposed to be. If it wasn’t there he’d go a little berserk — a small step, maybe, toward understanding nothingness.

A bigger leap came in an experiment about numbers, in which the parrot was shown groups of two, three and six objects.

the experimenter finally asked, “O.K., Alex, tell me, ‘What color five?’ ”

“None,” the parrot said.

Bingo. There was no group of five on the tray.

Alex had learned the word “none” years before in a different context. Now he seemed to be using it more abstractly.

Tags: alex, parrot, animals, death

How tough is New York?

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:36:13 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: New York is so tough, the lifeguards save sharks from the humans.

Via zuzu at Feministe

Clip Source: www.ananova.com

A lifeguard saved a shark from a mob of panicking swimmers off a beach on New York's Coney Island.

Marius Mironescu grabbed the 2ft sand shark in his arms and swam out to sea with it, reports the New York Daily News.

"There must have been 75 to 100 people circled around the shark in the water and they were bugging out," said Mr Mironescu, 39, of Brooklyn.

"They were holding on to it and some people were actually hitting him, smacking his face. Well, I wasn't going to let them hurt the poor thing."

He carried the shark - a baby and harmless to humans - to a less populated area and started backstroking out to sea, dragging the shark with one hand.

"He was making believe like he's dead, then he wiggled his whole body and tried to bite me. He didn't get it," added Mr Mironescu.

Tags: new york, new york city, nyc, shark, humor