Shots Ring Out!... after the break

Federal officials have announced they will need more time in deciding whether or not to place the polar bear on the endangered species list due to the threat posed to their environment by global warming.

While everything (underline, exclamation point) we cover here at animalinsider is important -- particularly the lolanimals, particularly the photoshopped pictures of cats in boobs -- this story we find particularly loaded. Why?

a) It would legally recognize global warming as the threat.

b) This classification could trigger limits on arctic development, particularly oil and gas exploration and production.

c) Polar Bears are cute.

d) Polar Bears are also smart and dangerous and powerful -- Gnut!

e) This is clearly a Polar Bear plot to take over humanity -- did you read (a) and (b), does that sound realistic at all???

Who knows, bills get tabled for reasons, it probably won't happen.

Feds Put Off Polar Bear Ruling - KOMO News

Attacking toad and other animals on Larry King...

Gadget converts woofs into words

Dr. Dolittle might have not have been able to get animals to talk so that other people could hear them, but perhaps Japanese toy maker Takara can.

The company on Thursday unveiled a gadget called Bowlingual, which scrutinizes and translates a dog's barks into expressions such as "I've had enough" or "I'm a little bored, let's play."

The gizmo was tested on a dog at the Tokyo Toy Show, an annual event featuring electronic games, collectibles and dolls from all over the world. The four-day event ends Sunday.

Bowlingual consists of a wireless microphone, which is attached to a dog's collar, and a terminal that analyzes and matches each "woof" with a set of preprogrammed phrases.

According to Takara, the device detects feelings--including happiness, frustration and sadness--and displays the associated expressions on the terminal's screen. Bowlingual can also be used to record a dog's mood throughout the day when owners are away from home.

A prototype of the device was unveiled last August with the intention of helping dog owners better comprehend their pets.

Bowlingual has a recommended retail price of $100 (12,800 yen). The company could not confirm commercial availability.

It's not known whether Takara is adapting the device to be used with cats.

Love, Or Something Like It

Sex is complicated. The why, the who, the how, rarely so simple as the love myths would like you to believe.

For instance a study was just released in New Scientist suggesting that primates may treat sex as a commodity, trading a good knit-pick for poon. In fact, after grooming a female the likelihood of her "engaging in sexual activity" is three times more likely than were the grooming to not have occured.

"And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors: A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity."

Now, I'm not saying this study isn't highly insightful in its analysis of biological relationships. But really, do we need all the capitalist terminology? Down with the dollar!!!

Should Animals Be Doing More For The Animal Rights Movement?

Should Animals Be Doing More For The Animal Rights Movement?

Edison vs. Elephant on Coney Island

On this very day 105 years ago Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant meant to give rides and carry heavy items on Coney Island...all in the name of science! His science. He came to Coney to prove George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla's alternating current (AC) was dangerous, whereas his competing direct current was completely safe. In fact, Edison was the one who convinced New York to use the dangerous and deadly AC for their electric chair.

Edison had established direct current at the standard for electricity distribution and was living large off the patent royalties, royalties he was in no mood to lose when George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla showed up with alternating current.

Edison's aggressive campaign to discredit the new current took the macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC (a killing process he referred to snidely as getting "Westinghoused"). Stray dogs and cats were the most easily obtained, but he also zapped a few cattle and horses.

The big PR push came when Edison made this journey to Luna Park Zoo on Coney Island to electrocute Topsy, "a cranky female elephant who had squashed three handlers in three years (including one idiot who tried feeding her a lighted cigarette)." After declaring that hanging the elephant was not humane, the ASPCA agreed to let Topsy "ride the lightning" to her death -- and 1,500 watched as Edison sent 6,600 volts through her body. He also filmed it, and it was later released as a film titled Electrocuting an Elephant, which has since shown up in more recent movies (you can view it here).

The headline in The Commercial Advertiser the day following Topsy's death read: "Bad Elephant Killed," and the paper reported that "the big beast died without a trumpet or a groan." As for Edison's direct current...the trail of dead animals didn't help him prove his point (shocking!) and "the AC demonstrated its superiority in less lethal ways to become the standard." In fact, Westinghouse was later awarded the Edison Medal for his achievements in developing the alternating current system.

Original Post

Fooled Ants "Adopt" Rare Butterflies

Fans of Aesop know that hard-working ants are fabled targets for freeloading parasites.

But a new study of the ant species Myrmica rubra shows that sometimes the tiny laborers fight back, triggering a co-evolutionary arms race that can catch related species in the crossfire.

In parts of Denmark, Alcon blue butterflies lay their eggs on marsh plants (left) near M. rubra colonies. When the larvae hatch, their outer layers mimic the hydrocarbon chemistry of the ants' cuticles.

The trick fools foraging ants into thinking the caterpillars are their own young, so they carry the parasites into their nests (right). The butterfly larvae are then cared for at the expense of actual ant babies.

For their study, David R. Nash of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues found that the ants' genes—and thus their surface chemistries—vary by location, with infected colonies showing the greatest differences between populations.

The team also noted that Alcon blue butterflies that best matched a colony's unique signature were the most successful at infiltrating the nests.

This suggests that as the ants evolve their cuticles so that they can better recognize larval parasites, the butterflies counterattack with a more refined chemical cocktail.

At the same time, Myrmica ruginodis ants—which can also be fooled into "adopting" butterfly larvae—don't show as many genetic differences between populations.

"Alternative hosts may therefore provide an evolutionary refuge for a parasite during periods of counteradaptation by their preferred hosts," the team writes in their paper, which appears in this week's issue of the journal Science.

Full Story

Jobless Indian Youths to Sterilize Monkeys

Unemployed youths will be trained to sterilize monkeys in one northern Indian state's effort to combat aggressive primates that have been raiding farms and harassing residents, according to a plan announced Thursday by a state official.

The idea drew immediate condemnation from conservationists, who said the plan was unscientific and would likely worsen the problem.

Indian authorities have struggled in recent years to deal with the tens of thousands of monkeys that live in and around its cities.

The monkeys are drawn to public places, such as temples and office buildings, where they are often fed.

Monkey Problems

In recent months, the deputy mayor of New Delhi was killed when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys, and 25 others were injured when a monkey went on a rampage in the city.

The mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh is infested with rhesus macaque monkeys that have been driven to farms and cities after losing their natural habitat to deforestation.

Prem Kumar Dhumal, the state's chief minister, said Himachal Pradesh would go on a "war footing" to fight the thousands of monkeys that have been turning farms into wastelands and attacking people, according to a statement from his office.

Full Story

Florida's New Law For Exotic Pet Owners

In January Florida's new exotic pet laws come into force. A $100 permit fee and state wildlife agency inspections should be expected for owners of the more exotic reptiles such as Nile monitors. State legislators estimate there could be anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 animals affected.

The new laws regulate the possession of six reptile species labeled as "reptiles of concern". Owners are required to have microchips implanted into their pets for identification purposes. Because many exotic reptile species can freely adapt to the local Florida environment, wild breeding populations can freely arise - causing problems for native wildlife. A breeding population of pythons has been found in Everglades National Park and the Nile monitors have established territory in Cape Coral on Florida's West coast.

The reptile species affected are Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, African rocky pythons, amethystine or scrub pythons, green anacondas and Nile monitors. The legislation also now requires permits for red-eared slider turtles, makes it illegal to allow them to reproduce, and requires all eggs to be destroyed. The turtles have been widely available in pet stores for years but were interbreeding with native species. Anyone who owned such turtles prior to July 1, 2007, doesn't need a permit for them.

From now, anyone wishing to own one of the species in question must be at least 18 years old, complete a questionnaire, apply for a state permit, comply with new caging requirements and pay a $100 annual fee. The animal also must be inserted with a microchip for identification purposes by July 1. Failure to comply is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine up to $500 and 60 days in jail.

Kitteh enlarged to show texture

moar funny pictures

Antarctica's Adelie Penguins Extinct in a Decade?

Adélie penguins in Antarctica are in the midst of a major upheaval as climate change causes their icy habitat to warm up, experts say.

Some populations of the birds are thriving, but most are declining rapidly.

The penguins rely on winter sea ice as a platform for feeding on ocean krill.

But they also need the ice to shrink in the summer so they can access their breeding colonies on land.

The mid-latitudes of the Antarctic Peninsula once provided the perfect habitat for the penguins—but not anymore.

"That region has experienced the most rapid warming during winter on the planet," said Bill Fraser, an ecologist with the Polar Oceans Research Group in Sheridan, Montana.

"The mid-winter temperatures are now around 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit [6 degrees Celsius] higher than they were 50 years ago."

If the trend continues, Fraser predicts that Adélie penguins will be locally extinct within five to ten years.

Photo-monitoring whale sharks

Up to 20 meters long and weighing as much as 20 tons, its enormous size gives the whale shark (Rhincodon typus) its name. Known as the gentle giant for its non-predatory behavior, this fish, with its broad, flattened head and minute teeth, eats tiny zooplankton, sieving them through a fine mesh of gill-rakers. Listed as a rare species, relatively little is known about whale sharks, which live in tropical and warm seas, including the western Atlantic and southern Pacific. However, a new study combines computer-assisted photographic identification with ecotourism to study the rare species and suggests whale shark populations in Ningaloo, Western Australia are healthy. The study appears in the Ecological Society of Americas recent issue of Ecological Applications.

West Australian marine scientist Brad Norman (ECOCEAN/Murdoch University) began the study in 1995. Photographs were taken while swimming alongside each whale shark and photographing or video-taping the white lines and spots along the flanks of the animal. Norman teamed up with U.S. computer programmer Jason Holmberg (ECOCEAN, Portland, Oregon) and astronomer Zaven Arzoumanian (USRA/NASA, Greenbelt, Maryland) who adapted software originally used with the Hubble space telescope. The pattern-recognition software developed by Holmberg and Arzoumanian allowed the group to positively identify individual whale sharks. Like a human fingerprint, the speckles and stripes pattern on the skins of whale sharks are thought to beunique to each individual.

Full Story

Pwned!

moar funny pictures

Weirdos In Need Of Love!

The world is full of weird, and yet wonderful creatures, many of which we wouldn’t know about if it wasn’t for the work carried out by The Edge (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered), a conservation programme launched by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to research and world’s most unusual creatures.

Environmental Graffiti has reported on some of the bizarre creatures The Edge studies, and their progress through the world, including the Baiji river dolphin and the Long-eared jerboa.

The scheme targets animals with unique evolutionary histories that are facing a real risk of extinction, already the Baiji dolphin is classified as functionally extinct – not the title which holds the most promise of a reprise.

The ZSL says many of these species are ignored by existing conservation plans, and this is maybe because they are so unique, they fall between the cracks. The Society defines Edge animals as having few close relatives, genetically distinct, and require immediate action to save them from extinction. These are exactly the type of creatures we should be focusing on, in order to understand evolution and ecology.

Full Story

Hotdoll: The Sex Doll for Dogs

Is your dog in heat and humping anything it can wrap its horny little legs around? Are you constantly having to pry your promiscuous pooch off the legs of guests, parents and members of your church? Protect your leg from a hump attack by getting Scruffy a Hotdoll. Yes, it's a sex doll for dogs. It's shaped like a dog and it'll allow your tension-filled pet to go to town as much as his little heart desires, humping away until he passes out in exhaustion, leaving a wispy coil of friction-singed dog-fur smoke wafting into the air.

Gizmodo