Chupacabra In Texas?

So is this strange animal discovered in Texas the mythological Porte Rican Chupacabra, or just a naked coyote? Place your wagers.

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Die Vurm

Congo's Ghosts

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Biological Weapons In Iraq

When one thinks of biological weapons one thinks of germs and viruses, and perhaps cattle mutilations and black helicopters,but not man-eating badgers.

Clearly the British army has to do more to win the hearts and minds of folks in Basra.

It's one of the more extraordinary statements issued by those chaps in the British Army.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area," said British military spokesman Major Mike Shearer.

To make it crystal, another spokesman added: "We have not released giant badgers in Basra and nor have we been collecting eggs and releasing serpents into the Shatt al-Arab river."

Rumours abound among people in the southern Iraqi city that British troops based in the area since 2003 introduced bear-like beasts, with large fangs and claws and a penchant for human flesh, to sow panic.

But despite the fantastic rumours spreading through Basra about the origins of the animals, they have been identified by local vets as the honey badger.

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra's veterinary hospital, has inspected the corpses of several dead badgers and has tried to reassure his fellow citizens that the badgers are not a new post-war arrival in the region.

"These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta," he said. "Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific."

The honey badger, or ratel, is known as a brave predator capable of killing a cobra. It weighs up to 14 kilos and is not known to kill humans and drag them away to its lair.

This reminds me of the Frank Zappa album Weasels Ripped My Flesh.

After all the Badger is a member of the same family as the weasel .

And speaking of weasels, Prince Harry who was supposed to go to Basra is currently stationed at one of NATO's leading Biological Chemical Warfare Research stations; Suffield Base in Medicine Hat.

See:

Iraqi Ghost Dance

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Prehistoric Happy Feet

What do you call a five foot penguin?
Whatever it wants to be called.

Peruvian prehistoric penguins were taller than Danny DeVito

Danny DeVito is 4'11" tall. These penguins topped out at 5 feet, and lived during a particularly sweltering time in Earth's history. 36 million years ago Icadyptes salasi plied the waters off the southern coast of Peru.

A prehistoric penguin has been uncovered that - at more than 5ft tall and with a spear-like 7in beak - is the mother of all penguins.

	A giant I salasi skull compared to Peru’s modern Humboldt penguin

The giant birds lived around the equator tens of millions of years earlier than expected and during a period when the earth was much warmer than it is now.

Researchers discovered their fossilised remains in Peru.

Evidence that the giant penguins once marched to South America was found by Dr Julia Clarke of North Carolina State University.

"We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, but the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in the last 65 million years," Dr Clarke said. "The evidence indicates that penguins reached low-latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates."

See:

March Of The Penquins to Extinction

it's natures way

Not So Cute Seals

Penquin Empiricism

Morality not from animals

Ted Morton To Outlaw Homosexuality

Brecht Meets Oscar

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Heroic Tails

Humans tend to be species chauvinists when it comes to recognizing animal sentience, until this happens that a family pet rescues someone.

Which is not unusual for companion animals; "People don't give their animals enough credit for being smart."

When it is unusual is when it occurs with wild animals. But again it goes to prove that domestication is less important than interspecies solidarity; mutual aid which is the basis of natural society.

Pet's the cat's meow after hall of fame induction

A year-old cat was hailed as a hero yesterday and inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame for waking a Morinville boy before he slipped into diabetic shock.

"I think that's awesome," said Morinville Coun. Pat Krauskopf. "It's not very often you hear about animals coming through like that."

March 27, 2006, Alex Rose was asleep in his Morinville home, 47 km north of Edmonton, when Mel-O, climbed a five-foot ladder and repeatedly pounced on the boy.

Mel-O was the only cat awarded yesterday with a medal of bravery, while three dogs received the honour.

Adrift, alone, but for Echo

Floating unconscious in the frigid waters of Lake Huron, her body temperature in the 20s, blood sugar dangerously low, Tish Smith was close to being claimed by the great lake. But Echo wouldn't allow it.

After their canoe was capsized by a two-metre wave during a freak summer storm that swept over the massive lake last July, the 4-year-old German shepherd-collie mix refused to let her owner die.

Hero dog showered with love

Jango the golden retriever has been hailed a hero dog.

The Trail dog roused his master from a deep sleep by barking to alert him that his house was on fire.

Owner Darrell Unger woke to Jango's persistent barking to find his house filling with smoke.

Five-year-old Koby Unger of Trail looks on as his family's dog, Jango, basks in the attention after his induction yesterday into the Purina Hall of Fame in Toronto.

In the past 39 years, the hall of fame has honoured 133 animals, including 109 dogs, 23 cats and a horse.

SEE:

Damn Cat

Dogs Are Not Wolves

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime

Elephants Cogitate

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Tigers As Commodities

The destruction of the wild for expansion of Palm Oil production in Asia is the greatest threat to the last refuge of the wild Tiger.The Ape Will Lie Down With The Tiger That and the Chinese taste for Tigers.

China criticised for 'tiger wine'

BBC[Wednesday, April 18, 2007 15:49]

A recent poll declared the tiger the world's most popular animal China has come under fire for allowing tigers to be bred for the production of so-called "tiger bone wine". The drink is reportedly made by steeping tiger carcasses in rice wine. Those who drink the wine believe it makes them strong. Chinese delegates at the International Tiger Symposium in Nepal are arguing for the lifting of a current ban on the trade in tiger bones and skins. But other Asian nations with threatened tiger populations want the ban to stay. Emotive issue There has been a forceful exchange of views on the issue at the symposium, according to the BBC correspondent in Kathmandu, Charles Haviland. Experts say there are several reasons why tiger numbers have drastically declined, but just one has grabbed the limelight, our correspondent says. The argument centres on the existence of so-called "tiger farms" in China, which have bred thousands of captive tigers with the ostensible purpose of entertaining visitors. But the conservation group WWF, which is chairing the symposium, says these farms are fronts for the production of tiger bone wine. WWF also says the captive tigers cannot survive in the wild, and believes the production of wine and underhand trade in skin and bones also threaten to make wild tiger poaching more lucrative. A senior WWF official said the discussions were heated, with Chinese academics saying their country should lift its ban on the trade in tiger parts. But experts from states like Nepal and Bangladesh, which have threatened tiger populations, are urging that the ban should remain. On Wednesday, a more formal forum of government delegations will begin discussing the fate of the majestic beast, which a recent television poll declared to be the world's most popular animal.

Businesses call for lift on tiger parts ban

Kathmandu - The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has expressed concerns over a campaign by Chinese businessmen to lift a ban on the trade of tiger parts, Kathmandu media reported on Wednesday.

"Since China is the biggest market of tiger parts, the lifting of the ban will affect conservation efforts," the English-language Himalayan Times quoted Sue Lieberman, the director of the WWF's global species programme, as saying. "This is going to be the real and biggest threat for the tigers and the tiger conservationists."

Businessmen are reportedly putting pressure on the Chinese government to lift the ban and are also stepping up their campaign on the international community to allow China to commercially breed tigers for their body parts.

International trade in all tigers and tiger products is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

However, wildlife organisations said illegal trade in big cat skins and body parts is worth about $8-billion a year. The tiger body parts are in high demands in China and other East Asian countries for their perceived medicinal value.

The concern expressed by the WWF coincided with the start of an international tiger symposium in Kathmandu that was being attended by tiger experts and conservationist from 12 nations, including China.

The symposium is to discuss tiger conservation in 10 Asian countries and draw up strategies to protect tigers, which are considered an endangered species.

The WWF estimated 5 000 to 7 000 tigers live in the wild, of which about 4 000 are royal Bengal tigers found in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.

The WWF said that over the past 100 years, tiger numbers have declined by 95 percent and three sub-species have become extinct - with a fourth not seen in the wild for more than 25 years.

The latest government figures from Nepal said about 370 tigers live there in the wild, distributed in Chitwan National Park in central Nepal and Bardiya National Park in western Nepal. - Sapa-DPA

Beasts of burden

As with humans, those animals that cannot profitably be integrated into the productive process are simply discarded. Domestication has focused on a narrow number of species; others not entirely domesticated have been preserved for recreational slaughter - such as deer. But many other species have been exterminated altogether, threatening the biodiversity of the planet. In ‘colonial India and Africa, the flower of British manhood indulged in veritable orgies of big game slaughter’. In north America, the wolf ‘became the symbol of untamed nature’ and was exterminated in most areas, as earlier in Europe, while between 1850 and 1880, 75 million buffalo were killed by hunters (Thomas). In each case, mass slaughter was seen as part of the divinely sanctioned transformation of wilderness into civilisation.

The same mania of extermination fuelled the hunting of humans defined as animals, such as the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, or the indigenous population of the Philippines, the subject of ‘goo-goo hunts’ after the US conquest of 1898.

Many other animal species have disappeared because of the destruction and fragmentation of their habitat. The animal industry is often directly involved in the wrecking of fragile local ecosystems, particularly when forests are cleared to make way for grazing land.

Today we are used to seeing the last survivors of endangered species conserved in zoos. The origin of these zoos formed part of the same colonial mentality that exterminated so many creatures: ‘the spectacle of the zoo animal must be understood historically as a spectacle of colonial or imperial power’ (Baker) with the captive animals serving as ‘simultaneous emblems of human mastery over the natural world and of English dominion over remote territories’ (Ritvo).

Anthropocentric humanism has been detrimental to humans as well as animals: ‘The brutal confinement of animals ultimately serves only to separate men and women from their own potentialities’ (Surrealist Group, cited in Law). What Camatte calls ‘the biological dimension of the revolution’ will involve the rediscovery of those aspects of humanity, some labelled as ‘bestial’, that have been underdeveloped by capital such as rhythm, imagination and wildness.

One consequence of this would be that humans would no longer see themselves as always above and distinct from other animals: ‘Communism... is not domination of nature but reconciliation, and thus regeneration of nature: human beings no longer treat nature simply as an object for their development, as a useful thing, but as a subject... not separate from them if only because nature is in them’ (Camatte).

See:

Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

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Pachyderm Liberation

No sooner do they get criticized for the prison conditions that they keep elephants in, than the Edmonton Zoo folks tell us all is well.

Except it ain't. Last fall one of the elephants injured her trunk on the fence at the zoo. The zoo enclosure is too small and what the heck are we doing keeping tropical animals in a boreal region in an outdoors Zoo.

And this is the same reactionary defense of the indefensible, that Zoo Check got when they denounced West Edmonton Mall for their enclosure and imprisonment of Dolphins,all died except Howard who was secretly shipped out in the middle of the night.

Zoocheck Canada, a Toronto-based animal rights group, says Edmonton’s cold climate and small zoo enclosure are making the zoo’s two elephants, Lucy and Samantha, sick, stressed and bored.

Spokesman Julie Woodyer said today that renowned African elephant expert Winnie Kiiru, project manager of the Amboseli Human-Elephant Conflict Project in Kenya, visited several Canadian zoos last fall and determined that the climate is too cold and enclosures too compact at many facilities in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

“After reviewing all of the elephant enclosures in Canadian zoos, it is my opinion that the Edmonton Valley Zoo is the worst at this time,” Kiiru said in her report, released last month.

“The climate in Edmonton is completely inappropriate for elephants.”

In her conclusion, she recommends that the “City of Edmonton take immediate action to move Lucy and Samantha to a sanctuary that can provide them with a more appropriate physical and social environment and to close the elephant exhibit at this zoo.”

And it's not just Edmonton, Zoo Check has criticized the famous Calgary Zoo for elephant breeding.

Female elephants are matriarchal social animals, needing to be in a group, which is not what occurs in Zoo's or circuses.

Elephants live in a very structured social order. The social lives of male and female elephants are very different. The females spend their entire lives in tightly knit family groups made up of mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts. These groups are led by the eldest female, or matriarch. Adult males, on the other hand, live mostly solitary lives.

The social circle of the female elephant does not end with the small family unit. In addition to encountering the local males that live on the fringes of one or more groups, the female's life also involves interaction with other families, clans, and subpopulations. Most immediate family groups range from five to fifteen adults, as well as a number of immature males and females. When a group gets too big, a few of the elder daughters will break off and form their own small group. They remain very aware of which local herds are relatives and which are not.

Elephants are also self aware, that is they have the ability to think and communicate. Thus it is unconscionable to keep them imprisoned and neither Zoo can defend its actions as being good for the animals, the species, or science.

From a study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an Asian elephant housed at the Bronx Zoo in New York, repeatedly touched a white cross painted above its eye, when it saw this mark reflected in a large mirror. Another mark made on the forehead in colourless paint, was ignored, showing that it was not the smell or feeling which caused the interest. Elephants are among the very small number of species such as the great apes and Bottlenose Dolphins capable of self-recognition.

Elephants in Zoos and Circuses in North America are the direct result of the Slave Trade and are the last vestige of that original Atlantic trade that brought Africa to the attention of North America's colonizers.

The Geography Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

"Chart of the Sea Coasts of Europe, Africa, and America . . ." From John Thornton, The Atlas Maritimus of the Sea Atlas. London, ca. 1700. Geography and Map Division. (1-11)

This map's elaborate cartouche (drawing), embellished with an elephant and two Africans, one holding an elephant tusk, emphasizes the pivotal role of Africa in the Atlantic trading network. The South Atlantic trade network involved several international routes. The best known of the triangular trades included the transportation of manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, where they were traded for slaves. Slaves were then transported across the Atlantic--the infamous middle passage--primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean, where they were sold. The final leg of this triangular trade brought tropical products to Europe. In another variation, manufactured goods from colonial America were taken to West Africa; slaves were carried to the Caribbean and Southern colonies; and sugar, molasses and other goods were returned to the home ports.

19th Century European Zoo's contained not just Elephants and other African flora and fauna, but Africans as well. Today we keep Elephants in their place. And our attitudes towards Elephants, as well as other species, as being self aware and cognitive is the same as it was towards indigenous peoples.

A Human zoo (also called "ethnological expositions" or "Negro Villages") was a 19th and 20th century public exhibit of human beings usually in their natural or "primitive" state. These displays usually emphasized the cultural differences between indigenous and traditional peoples and Western publics. Ethnographic zoos were often predicated on unilinealism, scientific racism, and a version of Social Darwinism. A number of them placed indigenous people (particularly Africans) in a continuum somewhere between the great apes and human beings of European descent

Entrepreneur William Reynolds, who billed the city as The Riviera of the East, had a herd of elephants march in from his Dreamland on Coney Island in about 1907, ostensibly to help build the boardwalk, but in reality to generate publicity. (Long Beach Historical and Preservation Society)

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