Strange animal love; well I posted here about the Dolphin Marriage, and according to the Seattle Times their most viewed online story was about Horse Sex.
Speaking of horses, there is the story of the deaf, blind, diabetic
equastrian.
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"When I'm on a horse, people can't tell I'm different. That is, they don't see me using a cane. They don't know I can't hear very well. They don't know I have diabetes."
Melissa Collins, 26, of Peters explaining one advantage of riding horses and being a member of the California University of Pennsylvania Equestrian Team.
Melissa Collins gives Breeze a quarter horse, a hug before riding him as she prepares to practice with the California University Equestrian Team. Ms. Collins has a significant hearing loss and is legally blind.
Cathie From Canada has one of those rescued cat stories that tugs at our heart strings.
But how about Sooty the Goldfish that survived being almost eaten by a Heron, dropped down a chimney, falling on potato peels covering the coals, tumbling out onto the hearth in front of a guy eating fish and chips? And this was no ordinary goldfish, it weighed over a pound, was 27 centimeteres long and would be called a Koe by most folks.
Then there was the cop who was attacked by five vicious Chihuahuas and suffered, wait for it, bites to his ankles. I can see a vicious dog bylaw in the making.
March of the Penguins was the sleeper hit in the theatres and is now out on DVD, it was a source of controversial debate around monogamy and the animal world, there was this other film about birds that got overlooked and should be in your collection as well; The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
"An "engrossing, delightful film" (The Washington Post), The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is the bonafide sleeper theatrical hit of the year.
The film's endearing guide is Mark Bittner, an aging bohemian, but the supporting cast members, a rambunctious flock of urban parrots, are the true stars, and their surprisingly humanlike behavior makes for a wondrous and rare experience. The film follows the ups-and-downs of these wild birds within the green niches of San Francisco as Bittner befriends, feeds, and names the members of the flock. Along the way, we meet many unforgettable characters: among them Connor, the grouchy yet lovable outcast of the flock, crying for a mate but luckless in his pursuits, and "the lovers," Picasso and Sophie, inseparable until Sophie is forced into mourning when Picasso disappears. More than a mere birdwatcher, Bittner finds solace in his immersion with these strikingly beautiful creatures - but how will he cope when he's evicted from his sanctuary and forced to live away from the parrots?
Now of course Birds are cute, well these birds are anyways. But what about Bats?
One of our most useful animal allies, but one that is badly misunderstood, and of course sterotyped. In Northern Alberta bat populations are crucial to the fragile ecology of the Aspen forest.
Merlin Tuttle is founder and president of Bat Conservation International (BCI), an organization dedicated to preserving bats and their habitats. He earned his Ph.D. in mammalogy from the University of Kansas in 1974 and conducted research full-time for 11 years before founding BCI in 1982. Tuttle is also an award-winning wildlife photographer whose pictures of bats have appeared in National Geographic and many other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.
I started a top-down approach in Austin, getting to leading media people and community leaders and talking about the fact that these bats moving in to their renovated Congress Avenue Bridge were far more allies than enemies. I made bats relevant to human interest, and was very diplomatic in my approach. That's how I built BCI — not by saying that bats had rights. A lot of people now agree with me that they're incredibly fascinating animals, but we started with like 'em or not, you need 'em. They're just as essential ecologically and economically by night as birds are by day. For example, about 70% of all tropical fruits eaten by humans come from plants that in the wild rely on bats as their primary pollinators or seed dispersers. Think where the developing world would be without bananas, breadfruit, plantain, avocados, papayas, peaches, cashews, jackfruit, dates, mangos — those are all bat dependent.When you travel around the world seeing all these crazy things long enough, it affects you. I got my start by getting the gray bats federally listed as endangered. I convinced the federal government to preserve several of their key hibernating and nursery caves. But even then, nobody wanted to do anything about them. It's one thing to get an animal listed as endangered, but if it's not popular, nobody puts any money or effort into it. So, I had to get more and more involved. It was kind of a nuisance side thing to what I really wanted to do, which was research. But I just couldn't sit back and ignore all this outrageous killing of beneficial animals. I'm not an animal rightist — I hunt and fish — but I don't like seeing people destroy the natural order of the world around them. So I started speaking out more and more.
In about 1978, the National Geographic Society asked me to write a chapter in their book WILD ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. I went to Washington to help their photo editors go over bat pictures. I was horrified. All the pictures they were going to put with my chapter were close-ups of tormented, snarling bats. In those days no one knew how to photograph bats. They'd just grab one, the bat would close his eyes and hunker down, thinking he was going to die, then they'd torment him until he snarled, then they'd take a picture. Then they'd blow the picture up to page size. No wonder everybody feared bats.
I said, "One of those pictures is going to completely undo everything I said in my chapter." So they agreed to send one of their staff photographers, Bates Littlehales, out in the field with me for six weeks to see if he could get better pictures. I asked him lots of photography questions. He got some good pictures. At the end he gave me the rest of his film and said, "Why don't you try taking some pictures now?" I ended up being the second most-used photographer in the book.
I used those pictures in talks to show the public what bats are really like. I found that they had a really big impact. One day, a little old lady came up after one of my talks and said, "You know, Dr. Tuttle, if you just founded a non-profit we could get a tax-deduction for donating to, some of us would like to try to help bats." So, with a grand design no bigger than I was going to hire a half-time secretary to help answer questions and produce educational brochures, I founded Bat Conservation International.
Then there were the stories of animals saving humans, which I wrote about here and here. And of course there was the tragedy of Katrina and Rita and the animals left behind, through no fault of their own or their owners, but rather by the bumbling bueracratic mishandling that overshadowed the entire disaster relief efforts.
So we still have to ask where are those U.S. military trained and armed Dolphins that got swept away during Katrina. And are they going to be the new threat in the Gulf coast, attacking swimmers and divers caused they have been trained too? And if they meet another pod will they transfer their training to them? Well don't expect anwsers to these questions since the military denies any knowledge of this program.
Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina
It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.
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animals
bats
horses
dogs
dolphins
cats
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