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It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
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.
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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."
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Pet's the cat's meow after hall of fame inductionA 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.
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.
BBC[Wednesday, April 18, 2007 15:49] | ||
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. |
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).
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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.”
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.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.
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.
The Geography Of The Atlantic Slave Trade | |
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. |
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
(Long Beach Historical and Preservation Society) |