Creatures in the news — winged, four-footed, cute or scary

mtierney

Sep 6, 2015 at 5:58am Edited

Good grief, what could be offensive in this -- considering troops are groups of apes and Eagle Scout rank is the ultimate goal in scouting. Madonna is, IMHO, well past her sell by date.

"Looking for love in New York is not for the meek. “If it’s a young male gorilla that was raised in a very small troop, bringing him to the Bronx, where he’s going to be exposed to four or five adult females, might not be in his best interest,” Dr. Thomas said. “You wouldn’t want to introduce a sexually naïve male that hasn’t had a lot of experience with courtship behavior.” (The human equivalent would be trying to match up an Eagle Scout with Madonna.)"

FYI, I am the proud mother of an Eagle Scout! grin

PeggyC

Sep 6, 2015 at 6:17am

I am thinking SAC saw something in that reference that we missed, or took a different angle on it. But I can't figure it out.

mtierney

Oct 2, 2015 at 6:09am

Sad, but the story reveals the kindness and dedication of those caring for mistreated and abused dogs...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/nyregion/dogs-hurting-the-most-have-a-special-place-to-heal.html?ref=todayspaper

mtierney

Oct 6, 2015 at 5:48am

News about our feathered friends...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/science/crows-may-learn-lessons-from-death.html?ref=todayspaper

mtierney

Oct 15, 2015 at 6:08am

AUSTRALIA TO KILL MILLIONS OF FERAL CATS,

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/australia/australia-feral-cat-cull-brigitte-bardot-morrissey.html?ref=todayspaper

tjohn

Oct 15, 2015 at 6:28am

mtierney said:
AUSTRALIA TO KILL MILLIONS OF FERAL CATS,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/australia/australia-feral-cat-cull-brigitte-bardot-morrissey.html?ref=todayspaper

As well they should. Australia's native fauna are completely vulnerable to predators such as cats.

joanne

Oct 15, 2015 at 10:01am Edited

It's old news here; we've known about this well, for years really but this latest announcement is a couple of weeks old at least. What annoys me is that feral dogs and goats are a bigger problem, and they never get publicity even in rural press unless a dog attacks livestock (and then it's usually attributed to a fox).

What people in cities and outside Australia don't realise is that these animals aren't native to here, they have no natural place in our ecology and nothing -literally nothing - that can control them. Unlike rabbits, which were also introduced by the First Fleet and have ruined whole swathes of subsoil, we don't have any real plans for dealing with the damage caused to native fauna and flora by the packs, herds and prides of these introduced species.

Now rabbits: you love the critters, we hate them. It was realised very early that bringing them was a mistake but we couldn't control/eradicate them. So they introduced foxes. A bigger mistake, and meantime the rabbits continued to destroy natural environment and displace native animals. So they introduced biological controls: diseases that spread to native animals (myxomatosis, etc), something that needed the prickly pear cactus to grow in (the cactus became a noxious weed choking out native plants), and cane toads to eat that beetle (nothing kills cane toads, they're poisonous to everything and have spread to all parts of Australia, killing off native frogs, birds and fish). Rabbits are still ruining farm land, and suburban gardens, and spreading myxo and chlamydia to koalas, etc.

So yeah, even cat lovers here see the need to control plague levels of feral introduced species. (How do people propose we track, capture and neuter ferals when most of them live beyond cities? When they're night stalkers, so hard to see in the bush and the desert? When we don't have sufficient vets in appropriate locations for rural towns let alone national parks and crown lands? There are at least as many feral felines as there are human citizens; feral camels and goats number in the millions; we no longer speak of brumbies glowingly but of wild horses as pests...)

oh oh

joanne

Oct 15, 2015 at 10:09am Edited

This article gives an idea of the costs to our economy that feral introduced species burden us with:

https://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering/about/news/news?news-id=94357

$5 billion, annually.

When you have major government projects such as the ones linked below (from 2010), then you know the problem is seriously impacting most aspects of modern life and a stable economy:

http://www.invasiveanimals.com/research/phase1/goals/goal-12/12d6/ please read the paras under Social impacts, and Production surveys.

marksierra

Oct 19, 2015 at 11:05pm

tjohn said:

mtierney said:
AUSTRALIA TO KILL MILLIONS OF FERAL CATS,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/australia/australia-feral-cat-cull-brigitte-bardot-morrissey.html?ref=todayspaper
As well they should. Australia's native fauna are completely vulnerable to predators such as cats.

mtierney

Oct 20, 2015 at 7:09am

The dog's ancestry...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/science/central-asia-could-be-birthplace-of-the-modern-dog.html?ref=todayspaper

mtierney

Oct 22, 2015 at 2:00pm

Nature's little joke?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/science/howler-monkey-species-deep-voice-testicle-size.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur&_r=0

cupoftea

Nov 5, 2015 at 1:27am

Interesting article on dogs being trained and used to protect and save a dwindling penguin population!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world/australia/australia-penguins-sheepdogs-foxes-swampy-marsh-farmer-middle-island.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

joanne

Nov 5, 2015 at 5:53am

Two nights ago, a fox broke into Melbourne Zoo and killed 14penguins.

Marksierra could tell us more, if you're interested. I'm just heartbroken.

Unfortunately, over the intervening 24 hours, that part of Victoria has also had some of the worst weather in 100 years (acc to a friend), with 3tornadoes and fierce storms and winds, flash flooding parts of the city, and surrounding towns. my friends' neighbour's were trying to bail water from their house in inner Melbourne at almost-midnight...

Melbourne Zoo is, for the the most part, one where the people are fenced away from the animals. So damage to the habitats will be extensive and expensive.

sac

Nov 5, 2015 at 5:59am Edited

PeggyC said:
Why insulting? All the author was implying was youth and sexual inexperience. Or are you more concerned that it's an insult to Madonna, who embodies the mature-and-sexually-experienced side of the equation in that metaphor??? I thought it was mildly funny.

No, it's an insult to Boy Scouts/Eagle Scouts, implying that they are more naive and inexperienced than other young men. If it was just about youth, they could have just said '16-year-old boy' or similar.

mtierney

Nov 22, 2015 at 4:52am

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/fashion/michael-goosby-lapd-dogs.html?ref=todayspaper

Hard working dogs, but no Bologna! smile

mtierney

Nov 23, 2015 at 4:11am

@Dave Hey, Dave, is this "tail" true?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/world/asia/towering-teeming-hong-kong-where-the-buffalo-roam.html?ref=todayspaper

mtierney

Nov 28, 2015 at 4:08am

Back in Central Park...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/nyregion/a-rite-to-improve-karma-for-man-creature-and-now-the-environment.html?ref=todayspaper

mtierney

Dec 5, 2015 at 7:42am

Mama and backup to the rescue...

https://www.facebook.com/sandi.ball.1/posts/1267213119960456

mtierney

Jan 3, 2016 at 5:49pm Edited

Nice to start the New Year with a laugh...

https://www.facebook.com/INGLI2/videos/960390310708363/

mtierney

Jan 5, 2016 at 4:56am

A real heart-breaker...

Abused dog feels love for the first time
http://www.cnn.com/videos/living/2016/01/03/abused-dog-transformation-orig-vstan.cnn

marksierra

Jan 8, 2016 at 9:26pm

Soccer - on horseback.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-08/tibooburra-horseback-soccer/7075852

mtierney

Jan 9, 2016 at 3:10am

beautiful tribute for a hard-working firedog..

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/nyregion/firehouse-loses-a-spotted-symbol-of-healing.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&action=click&contentCollection=nyregion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0