Animals
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I can haz climate change?
According to Australia's News.com, climate change is leading to "too many unwanted moggies." What are moggies, you ask? It’s British for “kitty cats.” Climate change has lengthened the moggie breeding season in Australia, from October through May (that's summer down under), leading to "record numbers" of cats being born. On the one hand, this means […]
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Watch a lizard play video games with uncanny precision
The theme of today is animals learning to coexist with human culture. Once this bearded dragon and the baby seal join forces to sit on a couch AND play video games, they will be an unstoppable force of lethargy at near-human scales! Who says you need a big cerebral cortex to be a couch potato?
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Baby seal breaks into house to sleep on sofa
This baby fur seal snuck through a cat flap into a New Zealand home and snuggled up on the sofa. Awwww who's a good little home invader? Who? Who? Look, he's even got a pillow! Okay, so the killjoy New Zealand Department of Conservation, which took the above photo, wants you to know that fur […]
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New species from Asia include noseless monkey named ‘Snubby’
There are still way more kinds of creatures out there than science knows about — we're discovering new species all the time, and it always seems like the new ones are the weirdest yet. The World Wildlife Fund just released info about their 2010 discoveries in Asia's Mekong River region, which traverses Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, […]
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It’s panda-countin’ time!
Get out your panda-counting equipment, because it's panda census time! China's government is organizing the first panda census in a decade, sending out teams of wildlife biologists over hill and under dale in search of the elusive critters. And it's not as fun as it sounds. Pandas are really rare in the wild — the […]
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Bear bile farming is just as bad as it sounds
Animal welfare foundation Animals Asia has just rescued 14 moon bears, which had been farmed and abused for a substance produced in their gall bladders. Gah. People are willing to perpetrate some real atrocities on animals in order to get valuable commodities — rhino horns, elephant ivory, tiger parts. But man, once you start doing […]
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Polar bears may be driven to cannibalism by climate change
If you watch nature shows, you know that male bears see cubs as tasty little McNuggets with fur, so it's not like one bear eating another is a big deal. Except that in the Arctic, polar bears are increasingly deprived of the sea ice they rely on to access seals and other tasty mammalian treats. […]
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Small farmers crave horse power
Photo: Donn HewesAsk any 5-year-old: Few tools symbolize the farm like a trundling tractor. In fact, you’d have to reach further back in time to find an equally enduring symbol: the horse. And while there’s little doubt that tractors have revolutionized farm labor and made farms much more efficient than they were in past centuries, […]
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Katherine Heigl wants you to neuter your pets, because she hates balls
Sure, there are lots of good animal-welfare-related reasons to spay and neuter your pets. But can we talk about the best reason? BALLS ARE GROSS. At least, that's the contention of Katherine Heigl, who is clearly embarking on some kind of weird image-correction campaign where she embraces her reputation as an ice queen in order […]
