Not all animals are created equal, especially not in terms of intelligence. Nobody would consider Cows, Chicken or Snakes as especially smart.
Very different to Elephants, Squid, Chimps and most of all Dolphins. Recent stunning experiments with Dolphins have revealed that they ‘understand’ basic concepts of language and can answer questions with the capability of small kids.
After all these years I still have this gay Las Vegas after taste in my mouth …
Perfect! Maestro Marc’s animal paintings are a dream. I love the strong colors and graphic style. But he still keeps the ‘nature’ of his subjects intact. Not many modern painters succeed in that.
Contrary to popular belief only one species of bees dies when they sting you (actually the quite common Honey Bee). But not to worry which ones they are - because if the bee dying continues they will be gone in a few years. And so will we if there is nobody to pollinate our crops.
The whole Colony Collapse Disorder really scares the honey out of me. Bees occupy such a specific niche in our ecosystem, that they can’t be substituted by any other insect.
I hope that all responsible parents bought their kids a virtual pet instead of a real one. First of all it’s much cheaper and easer to care for. If your brat succeeds in not killing the cyberpet until next xmas - then he or she is maybe ready for a real one.
In recent years we have seen a huge flood of computer animated specials - and Penguins - in the movie theatres.
Cuteness doesn’t work for me - at least not to watch a whole movie. But this one is weird, cool and many times very surreal. I mean surfing Penguins are strange enough - but a surfing chicken?
It’s make fun of itself (it’s made like a documentary) and all the other Penguin, Surf and Animal flicks out there. How very refreshing and actually funny.
Excellent choice for a rainy day, Duuuuude!
More? Official site and trailer
Uhhh … scary! Nothing Hollywood invents will ever beat natures billions of years of experimentations …
Where no man has gone before! Apes always led the way - we just followed. They test our medicine, they have to test our vehicles and even fly into outer space for us.
More? Ape-O-nauts.org
Click image for a larger perspective.
Imagine how different your perspective on life and the universe would be if were a bug. Grass would be a jungle to you. Any mammal or even humans would be godly moving objects to you. A simple rainfall would be a total menace to you.
But wouldn’t be bothered by windows updates, taxes and consumerism. A bug’s life might be quite nice actually …
The thing about genetics that scares me most is that we could create creatures only serve our weird social and emotional needs. It’s already bad enough that we slaughter, abuse and eat most of them anyway. Cats and dogs should be enough for emotionally deprived humans.
source: humandescent.com
I am a great fan of Nick Parker’s work and all the Wallace & Gromit shorts - their last movie is simply brilliant: charming, wonderful humor, hardly any violence, hardly any sex at all (it’s a British movie - remember) and lovely characters. In essence really entertainment for the whole family.
And I have two new favorite characters: Phillip the bad guys dog and you rabbits. Couldn’t find any good pictures - sorry. So if you are looking for a great comedy watch the movie or rent the DVD. Highly recommended.
Only the best ingredients for your beloved pets. I guess many starving people would kill such a great feast. Many pets in industrial countries are incredibly spoiled.
The national icon of New Zealand - the Kiwi. What a rare and strange animal! And once again almost extinct by other animals introduced by European settlers. Grrrr!
Kiwi on Wikipedia and the Kiwi Recovery Program
The world was always naughty, perverse and decadent. Mankind always screwed anything and everything. No opening was sacred, no object too sacred to be abused and used for personal pleasure.
Life is Sex - Sex is pleasure. Enjoy it until you die.
Thanks to Edosan for sharing this fine piece of Art. 
I find this old idea that animals have no emotions or a soul is very disturbing. I can’t guarantee that a dog’s soul will go to heaven, but anyone who ever handled an animal know that they have feelings too.
They certainly feel pain - and many animals like Elephants, Wolfs, Chimps and Dolphins have shown that they have a very rich social life as well. And there is no social life without relationships and feelings - no matter how primitive they are compared to ours.
Anyone how owns a pet like a dog or cat has seen them dreaming and do strange stuff while sleeping …
I still find it highly amusing that a scientist from the Soviet era ‘discovers’ the conditioning reflex. Somehow rulers and animals trainers / breeders knew this before. But as a scientist he at least ‘proved’ it’s existence and documented it. Oh well …
From Wikipedia:
In the 1890s, Pavlov was investigating the gastric function of dogs by externalizing a salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze the saliva produced in response to food under different conditions. He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was actually delivered to their mouths, and set out to investigate this “psychic secretion”, as he called it. He decided that this was more interesting than the chemistry of saliva, and changed the focus of his research, carrying out a long series of experiments in which he manipulated the stimuli occurring before the presentation of food. He thereby established the basic laws for the establishment and extinction of what he called “conditional reflexes” — i.e., reflex responses, like salivation, that only occurred conditional upon specific previous experiences of the animal. These experiments were carried out in the 1890s and 1900s, and were known to western scientists through translations of individual accounts, but first became fully available in English in a book published in 1927.
Pavlov was a dextrous operator who was compulsive about his working hours and habits. He would sit down to lunch at exactly 12 o’clock, he would go to bed at exactly the same time each evening, would always feed his dogs at exactly the same time each night and he would always leave Leningrad for Estonia on vacation on the same day each year. This behavior changed when his son Victor died in the White Army — after which he suffered from insomnia.
Unlike many pre-revolutionary scientists, Pavlov was highly regarded by the Soviet government, and he was able to continue his researches until he reached a considerable age. Pavlov himself was not favorable towards Marxism, but as a Nobel laureate he was seen as a valuable political asset, and as such was lavishly funded. After the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, Pavlov wrote several letters to Molotov criticizing the mass persecutions which followed and asking for the reconsideration of cases pertaining to several people he knew personally. In later life he was particularly interested in trying to use conditioning to establish an experimental model of the induction of neuroses. He died in Leningrad. His laboratory in St Petersburg has been carefully preserved.
The intranets provide a cute safety net if you feel stressed out, unloved or empty. Just click for something cute - and your day brightens up. So the net becomes an emotional one-click-pony: Click-Cute-and-Relax!
We humans have the great ability to empathize: we can feel what we see. We feel the cuddly moments and gentleness of such sweet snaps. We become the picture we watch - we become the little fluffy being being cared for. For an instant we are without weight, memory and pain.
The emotional rush is better than chocolate, caffeine and Prozac. Escape the harshness of your life with a cute instant gratification.
I just can’t help myself - these creatures look aristocratic, snobbish and funny at the same time. They can get pretty big (over 1 meter in length) and heavy (up to 60 kg) - bit like a large dog. They are domesticated in South America for meat.
Actually it would be funny to keep one of these as a pet. I would call mine Lord Mullberry or Lady Waffelhoffel … something like that.
An elephant and his mahut are a special kind of family. Sometimes when beloved work elephants die, people erect little temples in their honor. Too bad we hardly have any personal relationship to nature and the other inhabitants of this great planet.
On the other side - I can’t build a temple for every McChicken, Cow and Fish I ate …
The Deep is a brilliant book and web site from Claire Nouvian about deep sea creature. And they are amazing! Who needs alien when we have creatures like the Dumbo Octopus on this very planet!
Make sure to watch the Gallery.
Amazing! Cool! Wunderbar! Nature still creates the most stunning creatures and designs.
Those beautiful silent travelers of the oceans, they are adorable and graceful. It just pains me to realize they are hunted for their eggs and flesh.
Let’s save them!
Isn’t there a UN resolution against such designs? The 50’s have been a strange decade and dogs behaved very different from today. Taken from the blog of killer knitware:Threadbared.com.
