Mr Bumble has lost 4.4lb (2kg) on a gruelling weight loss regime involving eating more healthily and taking regular exercise.The two-year-old skunk was given to Tropiquaria Zoo at Washford Cross, Somerset, in September. His previous owners could no longer care for him and handed him over to the RSPCA but admitted that they had fed him bacon sandwiches.
Chris Moiser, the park’s owner, said Mr Bumble weighed one stone (6.8kg) when he first arrived and needed to lose 5 to 6lb (2.2 to 2.7kg).He has two half-hour walks each day and a disciplined diet of vegetables and fruit, with the occasional cricket as a treat.Mr Moiser said the animal needs to lose another 2lbs but was being allowed more animal protein in his diet.
”Mr Bumble is looking much better: we were worried about his health,” he said.”He has been on a strict vegetable and fruit diet and we take him out on a lead twice a day, letting him run back to his cage.”He doesn’t sleep as much as he did and seems to be a lot more active and interested in what is going on around him.”I’m sure he misses the bacon sandwiches.”
You and your pup hit the dog run only to have Fido completely ignored by his canine companions because of his unsightly, um, back door.
This scenario may have never happened to you, or anyone else for that matter, but that hasn’t stopped a 23-year-old senior civil engineering student from starting Rear Gear. According to Rear Gear’s product page on Etsy, these decorative butt-covers offer a “cheerful solution” for you pet’s “un-manicured backside.”
The $5 cardboard placards can be tied to your dog’s tail like a bizarre little ornament that conveniently hangs in front of your pet’s “area.” The placards come in a variety of designs, from a biohazard logo to a first-place ribbon. You can even order custom designs.
And if you do, please let us know how the dog park crowd responds.
Hundreds of thousands of robins from the UK are being killed illegally in Cyprus after migrating south for the winter.The birds are a delicacy on the island and are trapped and killed by locals to provide ambelopoulia, pickled or boiled songbirds, for restaurants.The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and its partner organisation BirdLife Cyprus, said one of the trapping hotspots was on the British Sovereign Base Area of Dhekalia.
The RSPB said it was ‘unacceptable’ that the illegal slaughter of the birds was taking place on an area controlled by the British authorities.During the autumn trapping season, an estimated 700,000 birds were caught on the island. Experts believe the winter figures this year will be even higher.BirdLife Cyprus’s Martin Hellicar said: ‘At this time of year, robins and other birds, such as song thrushes, escape harsh conditions further north in Europe and travel to the island for the winter.
‘Sadly many of these birds will be travelling to their deaths, particularly in the trapping hotbeds of Famagusta, Larnaca and the British Sovereign Base Area of Dhekalia.’Ambelopoulia is illegal but the law is being widely flouted as restaurants ‘openly serve’ it to locals.
Tim Stowe, the RSPB’s international director, said: ‘The illegal killing of songbirds has no place in a modern Europe and this increasing slaughter is placing increasing pressure on bird populations, many of which are already declining for other reasons’We remain concerned that many threatened species are also slain and we are working with BirdLife Cyprus to bring this barbaric practice to an end.’The birds are trapped in nets or caught on ‘traditional’ limesticks, where trappers coat sticks in ‘lime’ – a concoction made from locally-occurring fruits. More
Turning reindeer dung into gems for necklaces and ornaments has raised a pile of money for the Miller Park Zoo.The last two ornaments for the year were sold Sunday bringing the total raised for the zoo to $20,884. The fundraiser organized by the Miller Park Zoological Society brought in about $5,000 in 2008.
Chief “gemologist” Susie Ohley estimated about 300 necklaces and more than 2,000 ornaments were made this year, the second year of the project.”For sure this has been great for the zoo,” said Ohley, spokeswoman for the zoological society. “We are very appreciative of the support and attention this project has given us.”
The “Magical Reindeer Gems” are dime-sized pieces of dung from the zoo’s reindeer that have been dehydrated, sterilized and spray-painted with glitter and strung together with wire and beads.
The necklaces were added this year to the product line after people buying ornaments asked if there were any jewelry.Initially, Ohley said 100 necklaces would be made for the year, but the nationwide demand for the reindeer dung products pushed their gem making into overtime, she said. More
The “Peanuts” comic strip character Snoopy was named the top dog in pop culture by the American Kennel Club on Tuesday as part of its 125th anniversary celebration, beating out a college sports mascot.Nearly 76,000 online voters chose their favorites from a list of pop-culture dogs drawn from television, film, literature, sports and art, the kennel club said.
Snoopy was the pensive dog whose best friend was a bird and who seemed to be smarter than his human master in the comic strip created by the late Charles Schulz, who died in 2000.“Peanuts,” which for close to five decades served as a mirror for the baby boom generation, appeared in 2,600 newspapers in 21 languages. Its daily readership was believed to be the most of any comic strip in history.
Second place went to Texas A&M University’s mascot Reveille, followed by Scooby Doo, the television cartoon character. More
Amazing pictures of Southern Ocean marine life captured by scientists working in the Antarctic were released today. The inhabitants of the continent’s seas were captured as part of a study on biodiversity carried out by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).Images of the marine creatures, which were taken in the Bellingshausen Sea, West Antarctica, include ice fish, sea pigs and crustaceans.The underwater images also show giant sea spiders, rare rays and beautiful basket stars.
‘Few people realise just how rich in biodiversity the Southern Ocean is – even a single trawl can reveal a fascinating array of weird and wonderful creatures as would be seen on a coral reef,’ said BAS research cruise leader Dr David Barnes.‘These animals are potentially very good indicators of environmental change as many occur in the shallows, which are changing fast, but also in deeper water which will warm much less quickly. More
Four of the world’s last eight known northern white rhinos landed in Kenya and were transported to a game park where officials hope the endangered mammals will reproduce and save their subspecies.No white rhinos are known to remain in the wild, and the animals transported on Sunday have produced no offspring after nearly 24 years in a Czech zoo. So wildlife workers hoping to save the subspecies loaded two males and two females into wooden crates and began the effort to return them to what was once their savannah homeland.
When teams of Kenyan wildlife workers opened the crates on Sunday, two of the rhinos lingered several minutes before moving to a larger pen as Czech animal handlers coaxed them out with soothing words and treats. The other two exited immediately.The rhinos’ handlers and park officials said they hoped the two females will bear as many young as possible for several years, but all those involved acknowledged it was not a sure bet that the rhinos would reproduce.
The northern white rhino is the world’s rarest large mammal, making the international effort to save the subspecies all the more important.`Objective No. 1 is to get as many offspring as you can from the females, at least one calf out of each within two years,” said Rob Brett, the director of Fauna and Flora International, which helped arrange and finance the move. More
In Germany, they got a terrier that can do a somersault.Viewers of Germany’s version of Britain’s Got Talent, SuperTalent, have just voted for a small black and white Jack Russell as their winner.
During the final Prima Donna chased her own tail, walked on her hind legs, jumped through hoops and climbed on top of owner Yvo Antoni.The studio audience gave the pair a standing ovation before they were announced the winners.
Prima Donna who won just over half of the votes from 9million viewers fought off competition from Oliver Roemer, an unemployed 41-year-old from Bremen.Roemer was described by his local paper as being ‘corpulent, halfway bald and wearing old fashioned glasses’.
Prima Donna’s other competition were the so-called ‘super kids’: Richard Istel, 10, who sang the Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah and Carlotta Truman who sang John Lennon’s Imagine.There were also acrobats with a big golden ball, a pyrotechnic artist with a burning back and a guitar that shot sparks as well as 28-year-old Petruta Krüpper who played the pan pipes.
Some 37,000 acts were weeded out before the final but Prima Donna was the only dog.’A dog as Germany’s super talent, I didn’t reckon with that,’ said chief judge Dieter Bohlen, the German equivalent of Simon Cowell.
Usually the winner of the competition receives a recording contract and goes on tour around Germany.
But Mr Antoni said: ‘We won’t be making a record. But we will do a tour.’
In Germany, they got a terrier that can do a somersault.Viewers of Germany’s version of Britain’s Got Talent, SuperTalent, have just voted for a small black and white Jack Russell as their winner.
During the final Prima Donna chased her own tail, walked on her hind legs, jumped through hoops and climbed on top of owner Yvo Antoni.The studio audience gave the pair a standing ovation before they were announced the winners.
Prima Donna who won just over half of the votes from 9million viewers fought off competition from Oliver Roemer, an unemployed 41-year-old from Bremen.Roemer was described by his local paper as being ‘corpulent, halfway bald and wearing old fashioned glasses’.
Prima Donna’s other competition were the so-called ‘super kids’: Richard Istel, 10, who sang the Leonard Cohen classic Hallelujah and Carlotta Truman who sang John Lennon’s Imagine.There were also acrobats with a big golden ball, a pyrotechnic artist with a burning back and a guitar that shot sparks as well as 28-year-old Petruta Krüpper who played the pan pipes.
Some 37,000 acts were weeded out before the final but Prima Donna was the only dog.’A dog as Germany’s super talent, I didn’t reckon with that,’ said chief judge Dieter Bohlen, the German equivalent of Simon Cowell.
Usually the winner of the competition receives a recording contract and goes on tour around Germany.
But Mr Antoni said: ‘We won’t be making a record. But we will do a tour.’
Although the ape will be looked after by a robot on the mission, the decision is expected to spark controversy with animal rights groupsThe Russians first succeeded in putting monkeys into orbit in 1983. “We have plans to return to space,” said Zurab Mikvabia, director of the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy in Georgia which supplied apes for the programme in the 1980s.
The Institute is in preliminary talks with Russia’s Cosmonautics Academy about preparing monkeys for a simulated Mars mission that could lay the groundwork for sending an ape to the Red Planet, he said.Such an initiative would build on Mars-500, a joint Russian-European project that saw six human volunteers confined in a capsule in Moscow for 120 days earlier this year to simulate a Mars mission.
Mr Mikvabia said: “Earlier this programme was aimed at sending cosmonauts, people (to Mars).”But given the length of the flight to Mars, and given the cosmic rays for which we don’t have adequate protection over such a long trip, discussions have focused recently on sending an ape instead of a person.”
Estimates for the length of the journey to Mars vary depending on the type of mission envisioned, but the European Space Agency says its proposal for a round-trip mission would take 520 days, or about a year and a half.If Russia pursues the idea of sending monkeys to Mars, Mikvabia’s institute could become the site of an enclosed “biosphere” where apes would be kept for long periods to simulate space flights.
The Institute said a robot would accompany the first primate to Mars to feed and look after the ape.Mr Mikvabia said: “The robot will feed the monkey, will clean up after it. Our task will be to teach the monkey to co-operate with the robot.”
ezquara
Ezquara's Blog 
Comments