Here’s a short, slow-motion clip of an owl in flight: Not so much about animal intelligence as it is about the beauty and grace of the animal kingdom.
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Behavior
I first took note of this phenomena a few years ago. Around fall, it’s like all of the sudden the squirrels somehow get a lot dumber and practically throw themselves under cars. This year it seemed to have started even earlier. My suspicion was that after a few good summer months of gorging themselves on [...]
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I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities — and differences — between big animals and their domesticated counterparts. Take cats, for example. Do lions and tigers purr? (Answer: Sort of. Your neighborhood tabby purrs while inhaling and exhaling; big cats purr only when they breathe out.) And while I’ve been reading Animals in Translation, I’ve [...]
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Perhaps it’s because I grew up watching and re-watching ET — who resembled an overgrown deshelled turtle — that I feel such an affinity for these little dudes. For cold-blooded reptiles, turtles and tortoises are adorable. To see one helping up a buddy, as in the following video, well that just amps up the cute [...]
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In the past, animals with birth defects and physical abnormalities didn’t stand a chance of survival. But modern medicine — and increased animal domestication — has given some of these critters a second leash on life. Here’s the story of Grace, the two-legged kitten. This local news story from April 2008 profiles Amazing Grace, a [...]
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Did you know that otters have to be taught to swim? These cute little critters aren’t born with an affinity for water. When they’re about a month old, their mother has to teach them to enter the water, to float, and then to swim. Here’s a video from the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in which [...]
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The San Jose Mercury News reports that a marmalade cat named Christopher seems to have a sixth sense. Christopher lives at the Nine Lives Foundation’s Feline Well-Care Clinic (that’s a mouthful!) and has the uncanny ability to sense when other cats are sick and hurting. From the article: [Christopher] will sit outside the cages of [...]
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Gorillas and humans use similar body language to communicate, reports the U.K. Daily Mail. Researchers at the University of Sussex studied a family of gorillas in a British animal park. Psychologist Dr Gillian Sebestyen said: “We shared 23 million years of evolution with great apes and then diverged approximately six million years ago. Gorillas have [...]
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Lynn sent me an item that’s been making the rounds as an e-mail forward. Though I’m reluctant to post something that I cannot properly credit, I’m going to do so. I like it that much. Terry Burns from Middleburg, Pennsylvania shared this photograph and caption with an unknown magazine: The text reads: Cashew, my 14-year-old [...]
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Can you jump over 100 feet in the air? Neither can I. But trap-jaw ants can perform the equivalent feat. With their mouths. This video (complete with protractor!) demonstrates these amazing insects in action, using their jaws to propel themselves great distances. From the YouTube post: This has to be one of the oddest (and [...]
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