Animal Planet has created a great website,
The Animals Save the Planet. It has animated shorts, fun downloads, and suggestions on saving the Earth.
My favorite is the farting cow, Stanley, who teaches that livestock is responsible for 18% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
Stanley suggests saving the planet by eating less meat. Well, of course he would say that, duh!
If you like Stanley too, you can
download a Farting Cow widget.
The World Is Your Litter Box: A How-to Manual for Cats
is a very unusual book in that it was written by Quasi, who happens to be a cat. This book is actually an instruction manual for cats who were unfortunate enough to be born without the innate feline abilities possessed by Quasi.
The cats who live in my house, Grace and Bandit, were very interested in the book. Grace, of course, wouldn't read it while I was looking, but she did read it after I was asleep for the night. Grace, the world's most prolific upchucker, learned of a few new places to throw up thanks to Quasi. Bandit thought the book was very flavorful - all four corners now are artfully decorated with fang marks.
Grace and Bandit have a few suggestions in case Quasi is thinking of a sequel. They'd like to teach him the "brush your tail against a candle during a party" trick to liven up social gatherings. Also, to encourage household remodeling and redecorating, there's the "get up into the ceiling and cause the drywall to collapse" trick.
On the whole though, we'd like to congratulate Quasi, and his human co-author, Steve Fisher, on a cute, humorous, and charming book.
Since all dogs are descendants of wolves, isn't it amazing the variety to be found?
I have a strange hobby of photographing dogs and food whenever I travel. Here are some of the dogs I've met on my trips:
Chicago, IL:
San Diego, CA:
Boston, MA:
Martha's Vineyard, MA:
Lake Geneva, WI
Nürnberg, Germany:
Ansbach, Germany:
Dinkelsbühl, Germany:
Ulm, Germany:
Schwangau, Germany:
Budapest, Hungary:
Szentendre, Hungary:
Sion, Switzerland:
Cheverney, France:
Flagey-Echezeaux, France:
Paris, France:
I have
MORE!
There are 20-25 dogs based throughout Helmand province in the south of Afghanistan where British troops are based.
Most are German Shepherds, Labradors or Spaniels. They may look cute and friendly, but these animals have a deadly job - sniffing out roadside bombs, and chasing and catching Taleban fighters, alive.
One sniffer or protection dog along with their handler can do the job of "four-six men" on the ground, meaning that those men can be deployed on other tasks.
Source:
BBC
In a prominent New York hotel last month, a uniformed man strode purposefully through the corridors, a beagle mongrel trotting at his side.
“We look like cops,” says Carl Massicott with a laugh.
Massicott is in fact an exterminator; his highly trained dog sniffs out bedbugs – the pestilence whose virulent return has been plaguing hotels across the US in recent years.
Massicott runs
Advanced K9 Detectives, a specialist extermination company that uses dogs to sniff out pests. News of an infestation can ruin a business predicated on giving punters a good night’s sleep; it helps that Massicott dogs appear innocuous. Massicott says he's heard of dogs being used to sniff out termites in the past, and thought to apply the skills of his first black-lab mix, Jada, to sniff out bedbugs when there was an epidemic in 2002.
He’s since trained a small army of mutts, all adopted from dogs' homes. There’s only one requirement: “They’ve got to like to hunt,” he says.
Each young dog is trained for an average of 18 months. Initially they are introduced to the pest’s scent and rewarded with a treat each time they smell the bugs; the process culminates in the dog seeking out that scent on its own.
Each dog is capable of covering 150 hotel bedrooms per day.
Source:
Times Online
Cute video of bay animals playing & having fun - Weezer performing Island In The Sun: Spike Jonze.
Watch the video
