Ten Halloween Safety Tips for Pets

Halloween can be a festive and fun time for children and families. But for pets? Let's face it, it can be a downright nightmare. Forgo the stress and dangers this year by following these 10 easy tips.

http://tinyurl.com/maz9nrn

How Was Work? Just Snuggled With Some Kittens

Brace yourselves: Jackson and Eve, 3-month old kittens that are brother and sister, just stopped by the TIME headquarters in New York City. ASPCA reps held them, and staffers got to pet the gray-and-black-striped cats in front of blown up posters of past magazine covers. Eve grabbed this reporter’s notepad, for instance.  In honor of National Cat Day on Oct. 29, offices in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle were able to request kitten and cupcake deliveries in exchange for a $20 donation that will go to a local shelter, as part of a promotion organized by Uber, the taxi-hailing app, CHEEZburger, a website for memes, the Seattle Humane Society, and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).

http://tinyurl.com/ooq3hrb

Top 10 Exotic Animals of Costa Rica

Sandwiched between two continents and two seas, Costa Rica is a biogeographical bridge bursting with life and natural wonders. For such a small country, it offers some of the finest and most varied wildlife viewing on the planet.  Similar in size to West Virginia, this rain forest-cloaked Central American country is home to more than 500,000 different species -- about 4 percent of all plant, insect and wildlife species on Earth.

http://tinyurl.com/me7yxl3

Twin Panda Cubs Named at Zoo Atlanta

The twin giant panda cubs born in July at Zoo Atlanta now have names.  Zoo officials said Wednesday the pandas will be called Mei Lun and Mei Huan, which originates from a Chinese idiom that means “something indescribably beautiful and magnificent.”  People voted on several possible names through the website for ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

http://tinyurl.com/k7fzxqe

Sumatran Elephants Suffer in Rush for 'Liquid Ivory'

Western consumers are inadvertently driving the Sumatran elephant to extinction by eating, washing and wearing - in cosmetics - the derivatives of a fruit that is destroying the animal's last remaining forest habitat. Jim Wickens reports.

http://tinyurl.com/lqzdmcx

Bob Barker Donates $1M to Send Rescued Elephants to California Sanctuary

Three former zoo elephants from Canada have arrived at their new home in a California sanctuary after former "Price is Right" host and animal activist Bob Barker sought and paid for the move.The 89-year-old Barker was on hand late Sunday to welcome the pachyderms to the Performing Animal Welfare Society's ARK 2000 compound in the hills near San Andreas, The Sacramento Bee reported.  "It was more than emotional for me, for all of us," Barker said. "I had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. It's hard to believe they are finally here."

http://tinyurl.com/n4mtk9p

'Blackfish' To Air on CNN

Today on Twitter the words #seeBlackFishCNN were trending for a while. On Oct. 20, it was obvious that this new documentary that will air on CNN is making a huge impact on the world already. Stop Insane Cruelty went to Twitter to voice their opinion and so did other people.

http://tinyurl.com/lnjqr79

‘Shake’ Captures Pups in Motion

In 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge used photography to capture high-speed motion and prove that when a horse gallops, all four of its hooves leave the ground. In her new book “Shake,” shutterbug Carli Davidson uses the same technology to demonstrate that when dogs perform the titular action their body parts swing, sway and spin in beautiful, unexpected and hilarious ways.

http://tinyurl.com/k3uymbd

American Humane Association Hero Dog Awards Announced

The top 2013 American Hero Dog will be announced Saturday at the third annual American Humane Association Hero Dog Awards at The Beverly Hilton.  The winner is determined by a combination of more than 1 million votes cast by the public and by a celebrity panel that included entertainers Whoopi Goldberg and Kristin Chenoweth as well as country singing star Miranda Lambert.

http://tinyurl.com/o4cmzf5

Kenya to Microchip Every Rhino's Horn

Microchips will be placed in the horn of every rhinoceros in Kenya in an ambitious bid to tackle the scourge of poaching, wildlife officials have announced.  The World Wildlife Fund donated the chips as well as five scanners at a cost of $15,000 (£9,400). Tracking the rhinos – there are more than 1,000 in Kenya – to dart them and fit the device will cost considerably more.

http://tinyurl.com/l9c9gbm

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013

The winners of this year’s prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition have been announced today at a gala awards ceremony held at London’s Natural History Museum. South African photographer Greg du Toit has been named Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 by the panel of international judges for his image Essence of elephants, a mysterious and energetic portrait of African elephants in the Northern Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana. 

http://tinyurl.com/mffr7b3

October is Adopt A Shelter Dog Month

October is 'Adopt-a-shelter dog month' many dogs are adopted this month throughout the Magic Valley.  Ralitsa Carter recently brought home three-month-old Rio; he's a lab, husky mix.  In the past, she always bought dogs from breeders. This time, she decided to go in a different direction.  "With my husband we've been discussing for a very longtime to whether or not to get a dog or not. We decided to get one and we thought the best thing for both us and one of those lucky dogs to just come home with us. That's why we decided to adopt” said Ralitsa Carter, adopted a dog. 

http://tinyurl.com/mlzvvjm

The Original LOL Cats

Think our fascination with quirky pictures of cats began with the Internet? In their new book, “The Photographed Cat: Picturing Human-Feline Ties, 1890-1940” (Syracuse University Press), authors Arnold Arluke and Lauren Rolfe show how we’ve been embarrassing our furry friends since the birth of photography. Here, Tiger, the mascot of a VFW post in Long Beach, Calif., poses after World War I.

http://tinyurl.com/k45wksn

Elephants 'Understand Human Gesture'

African elephants have demonstrated what appears to be an instinctive understanding of human gestures, according to UK scientists.  In a series of tests, researcher Ann Smet, of the University of St Andrews, offered the animals a choice between two identical buckets, then pointed at the one containing a hidden treat.  From the first trial, the elephants chose the correct bucket.  The results are published in the journal Current Biology.

http://tinyurl.com/lmdbxc9

Tales of Unlikely Animal Adoptions

Stories of interspecies friendships are always adorable, but they’re truly heartwarming when they involve animals adopting young outside their species and caring for them as their own. Lisa Rogak collected more than 40 such tales in her new book, "One Big Happy Family: Heartwarming Stories of Animals Caring for One Another."

http://tinyurl.com/kqubmkn

Seal Survives By a Nose

This lucky seal avoided a grisly death in the jaws of a great white shark — by a nose.  The marine mammal was swimming with a pod of pals off the coast of South Africa when the killer fish tried turning it into lunch.  But the massive predator missed its mark as it breached the surface, nailing the seal with its snout — instead of row after row of razor-sharp teeth.  

http://tinyurl.com/kbv99cs

Five Animals That Hold Key to Immortality

While death's cold, bony fingers will inevitably reach all creatures, Mother Nature has imbued a few of her quirkier children with resilient biology seemingly predisposed to keep mortality at bay. Tapping into their secrets has long been a quest for scientists, not least because the thought of our minds flickering out one day continues to bother most people. 

http://tinyurl.com/pzvfbkw

How Pets Grieve When Their Furry Friends Die

When Adam Marsh lost his 6-year-old Pomeranian, Astor, to lung disease in June, he wasn’t the only one in their downtown apartment devastated by the death. Marsh’s other dog, Cooper, a 2-year-old, 6-pound Chihuahua- dachshund mix, seemed to be grieving as well.

http://tinyurl.com/prfrwpy

Dogs Are People, Too

For the past two years, my colleagues and I have been training dogs to go in an M.R.I. scanner — completely awake and unrestrained. Our goal has been to determine how dogs’ brains work and, even more important, what they think of us humans.

http://tinyurl.com/lmqlxl9

What People Get All Wrong About Their Cats

We may think we know our furry feline friends, but they’re often misunderstood, says anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, author of the new book “Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet.”

http://tinyurl.com/n28jh4f

What Government Shutdown Means for Animals?

Congressional Democrats and Republicans failed to reach agreement last night on continued funding of the federal government, and Washington this morning began the process of temporarily mothballing its programs and services.   In a shutdown, "non-essential" federal workers are furloughed, while some "essential" operations continue. 

http://tinyurl.com/me9ssxj

Oh, Don’t Mind Our Pet Lion

You’ve been looking at the home of actress Tippi Hedren in California, photographed by LIFE magazine during the early 1970s. Best-known for her role in Hitchcock’s The Birds, Tippi is also the mother of actress Melanie Griffith (Working Girl), who is the little girl you just saw lying in bed with a lion, and also above with her head in its mouth.

http://tinyurl.com/bn3psq5

Images: Meet the Family Living With 7 Tigers

Ary Marcos Borges da Silva, 43, (center) with his daughter Uyara (right) and his granddaughter Rayara riding atop their tiger, Tom, in Maringa, Brazil near Sao Paolo.

http://tinyurl.com/oe8vzfa