Many Smaller Animals Clean Themselves to Survive

Going without a shower for a few days might make you feel gross, but for small animals like bees and houseflies, keeping clean is a matter of life or death.A mosquito flying through the fog of the early morning may find its wings so weighed down by water droplets that it can no longer search for food. A honeybee can easily pick up five times its body weight in pollen over the course of a day.  "It's all relative," said Guillermo Amador, a doctoral student at Georgia Institute of Technology. "To us, a particle of dust doesn't mean anything, but if a mosquito accumulates too many of them it gets too heavy to fly."

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Can We Justify Killing Animals For Food?

Is it right to kill animals for food? And if it's wrong, how wrong is it? Could and should Western society ever change its views?  Four philosophers share their views with BBC Radio 4's Analysis programme.  Peter Singer: Our future selves will consider meat eating to be barbaric  Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and the author of Animal Liberation.

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Genetic Islands Are Stranding Big Animals

Big animals like to move. They need lots of space to find food and suitable mates. But animals around the world are increasingly finding it tough to get around as their habitats are being chopped up into small patches of protected reserves.  Chinese pandas, Florida panthers, Indian tigers, Africa’s mountain gorillas, and now possibly jaguars in Central America are all getting swept into a biological black hole of shrinking spaces and smaller gene pools from which they can reproduce.

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Funny Animals Lounging Around

Animals, just like humans, have a wide range of personality traits such as laziness, which can gain them quite a reputation. As most others have stated being lazy in the animal kingdom can actually be an excellent tool for survival. Being lazy can help save energy. Laziness is a disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to do so. It is common for animals to forage for food until satiated, and then spend most of their time doing nothing, or at least nothing in particular. 

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Surprising Animal Victims of Your Favorite Foods

Sustainable eating isn’t always easy. Picking up whatever’s cheap and convenient is definitely simpler than making sure that our food came from responsible, cruelty-free sources. We all know the effort is worth it, and sometimes all we need is an extra push. We’ve put together a list that puts a face on who you could help by being a conscious consumer. Click through for five unexpected victims of your favorite foods.

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Animals Feel Pleasure

Do dogs feel pleasure? How about crocodiles? Jonathan Balcombe says yes, they do. And not just dogs and crocodiles, but also fish, monkeys, pigs and chickens.  "Why wouldn’t they?" he says. "Pleasure is nature’s way of saying 'Good behavior!' It encourages us to do it again. Little wonder, then, that food, play, sex and friendships feel so good. Fishes line up for a spa service from cleaner-fishes, crocodiles love to bask in the sun, as do chickens, and if you haven’t seen a pig eat a pumpkin then it’s time you turned your lights on."

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-Igor Purlantov

Top 5 Summer Pet Hazards

The recent heat wave that cooked much of the U.S. killed dozens of people across the country, but in addition to the human casualties, animals also perished in the sweltering heat and humidity. Just as heat and sun can be hazardous to human health, animals are vulnerable to the numerous risks summer poses.

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How Elephants Use Insight to Solve Problems

Highly social and clever and cooperative with tools, elephants are often near the top of the brainiest creatures list. Now, scientists have added a new talent to elephants' mental repertoire: The ability to solve a problem using insight—that aha! moment when your internal light bulb switches on and you figure out the solution to a puzzle.

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