Animal Shelter Shares ‘Beautiful Images’ After All Are Adopted

A US animal shelter has celebrated the adoption of all of its resident animals by sharing images of their empty pens.  Photos from the Indiana centre show a vacant cat and kitten playpen and empty dog and puppy kennels.  The record 100 percent adoption rate was a first for Fort Wayne Animal Care and Control, according to its Facebook page.

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Animal Behavior Expert Says Understanding Animals' Emotions Is Key

You can tell when an animal is stressed: The whites of its eyes show, the tail swishes, the head is up and ears pinned back, and it defecates more. It may balk, bolt or lash out.  People who work with animals, whether as veterinarians, trainers, facility or livestock managers, need to understand animals’ emotional response if they want the best outcomes, Temple Grandin told students and faculty at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at a lunchtime lecture Tuesday. She is an internationally known designer of livestock facilities, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and autism activist.

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Animals Are Showing Up In Really Strange Places

In the spring of 2010, a lone grey whale was spotted off the Mediterranean coast of Israel, an event that sparked international interest for an important reason: It was the first North Atlantic sighting of a grey whale, a species nowadays restricted to the Pacific Ocean, in about 200 years.  The case is just one example in a recent spate of animals turning up in places they don't belong - generally, either Pacific species showing up in the Atlantic, or vice versa. Northern gannets, a North Atlantic species, have been spotted off the coast of California several times in recent years, for instance, while several Pacific species of auks, a type of diving bird, have recently been observed in the Atlantic.

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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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Animal That Survives in Space Has Weird DNA

The only animal known to survive the extreme environment of outer space without the help of special equipment turns out to have the most foreign DNA of any species.Water bears, also known as tardigrades, have genomes that are nearly one-sixth foreign, meaning that the DNA comes from creatures other than the animal itself, new research finds.  The discovery, published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to the evidence that tiny water bears are incredibly unique and seemingly indestructible animals. In 2007, some were even rocketed into space on the outside of a satellite.

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Want to Work With Animals?

So you want to work with animals? Having a real passion for the area is an excellent start, says Tom Laws, a careers adviser working with the National Careers Service.  “If you’re just starting out or planning a career change, begin by volunteering at a local kennel or animal charity,” he says. “After getting more of an idea about the day-to-day tasks of the work, and speaking directly with people working there, it could help make your mind up about re-training.”

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Profile: A Human Touch For Animals

Temple Grandin, 68, is one of the world’s top experts on nurturing farm animals. She trains farmers and ranchers to raise livestock without causing them pain or fear. Those methods and insights make their care — called animal husbandry — faster and easier because the animals do not become anxious.  Grandin also has designed slaughterhouses, facilities where animals are killed for food. Animals move through these facilities without stress. Death comes instantly and painlessly. About 30 million cattle are killed for meat every year in the United States. Today more than half of those cattle are processed in systems that Grandin designed.

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The Truth About Animal Charities, Cats and Dogs

As we approach December - the month when almost a third of all charitable giving for the year takes place - many of us might be wondering where we should be sending our charitable donations. Some of us will choose to give to charities such as Against Malaria Foundation, which helps to protect people in the developing world from a disease that kills almost 3,000 children every day. And yet, despite the great needs of humans around the world, many people will choose to donate to charities that help animals. In fact, it has recently been reported by the Mirror that “bequests to animal charities beat donations to human causes”, and that donations bequeathed to animals “dwarfed” those going to vulnerable and abused children.

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Top 10 Most Virile Male Animals

Sperm and male sex organ extremes are revealed in a new study of more than 100 mammal species. The study also answers a question that has baffled scientists for years: Which is favored more during evolution, sperm size or sperm count? Quantity is key for mammals such as this roaring male lion, which can mate up to 60 times per day. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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Why Some Animals Are More Tolerant to Human Interaction

When most wild animals first encounter humans, they respond as they would to any predator—by running, swimming or flying away.Over time, some species become more tolerant of humans' presence, but the extent to which they do is largely driven by the type of environment in which the animals live and by the animal's body size, according to a comprehensive new analysis.

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