The grand circle of life is on display at the University of Florida Small Animal Hospital. The institution reports that it “… offers the highest quality diagnostic and treatment care for all non-domestic animals, including Florida indigenous wildlife and non-native exotic animals.“ “Our service has exceptional experience and unparalleled facilities for non-domestic mammal medicine. We […]
Tag: animals
Ig Nobel winner Frans de Waal: The intelligence of animals
Ig Nobel Prize winner Frans de Waal published an essay about “The Brains of the Animal Kingdom“, in the Wall Street Journal. It begins: Who is smarter: a person or an ape? Well, it depends on the task. Consider Ayumu, a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University who, in a 2007 study, put human memory to […]
The breakfast-cereal bat comes to roost at the museum
The pipistrelle bat (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) that made headlines (and this blog) in Germany last November, after the Chemisches und Veterinäruntersuchungsambt (CVUA-Stuttgart) reported its find in a box of breakfast cereals, is in the news again. The mummified insectivore is now a registered specimen (NMR 9990- 03109) in the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. […]
Improved Method for Tracking Apocryphal Animals
Apocryphal animals are notoriously difficult to tag and track. This new study tells of a technological advance that could make a difference: “Indirect Tracking of Drop Bears Using GNSS Technology“,” Volker Janssen [pictured here], Australian Geographer, Volume 43, Issue 4, December 2012. (Thanks to investigator Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.) The author, […]
Dogs Tail Wagging (Robotic and Otherwise): an Update
Back in 2010, Improbable reported ongoing investigations regarding tail-wagging in robotic dogs. We can now provide readers with an update, thanks to researcher Stephen Leaver, who has posted a video of Robodog in action via his research lab webpage. The accompanying paper : ‘Behavioural responses of Canis familiaris to different tail lengths of a remotely-controlled […]
The ‘Animal Elimination Problem’
Are vegetarians being cruel to animals? In the sense that they might be contributing to the ‘Animal Elimination Problem’ (i.e. as a result of their refusal to eat them, are they denying as yet unborn bred-for-food animals the right to a life)? Such problems have been examined by top-of-his-class Professor Stephen H. Webb (Wabash College, […]
Shake, animal, shake—and dry, at your own frequency
A furred animal shakes itself dry at a characteristic frequency. This video documents the physics of it, in slow motion accompanied by music. This study, from which the video is descended, explains the detail: “Wet Animals Shake at Tuned Frequencies to Dry,” Andrew K. Dickerson, Zachary G. Mills, and David L. Hu, Journal of the […]
Deciding not to blow up a cow (officially)
The US Forest Service has decided to not use its standard disposal-by-detonation procedure in the celebrated case of the forlornly frozen cows, which we described recently. MSNBC/US News reports [HT Adam Orbit, again]: Solution found for dead cows stuck in mountain cabin: saws What to do with the carcasses of six cows inside a U.S. […]
George Macleod and book dilution
George Macleod (MRCVS, DVSM, Vet.FFHom, according to reports) wrote several books. A web site [from which we reproduce the apparently diluted photo you see here] that sells those books says: George Macleod, a graduate of Glasgow University, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on homoeopathic treatment of animals. He is one of the few veterinary […]
A democracy depends on uninformed individuals, we are informed
A democracy without a substantial number of uninformed individuals, may not know what it’s doing, metaphorically speaking. So implies this new study: “Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups,” Iain D. Couzin [pictured here in a blurry photo], Christos C. Ioannou, Güven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J. Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa Conradt, Simon A. […]