Feb. 15/2017

Feature:
Meet The Dogs Sniffing Out Unwell Trees

“Mira’s nose is so sensitive that she can smell sick citrus trees, & U.S. orange growers are hoping her super sniffer will help combat one of the biggest threats ever to their crop.

The government has trained 10 dogs including Mira- a 32 month old German shepherd-Belgian Malinois mix- to identify a bacteria that has been killing citrus trees for a decade in Florida...Similar to canine teams that sniff out bombs, drugs, & even bed bugs, this one is on the hunt for a disease known as citrus greening...

...Dogs, with 50 times more scent receptors in their noses than humans, sense chemicals that trees emit when infected. They’re accurate 99.7% of the time...

‘They’re pretty much the forefront of early detection for us right now,’ said Yindra Dixon, a public affairs specialist for the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service...

‘Tests show the wet noses of the dogs are more accurate than DNA sampling techniques...The animals also have detected the disease in trees that didn’t show symptoms until days or weeks later...

Once trained, Mira & the other dogs have shown they are both eager & accurate, said Jerry Bishop, the training director at Coast to Coast K9 Teams, the company working with the USDA to co-ordinate grove inspections by the animals.

‘As soon as she comes out of the kennel, she likes to chest bump you,’ Bishop said of Mira. ‘She’s like, ‘Let’s go to work. I’m ready’...”

Melissa Mittelman
Bloomberg News
in The Montreal Gazette
March 5/2016

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Feb. 8/2017

Feature:
Polydactyl Cats: The Felines With Extra Toes

 “Regular cats have 5 toes on their front feet & 4 on their back, for a total of 18. But polydactyl... cats boast more toes, usually on their front feet.

...the Greek root poly means ‘many’ & daktylos means ‘digits or toes’. The record holder for most toes was a kitty named Jake, who had a whopping 28.

American writer Ernest Hemingway was a lover of polydactyl cats. He was given his first polydactyl cat, a white 6-toed feline named Snowball, by a ship’s captain; today, nearly 50 of Snowball’s descendants still live at the Hemingway Home in Key West.  Polydactyl cats are known by many names, including ‘Hemingway cats’,...'mitten cats’, ‘big-foot cats’ & ‘6-toed cats’ — or even ‘cats with thumbs’.

Interesting Facts
    The first scientific record of polydactyls is from 1868. They were mostly found in the northeastern United States & Nova Scotia. One theory is that the first mitten kittens were brought to America by English Puritans in the 1600s.

    President Theodore Roosevelt’s poly kitty Slippers was one of the first cats to purr around the White House.

    Polydactyl cats often found their way onto boats because sailors believed they were good luck. They were widely recognized as top-notch mousers, & their extra toes were rumored to give them better balance while sailing the high seas.

Common Questions
New York veterinarian Dr. Arnold Plotnick of Manhattan Cat Specialists tells us a little more about polydactyl cats...

Some cats have extra toes because they inherit a gene that codes for polydactylism. If one parent is polydactyl & one parent has normal feet, then 40-50% of the kittens will also be polydactyl...

Most polydactyl cats have extra toes that look like the other toes — there are just more of them. Thumb cat polydactyly is a condition where the first digit, or the dewclaw, is so large that it resembles a thumb...

...there’s no certain breed of cat that is more or less prone to being polydactyl. However, in the past, the original Maine Coon cats had a high incidence of polydactylism — about 40%...”

 Vetstreet Staff (Vetstreet.com)
April 21/2016
care2.com

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Feb. 1/2017

Feature:
Dolphins Recorded Chatting With Each Other Like Humans

“...picture 2 dolphins chatting away like humans. Well, according to one recent study, that’s not such a wild thing to imagine. Apparently, dolphins talk with each other in much the same way as humans, but instead of words, they use pulsed clicks to communicate.

The Telegraph reports that dolphins have been recorded having a conversation for the first time after scientists developed an underwater microphone that could distinguish the animals’ different ‘voices’.

We’ve known for some time that mammals such as dolphins have advanced communication skills involving various clicks & whistles. But what this new research shows is that dolphins actually form words by altering the volume & frequency of the sounds they make. And they string their “words” together to form — you guessed it — sentences. Like humans do.

The research took place at the Karadag Nature Reserve, in Feodosia, Ukraine...

...researchers recorded 2 Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, named Yasha & Yana, talking to each other in a pool.

They were able to distinguish the dolphins’ different ‘voices’. They also noticed that each dolphin would listen to a sentence of pulses without interruption, before replying...

...Lead researcher Dr. Vyacheslav Ryabov confirms, saying, ‘The analysis of numerous pulses registered in our experiments showed that the dolphins took turns in producing [sentences] & did not interrupt each other, which gives reason to believe that each of the dolphins listened to the other’s pulses before producing its own’...

This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence & consciousness in dolphins, & their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language...

We already know that dolphins & humans actually see the world in similar ways...”

Tex Dworkin
Sept. 17/ 2016
care2.com

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Memorial
Peanut
Gone way too soon.

Jan. 25/2017

Feature:
Yes, Dogs Apparently Do Understand What We’re Saying

“...According to a new study, not only do dogs comprehend what we’re trying to tell them by the tone of our voices, but they can also even understand what it is we’re saying — sort of.

Neuroscientist Attila Andics & his fellow researchers at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest discovered that just like human brains, a dog’s brain reacts to both the meaning of a word & how it is spoken. Just like us, the left hemisphere of a dog’s brain responds to meaning, while the right hemisphere responds to intonation.

The study...shows that even non-primate mammals who cannot speak can still comprehend the meanings of words in a speech-filled environment. This suggests that the ability of our brains to process words is not unique to humans, & may have evolved much earlier than previously thought.

Not only could these results help make communicating with our dogs more efficient, but the study sheds new light on the origin of words during language evolution. ‘What makes words uniquely human is not a special neural capacity, but our invention of using them,’ Andics said...

...The 13 participants were all family pets. They included 6 border collies, 5 golden retrievers, a Chinese crested dog, & a German shepherd.

To be tested, the dogs were first trained to lie still for 8 minutes in the MRI machine while wearing headphones & a radiofrequency coil...Their brain activity was recorded as they listened to a recording of their trainer saying, in both positive & neutral tones, words of praise – like ‘Good boy!’ & ‘Well done!’ – as well as neutral words like ‘however’ & ‘as if.’

...the positively spoken positive words got a big reaction in the reward centers of the dogs’ brains. The positive words spoken neutrally & neutral words spoken with positive tones? Not so much.

Regardless of how they were spoken, the dogs processed the meaningful words in the left hemisphere of their brains. They processed intonation in the right hemisphere.

...'It shows that these words have meaning to dogs. They integrate the 2 types of information to interpret what they heard, just as we do.’...”

Laura Goldman
care2.com
September 5/ 2016

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Jan. 18/2017

Feature:
Why Are Sloths Sooo Slow?

“...While a cheetah can go from 0 to 60 miles an hour in only 3 seconds, it takes a sloth all day to cover 41 yards.

...according to a new study, the lethargic lifestyle of tree sloths is the direct result of the animal’s adaption to its arboreal niche.

Sloths live entirely in trees on a diet of leaves (making them folivores). And for this they are extremely rare. While most of the terrestrial world is covered in trees, there are very few vertebrates that call the canopy home. The aim of new study, says Jonathan Pauli, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of forest & wildlife ecology, was to help explain why arboreal folivores are indeed so rare & why more animals have not evolved to take advantage of a widespread ecological niche.

‘Among vertebrates, this is the rarest of lifestyles,’ says Pauli...

For their research, Pauli & his Wisconsin team studied wild 2 & 3 toed sloths at a field site in in northeastern Costa Rica.

‘Most of the world is forested, but the energetic constraints of a leafy diet seem to prevent adaptive radiation,’ Pauli notes. As organisms evolve they ‘radiate’ out from their ancestral group, & in doing so take on various traits & forms to allow them to live more specialized lives. For the sloth, this means ‘specialized limb adaption, reduced body mass, a slow metabolic rate & claws that act like fulcrums – hooks to accommodate the animals’ need to hang in & traverse the treetops.’

‘This study explains why eating leaves in the canopies of trees leads to life in the slow lane, why fast-moving animals like birds tend not to eat leaves, & why animals like deer that eat a lot of leaves tend to be big & live on the ground,’ says Doug Levey, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.

When the researchers measured the energy use of 3-toed sloths, they found a wildly low expenditure of as little as 460 kilojoules of energy a day, the equivalent of burning a 110 calories... It is the lowest measured energetic output for any mammal.

‘The measurement was intended to find out what it cost the sloth to live over a day,’ says Pauli, who says that a diet of little but leaves lacks nutritional value & the animal’s small doesn’t allow for gorging – so sloths need to find ways to maximize their meager diets. Which means using tiny amounts of energy through a reduced metabolic rate, dramatic regulation of body temperature, & living life at an exceedingly languid pace...”


Melissa Breyer (Treehugger)
July 24/2016
care2.com

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Jan. 11/2017

Feature:

Study Finds Fish Can Recognize Our Faces

“...In a recent study, researchers found that there’s at least one fish species capable of recognizing individual human faces with a high rate of accuracy.

...a team of researchers from the University of Oxford & the University of Queensland found that archerfish can identify human faces after teaching them to choose one & spit at an image of it for a food reward.

According to the study, which was just published in Scientific Reports, when the fish were shown up to 44 new faces, they still picked the right one 81% of the time...

‘It has been hypothesized that this task is so difficult that it can only be accomplished by primates, which have a large & complex brain...we wanted to determine if another animal with a smaller & simpler brain, & with no evolutionary need to recognize human faces, was still able to do so,” Dr Cait Newport, lead author of the study & a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, said in a statement.

...Hopefully for fish, more knowledge on our part about how intelligent & aware they are will help us reconsider how we treat them...

They have long-term memories, recognize themselves & others, feel pain, can count, can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, play, develop traditions, form bonds with each other & learn from past experiences.

Fish have also been found to use tools & use different sides of their brains...Manta rays were also recently found to be the first fish to recognize themselves in a mirror, which is used as an indicator of self-awareness...

For more info on why we should rethink our relationship with fish, check out FishFeel.org.”


Alicia Graef
June 11/ 2016
care2.com

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Jan. 4/2017

Feature:
Pets Get Their Own Bathroom in New York’s JFK Airport

“In an effort to accommodate travelers with furry friends, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York has created a bathroom specifically for pets.

The facility is located at Terminal 4, right between the men & women’s bathrooms. It is 70 square feet & has artificial turf & even a fire hydrant for pets to feel comfortable while doing their business...

Pet owners are responsible for cleaning up after their pets... There are poop bags in a dispenser, as well as a hose.

JFK Airport’s pet facilities are not unique. Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, & Seattle-Tacoma International Airport all have pet relief stations... Federal regulations require that all airports that service 10,000 people or more must have special areas for pets by August 2016.
Airlines have seen an uptick in pet travel & have made changes to accommodate passengers & their animal companions. Many of these animals are service or emotional-support dogs, though people often travel with their pets as well.

In 2001, Israel’s El Al Airlines incorporated frequent flyer miles for pets. Called Points for Pets, the pet earns a free trip after they have completed 3 trips on the airline within 3 years...Virgin Atlantic Airlines launched its pet travel program in 2005... The airline even offers a welcome pack for pets, which includes a T-shirt, collar tag, & a pet passport, which tracks the amount of times traveled & gives rewards for every 5 trips.

In 2015, American Airlines created specialty pet cabins for first-class passengers. There are now 2 pet cabins on the carrier’s 17 Airbus 321 aircraft... The special pet carrier costs $125 each way for passengers...”


Lindsay Patton
May 4/2016
care2.com

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