One of the world's few remaining pageants of objectification and commoditization.
How's the animal rights movement doing? If you rate it by the simple question "How many animals have rights?" you'd have to say "Not very well." Call it the animal rights paradox.
Premiered at Sundance, the movie follows attorney Steven M. Wise as he argues to a high court judges that chimpanzee Tommy has the capacity for legal rights and should be set free…
Winston Churchill famously said: “A dog looks up to you; a cat looks down on you; only a pig treats you as an equal.” But that, of course, is hardly how we treat them…
In a sane world, it would be headline news. Everything else would immediately come to a screeching halt to make way for a massive, worldwide attempt to turn things around. (Of…
The Whale Who Took Down SeaWorld
Egg Industry Concession Is No ‘Victory’
For Chimps, the End of Vivisection, Almost
Cecil Is the Least of It
Would you be able to find something if you could only look at it through a mirror? Crows can. This puts them among a small group of species, including humans, dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants and magpies, who have been shown to be able to process mirror information.
OSHA attorney John Black said, “Killer whales are large, powerful and non-domesticated animals. They have the potential to cause serious physical harm or death to people who get near them.”
Here are a few facts and figures about orcas in captivity. There are currently 42 orcas in captivity worldwide. More than half of them are owned by marine circuses in the U.S.
Monday, 19 months after killer whale Tilikum dragged his trainer to her death, SeaWorld Orlando will be in court to fight charges of having committed “willful” safety violations.
Former SeaWorld trainers speak about the danger and about how wrong it is to be keeping killer whales in captivity in the first place.
The dog in this iconic photo from the relief effort at Ground Zero was Riley, a golden retriever who came to the wreckage with his person, Chris Selfridge from Pennsylvania. We spoke with him about working with Riley in the wreckage of the World Trade Center:
Scientists at Murdoch University in Western Australia began noticing dolphins carrying large conch shells in their mouths to trap small fish.
They stopped at the open door. They stared out nervously for a moment. Then they hugged each other in delight and stepped gingerly into the sunlight.
In the hours and days following the attack on the Twin Towers, almost 100 trained dogs from 18 states, were deployed in the search-and-rescue efforts at Ground Zero. Photographer Charlotte Dumas went in search of the dogs who are still with us.
Within minutes of the first strike, the Internet was buzzing with e-mail reports, requests for help, and responses. It was still the early days of e-mail. There was no Facebook, no Twitter. Some of the old online services like AOL were still central gathering places for people. But e-mail was coming into its heyday.
Get together now and build an emergency coalition. In the New York disaster, the city’s Animal Care & Control took on most of the animal rescue and relocation side of things, the Suffolk SPCA took care of the search-and-rescue dogs, and the ASPCA handled emergency veterinary care. Decide who’s going to be doing what in your community.
Most people are not prepared to deal with emergencies that affect their animals. Here are a few quick pointers:
“The lieutenant asked Cody and me to climb down into a pit 10 feet deep and search for any signs of life. I called into the back of the hose truck several times, but there was no response. Then Cody, my golden retriever, began scratching the earth and whimpering. I told the firefighters above me: ‘We have a body down here!’”
Kathleen Ross, had been in her lower Manhattan apartment, just blocks from the World Trade Center, when the terrorists struck. She knew she had to get out, but her 4-year-old cat, Tweety-Pye, was too terrified to cooperate. As the second tower collapsed, the beautiful gray kitty ran and hid.
“The dogs would come out of the site covered in ash and debris,” Gross recalled. “We hydrated them with IV fluids, rinsed the dust out of their eyes, bathed them, gave them antibiotics, cleaned and stitched wounds, and fitted them with booties.”
On the 70th floor, as soon as he heard the crash and the ensuing chaos, Omar Eduardo Rivera, who was blind, ordered his guide dog, Dorado, to go down the stairs to safety without him. Rivera was certain he could never make it to safety himself.
When Marcello Forte took a call from New York City animal control, there were already 30,000 tons of food and supplies piling up at the waterfront. The Center for Animal Care and Control (CACC) urgently needed help at Pier 40, which had been set up as an emergency distribution point.
As pet lovers, we’re convinced that our pets make us a happier and healthier person. I thought “the pet effect” was an established scientific fact.
Laws that protect animals from cruelty are granted as acts of kindness, not inherent rights. One attorney is setting out to put a crack in the legal wall that separates humans from nonhumans.
It’s one of the largest cat hoarding cases in history. But not long ago it was celebrated as a haven for abandoned kitties. What happened?