A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Posts from the ‘Old News’ category

  • Ringling Caves!

    The elephants are packing their trunks. By any standard, today’s decision by the Ringling Circus to phase out its elephant acts represents a seismic shift in the use of…

  • Collapse of Antarctic Ice Sheet Irreversible

    One of the six major glaciers being eroded from below by warm water What does it mean when two major studies this week tell us that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is…

  • 2013 Game Changers

    Two events share top prize as game changers for the year just ending: The Nonhuman Rights Project's lawsuits have started a whole new conversation about how we relate to other…

  • Mother Carries Shot Pit Bull to Safety

    It started out as the same hike that Andi Davis does every day to the top of one of the mountains near where she lives in Phoenix, Arizona. But this time, close to the top,…

  • Liberators or Terrorists?

    When 100 people, mostly women from various rescue groups, rescued 178 beagles from a research lab in Brazil last week, nobody called them terrorists. The five security officers…

    The Right Music for Cats
    Greyhound Shock Angers Australians
    Holiday Gift for Elephant Music Lovers
    The Yeti Bear

    Elephant ‘Stud’ Shipped Around the World

    The Denver Post calls Billy the elephant a “pachyderm heartthrob”. We’d call him a cardiac patient in the making.

    Billy is on his way to the Denver Zoo from Europe in hopes that he’ll father a new baby to put on display there.

    Elephants at zoos are dying faster than replacements can be born, and there’s talk of zoo elephants needing to be classified as “endangered”.

    So it’s no surprise that zoos are racing to keep their populations from dwindling – and that rather than address the cause of the problem (major diseases stemming from obesity), they’re shipping more elephants from one zoo to another as part of an emergency breeding program.

    Latest case in point: Billy, who was born in Ireland, then shipped to Belgium, and is now being prepared for the 5,000-mile flight from Brussels to Denver.

    Ladybug Playtime

    A student leaves some sprinkles lying around in her dorm room. A ladybug flies in. The student posts what happens next. Is it play? Does the…

    An Elephantine Obesity Epidemic

    We already know that most of the major health problems for humans – heart disease, many cancers, diabetes, arthritis, etc. – are the product of an unhealthy lifestyle. The same is true for elephants at zoos.

    And a new study, commissioned by a zoo, concludes that unless radical action is taken, the situation is so dire that elephants will be extinct at zoos within a few decades.

    The study flies in the face of what zoos keep telling us about zoos being the last refuge of elephants, protecting them from the ever-increasing dangers of living in the wild.

    Meet Your Ancestor . . .

    This is Archicebus achilles, or “beginning long-tailed monkey.” One of the very earliest of our primate ancestors, she weighed about an ounce, could fit in the…

    Giant Feral Cats Are Eating Australia

    In Northern Australia, feral cats are growing enormous – more than three feet long – and consuming much of the indigenous wildlife.

    Now the federal government is taking action to save the wildlife by killing as many cats as possible.

    Will it work? Probably not. But neither, frankly, will a trap/neuter/return program. After all, we’re talking about what’s become essentially a new species of wildlife, fully integrated into the “bush”.

    For the Love of Sloths

    Monique Pool has up to 200 sloths at her sanctuary home in Paramaribo, Suriname. Outside of the city, the rain forest is being bulldozed for cattle…

    Dear Diary

    Buzzfeed’s latest feline philosophy. “Like Sisyphus, I am bound to hell.”(For deep thoughts on why cats are better than dogs, go here.)