Disinformation » Animal Rights

California Court To Rule Whether SeaWorld Whales Are Illegal ‘Slaves’

JacobSloan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:58:48 +0000

Regardless of the slim odds of a favorable ruling, it’s a groundbreaking case in its use of the Constitution to fight for intelligent animals’ freedom. Via PhysOrg:

A California federal court is to decide for the first time in US history whether amusement park animals are protected by the same constitutional rights as humans.

The issue arises from a lawsuit filed by rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in a San Diego court on behalf of five orcas named Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises. The whales perform water acrobatics at the SeaWorld amusement parks in San Diego and in Orlando, Florida.

PETA argues that continuing the whales’ “employment” at SeaWorld violates the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits slavery. District Judge Jeffrey Miller heard arguments in the complaint Monday and reviewed the response from SeaWorld, which asked that the lawsuit be dismissed. His ruling is expected to come later. “It’s a new frontier in civil rights,” said Jeff Kerr, PETA general counsel, who described the hearing as a “historic day.”

Yes, A Monkey Head Transplant Experiment Occurred in the 1960s

ralph — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:38:22 +0000

This is one of those things that would be hard to say without the video evidence. As Cyriaque Lamar explains on io9.com:

We’ve been loving the Midnight Archive’s series of macabre web shorts (previously: 1, 2). One of their more recent installments is a short documentary on the late Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon who successfully transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another …

Are Whales Slaves?

bluemana — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 02:16:54 +0000

PETA is asking … Hamilton Nolan reports on Gawker:

PETA has filed a lawsuit charging SeaWorld with violating the 13th Amendment by enslaving killer whales. This could be interesting.

The scorn heaped upon this lawsuit in the court of public opinion will be roughly equal to the scorn once heaped upon the ideas of abolition and female suffrage. Somebody please have Jay Leno read some Peter Singer before he starts to discuss this news.

Mother Bear Kills Cub and Itself to Escape ‘Crush Cage’ Torture for ‘Bear Bile’

Good German — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:13:10 +0000

Photo: SlimVirgin (CC)

AsiaOne reports:

The Chinese media has reported on an extraordinary account of a mother bear saving her cub from a life of torture by strangling it and then killing itself. The bears were kept in a farm located in a remote area in the North-West of China. The bears on the farm had their gall bladders milked daily for ‘bear bile,’ which is used as a remedy in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

It was reported that the bears are kept in tiny cages known as ‘crush cages’, as the bears have no room to manoeuvre and are literally crushed. The bile is harvested by making a permanent hole or fistula in the bears’ abdomen and gall bladder.

As the hole is never closed, the animals are suspect to various infections and diseases including tumours, cancers and death from peritonitis. The bears are fitted with an iron vest, as they often try to kill themselves by hitting their stomach as they are unable to bear the pain.A person who was on the farm in place of a friend witnessed the procedures and told Reminbao.com that they were inhumane.

The witness also claimed that a mother bear broke out its cage when it heard its cub howl in fear before a worker punctured its stomach to milk the bile.

San Francisco To Outlaw Pet Stores

JacobSloan — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:00:35 +0000

Kudos to San Francisco for its decision to crack down on an industry based on animal misery. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

San Francisco’s ever-active Animal Control and Welfare Commission has renewed its push for a pet sale ban in the city – only this time, it even covers goldfish. The idea is to put the squeeze on puppy and kitten mills that supply pet stores, and to discourage “impulse buys” of hamsters and other small pets that often wind up being dumped at shelters.

“Most fish in aquariums are either mass bred” under inhumane conditions “or taken from the wild,” commission member Philip Gerrie said. That leads to “devastation of tropical fish from places like Southeast Asia,” he said.

The proposed ban, which the commission just adopted after a year of study, was expanded to cover animal breeders as well as pet stores.
As you might expect, it has local merchants like Ocean Aquarium owner Justin Hau dumbfounded. “The city is taking more and more control,” Hau said. “They are very stupid.”

Rabbinical Court Sentences Dog To Death By Stoning For Reincarnation

BananaFamine — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:38:16 +0000

Reports Agence France-Presse via the Raw Story:

JERUSALEM — A Jerusalem rabbinical court condemned to death by stoning a dog it suspects is the reincarnation of a secular lawyer who insulted the court’s judges 20 years ago, Ynet website reported Friday.

According to Ynet, the large dog made its way into the Monetary Affairs Court in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, frightening judges and plaintiffs.

Despite attempts to drive the dog out of the court, the hound refused to leave the premises.

One of the sitting judges then recalled a curse the court had passed down upon a secular lawyer who had insulted the judges two decades previously.

Their preferred divine retribution was for the lawyer’s spirit to move into the body of a dog, an animal considered impure by traditional Judaism.

For more information, see original article.

Video: Disturbing Abuse Of Australian Cattle At Slaughterhouses

Pelliciari — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:12:44 +0000

Animals Australia and RSPCA Australia have launched a public campaign against the torture cattle endure during live export. The campaign asks the Live Export organization to reconsider the trade of living animals because of the cruel way they are treated before being slaughtered.

Note, they are not necessarily advocating vegetarianism or the elimination of slaughterhouses (although there are many benefits to reducing industrialized slaughterhouses including cutting down on pollution, increase agricultural land and reduction of animal cruelty), but they argue the unfair treatment of live animals being exported to other countries.

Warning: The video below include graphic material that may be difficult to watch.

States To Outlaw Undercover Photos And Videos Of Factory Farms

JacobSloan — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:13:48 +0000

A bill before the Iowa legislature would make it a crime to produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility.

In Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota, laws are in the works to criminalize the documenting of animal cruelty and health violations in factory farming. With activists nosing around, “people are scared to death that they might be found in a compromising position,” [says the] president of the Iowa Farm Bureau — it’s about “making producers feel more comfortable.” The New York Times reports:

Undercover videos showing grainy, sometimes shocking images of sick or injured livestock have become a favorite tool of animal rights organizations to expose what they consider illegal or inhumane treatment of animals.

Made by animal rights advocates posing as farm workers, such videos have prompted meat recalls, slaughterhouse closings, criminal convictions of employees and apologies from corporate executives assuring that the offending images are an aberration.

In Iowa, where agriculture is a dominant force both economically and politically, such undercover investigations could soon be illegal.

Similar legislation is being considered in Florida and Minnesota, part of a broader effort by large agricultural companies to pre-emptively block the kind of investigations that have left their operations uncomfortably — and unpredictably — open to scrutiny.

Endangered Sea Turtles To Be Killed After Experiment

BananaFamine — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 02:54:10 +0000

Green sea turtle. Photo: Wilfried Wittkowsky (CC)

Controversial news that’s causing an uproar. The Vancouver Sun reports:

Endangered green sea turtles that have been part of a University of B.C. research project for more than 10 years will be killed sometime this spring.

Bill Milsom, head of UBC’s zoology department, said seven turtles will be killed in order to complete a study into turtle diving depths. The turtles are at least 10 years old and can live to be 30.

The study was designed to measure the impacts of climate change on the animals and to help countries develop policies around fishing.

More than 85,000 green sea turtles died as “bycatch in the fishing industry” between 1990 and 2008, Milsom said. By studying diving depths, researchers could recommend how deep fish nets should be placed to avoid catching the turtles.

Asked why kill an endangered species, Milsom said “they were brought in for these experiments [at UBC] and as part of those experiments, it requires harvesting the tissues.”

As the research progressed, he said, the studies became more invasive. Initially, tiny pacemaker-like devices were implanted under the turtles’ skin to measure impacts of climate change.

“The final experiments require major surgery,” Milsom said.

They are necessary to “help us understand why these animals have such high mortality when caught in trawl nets in warming oceans.”

At the end of the surgery and measurements, the anesthesia will be increased until the turtles die, Milsom said.

A spokesman for an animal rights group said it makes no sense to kill an endangered species and questions why the turtles can’t be spared to “live out their final days in peace.”…

for more information, see original article or an article on the same topic at The Huffington Post.

‘The Cove’ Sent To Every Household In Japanese Fishing Village

BananaFamine — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:41:23 +0000

MNN reports:

This time last year, producers of the “The Cove” were riding high after winning Best Documentary at the 2010 Academy Awards.

Directed by Louie Psihoyos and produced by Fisher Stevens and Paula DuPre Pesmen, the film shed dramatic light on the thousands of dolphins slaughtered each year in the Japanese fishing town of Taiji. “It has the breathless pace of a Bourne movie, but none of the comfort of fiction. This is documentary filmmaking at its most exciting and purposeful,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers in a review.

This past weekend, residents of Taiji were able to give their own verdicts after a local activist group, called People Concerned for the Ocean, delivered a Japanese-dubbed copy of the film to each home. In partnership, the producers of “The Cove” also made a similar version available as a free stream on the official website.

Louie Psihoyos, Director of The Cove and founder of the non-profit Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) said, “The people in Taiji deserve to know what millions of others around the world have learned about their town by seeing “The Cove”. Not only are the killings cruel, but the threat of dolphin meat poisoned with mercury is significant. We at OPS hope that when Japanese people watch this film in the safety of their own homes, they may see that a few fishermen’s profits have endangered their children’s health.”…

For more information, see original article.

Knowsley Safari Park Makes Changes After Photographs of Carcasses Were Released

Pelliciari — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:12:20 +0000

Photographer Penny Boyd released photos of carcasses to the council and animal charities

What happens to animals that perish in a safari park? One ex-employee of Knowsley Safari Park took photos making the public aware of how the carcasses were disposed of. BBC News reports:

A Merseyside safari park was told to change the way it dealt with dead animals after an ex-employee released images of carcasses left in the open.

Knowsley Safari Park photographer Penny Boyd complained to the local council over what she believed was unnecessary killing of animals and their disposal.

An investigation by Knowsley Council found a breach of animal by-products regulations, which the park addressed.

In a statement, it said “robust new procedures” were now in place.

[Continues at BBC News]

400,000 Baby Chicks Killed By Bankrupt Poultry Farm

Easy Rider — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:41:48 +0000

Photo: Dmitry Noskoff

Stephen Messenger writes in treehugger:

Poultry workers reportedly wept as they carried out their grim task — overseeing the death of about 400 thousand newborn chicks by drowning them in water or simply dumping them in rusty barrels outside where they would succumb to the freezing winter air. Around 600,000 more birds, housed at Russia’s Krasnaya Polyana poultry farm have died of malnutrition, and the lives of 3 million others await a similar fate. A $190,000 tax debt, says the farm, has forced them to declare bankruptcy, leading to this killing of chickens on a horrific scale.

The poultry farm, located in the region of Kursk, is owned by Russian parliament member Alexander Chetverikov — and he says declaring bankruptcy, which has forced the deaths of about 1 million chickens, was his only recourse after he became the target of a political conspiracy aimed at putting him in financial ruin.

Chetverikov, a member of the JustRussia party, says he ran a campaign to fight corruption in the region’s leading United Russia-lead government — and that, “they were looking for a possibility to settle their political and personal scores with me.”

But while the politician’s finances may have fallen victim to some shady political dealings, the millions of birds at his are the ones truly paying the price…

Man Cuts Off Cat’s Head With Machete And Brags About It on Facebook

imkaan — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:51:46 +0000

Curtis Cartier writes in Seattle Weekly:

In what’s sure to be yet another blow to anyone with the name “Dameon,” Dameon Parker, a 30-year-old Olympia man has been charged with animal cruelty for allegedly luring his neighbor’s cat into his house, then cutting off its head with a machete.

The News Tribune reports Tuesday evening that a woman saw Parker carrying the kitty by the nape of its neck out to his backyard, then emerging later with a massive machete that was covered in blood and cat fur.

She apparently found the headless feline buried in the yard. But it wasn’t until Parker took to Facebook to claim victory over the helpless beast that investigators were informed of the act.

Parker’s Facebook page is still up, though it appears some of the more incriminating posts are down. The only remaining post is a plea for friends to leave one “Mary” out of the matter, followed by a full throated challenge to anyone who has something to say about catricide to do so to his face.

Woman Caught By CCTV Throwing Cat In Garbage Bin Only Receives Fine

majestic — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:29:55 +0000

The fat lady who threw a cat into a garbage bin has avoided being sent to the slammer herself. However, Mary Bale — the perp caught by the UK’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras — has been fined 265 pounds ($420) for animal cruelty (per Reuters). She could have received a sentence of up to six months in jail — should she have?

Beer With Highest Alcohol Percentage Sold In Road Kill Taxidermy

Pelliciari — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:16:39 +0000

It’s understandable that the strongest beer ever made would be sold-out within a few hours, but what’s with the road kill? Brewdog released The End of History as part of their experimental, highly-alcoholic, beers. With an alcohol content equivalent to liquor, the beer is eclectically unique with its own beer cozy. The Telegraph details:

The stunt has been condemned by animal rights groups as “cheap marketing tactics”.

Twelve bottles of The End Of History ale have been made and placed inside seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare.

And at 55 per cent volume, its makers claim it is the world’s strongest beer.

A taxidermist in Doncaster worked on the animals, which were not killed for bottling the new drink, with some having been killed on the roads.

Outfits featured on some of the animals include a kilt and a top hat.

BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, created the ale, which is stronger than whisky and vodka.

The brewer recommend the beer should be served in a shot or whisky glass ”to be enjoyed like a fine whisky”.

The firm’s co-founder James Watt said: ”In true BrewDog fashion, we’ve torn up convention, blurred distinctions and pushed brewing and beer packaging to its absolute limits.

”This is the beer to end all beers. It’s an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion; changing the general perception of beer, one stuffed animal at a time.

”The impact of The End Of History is a perfect conceptual marriage between taxidermy, art and craft brewing. The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing – they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.”

The blond Belgian ale, infused with nettles and juniper berries, was created by BrewDog’s brewers by freezing the liquid to separate water from the solution.

The process was then repeated dozens of times, requiring hundreds of litres of beer to be reduced through the process to produce just enough for a 330ml bottle.

Story continues at Telegraph …

Monkey Terrorists in Afghanistan

Pelliciari — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 19:39:45 +0000

Monkey see monkey do? or Human do, then train monkey so less humans have to do? Chinese news source, Peoples Daily Online (人民网) reads:

Afghanistan’s Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency.

Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few “monkey soldiers” holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.

According to the report, American military experts call them “monkey terrorists.”

As a form of cruel political means, wars are launched to meet political goals through conquest, devastation, assaults and other means.

In a sense, the emergence of “monkey soldiers” is the result of asymmetrical warfare. The United States launched the war in Afghanistan using the world’s most advanced weapons such as highly-intelligent robots to detect bombs on roadsides and unmanned aerial vehicles to attack major Taliban targets. In response, the Taliban forces have tried any possible means and figured out a method to train monkeys as “replacement killers” against American troops.

Analysts believe that apart from using “monkey killers” to attack the American troops, the Taliban also sought to arouse Western animal protectionists to pressure their governments to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

An American official responded that the Taliban forces have started training “monkey soldiers” after suffering heavy losses, implying that they have exhausted their tricks. Nevertheless, the Taliban believe that the emergence of “monkey soldiers” indicates that they have found smarter and more effective ways to cope with American troops.

Ironically, the initiators of “monkey soldiers” are the Americans. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained massive “monkey soldiers” in the Vietnam War and dispatched armed monkeys to dangerous jungles to launch assaults on Vietnamese soldiers. Today, the Taliban forces have given the American troops some of their own medicine.

When armed animals enter interpersonal wars, what kind of world will we face? This cannot but arouse our reflections and concerns.

Read More: Peoples Daily Online (人民网)

BP Buys Search Term “Oil Spill” from Google

Aaron Dames — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:45:13 +0000

Reports Reuters:

BP Plc has bought terms such as “oil spill” from search engine providers including Google Inc to help direct Internet users to its website as it attempts to control the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

A spokesman said BP would pay fees so its own website would rank higher or even top in the list of advertisements that appear alongside search results when Internet users search on terms such as “oil spill,” “volunteer” and “claims.”

BP did not say how much it was paying for the service but U.S. President Barack Obama has criticised the company for spending $50 million on TV advertising to bolster its image during the crisis.

BP said it wanted to help people who were trying to access information on the BP website to find it more readily, rather than intending to draw away hits from other sites.

“We know people are looking for those terms on our website and we’re just trying to make it easier for them to get directly to those terms,” the spokesman told Reuters.

Blobfish In Danger Of Extinction

JacobSloan — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:40:53 +0000

Oh no! How was it possible to miss this news? Nature’s saddest-looking animal, the blobfish, is in danger of going extinct due to over-fishing. I would sacrifice a hundred rare white timberwolves to save a single blobfish. The Telegraph reported:

Scientists fear the blobfish, which can grow up to 12 inches, is in danger of being wiped out by over-fishing in its south eastern Australian habitat.

The fish, which lives at depths of up to 800m, is rarely seen by humans but it lives at the same depths as other ocean organisms, such as crabs and lobsters and other edible sea creatures.

As a result the fish, which is inedible, is being dragged up with other catches by trawler fishermen.

Who Really Won In The Supreme Court Animal Rights-Free Speech Decision?

majestic — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:29:20 +0000

So who were the winners from the big news First Amendment decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday? Free-speech advocates say the Supreme Court protected the First Amendment. Animal-rights advocates say it showed how Congress could pass a new anti-animal cruelty law, according to the Christian Science Monitor:

Free speech advocates praised Tuesday’s US Supreme Court decision striking down a federal law banning depictions of animal cruelty.

At the same time, animal rights groups are calling on Congress to enact a new, more targeted law, to prevent trafficking in photos and videos depicting acts of severe animal cruelty, including so-called “crush” videos.

In striking down the 1999 Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, Chief Justice John Roberts said the law was substantially overbroad and could criminalize depictions of entirely lawful conduct such as hunting videos and magazines. The vote was 8 to 1.

“It is clear from the opinion and the size of the majority that the court heard the many voices concerned about this law,” said David Horowitz, executive director of the Media Coalition, a free-speech advocacy group. “This law put at risk a broad range of newspaper articles, films, books, and images of hunting and wasn’t limited to dogfighting videos,” he said.

The 1999 law was aimed in part at outlawing the production and distribution of “crush videos” involving depictions of small animals being tortured and killed by women in high heel shoes. The videos were sold in an underground trade as part of a sexual fetish.

But the 1999 law also outlawed depictions of other acts of animal cruelty.

Free-speech advocates

The high court case stemmed from the arrest and conviction of a Virginia-based documentary producer named Robert Stevens who sold videos containing scenes of dogfights. Mr. Stevens said his videos were aimed at portraying the aggressive characteristics of pit bulls and the use of pit bulls in hunting. He argued that his documentaries were protected by the First Amendment.

A federal judge disagreed and a jury convicted him of selling banned depictions of dog fights in violation of the 1999 law. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

A federal appeals court overturned the conviction by declaring the underlying law unconstitutional. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court also declared the law unconstitutional, but on different legal grounds.

In doing so, the high court rejected an attempt by the Obama administration to create a free speech balancing test that would weigh the value of the disputed speech against its societal costs to determine if it qualified for First Amendment protection…

[continues in the Christian Science Monitor]

Whose Idea Was This? Testing Tasers On Meth-Head Sheep

majestic — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:50:35 +0000

You definitely can’t make this stuff up. Come on PETA, forget about the rich bitches in fur coats, get these sheep into rehab and away from the psycho scientists who dreamed up this “experiment,” reported at POPSCI:

Cocaine is a hell of a drug, but getting shocked with a Taser while riding high on methamphetamines probably beats any white-knuckled cocaine experience hands down. And that’s exactly what happened to some lucky sheep in a new study that tested the effects of Tasers on meth-addled targets, funded in part by Taser International.

There’s at least some scientific reasoning behind all the apparent madness. Growing abuse of methamphetamines has led to arrest-related deaths in situations where law enforcement officers used their Tasers on drug-intoxicated suspects. The latest study was designed to test whether electronic control devices (e.g. Tasers) can lead to dangerous cardiac responses in meth-intoxicated humans, with sheep standing in for people.

The less-lethal device of choice was the Taser X26, a standard law enforcement tool which can fire at suspects from a distance of 35 feet. Researchers shocked sixteen anesthetized sheep after dosing the animals with an IV drip of methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Some of the smaller sheep weighing less than 70.5 pounds suffered exacerbated heart symptoms related to meth use. But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition, a highly abnormal heart rhythm that can become fatal.

The study that appears in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine openly lists a few caveats. Aside from being partially funded by Taser International, the study authors include two physicians who represent medical consultants and stockholders of the company. One of the two is also the medical director of Taser International…

[continues at POPSCI]

Photo: Fir0002, flagstaffotos.com.au, GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Russian TV-Watching Cows

disinfogreg — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:45:07 +0000

Via English Russia:

One Russian farmer decided to equip his cow barn with … LED TVs.

He has got from somewhere the information that cows get more happy and productive if they watch the movies with the juicy green fields. So he got a non-stop loop of world’s recognized green Swiss Alpine fields and got the most slim LCD TVs on market in Russia and then called the team of workers to install that all.

Now they go into statistics to measure the outcomes. They compare the results from two groups of cows, one is watching TV another is deprived of this humanity most spread entertainment thing.

Drunk History: Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison

ralph — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:43:49 +0000

On the latest Funny Or Die Presents, this is Drunk History: Nikola Tesla. If you think this is purely a joke, I’m afraid not …

On January 7th, Duncan Trussell drank a six-pack of beer, then a half a bottle of absinthe … and then he discussed a historical event:

Kangaroos Victims of Factory Fluoride

phunkychic666 — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:59:37 +0000

DEBORAH GOUGH writes in the Age:

SCORES of starving and pain-ridden kangaroos have been culled after developing tooth and bone deformities from breathing and ingesting fluoride emissions. Many more are believed to be suffering from growths that will kill them.

The affected kangaroos are living near the Alcoa aluminium smelter in Portland, in the state’s south-west, and the Austral Bricks factory at Craigieburn.

Autopsies performed at Melbourne University on 49 kangaroos culled at Alcoa on a single day last year found all but one were suffering from flurosis, which leads to excessive bone growths, or lesions, on joints in the paws, ankles and calves.

It can also cause tooth and jaw deformities that hinder eating and foraging. The Sunday Age has been told more than 200 ill kangaroos living near both affected sites have been culled in recent years, but this figure could not be confirmed.

Navy Issues Guidance on Use of Marine Mammals

Aaron Dames — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:07:43 +0000

Steven Aftergood writes on Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists:

A new U.S. Navy Instruction (pdf) updates Navy policy on the use of marine mammals for national security missions.

It seems that by law (10 USC 7524), the Secretary of Defense is authorized to “take” (or acquire) up to 25 wild marine mammals each year “for national defense purposes.” These mammals — including whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions — are used for military missions such as locating and marking underwater mines, and providing force protection against unauthorized swimmers or vehicles, among other things.

The new Secretary of the Navy Instruction 3900.41F, dated 13 November 2009 and published this week, provides guidance on “Acquisition, Transport, Care and Maintenance of Marine Mammals.”

The U.S. military marine mammal program has labored under a cloud of public suspicion, the Navy admits, and such suspicion has only been aggravated by the secrecy that surrounded the program for many years.

Scientists Say Dolphins Should Be Considered ‘Persons’

JacobSloan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:53:09 +0000

Scientists say that dolphins as a species are significantly smarter than chimpanzees, so smart that they should be classified as “non-human persons” — making it deeply unethical to keep them in amusement parks or inadvertently kill them in fishing operations.

Until recently, dolphins were placed third among animals in intelligence (behind humans and chimps). However, new behavioral studies suggests that dolphins are smarter than previously believed. How smart? From the U.K.’s Times:

Dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

Dolphins can solve difficult problems, and those in the wild cooperate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication. It has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals.

Bottlenose dolphins [can] recognize themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.

Religious Sacrifice of 250,000 Animals Begins

majestic — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:03:32 +0000

Olivia Lang in Bariyapur, Nepal, reports for the Guardian:

The world’s biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.

The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

With up to a million worshippers on the roads near the festival grounds, this year’s fair seems more popular than ever, despite vocal protests from animals rights groups who have called for it to be banned. “It is the traditional way, ” explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, “If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.” .

Crowds thronged the roads and camped out in the open, wrapped in blankets against the cool mist. The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls broadcasting music and offering tea and sugary snacks.

As dawn broke, the fair officially opened with the sacrifice of two rats, two pigeons, a pig, a lamb and a rooster in the main temple, to cheers of “Long live Gadhimai” from spectators pushing against each other for a better view.

In the main event, 250 appointed residents with traditional kukri knives began their task of decapitating more than 10,000 buffalo in a dusty enclosure guarded by high walls and armed police.

Frightened calves galloped around in vain as the men, wearing red bandanas and armbands, pursued them and chopped off their heads…

[continues in the Guardian]