How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Is a microscopic, mind-altering parasite spread by cats responsible for car accidents, hoarding behaviors, and schizophrenia? Respected scientists are now saying that “crazy cat lady” disease is real and millions of people are infected. Shocker from Kathleen McAuliffe in the Atlantic:
Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis — the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease…
This #OccupyWallStreet Dog Hates Banksters!
You know your movement is rockin’ the interwebs when you have a Tumblr blog for animals supporting it.
See more conscientious animal objecters to the current state of capitalism at: Awwccupy Wall Street …
San Francisco To Outlaw Pet Stores
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…
The NYC Fancy Rat Convention
June is a special time of year in New York, when the sun warms the city, and the rats come out of hiding and get whisked off to fashion shows in the finest of attire at the Fancy Rat Convention.
Meet Kenny, An Inbred White Tiger (Photos)
Via Prose Before Hos:
Kenny is a white tiger ‘selectively’ inbred while in captivity in the United States. As zoo’s and exotic pet stores have increased the demand for white tigers, breeders have attempted to recreate the ideal white tiger — large snout, blue eyes, white fur — through relying on a limited pool of captive white tigers.
The result? An astoundingly high rate of deformities and health issues. For example, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations.
First Cloned Cat Turns Ten Years Old
It feels like just yesterday that the first generation of cloned animals captured the headlines — now they are passing comfortably into old age (without any bizarre mutations, eyeballs spontaneously falling out, et cetera). Cloned pets turning ten is our generation’s Bob Dylan turning seventy. Via the Houston Chronicle:
Almost 10 years later CC, aka Copy Cat, is still in the College Station area. She has a mate, Smokey, and they live with their three offspring in a cat mansion built by Dr. Duane C. Kraemer, an A&M researcher who helped bring CC into the world.
CC and her family seem like perfectly normal cats, which disappoints many guests hoping to see something more exotic, said Kraemer’s wife, Shirley, the head cat wrangler.
A&M’s cat-cloning operation was an offshoot of the Missyplicity Project to clone a dog named Missy with funding help from a company that wanted to market pet cloning. When the…
Dog Eats Sleeping Owner’s Right Foot, Saving Him
An inspiring case of everyday-life heroism, as an Oregon man awoke to find that his likely-gangrenous foot had been gnawed off and consumed by his pet dog — there have been reported similar cases in the past. Via the Huffington Post:
A diabetic Oregon man with no feeling in his feet woke up to find his dog had eaten part of his right foot, including three toes.
The man told emergency responders that he fell asleep on his couch and woke up to find pieces of his foot missing.
Roseburg veterinarian Alan Ross says that the dog may have been trying to rid his owner of dead tissue, and says he may have been attracted to the foot if it were infected or gangrenous.
More Than Half Of America’s Pets Are Obese
The obesity epidemic is spreading from man to man’s best friend — in America at least. The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) reports that:
Obesity continues to expand in both pets and people according to the latest pet obesity study. The fourth annual Association for Pet Obesity Prevention (APOP) National Pet Obesity Awareness Day Study found approximately 53% of cats and 55% of dogs were overweight or obese. Preliminary data released from a nationwide collaboration with Banfield, the nation’s largest chain of veterinary clinics, reveals pet obesity continues to be a serious problem. APOP founder Dr. Ernie Ward remarks, “This year’s data suggests that our pets are getting fatter. We’re seeing a greater percentage of obese pets than ever before.”
32% of cats in the preliminary sample were classified as overweight by their veterinarian and 21.6% were observed to be clinically obese or greater than 30% of normal body weight. 35% of…
Escaped Boa Constrictor Runs Amok In Boston Subway System For A Month
The thing that every subway commuter fears most happened in Boston — a boa constrictor ran loose in the transit system for a month before being caught, after its owner “lost” it. How is it possible to misplace a boa constrictor on the subway? Via the experts on all matters snake-related, Business Insider:
For the past month, a 3-foot-long boa constrictor has been roaming the Boston subways.
Snake-owner Melisa Moorhouse lost her non-venomous boa, Penelope, on a Red Line train on the morning of Jan. 6. She notified police immediately, but they were unable to find the snake. It is legal to transport pets on the MBTA.
Last Thursday the snake was finally found. Red Line attendant Sharon Lynch, a snake owner herself, lured the animal into a box.
The Pets We Kept Before Dogs Found In 16,500-Year-Old Cemetery
Source: Mariomassone (CC)
Alasdair Wilkins writing at io9.com:
A burial site recently uncovered in Jordan is the oldest ever discovered in the Middle East, at least 1,500 years older than any other cemetery previously discovered. But it’s not just its great age that makes it special — the cemetery also reveals what animals humans kept as pets long before the domestication of dogs.
The site, which dates back about 16,500 years, was discovered in ‘Uyun al-Hammam in Jordan. The University of Toronto researchers discovered the site back in 2000, but it’s taken eleven years just to come to grips with what the site has to teach us. Indeed, this cemetery stands to be particularly useful, as it has eleven different sets of human remains — more than all other burial sites of this type combined.
But it isn’t just the human corpses that have attracted attention, as they’ve also discovered remains of ancient pets.…
Meet My Pet Buffalo: Rides in Car, Chugs Beer (Video)
Naeema Siddiqua writes in the Toronto Sun:
SPRUCE GROVE, ALTA.— A buffalo arriving at a bar in a convertible may seem like a figment of the imagination, but it actually happened.
Bailey Jr. is a 1,600-pound male bison that last Saturday arrived at a Spruce Grove bar, about 30 kilometres west of Edmonton, in a convertible for a pint of ale, while a British camera crew from Animal Planet captured the barley lover chugging down a root beer and a bottle of beer.
Not to worry, he had designated drivers with him — owners, Jim and Linda Sautner.
The film crew from London, England’s Oxford Scientific Films is part of a team that produces Fatal Attraction for Animal Planet. The documentary series looks at the psychological profile of people who have close relationships with big, dangerous and exotic animals.
Baby Washing A 15 Foot Python (Photo)
I can’t tell yet if this photo from the internets is for real, I’m calling it Photoshopped:
