Hello, Animal Lovers!
Nearly everyone likes animals. But there is something
suspicious about how we humans regard our four-footed (or even
no-footed) friends. Ever notice that people are most fascinated
with the animals that are most like us? Most people rate
creatures like the apes and monkeys as the most interesting
animals, with the next level being animals that seem to like our
company like dogs and even cats. But the animals most despised
and feared are those that seem hardest to understand and least
like us - mostly creepy crawlies like spiders, insects and
especially snakes. Our appreciation of animals is a kind of fun-
house mirror view of our own behavior.
Strangely, the very idea that animals are so much like us
makes many people uncomfortable. They try to place artificial
barriers between us and them, as if we weren't also animals. The
idea that animals could have emotions has only recently been
accepted by scientists, though farmers and animal trainers have
always realized that their furry co-workers have definite moods.
Of all people, they have learned that ignoring these moods is
pretty perilous. They often find this out the hard way when a
normally docile large animal unexpectedly becomes pissed off one
day. Dealing with an unhappy half-ton animal can be enough to
ruin your whole day. And it's also clear that there are good and
bad dogs, cats, horses, and even parrots, just as there are good
and bad humans. Fortunately for us, the world's other species
have neither lawyers nor politicians, or we'd be in real trouble.
Thanks this week to all of the special folks that help keep
this thing afloat. Among the folks we Thank this week: Helen
Yee, Carol Becwar, Larry Sakar, Nnamdi Elleh, Eva Lu Yu-Hwa,
Sherrie & Jack Gervais, Bernie & Donna Becwar, Jerry Taff, Junji
Taniguchi, Howard Lesniak, Tim McChain, Bruce Gonzo, Rosana &
Stan Leung, Jan Michalski, Brian Siegl and Peter J. Adler. As I
read through the stories this week, I kept thinking of zoos.
Considering that the most dangerous animal in the world is the
one that thinks and walks upright, after a while you begin to
wonder if the bars on the zoo cages protect us from them or them
from us.
Have A Wild Week!
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INHERITED TRAITS...
----------------
The Queen of England is worried. Of course, there's Charles
and that whole mess, but this time she is worried about the royal
budgerigar birds that have inhabited the grounds of Windsor
Castle since the 1930's. The Queen recently appealed for a stock
of fresh, purebred female birds to help increase the dwindling
number of birds there.
Graham Stone, a fellow stuck with the comic-opera title
"Keeper of the Royal Budgerigars," says that he believes the
problem to be that there hasn't been any fresh blood for decades.
"They seem to have lost the vigor of breeding in the past
two years, because they are getting too inbred," Graham said.
(AFP)
[ His training as a royal servant is
reflected in the fact that he can say this
around the royal family without even a hint
of irony in his voice. ]
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THE CREATURE COLLECTIVE...
-----------------------
Many languages have words called "counters" that help to
define groups of objects. Japanese, for example, has a specific
set of counting adjectives that can tell you if the thing being
counted is round, flat, or some other specific description.
We English speakers may be hard pressed to come up with
examples of this in our native language, with one exception: in
the case of groups of animals. Some of these are common, such as
a herd of sheep or pack of wolves, but some of them are pretty
bizarre. Try these out:
An aerie of eagles
An army of frogs or herring
A band of gorillas
A bed of clams or oysters
A bevy of quails or swans
A brace of ducks
A brood of chicks
A cast of hawks
A cete of badgers
A charm of goldfinches
A clowder (or clutter)of cats
A clutch of chicks
A colony of ants, rabbits
A congregation of plovers
A covey of quail, partridge
A crash of rhinos
A drove of cattle, sheep, pigs, hogs
An exaltation of doves
A flight of birds
A flink of cows (Twelve or more)
A gaggle of geese
A gang of elks
A host of locusts
A hover of trout
A husk of hares
A kettle of hawks
A kindle (or kendle) of kittens
A knot of toads
A labor of moles
A leap of leopards
A leash of greyhounds or foxes
A litter of pigs, puppies and others
A murder of crows
A murmuration of starlings
A muster of peacocks
A mute of hounds
A nest of vipers
A nest, nide or nye of pheasants
An ostentation of peacocks
A pack of hounds, wolves, mules and others
A parliament of owls
A plump of waterfowl
A pod of whales or seals
A pride of lions
A rafter of turkeys
A school of fish
A sedge or siege of cranes, bitterns or herons
A shrewdness of apes
A skein of geese (in the air only)
A skulk of foxes
A span of mules
A spring of teals
A tribe (or trip) of goats
A troup of monkeys or kangaroos
A walk of snipe
A watch of nightingales
A wedge of swans
A wing of plovers
A yoke of oxen
- Source: Wood, Gerald. ANIMAL FACTS
AND FEATS, Sterling, c1977, p.
245.MINNESOTA VOLUNTEER, Jan-Feb,
1997, pp. 28-29.
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What's the difference between men and pigs?
Pigs don't turn into men when they drink
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A SPOT OF INDIGESTION
---------------------
Amazing that no one had noticed this until now, but coffee
drinkers in London began complaining last week as their favorite
cappuccinos -- a coffee characterized by its top layer of light
frothy milk -- all seemed to go flat at once. The change forced
a popular coffee house chain called Pret a Manger to issue a
printed explanation.
"Sorry if your coffee is not very frothy today," the
leaflets read. "At certain times of the year our cows have a
change in environment, just like us really."
A food scientist traced the cause to a change in diet of
England's cows around this time of year, as the milkers move
inside for the winter. They expect that things will get back to
normal when the cows get used to the new diet, curing the sagging
cappuccinos. (Reuters)
[ Or, maybe the cows just weren't in the
moo'd... ]
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OH, RATS...
--------
Few mammals are quite as despised as rats, mostly because
they compete with humans and prefer the same food we do. Living
where we do as well, rats ability to carry disease also puts them
on society's hit list. Now Belgian military researchers have
come up with a plan where rats may save many more lives than they
have taken in the past.
The Antwerp-based research group Apopo said that they have
taught African rats to detect and dig up land mines. The trained
rat-sappers sniff out the dangerous explosives by smell, allowing
humans to safely map and remove minefields.
"Rats have certain advantages over dogs, which are often
used for detection purposes, and they live as long," said Apopo's
chief technical engineer Christophe Cox.
"They have a better sense of smell, are cheaper to keep and
maintain, they are more resistant to tropical diseases and, since
they are smaller, you can transport more. Plus they are very
suitable for repetitive tasks," Cox said. (Reuters)
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DUCK A LA ORANGE VEST?
---------------------
Everyone occasionally needs a little help from their
friends. That's especially true if you are a duck with a genetic
defect, lacking the oily feathers that keeps ducks from sinking.
This particular duck basically floats about like a down pillow -
she soaks and sinks.
Considering that it can't swim, how the duck survived as
long as it did is amazing. Now named Jemima, she turned up in
the emergency water supply lagoon of a Royal Air Force base in
eastern England, paddling for her life and trying to stay afloat.
The duck was fished out and dried off by the station's air-sea
rescue team.
So, what to do with a creature that can't do what others of
its kind take for granted? The only thing the RAF folks could do
in a case like that is to make the duck an officer. Now Honorary
Flight Lieutenant Jemima, the Aylesbury duck has stayed on as a
station mascot, neatly equipped with her own miniature life vest
so she'll stay safely afloat in the water. (Reuters / British
Ministry of Defense)
[ Well, no one can ever say the RAF doesn't
know how to duck. ]
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WHERE THERE'S A WILL...
--------------------
We've all seen cases where inheriting a large amount of
money makes some folks go ape, right?
So it remains to be seen if the $60,000 inherited by Jimmy,
Trunte, Fifi, Trine, Grini and Gigi of Copenhagen, Denmark has
that effect. It's not hard to imaging that they might monkey
around with the inheritance - the six happen to be chimpanzees
living in a cage at the Copenhagen Zoo.
Apparently, an 83-year-old widow with no close relatives
left the chimps the cash in her will. It fell to senior deputy
judge Christian Notlevsen to officially read the will to the
inheritors, in accordance with Danish law. He reported that the
hairy heirs took the news surprisingly well, behaving better than
many people he had seen in court during the reading of wills.
A zoo spokesperson said that the money would be used to
improve the chimpanzee area at the zoo. (Reuters)
----------
Maybe the six affluent apes could take a lesson from movie
star Raven Thorogood III. After playing a feature part in last
year's movie "Babe, Pig in the City," the actor found himself
with some money to invest. He put the money in Wall Street and
did pretty well, too. All told, his portfolio is up almost 60
percent since the start of the year, with one of his choices
soaring more than 330 percent.
Not bad for a five-year-old. A five-year-old chimpanzee, no
less.
Roland Perry, editor of the Internet Stock Review, chose
Raven to pick stocks by throwing darts at a board listing a
number of possible choices. the editor plans to publish an index
called MonkeyDex that he predicts will make monkeys of Wall
Street's human money managers.
Given what happened to the market this year, it's unlikely
it will, but the simian stock-picker sure made the big bananas
for a while there. (Reuters)
[ Just try explaining to your broker that you
got this hot stock tip from a day trader who
lives in a cage and swings by one arm. ]
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GOING POSTAL - WITH FEATHERS...
----------------------------
Postal workers in Detroit were surprised a while back to
find an unlabelled package in the mail that contained 22
shivering week-old chicks. They fed the baby birds crackers
while trying to figure out what to do, eventually turning over
the peepers to the Michigan Humane Society for safekeeping.
The local postal inspector theorized that a shipping label
came off of the box, possibly part of a larger shipment destined
for a school, farm or research facility. (Reuters)
[ About now, you know someone, somewhere has
to be promising that "...the chicks are in
the mail." ]
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PLOP GO THE WEASELS?
-------------------
With so many lawyers swarming around the federal courthouse
in Tampa, Florida just now, it's ironic to realize that it isn't
the first such problem they've had recently.
Last year the infestation was, of all things, vultures.
Lawyers, for some reason, didn't find it all that amusing. But
neither did other workers at the court house, who had to put up
with nearly 200 turkey buzzards who took to roosting on the 17-
story Sam M. Gibbons building. The notoriously unclean carrion-
eaters fouled the sidewalks with their droppings and the remains
of their meals. Large birds, with as much as six foot (2 meter)
wingspans, they are members of the vulture family. They also
frightened people inside the building by crashing into the
building's large windows.
Building managers had some success in chasing away the birds
after installing loudspeaker system that broadcast a buzzard-
busting chirping designed to annoy the birds.
"These devices are made to keep pests away from agricultural
crops. It is a very unpleasant sound for the birds," according
to building manager George Post.
It was no picnic for the court employees and people in
surrounding buildings, either. Even Post admitted that the sound
was somewhat irritating to people.
"It's driving us crazy," said John Bell, manager of a nearby
theater. (Reuters)
[ Now if they could only find the frequency
that works on politicians and lawyers... ]
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© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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