Animal Resistance

Kirk must have realized that we haven’t marvelled at the cleverness of birds lately, so he sent in a story from the car wash (talking ’bout the car wash…), wherein a car wash operator was convinced that his employees were stealing from the coin-operated machines, so he set up a little stakeout, and what do you suppose he found? Well, you may recall that we mentioned clever birds a very short while ago, and indeed it was clever birds that he found – one would actually crawl into the machine and pull out quarters (possibly because they were shiny), while others would take the coins and fly away. Now, consider for a second that it’s not just the shinyness that attracted the birds – maybe the animal kingdom has a bankroll! OK, maybe not, but birds are clever.

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darrek reports that a group of bull sharks managed to stand up for their local shrimp population by ramming a fishing boat until it sank in Florida earlier this week. We’ve written about this kind of aquatic teamwork before, and some may accuse me of having anthropomorhic tendencies, but this case really highlights that this wasn’t just a random collision; apparently the sharks spent four days ramming the shrimp boat. The day is surely coming when fishermen will hear a knock at the door from a voice offering flowers and a candygram… Link.

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A dolphin at a Florida aquarium managed to create a bomb scare after playing with a toy that a bunch of people thought looked like an explosive of some kind. Details are sketchy, but it seems that most of the people who evacuated were employees of the facility, who I guess weren’t aware that their dolphin was even allowed to have any toys. The item in question was some kind of glass jar about the size of a softball, and as toys go, it sounds pretty lame, but if I was a dolphin stuck in a tank and I found something that managed to disrupt an entire aquarium, it’d be my new favourite thing. Link.

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jeremytough sent in a story about a duck, and while the papers are presenting it as a tale of triumph over adversity, I’m confused about a bit in the middle. See, this guy goes out hunting and shoots a duck, and then he stores the body in his fridge. The thing is, the duck’s not actually dead. Two days later, the guy’s wife opens the fridge and the “dead” duck moves. Something mysterious happens at this point, like I said, and now the duck’s at an animal sanctuary with a 75% chance of surviving. I don’t understand why the hunter had a change of heart and took the bird to the vet, not that I’m complaining, but anyway, near as I can tell we’ve got the worst hunter ever here, and the thing of it is, there’s a continuum of knowledge in the, uh, huntosphere. We hear a lot about “responsible hunting,” “one shot, one kill,” and other rhetoric about clean kills and minimal suffering, but how do hunters learn how to be all “responsible” without inflicting all kinds of cruelty while they practice? Link.

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Here’s another argument for changing the tradition of animal sacrifice during the feast of Eid al-Adha: most average people really suck at amateur butchery, to the point that 1413 people in Turkey alone were injured during the ceremonies. Incidents ranged from cuts from slipping knives to being crushed under the weight of the collapsing bodies to heart attacks while trying to restrain the animal pre-slaughter. THere’s got to be a message in there somewhere, but what? Hmmm… Link.

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Weird News Monday continues with a tale of animal escape from kunsjoi. A calf escaped from a slaughterhouse where he was to be sacrificed as part of the Eid-ul-Juha festival, and held attackers at bay for 20 hours before he was rescued by the local SPCA. Then, in a Monday-worthy twist, his rescuers named him George in honour of his courage. Yes, George as in George W. Bush, courageous warrior. Link

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Just how drunk do you have to be to bite a panda, even if he bites you first? That’s the question running through my mind after reading PonderingWillow‘s latest submission, and the answer appears to be four beers. There’s got to be some kind of metric conversion skewing the number there – I mean, sure, being vegan, it’d take me an awful lot of beer to even consider the idea, but for Zhang Xinyan, I guess four did the trick. In any event, “the fur was too thick,” and Gu Gu is going to be fine, if a little startled. As for Zhang, he’s got bite wounds on both legs. Link.

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TheRealPamela was one of several pornstars who sent word of a pig who really, really, really didn’t want to go to a slaughterhouse. Yeah, go figure, eh? In this case, the pig took several shots from a police taser as well as a few tranquilizer darts before being subdued and returned to the farmer who lost him or her. It’s quite common for a story like this to end with the animal getting a pass to a sanctuary somewhere – animals who make the news near a slaughterhouse tend to hit a chord with the public that way, like saving this one animal will make it OK for them to eat bacon in the morning. In this case, there’s a bit of a twist – the pig won’t be going to the slaughterhouse anytime soon, but not out of any kind of compassion. The farmer is merely concerned about the effects of the tranquilizer on the meat. Did I mention the farmer’s a lawyer? Link.

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Jenna sends word that a Serbian man is recovering after trying to have sex with a hedgehog. This wasn’t purely for sexual gratification; he was told that by getting it on with a hedgehog he’d cure his premature ejaculation. Says who? Says his witch doctor. Uh huh. Here’s a phrase I’d like to see used more when reporting cases of bestiality: “he ended up in an operating theatre after the hedgehog’s needles left his penis severely lacerated.” Doctors were able to repair the damage, but if I was in charge, I’d return the restored penis in jar of some sort so the owner could better look after it. I’m helpful that way. Link.

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