“This is a nice sounding story, but I’d like to remind the peeps that in WW I Britain alone lost over 484,o00 horses. After the war, thousands and thousands of horses were sold as work horses or just abandoned. In WWII soldiers lowered mice and canaries behind enemy lines to see if they died from bad air.  In Vietnam dogs searched for traps and weapons caches. They died of the heat or their injuries. Those that lived were abandoned when the war ended. It is estimated that during the ’90s some 75,000 animals died in Afghanistan, mainly due to land mines.We are the hidden victims of war. You can read about animals during war HERE.”

“Haaaaaaaaaaaa… Size isn’t everything!”

The folks who uploaded this video to YouTube commented:

Apparently Rottweilers have a natural herding instinct.. we put it to the test with hilarious results. Filmed in beautiful New Zealand!”

LOL! …

Video uploaded to YouTube by Cheeki1972 

Gypsy photo courtesy of KarenFayeth, 2010, 2011, 2012 All rights reserved

Rottweiler and friend courtesy of morgueFile

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“This cat would like to have fun too …Where’s the snow?”

Birds just do like to have fun. We had a home once on a scant four acres in rural California. The property was roughly triangular with a creek running along two sides. One day during a rather dramatic downpour we stepped onto the deck outside our bedroom to find a duck riding the rapids. She would go so far and then fly back to the place where the creek curved and ride again. She was clearly have a good time. It was just as clear that she was intelligent and inventive.

While ducks are underestimated and often the butt of jokes, crows are known for their intelligence and for the use of tools:

As a group, crows show remarkable examples of intelligence. Crows and ravens often score very highly on intelligence tests. Certain species top the avian IQ scale.Wild hooded crows in Israel have learned to use bread crumbs for bait-fishing.Crows will engage in a kind of mid-air jousting, or air-”chicken” to establish pecking order. Crows have been found to engage in feats such as sports, tool use, the ability to hide and store food across seasons, episodic-like memory, and the ability to use individual experience in predicting the behavior of environmental conspecifics.

One species, the New Caledonian Crow, has also been intensively studied recently because of its ability to manufacture and use its own tools in the day-to-day search for food. These tools include ‘knives’ cut from stiff leaves and stiff stalks of grass.Another skill involves dropping tough nuts into a trafficked street and waiting for a car to crush them open.

On October 5, 2007, researchers from the University of Oxford, England presented data acquired by mounting tiny video cameras on the tails of New Caledonian Crows. It turned out that they use a larger variety of tools than previously known, plucking, smoothing, and bending twigs and grass stems to procure a variety of foodstuffs.

Crows in Queensland, Australia have learned how to eat the toxic cane toad by flipping the cane toad on its back and violently stabbing the throat where the skin is thinner, allowing the crow to access the non-toxic innards; their long beaks ensure that all of the innards can be removed.

Recent research suggests that crows have the ability to recognize one individual human from another by facial feature. MORE [Wikipedia]

INDIAN CROW

Crow trivia: 

Eating crow is a U.S. colloquial idiom meaning humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proved wrong after taking a strong position.Eating crow is presumably foul-tasting in the same way that being proved wrong might be emotionally hard to swallow.The exact origin of the idiom is unknown, but it probably began with an American story published around 1850 about a slow-witted New York farmer.Eating crow is of a family of idioms having to do with eating and being proved incorrect, such as to “eat dirt”, to “eat your words”, and to “eat your hat” (or shoe). MORE [Wikipedia] … and, of course, we know the part about the New Yorker is untrue. There’s no such thing as a slow-witted New Yorker. 

Video uploaded to YouTube by juanstrongman

Gypsy photo courtesy of KarenFayeth, © 2009, 2010, 2011 All rights reserved

Indian crow – courtesy Prianka Bansal via Wikipedia. The photographer has released the photograph into the public domain.

Corbin Maxey, aka The Reptile Guy, brought a few of his rescued animals to the CBSNews.com newsroom to visit with Cali Carlin and talk about why they should not be kept as pets.

“Oh no! I better be good or the peoples will get something that will eat ME for dinner.”

… or some of the babies that come to visit.

 CORBIN MAXEY and FRIEND

CORBIN MAXEY is a twenty-two-year-old nationally recognized animal expert, specializing in reptiles, and is most notable from his numerous appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Today Show, and various other national and local television programs. For over a decade, Corbin and his reptile friends have been visiting schools, libraries, zoos, aquariums, and private events sharing his love of animals while promoting the respect and appreciation of all nature.” MORE

GYPSY AFTER READING GOOD NEWS FOR PETS

The Humane Society of the United States applauds New Jersey lawmakers for strengthening the state’s protections for animals by authorizing courts to include animals in domestic violence restraining orders. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed A1633/S540, the Domestic Violence Pet Protection Order act, into law on Tuesday after it passed the state legislature with strong bipartisan support.

The Domestic Violence Pet Protection Order Act, sponsored by Sen. Tom Kean Jr., Sen. Jeff Van Drew, Assemblywoman Connie Wagner and Assemblywoman Charlotte Vandervalk, will not only serve to protect the animals who are tragically involved in many domestic violence cases, but will also have a direct impact in protecting the people who are targeted.

“We applaud the legislature and Governor Christie for recognizing the link between animal cruelty and human violence and for taking steps to protect animals and their families. This law sends a strong message to abusers that they cannot victimize the creatures who comfort us,” said Kathleen Schatzmann, New Jersey state director for The Humane Society of the United States.

Realizing that animals are often viewed as beloved family members, domestic violence abusers often target pets to intimidate or control their spouse or partner. As a result, pets are sometimes hurt or killed.

Now that courts can include animals in domestic violence restraining orders, victims will no longer feel they have no alternative but to remain in violent households, leaving themselves and their children at risk.

The signing of this bill comes on the heels of the results of The Humane Society of the United States’ third annual “Humane State Ranking,” a comprehensive report rating all 50 states and Washington D.C. on a wide range of animal protection laws, including animal cruelty codes, equine protection standards, wildlife issues, animals in research and farm animal policy. The HSUS ranked New Jersey second in the nation—tied with Oregon—for its strong animal-protection policies.

Photo credit ~ “Serious Gypsy” courtesy of Karen Fayeth, © 2012 All rights reserved