edieraye wrote: 
Very cool, thanks.

Turtle eggs communicate to hatch together - what a world we live in, still full of wonders and mysteries!
 
(This reminded me of an interesting if slightly boring - by TED standards - talk on what we learn in the womb.  Similar in a wonderfully weird way.)

 Inamorato wrote: 



Read about this in the okc paper last weekend

MMmmmm Trigger.

 rosedraws wrote: 
You've proven my point. It is our subjective feelings/psychology  towards certain animals that make some ok to dine on and others forbidden.

And maybe "we" wouldn't eat dogs or cats but there are are a number of cultures out there that do.

Don't get me wrong I love animals and Yogi has nothing to worry about but I don't see the posted article as a big deal

 mzpro5 wrote: 


Completely not true.  I've been around both.  Sentient beings, both. But horses have way more going on than cows.

I'm not so squeamish about what we do with them when they need to be put down, but they deserve their special place... a unique kind of pet really.  We wouldn't raise dogs and cats for meat, and I don't believe that would be right for horses. 

 Inamorato wrote: 
We in America have given horses a special place in our psyche when in reality aside from the fact they are ridden there is really no difference between horses and cows.  They are all livestock.  We have anthropomorphized horses so we are squeamish about them being a part of the food chain.

Horses could soon be slaughtered for meat in US

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS
Associated Press

TULSA, Okla.— Horses could soon be butchered in the U.S. for human consumption after Congress quietly lifted a 5-year-old ban on funding horse meat inspections, and activists say slaughterhouses could be up and running in as little as a month. 

Slaughter opponents pushed a measure cutting off funding for horse meat inspections through Congress in 2006 after other efforts to pass outright bans on horse slaughter failed in previous years. Congress lifted the ban in a spending bill President Barack Obama signed into law Nov. 18 to keep the government afloat until mid-December.

It did not, however, allocate any new money to pay for horse meat inspections, which opponents claim could cost taxpayers $3 million to $5 million a year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture would have to find the money in its existing budget, which is expected to see more cuts this year as Congress and the White House aim to trim federal spending. 

The USDA issued a statement Tuesday saying there are no slaughterhouses in the U.S. that butcher horses for human consumption now, but if one were to open, it would conduct inspections to make sure federal laws were being followed. USDA spokesman Neil Gaffney declined to answer questions beyond what was in the statement.

The last U.S. slaughterhouse that butchered horses closed in 2007 in Illinois, and animal welfare activists warned of massive public outcry in any town where a slaughterhouse may open.

"If plants open up in Oklahoma or Nebraska, you'll see controversy, litigation, legislative action and basically a very inhospitable environment to operate," predicted Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of The Humane Society of the United States. "Local opposition will emerge and you'll have tremendous controversy over slaughtering Trigger and Mr. Ed."

But pro-slaughter activists say the ban had unintended consequences, including an increase in neglect and the abandonment of horses, and that they are scrambling to get a plant going — possibly in Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska or Missouri. They estimate a slaughterhouse could open in 30 to 90 days with state approval and eventually as many as 200,000 horses a year could be slaughtered for human consumption. Most of the meat would be shipped to Europe and Asia, where it's treated as a delicacy.

(Full story)

I'll have a Triggerburger and a small order of rooster fries, please.

 Proclivities wrote: 
The dinosaurs were in the Garden of Eden. it was after a big meal of brontosaurus ribs that the Lord got Adam sleepy enough for surgery.

 oldslabsides wrote: 
Do it! DO IT!

 rosedraws wrote: 
We cannot elevate nature above people," said Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. "That's against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.

Yeah, people are FAR more important than the only rock we know of that they can live on.  I'm not gonna call this person a tool, nope.

 Skaterella wrote:
  Love it. Why are the most ignorant also the rudest? Standing up during a sermon? Really? She couldn't wait until after the service, but instead had to broadcast her stupidity to the congregation? What a moron.

 rosedraws wrote: 
I like this quote as well:

Although tea partier Mattos said she brings her grandchildren to see the manatees, she doesn't see a point in the Save the Manatee Club. "If some of these environmental movements had been around in the days of the dinosaurs, we'd be living in Jurassic Park now," she said.

 winter wrote: 

   Afriend of mine is a pastor & she had someone stand up during a church service and argue with her (during the sermon) because my friend had not used the King James Version to preach from.  This women astutely told my friend that the KJV was the bible Jesus read from...

 rosedraws wrote: 
Look, it says in the Bill of Rights that we should not put beasts before humans. Just like it says in the Bible that the King of England can't make you house soldiers.

Florida Tea Party hates manatees, declares them ‘dangerous’

And who can blame them? Look at this fearsome beast, floating Zeppelin-like in this lagoon, ready to slowly swim toward you and possibly nuzzle your face. “Help!” you gasp, and you crawl back into the boat, terrified. “I think he licked me!”

Wild Cougar Traveled East 1,500 Miles

By Peter Applebome, The New York Times

From the beginning, the tale seemed to skirt the edges of the possible — a mountain lion reported to be stalking the wilds of Greenwich, Conn., seen near fancy private schools and busy roadways. But the sightings were confirmed in early June by paw prints, photographs and animal droppings, and then, more dramatically, by the lean body of a 140-pound male creature killed by a sport utility vehicle on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Milford on June 11.

The aftermath was even more surprising. On Tuesday, in what state officials termed “amazing news,” they said that the Connecticut Cougar had made its way east from the Black Hills of South Dakota and that genetic testing matched samples of an animal confirmed as having been in Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

That means that the animal traveled more than 1,500 miles to Connecticut, more than twice as far as the longest dispersal pattern ever recorded for a mountain lion. The news stunned researchers trying to make sense of the first confirmed presence of the species in Connecticut in more than a century.

(Full story)

(Story in St. Paul Pioneer Press)

(Story in Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Amazing bird this

Dingoes are possibly migrated Asian Wolves, ferried down through Indonesia and new guinea by humans around 1500 BC. The humans had domesticated them as hunting/working companions. Some of these canids went feral and eventually out-hunted the thylacine and took over their habitat. Kind of like the early settlers of America moved in and took over the lands of the indigenous peoples. I'm sure human hunters helped the thylacine along to extinction also.

Here's an interesting essay.

Extinct Australian thylacine hunted like a big cat

The extinct Australian carnivore known as a thylacine was an ambush predator that could not outrun its prey over long distances, a new analysis shows.

The thylacine has been variously described as a "marsupial wolf" or a "Tasmanian tiger".

This study suggests the latter term might be more appropriate; the animal's hunting strategy was more like that of a big cat than that of a wolf.

Details appear in Biology Letters journal.

Thylacines once roamed mainland Australia, but their numbers declined as humans settled the continent from around 40,000 years ago and as the dingo was introduced around 4,000 years ago.

Eventually, they were confined to the island of Tasmania, which was dingo-free. The species was eventually wiped out during a large-scale eradication effort in the 19th Century and 20th centuries.

Killing tactic

The thylacine was very much a marsupial, and therefore only a distant genetic relative of dogs and cats. But the latest paper deals with the ecological niche it occupied in Australia.

By studying the bones of the thylacine, scientists from Brown University in the US were able to establish that the thylacine was a solitary, ambush-style predator - much like a cat.

"Although there is no doubt that the thylacine diet was similar to that of living wolves, we find no compelling evidence that they hunted similarly," said lead author Borja Figueirido, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown, in Providence, Rhode Island.

The researchers compared the thylacine's skeleton with those of dog-like and cat-like species, such as pumas, jackals and wolves, as well as Tasmanian devils - the largest carnivorous marsupials living today.

They found that the thylacine would have been able to rotate its arm so that the palm faced upwards, like a cat.

This increased amount of arm and paw movement would have helped the "Tasmanian tiger" subdue its prey after an ambush.

'Unique mix'

Dingoes and wolves have a more restricted range of arm-hand movement. Their hands are - to a greater degree - fixed in the palm-down position, reflecting their strategy of hunting by pursuit and in packs, rather than by surprise.

However, this is not a hard-and-fast rule. Some cats, like cheetahs, use speed to catch their quarry, while some dog-like species, such as foxes, rely on ambush to catch their prey.

Christine Janis, professor of biology at Brown and a co-author on the paper, said the thylacine's hunting tactics appear to be a unique mix. "I don't think there's anything like it around today," she said. "It's sort of like a cat-like fox."

While some experts believe the introduction of the dingo played a key role in the thylacine's disappearance from mainland Australia, some of the researchers in the latest study are more cautious.

The animals appear to have been similar in several respects - such as their diets - but probably hunted in different ways.

According to Professor Janis, the dingoes may have been "more like the final straw".

The last captive thylacine - known as Benjamin - died in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania, in September 1936.