Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla (small version) (par aleutiandream)
"pour mettre son âme en paix et résoudre le paradoxe de la viande, le carnivore humain “démentalise” les animaux de boucherie (alors même qu’il “anthropomorphise” les animaux de compagnie). Ce déni d’esprit, disent les auteurs, n’est probablement pas le seul outil dont il dispose dans ce but : le poids de la tradition culturelle est sans doute aussi présent, ainsi qu’une faculté à occulter le lien viande-animal. Ces psychologues suggèrent également de reproduire ce genre de tests dans les pays où l’on mange les animaux, tabous chez nous, que sont le chien et le chat."
— Comment concilier goût pour la viande et amour des animaux ? | Passeur de sciences
Posing as black market gorilla buyers, the rangers recovered the infant male unharmed inside a backpack and arrested three poachers, who were seeking to sell the gorilla—now named Shamavu after his rescuer-for as much as U.S. $40,000, according to park authorities.
Shamavu is the fourth baby gorilla Virunga rangers have recovered from poachers in 2011—the highest number on record in a single year, suggesting that baby-gorilla trafficking may be on the rise in the region.
(via Pictures: Baby Gorilla Rescued in Armed Sting Operation)
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During one expedition, the researcher and his team witnessed a heartbreaking scene between a mother dolphin and her deceased newborn calf. The mother could be seen repeatedly lifting the corpse to the surface, presumably in an attempt to get it to breathe.
“This was repeated over and over again, sometimes frantically, during two days of observation,” said Gonzalvo. “The mother never separated from her calf…. [She] seemed unable to accept the death.”
Gonzalvo experienced a similar scene a year later, when he came across a pod of dolphins that appeared to be assisting a 2 to 3-month-old dolphin that was having difficulty swimming.
“The group appeared stressed, swimming erratically,” he said. “Adults were trying to help the dying animal stay afloat, but it kept sinking.”
"— Do dolphins mourn their dead? | MNN - Mother Nature Network
"In 1924, Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at the University of Tokyo, took in Hachikō as a pet. During his owner’s life, Hachikō greeted him at the end of each day at the nearby Shibuya Station. The pair continued their daily routine until May 1925, when Professor Ueno did not return. The professor had suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and died, never returning to the train station where Hachikō was waiting. Every day for the next nine years the golden brown Akita waited at Shibuya station."
CNN and the UK Telegraph have both reported that the dogs have been rescued since the footage aired, and are both receiving veterinary care; the more seriously wounded dog is at a clinic in the city of Mito, while the protective spaniel-type dog is receiving care at a shelter in the same town. (via Yahoo)
Ultimate Loyalty: Japanese Dog Refuses to Leave Injured Friend Behind (via LNeilB2)
“One of our co-authors saw them actually flapping their fins. Some people have seen them jetting water while in flight. We felt that ‘flight’ is more appropriate because it implies something active.” (via Photographic Evidence Proves That Squid Can Fly : TreeHugger)
Seven elephants have been killed by a speeding freight train in eastern India, after two baby elephants strayed onto the tracks and older ones followed to try to save them.
One of the elephants was dragged for about 400 meters (yards), while the other four died on the spot,” district official Kalyan Das told India Today. Two others were severely injured and died hours later, he said. “It is a ghastly sight,” forest conservator S. Patel told the same paper. The baby elephants were among the dead.
Millions of killer giant squid are not only devouring vast amounts of fish they have even started attacking humans. Two Mexican fishermen were recently dragged from their boats and chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified even by their own families. No wonder the giant squid are called “diablos rojos” - red devils. (via Giant Squids Depleting Fish Populations, Now Turning Their Hungry Tentacles To Humans - Geekologie
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Finally, EEG-like recordings have been done in both octopus and cuttlefish, leading to the general (but very preliminary) finding that cephalopods have complex, low-frequency “background” electrical activity in some parts of their brains that seems to vary with their states of consciousness. In addition, they show sensory-evoked changes in this activity, in the same way that human EEGs do. This suggests that some of the gross functional properties of the cephalopod brain might resemble those of mammals on a system-wide level.
All of the arguments by analogy should be taken with a grain of salt, because while it is interesting to consider the possible theoretical importance of the apparent similarities between octopus and vertebrate brains, it seems premature at this point, given how little we know about them. While laterality, distributed low-amplitude electrical activity, and a certain kind of memory system architecture are found in the brains of animals who are almost definitely conscious (eg. mammals and birds,) it’s hard to say that their presence in such highly divergent nervous systems (eg. those of vertebrates and cephalopods) has the same set of functional consequences in all cases. (via Cephalopod Consciousness Part 3: The Case for Cephalopod Consciousness | Cephalove
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"The two-year-old cephalopod has a record of predicting past German results in this manner, his owners say. Paul has so far correctly predicted all of Germany’s results in South Africa. His keepers say he correctly predicted nearly 70% of Germany’s results during the 2008 European Championship."
— BBC News - ‘Psychic’ octopus predicts Germany victory over England
