Browsing Posts published in April, 2011

Each week the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) sends out an email alert called “Take Action Thursday,” which tells subscribers about current actions they can take to help animals. NAVS is a national, not-for-profit educational organization incorporated in the State of Illinois. NAVS promotes greater compassion, respect and justice for animals through educational programs based on respected ethical and scientific theory and supported by extensive documentation of the cruelty and waste of vivisection. You can register to receive these action alerts and more at the NAVS Web site. This week’s “Take Action Thursday” looks at various issues concerning birds, a disappointing decision for puppies in Missouri, and a court decision on a chimpanzee in Brazil. continue reading…

by Kathleen Stachowski for Animal Blawg

Running away to join the circus! What a call to liberation–beckoning kids for generations. An escape to freedom from nagging parents, onerous chores, meaningless homework. Restless adults still hear that siren song—now merely an escape fantasy—and imagine leaving the past behind and starting over as someone new.

Circus elephant in chains---courtesy Animal Blawg.

While the human version is all about free will and freedom, for other species—whether captured from the wild or bred into captivity—the circus means bondage. Captured animals are abducted away from everything good and natural—family, home, accustomed diet, comfortable routine. Chained or caged (some once roamed 30 and more miles a day!), they’re transported a world away, forced to start life anew in slavery. Captive-bred animals, never having experienced the life nature intended, know only the exploitation: abuse, crushing boredom, perpetual confinement. One wonders if they aren’t the “luckier” of the two. continue reading…

by Gregory McNamee

Birds are better known for their sense of sight than for their sense of smell. That does them a disservice, scientists Darla Zelinetsky and her research colleagues hold, writing in a newly published paper on avian olfaction that birds owe their sense of smell to their theropod dinosaurian ancestors, they of the great olfactory bulbs of yore. The relative size of the birds’ scent apparatus increased early in their evolution, then decreased in what in the language of science is called “derived neoavian clades”—that is, more recently evolved species of birds. We have the notion that birds cannot smell, they speculate, because birds that commonly live in association with humans, perching birds such as crows and finches, indeed have poor senses of smell compared to other avifauna. “It also may be no coincidence that these are also the cleverest birds,” they note, “suggesting that enhanced smarts may decrease the need for a powerful sniffer.”

* * *

Foxes of whatever variety have very powerful noses, of course. To judge by a recent BBC report, in Russia the common red foxes are using them to sniff out Arctic foxes, which are rapidly being displaced by their southerly cousins.

Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus)---Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The problem, it seems, is that with climate change, the arctic conditions under which the aptly named Arctic foxes exist are becoming less extreme, allowing the red foxes to claim northerly climes as their own. Writing in the journal Polar Biology, Russian and Norwegian researchers observe that red foxes are fully 25 percent larger than their Arctic kin, giving them an edge in any fight for territory. The only solution for the Arctic foxes, it would seem, is to retreat to colder places, if any such places exist. continue reading…

by John P. Rafferty

This week, we reflect on the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the annual celebration of Earth Day. Therefore, it seems logical to examine the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill as well as one of the mantras of the environmentally apathetic, namely that the global environment is too vast for humans to affect. At first glance, the greater ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico seems to be absorbing the damage done by the spill.

Aerial view of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, May 6, 2010---MCS Michael B. Watkins—U.S. Navy/U.S. Department of Defense

The focus of the press seems to be on British Petroleum’s (BP) financial responsibilities to people whose livelihoods were interrupted by the spill and discussions over how coastal ecosystems along the Gulf Coast should be restored. However, while terrestrial plants and animals affected by the oil can be washed off and the dead counted, less tangible is the damage beneath the waves. Is the Gulf really digesting all oil released from the wellhead, or are there lingering environmental issues?

The answers, it seems, are yes and yes. A recent piece by Melissa Gaskill of Nature News relayed the U.S. government’s take on the fate of the 4.9 million barrels (207 million gallons) of oil. Some 1.24 million barrels were recovered or burned, while roughly the same amount was either volatile enough to evaporate at the surface or dissolved. Of the 1.1 million gallons that remained intact, some sank to the seafloor while the rest fouled beaches in some way or formed persistent oil slicks. Dispersants were used to break up about 770,000 barrels, and the remaining 630,000 barrels broke up naturally through dilution and wave action. Despite much debate over these numbers, all parties agree that the Gulf itself can process a decent amount of the oil, because it has done so before. This is small consolation to the jobs lost and the more than 6,000 birds, 600 sea turtles, and over 100 mammals who perished in large part as a result of the disaster. (The animal death toll is likely much higher, perhaps up to ten times the number of carcasses collected.) continue reading…

by Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund

This week [April 14, 2011] the Missouri House of Representatives voted to repeal most of Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, just five months after Missouri voters approved common-sense standards for the care of dogs in large-scale commercial breeding facilities. These politicians decided to defy the will of the voters and dismantle Prop B piece by piece, stripping away the requirements such as clean water, veterinary exams, and space for exercise, and reverting to the weak law that allowed thousands of dogs to be crammed into rows of stacked, wire cages.

The vote was fairly close, with a margin of 85-71 (like the Senate vote, which was 20-14). Twenty-six Republicans and 45 Democrats in the House voted to stop the repeal and to keep Prop B intact. Several lawmakers spoke out against overturning the will of the people, such as Reps. Scott Sifton, D-96, Eileen McGeoghegan, D-77, Margo McNeil, D-78, and Jill Schupp, D-82, and offered amendments to restore some basic animal welfare standards, such as space requirements and making sure cages are cleaned once a day. Their amendments were voted down by legislators who essentially wanted complete deregulation for puppy mills, continue reading…

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