Animals Library: cats

Showing posts with label cats. Show all posts

Amazing Photos to Inspire Animal Adoption

Hungarian photographer Sarolta Bán puts magic in her photos to help save animals, and somehow find responsible foster parents for the rescued ones.

If these photos are not enough to melt your heart, visit Sarolta Bán's Gallery.

For animal lovers, don't forget to get a hanky.

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Greenpeace Says Goodbye to Simba

Greenpeace along with Netherland based animation studio Studio Smack gave us a horrifying glimpse of what life on Earth is without all the adorable memeable cats, loyal friendly dogs and noisy beautiful birds. ( I could do without the cockroaches though, just saying...)

Dutch company Studio Smack gave the world, a world without animals in their "Hacking Disney" video where they deliberately wiped out the fauna in Disney's epic musical adventure The Lion King.

One by one, the animals ranging from zebras, elephants, giraffes, including our favorite characters Zazu and Mufasa slowly dissappear before our eyes.

Greenpeace and Studio Smack did an excellent job in showing us how important wildlife conservation truly is and the need for humanity to step up our game in conserving our treasured fauna.

With animals getting extinct and are in danger of extinction each year, this bone chilling picture of a barren African savannah might not be so far at all!

Hopefully, this would encourage us to take good care of our Earth and we wouldn't say goodbye to Simba soon.

Rejoice is the social media manager for Mapping Kindness (www.mappingkindness.com) and the Mapping Kindness Blog (www.blog.mappingkindness.com)

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Cats First Domesticated by the Chinese in Farms

While it’s commonly thought that cats were first made into pets by the ancient Egyptians, new evidence shows that our friendly felines were actually first domesticated in Chinese farms, some 5,300 years ago.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencestraced the domestication of cats to Quanhucun, an early village in China.

According to Fiona Marshall, one of the study’s co-authors, her team took three-pronged scientific approach to investigating the beginnings of cat domestication. Marshall is also a professor of archaeology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Her data shows that cats were probably drawn towards the small animals that lived in ancient farming villages, so as they preyed on these critters that fed on grain in farms, it was only a matter of time until they interacted with humans.

Marshall adds that their findings indicated that the village of Quanhucun was a food source for cats 5,300 years ago, leading to a symbiotic relationship between humans and cats. The cats could prey on small animals like rodents, and the farmers enjoyed a natural way of keeping pests away from their grain. She also notes that even if the cats were not domesticated, they have enough evidence to show that the animals lived

close to farmers.

Marshall, along with the study’s lead researcher Yaowu Hu and other members of the research team examined eight cat bones of at least two felines excavated from a site in China. From there, the team found that the cats fed on grain millet grown by farmers. Even more interesting is how one cat appeared to have had a diet of human-grown grain, leading to suspicions that it was actually fed by farmers.

Read the full story on Discovery News.

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Funny Cats and Dogs Hate Kisses Compilation 2014

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Op-Ed: Your cat thinks you are a big stupid momma cat

According to the British anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, cats regard their "owners" as large rather stupid members of their own species but not hostile.

John Bradshaw is on the faculty of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. Bradshaw's specialty is anthrozoology:

""Anthrozoology is the study of interactions between man and animals, and has emerged as a specialty over the past twenty-five years, initially in North America and subsequently also in Europe, Australia and Japan. It is essentially an interdisciplinary science, involving specialists in biology, psychology, social sciences, medicine and veterinary science.""

Source: Here

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What behavior do you have after playing online games?

Admit it! After playing online games, you will be bound to react like one of these guys. So which one are you?

http://thayssharumrn.deviantart.com/art/Hey-Joe-98641974

http://s600.photobucket.com/user/DarkestImmortal/media/My%20Pets/Other%20cute%20animals/PallasCatKittens.jpg.html

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New Species of Wild Cat Discovered in Brazil

Discoveries of previously unknown mammals, especially large mammals, are always an exciting affair, which is why news of scientists discovering a new species of wild cat in Brazil quickly made the rounds on television and the Internet. A mammal discovery is a reminder of how in many ways, we’re still scratching the surface of what we know of the natural world. More importantly, the discovery of the new wild cat brings to light conversation issues for the animals.

Scientists had for many years thought there was only one species of Brazilian tigrina, but it turns out there the housecat-sized tigrina populations in the northeastern and southern section of Brazil are two completely separate species, this according to research on their molecular data. With no evidence to support interbreeding between the tigrina populations, they were declared as two distinct species.

According to Eduardo Eizirik of Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, their research calls for increased focus on the conversation of tigrinas in northeastern Brazil, which little is known of as far as their biology and numbers go. In contrast, much more is known about the wild cats in southern Brazil.

Eizirik and his colleagues theorize that the two separate species probably evolved according to their environments, with the northeastern tigrinas adapting to savannahs, forests, and dry shrub land, while the southern cats live in wetter and denser Atlantic forests.

All species of wildcats in Brazil however, are threatened, and the race is on to learn more about them to increase conservation efforts.

Read more at Science Daily.

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Cats recognise their owners' voices but never evolved to care, says study

Any cat owner will tell you that although they are sometimes kept as pets, felines are beholden to no one.

A new study from the University of Japan has confirmed this, showing that although pet cats are more than capable of recognising their owner’s voice they choose to ignore them - for reasons that are perhaps rooted in the evolutionary history of the animal.

Source: Here

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Long Distance Relationships are Hard Even for Cats!

Source: Here

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Cute Cat Rushing to Poop!

Source: Here

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News in Brief: Mice lose cat fear for good after infection

Mice may permanently shed a fear of felines when infected with a parasite. The effects linger long after the parasites disappear, a study shows.

The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii can infect most mammals, including humans (SN: 1/26/13, p. 24). But the parasite can reproduce only in the feline gut, so cats need to eat animals infected with T. gondii to keep the parasite generations going.

Source: Here

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Iran looks to send Persian cat into space

Iran has settled on a Persian cat as the best candidate for its latest trial for a manned space mission it hopes to make by 2020, state media reports.

The feline would be following in the footsteps of a menagerie of dogs and monkeys who were among the early stars of the US and Soviet space programs in the 1960s.

Source: Here

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Cat: Abyssinian

Intelligence is hard or impossible to measure in most animals, but especially difficult to measure in felines, which are not pack animals and so have little interest in social hierarchies--which means they don't pay much attention to commands from us. Dogs, on the other hand, have instincts to obey the alpha in their pack--which is often a human. Cats just don't think this way. But the Abyssinian, one of the oldest known breeds of cat, is noted by much of the cat fancy community as the smartest breed.

Abyssinians can't be trained, exactly, but they will exhibit signs of learning. They can be taught to play fetch--perhaps the only breed of cat that will do this reliably. No studies have been performed to measure the Abyssinian's intelligence, but anecdotal evidence suggests the Abyssinian is energetic and curious, able to figure out small puzzles (like doorknobs) quickly.

Source: Here

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