This blog is taking a break for the next few months so that I can devote my energies to the Whale Sanctuary Project. Here's why.
The Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica was the first of its kind for these wonderfully engaging animals, and it was a model for others that followed. But questions have arisen. And…
Tafi Atome looks like a typical forest in Ghana. The monkeys have been revered in this village for two centuries. But being “sacred” is no guarantee of survival.
The great irony of the animal rights movement is there is still only one species that has any rights at all: humans. But the Nonhuman Rights Project is setting out to change that.
Why would a supposedly “intelligent” species behave in a way that’s bringing about a mass extinction – one that will likely take us down along with so many other animals?
Is the Stock Market a Global Ponzi Scheme?
Sacred Activism in the Service of Animals
Of Humans and Persons
In Dorset, England, this 15-year-old feline shows up regularly at the bus station, sits under the shelter until his favorite bus arrives (the one that makes the round trip from Bridport to Charmouth), waits for the door to open, and hops aboard.
“Special value must be more than the market value of a well-trained dog … We believe that the special value…may be derived from the attachment that an owner feels for his pet.”
It was a toxic mix of greed, jealousy, forestry, business and cat stew. A Chinese CEO is dead and a deputy director of agriculture is in handcuffs.
Dogs have been around humans long enough to figure out that staring and pointing are referential – it’s not about the finger or the eyes; it’s all about the direction.
Ancient Egypt was, to the best of our knowledge, where cats first became household pets. It began when cats made themselves welcome by keeping the storehouses of grain free from rodents. Soon after that, they just moved – as cats have a way of doing.
It’s hard to grasp the sheer number of homeless dogs put to death in shelters each day. Shelters estimate 5,500. But that’s just a number that can’t tell the story. Nor can bios or memorials. But it can perhaps be accomplished in art.
A family of orcas in Puget Sound off the coast of Seattle yesterday.
Update to our story on Andrea, the cat who survived being gassed twice at Utah’s West Valley City shelter. A group of volunteers from the shelter, led by the rescue group CAWS (Community Animal Welfare Society), asked the city council to get rid of the gas chamber altogether. The city council declined.
Paul Shapiro’s weekly round-up of news from the world of farm animals – January 6, 2012.
Check this out: An “unadoptable” pet gets gassed at the shelter, but survives and finds a home. So now they’re looking for better ways to kill the dogs and cats!
What’s killing the bees? We’ve heard numerous theories over the past few years, from pesticides to viruses to cell phones. Now there’s a new theory: A parasitic fly is turning bees into zombies.
It doesn’t get much worse than this for an orangutan being kept at a zoo. Sean Whyte, who runs the grassroots British group Nature Alert, says that these gentle primates are kept in cages 5 feet by 5 feet where they can barely stand up or turn around.
Natalie Portman is one of the few celebrity actors who embrace the animal protection world as a passionate cause (rather than as part hobby, part self-promotion).
Look where the arrow is pointing. That’s not part of the octopus; that’s a black marble jawfish pretending to be part of the octopus since her coloring fits so well.
The H5N1 virus (aka bird flu) is rearing its head again in Asia, where huge, dirty, inhumane chicken markets are a breeding ground for dangerous bugs and viruses that can be carried around the world by humans, by birds or by other animals.
A series of small earthquakes in Ohio and Arkansas has more and more people worried that the quakes are being caused by companies pumping water into the ground – either as waste water or to drill for natural gas.
Knowing what someone else doesn’t know enables you to take advantage of them – or, on the other hand, help them. It’s one of the hallmarks of extra brain power, and it’s one of the key arguments that we use to make the case that a particular animal qualifies to be recognized as a “person” in legal and philosophical terms.
Latest word to enter the scientific vocabulary: Vegansexual. The term was coined in New Zealand after much media attention was given, four years ago, to a study that noted that an increasing number of vegans said they engaged in sexual relationships and intimate partnerships only with other vegans.
A lone octopus wends her way across the floor near a hydrothermal vent 7,800 feet below the surface of the Antarctic Ocean. She’s just one of thousands of sea creatures seen by humans for the first time when a team from Oxford University sent a remote camera down to visit them.
Kathy Rudy hates cruelty to animals, is a professor of ethics who has written a book called Loving Animals: Toward a New Animal Advocacy, writes passionately about human rights and animals … and also tries to make a case for supporting zoos