Umi Devi

Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts

Aug 6, 2011

Even baboons like to have a dog around

PETA, where are you when we need you?

Jul 20, 2011

Commuting is for the dogs

Ticket, please.
Each morning, like clockwork, they board the subway, off to begin their daily routine amidst the hustle and bustle of the city, DogFiles reports.
But these aren’t just any daily commuters. These are stray dogs who live in the outskirts of Moscow Russia and commute on the underground trains to and from the city centre in search of food scraps. Then after a hard day scavenging and

Jul 17, 2011

Swim with the sharks

No, you don't have to go to Washington.

To get excited for Shark Week, the Discovery Channel teamed up with the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta to place a live streaming peephole in the aquarium’s Ocean Voyager exhibit.

The exhibit, which was designed to house whale sharks, holds 6.3 million gallons of seawater, enough to fill nine and a half Olympic swimming pools. It is home to seven different

Why pets are good for you

Bend over.
From The Los Angeles Times:

Health: An Australian survey found that dog and cat owners were in better health than people with neither (health was measured either by how often people went to the doctor or by how much medication they took). And a study with people on Medicare found that those who owned pets made fewer doctor visits than those who didn't.

Hypertension: A number of

Jul 14, 2011

How to deactivate a cat

Answering the big questions. Don't laugh.

This hyena walked into a bar...
Here at Gumbo International Headquarters we expend considerable resources to answer your most pressing questions.

Several thousand readers have asked: why do hyenas laugh? We went out into the bush to find out.
Spotted hyenas have a rich vocal repertory; they emit about a dozen distinct vocalizations, most of which can be modulated in various ways to alter their

Jul 4, 2011

What does your dog see?

Dr. Mark Plonsky, a professor of psychology, summarizes the basics of dog vision:Dogs are red-green color blind.
They see a brighter and less detailed world when compared to humans.
Peripheral vision is better than humans (dogs see more of the world), but distance is not judged quite as well.
Dogs excel at night vision and the detection of moving objects.
Here's a rough guesstimate of what a

Jun 25, 2011

What a croc

A congressman is born.
Cuban crocodiles can live for 75 years, spending only 86 days in their eggs. Their eggs don't completely shield them from the environment.
A crocodile egg actually needs direction from its environment. The temperature of the nest activates the sex chromosomes of a developing crocodile in its egg. Temperature-dependent sex determination, as this process is called, is not

May 31, 2011

How Santa can find your house in a snow storm

We see you, camera man!
Researchers have discovered that the ultraviolet (UV) light that causes the temporary but painful condition of snow blindness in humans is life-saving for reindeer in the arctic.

Human beings are able to see light with wavelengths ranging from around 700nm, which corresponds to the color red, right through all the colors of the rainbow in sequence to 400nm, which

May 5, 2011

Here's hoping he took a bite

A four-legged recruit joined U.S. Special Forces as they stormed Osama Bin Laden's secret lair.

The explosive-sniffing dog was strapped to an assault team member. As anonymous as the humans involved, the dog's name and breed weren't revealed.
Heavily armoured hounds — equipped with infrared night-sight cameras — have been used in the past by the top-secret unit. The war dogs wear ballistic body