flanerie.org

[from Stuff.co.nz]
A little dog named Leo has been proclaimed a hero after risking his own life to protect four kittens in a Melbourne house fire overnight.

The plucky pooch tested the courage and skills of firefighters as they were forced to dodge fallen power lines to reach him and his young feline companions at the burning weatherboard home in Pilgrim Street, Seddon just before 9pm (AEDT).

Commander Ian Brown said family pet Leo, which remained in the house guarding the family's four-week-old kittens, owed his life to the firefighters.

"They got him out of the house and successfully resuscitated him," he said. "They are just there spending some time now with Leo before they go off duty."

Following a few tense minutes, the animals responded to oxygen and therapy, and were now fully revived.

Commander Brown said the family was relieved to be reunited with their family pets, including the mother of the kittens, which had initially been lost in the incident.

"Everyone's fine. . . we rescued anyone," Commander Brown said.

An 11-year-old girl suffered smoke inhalation as she made her escape, and was treated by paramedics before being taken to hospital for observation.

She was at the home with her 37-year-old mother, a five-year-old sister and 18-year-old brother when the fire started in the front room.

However, Commander Brown said the lives of firefighters were put at further risk, with the family not having an evacuation plan or smoke alarms.

"A proper working smoke alarm and an evacuation plan equals a safer escape."

The cause of the fire is being investigated.

This is Bailey. He lives over the road and comes to our garden for his breakfast.

[found on stuff.co.nz and the thinnest piece of science I have read in a long time]

New research has gone to the dogs and discovered that canines pick up on the morals of their owners.

Research by University of Vienna scientists reveals that dogs "show a strong aversion to inequity", and can develop a sense of right and wrong.

The Austrian experts base their theories on the fact dogs will play with each other but this will rarely end in a full-on scrap, showing they abide by social rules.

LandSAR search dog handler Dave Krehic believed dogs like his five-year-old German shorthaired pointer Stig learned their sense of right and wrong from their owners.

"It's totally how someone brings it up. It's just like a child," said Krehic.

However, nature played a part as well as nurture. "They are a living thing and like humans there are some good ones and there are some bad ones. Some people say their dog would never be aggressive, but I think that could be brought out in most of them."

University of Otago associate professor of animal behaviour Ian Jamieson said it could be argued that dogs had developed a perceived "morality" as a way to order their society.

"Humans, like dogs, are very social and you need to have certain rules of engagement, otherwise there is complete chaos," said Jamieson. "People are interpreting morality in that sense when they look at dogs, but they could well be very basic fundamental behaviours that animals exhibit."

The president of the Selwyn District Kennel Society, Gary Doyle, said dogs could do more than just behave in a morally correct way they could expose some people by their actions. "We used a dog I had as a barometer of who we should sell pups to. If he went over to them and stayed by them, it was a sign he didn't trust them."

A Dudley teenager has survived being bitten in the face by a shark - in his own bedroom.

Sam Hawthorne, 14, was 'attacked' when he sleepwalked into a long-dead souvenir shark hanging on the wall, reports Metro.

He was left with the creature embedded in his cheek and blood pouring from a wound.

His mother, Susan Hawthorne was woken by her son's screams but arrived too late to fend off the holiday souvenir.

She said: "It was like something out of a horror film. The shark must have been embedded in Sam's cheek for about 15 minutes and he was in a lot of pain."

Sam, who escaped with just a small scar, added: "It was the most frightening experience of my life."

[found on Ananova]
A duck in China has become a celebrity for its singing, dancing and counting abilities.

According to Dahe Daily, Bengbeng (Silly), follows its owner, Du Xinai of Xingxiang city, to the local agricultural market to buy vegetables every day, wearing a small red scarf and a pair of tiny shoes.

"Each day someone asks him to dance or sing or count", says Du.

"If you ask him to sing, he quacks rhythmically while shaking his head and body. He quite enjoys it."

"If you put up one finger, he quacks once, then twice with two fingers, and so on."

Du says Bengbeng is also a good citizen, and always waits for the traffic lights.

"If he sees me waiting for a green light, he stops also, and waits quietly for the colour to change."

Du says Bengbeng has become quite a star. "Everywhere he goes, people welcome him like a super star."

[found on Ananova]
A wolf walked into a packed bar in Italy, ate a steak sandwich and walked out again.

The wolf strolled into the bar at Villetta Barrea, near to the Abruzzo national park, and helped itself to a steak sandwich from a table.

Bar owner Giacinto Lorenzo, 43, said: "It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it really happened.

"Everyone here knows what a wolf looks like and there was no mistaking this beast for a big dog. It was one of the wolves from the national park.

"It looked pretty thin and we guess it must have been suffering with the recent cold weather and the snow.

"Everyone was so frightened we couldn't move for about five minutes afterwards, but the wolf just sauntered out as if it was the most normal thing in the world."

Local authorities have sent a team out to search for the wolf.

[from El Reg]
A US couple had a lucky escape when a 600lb cow unexpectedly landed on the bonnet of their minivan, unsurprisingly causing "heavy damage".

According to AP, Michigan-based Charles and Linda Everson were visiting the area around Lake Chelan, Washington, to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. On their way back to the hotel near Manson on Sunday, the bovine in question decided to plummet from a 200ft cliff and impact without warning against the vehicle.

Charles Everson admitted he "didn't see the cow falling and didn't know what happened until afterward". He added he'd been reduced to repeating: "I don't believe this. I don't believe this."

Chelan County fire chief Arnold Baker said the pair had missed being killed by a matter of inches. The cow wasn't so lucky, and was quickly "euthanised".

Police in South Africa impounded a Fiat Uno car that was being used to transport two cows and two goats.

Two policemen in northern KwaZulu-Natal chased after the tiny car after a tip-off, reports Independent Online.

Police spokesperson Captain Jabulani Mdletshe said residents of the Phelindaba area reported seeing a man loading a cow into the Fiat.

By the time the two officers arrived, the driver had loaded his vehicle with all four animals and was attempting to speed away.

Police gave chase and, realising he was not losing his pursuers, the man stopped his car and fled into the bushes.

The animals were later handed over to the Hluhluwe Stock Theft Unit, but the driver is still at large.

[from El Reg]
A Taiwanese woman was sporting a brand spanking new breast implant this week after her previous joy bag was punctured in a freak bee stinging incident.

The apine dive bomber attacked the 31 year old last month as she was riding her motorcycle while wearing a low cut dress, Ananova reports. Despite the fact that saline implants are supposed to withstand pressures of 200Kg, the woman said her right breast “disappeared” in just two days.

Subsequent investigations showed the saline from the boob propper-upper had leaked as a result of the bee attack.

The surgeon who reinstalled the girl’s right Bulgarian air bag put the incident down to the fact that she was “very skinny” which meant the skin on her breasts was therefore very thin and prone to puncturing when attacked by enraged pollen collectors.

He has now advised her to avoid acupuncture in future, and, curiously, yoga.

[found on Ananova]
Efforts to save a rare fish suffered a setback when scientists realised they'd been restocking rivers and lakes with the wrong species.

Researchers at the University of Colorado have been trying to restore the cutthroat trout, Colorado's official state fish, to its native habitat since the early 1970s.

They described the blow to the expensive, decades-long effort as a "setback", reports the Rocky Mountain News.

"This was a very surprising result," said Jessica Metcalf, a researcher at CU who led the study. "It's not at all what we expected."

The greenback cutthroat, named for the brilliant crimson slashes behind its jaw, was named Colorado's state fish in 1994.

It had been declared endangered in 1973 when the scheme was launched to restore the species using sperm and eggs from what were believed to be nine relic populations.

However, using DNA analysis, researchers recently found that five of those nine relic populations weren't greenback cutthroats at all, but Colorado River cutthroats.

Bruce Rosenlund of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, played down the discovery and said only DNA technology could tell the difference between the two species.

"Our feeling for a long time has been that they were very, very closely related and indistinguishable... other than the fact that one's on the east side of the Continental Divide and one's on the west side," he said.

[from El Reg]
Nepal Airlines has apparently fixed an electrical fault on one of its Boeing 757s by sacrificing two goats in appeasement of Hindu sky god Akash Bhairab, Reuters reports.

The airline boasts two Boeings, and one was reportedly giving it a certain amount of grief leading to suspension of services over the past few weeks. However, the quick dispatch to the hereafter of two caprine sacrifies in front of the "troublesome" machine at Kathmandu on Sunday quickly resolved the matter.

Senior airline official, Raju K.C, declined to elaborate on the exact nature of the problem, but confirmed: "The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights."

[from BBC News]
Pet camel kills Australian woman

A woman in Australia has been killed by her pet camel after the animal apparently tried to have sex with her.

The woman was found dead at the family's sheep and cattle ranch near the town of Mitchell in Queensland.

The woman had been given the camel as a 60th birthday present earlier this year because of her love of exotic pets.

The camel was just 10 months old but already weighed 152kg (336lbs) and had come close to suffocating the family's pet goat on a number of occasions.

On Saturday the woman apparently became the object of the male camel's desire.

It knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her and displayed what the police delicately described as mating behaviour.

Young camels are not normally aggressive but can become more threatening if treated and raised as pets.

[found on NewScientist.com and confirmation that I will soon be out of a job]
It takes a smart monkey to do mathematics, and although Elsa Addessi insists her 10 capuchins aren't quite doing sums, she admits they must be pretty clever to be able to pass the tests that she has put them through. One can even handle multiplication.

Addessi, a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy, tested whether her capuchins could understand the value of monkey money, and then use it to buy the greatest amount of food.

First, all ten capuchins successfully learned that a blue token would "buy" them one piece of peanut whereas a yellow token would get them three, and if offered the choice between one of each token, they would be better off choosing a yellow one.

But things became more difficult when they were asked to choose between one yellow and up to five blue tokens.

Two monkeys went for quantity, always choosing the larger stack of tokens on offer, regardless of the token's colour. Another four preferred colour over quantity, always choosing yellow tokens over blue, however many blue tokens were on offer.

Addessi thinks this may be due to the design of the experiment: the monkeys were given three peanuts all in one go in exchange for a yellow token, whereas they had to hand over five blue tokens one by one before they received five peanuts. "I think waiting for their reward made them upset, frustrated," she says.

However, "four capuchins were able to maximise their payoff," says Addessi. These monkeys could work out that four blue tokens bought more food than a single yellow token, whereas two blue tokens were of lesser value.

Addessi and her colleagues then tested the four "smart" capuchins and two others further. This time they were allowed to choose between two yellow tokens, worth six peanut pieces, and four or five blue tokens, worth four or five peanut pieces respectively.

One of the monkeys didn't understand the test at all. Three stuck to yellow tokens regardless, leaving just two monkeys that were able to maximise their payoff.

Addessi says the monkeys are not actually doing maths, but roughly estimating which lot of tokens is worth more. If they were doing maths, they would find it just as easy to discriminate, say, between six and five pieces of nut as between six and four pieces.

But the monkeys were better at discriminating between numbers further apart, for instance when they could choose between six and four pieces, represented by two yellow tokens and four blue, rather than between six and five, represented by two yellow tokens and five blue.

The ability to discriminate between "less" and "more" is important for most animals. Figuring out which tree has more berries on it, for example, or determining whether there are more friends than enemies in an area, are matters of life and death.

What is unique about Addessi's study is that the monkeys didn't just choose between quantities but also showed they were able to represent them using symbols – much as humans use coins to represent value.

"I find this quite surprising coming from an animal that diverged from us 35 million years ago," Addessi told New Scientist.

[from Ananova]
A German farmer lost 10,000 Euros when it was eaten by his goat.

But he got it back after having a vet carry out emergency surgery to recover the cash.

Martin Radlberger, 34, from Rosenheim in Germany left the 100 Euro notes that he planned to use to buy a tractor on the kitchen table when he went to answer the phone.

But when he returned he saw his nanny goat Steffi just finishing off the last crisp new note.

He said: "I know I shouldn't have left the cash on the table, but I was only gone for five minutes to answer a phone call. When I returned I saw how my goat had the last note in her mouth."

Radlberger immediately called a vet who performed an emergency operation on the animal.

"Now I have almost all my money back, and Steffi has had a hard lesson" the farmer says, adding that the vet had kept three of the soggy 100 Euro notes to pay for the surgery.

Fire chiefs rushed 18 crew, three engines, a Land Rover and a rescue boat to a 999 call - to save a trapped duck.

Residents feared a child had drowned as teams raced up to 35 miles to the scene with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, reports The Sun.

Locals were stunned to find the "casualty" was Daffy, a white Aylesbury, trapped in a drainage tunnel.

A woman called 999 after finding the duck stuck between sluices near Earlswood, West Midlands.

Residents blasted the three-hour operation to free the bird, which lives on a nearby lake, as a "waste of money".

Retired fireman Neil Guest, 54, said: "It was unbelievable.

"There were five men to each engine, an officer in charge and two with the dinghy. That duck got treated better than people did in the floods."

Warwickshire fire bosses said it was their "good deed for the day".

[found on stuff.co.nz]
When Oscar the Cat visits residents of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jump into action – Oscar can sense within hours when someone is about to die.

In his two years living in Steere's end-stage dementia unit, Oscar has been at the bedside of more than 25 residents shortly before they died, according to Dr David Dosa of Brown University in Providence.

He wrote about Oscar in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"It's not that the cat is consistently there first," Dr Joan Teno, a professor of community health at Brown University, who sees patients in the unit. "But the cat always does manage to make an appearance, and it always seems to be in the last two hours."

Raised at the nursing home since he was a kitten, Oscar often checks in on residents, but when he curls up for a visit, physicians and nursing home staff know it's time to call the family.

"I don't think this is a psychic cat," said TeNo "I think there's probably a biochemical explanation," she said in a telephone interview.

While pets are often used to bring comfort to the elderly in nursing home settings, Oscar's talent is special, though not unexpected.

"That is such a cat thing to do," said Thomas Graves, a feline expert and chief of small animal medicine at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.

Graves said there is no evidence to suggest cats can sense death, but he doesn't discount it for a minute.

"Those things are hard to study. I think probably dogs and cats can sense things we can't," he said.

On a particular day detailed by Dr Dosa, Oscar settled on to the bed of a patient in room 313.

His presence sent staff off to make calls and set up vigil.

When a grandson asked why the cat was there, his mother explained: "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven," according to Dosa's account.

She died a half an hour later.

[found on stuff.co.nz]
Police in southwestern France are searching for a big cat, possibly a young tiger, that has been spotted prowling in a village near the city of Bordeaux, the village's mayor has said.

Officials from the National Hunting Office have also laid traps for the animal after a woman and her daughter saw it repeatedly in their garden.

"At first they didn't believe it, but the third time the animal was 10 metres away from them," Pierre Soubabere, mayor of Saint-Louis-de-Montferrand, said.

Another resident has seen the cat roaming the countryside, and its tracks suggest it is a young tiger, though it could be a jaguar or a leopard.

Soubabere said no such animal had been reported missing in the area, not even by circuses that spend part of the year in a neighbouring town.

[from Ananova]
A mum was trapped for an hour with her hand stuck inside her pet boxer's mouth.

Pregnant Vicky Morl speared her hand when she tried to pluck out a fishing hook which was stuck in the animal's jaw, reports the Daily Mirror.

It was a case of becoming too attached to her agitated pet - for whenever he moved, poor Vicky had to move with him.

She was finally released by a fire crew and paramedics and taken to hospital. Her left hand was so badly injured she needed a skin graft.

Husband James said: "Both Vicky and the dog were very upset. But the emergency services managed to calm them down and set them free."

Vicky, in her late 20s, became trapped after her pet rummaged round the garden of her home in Maidenhead, Berkshire.

Somehow, he ended up with a lethally sharp fishing hook in his mouth. Vicky tried to wiggle it free. But as she did so, the hook penetrated her hand and she was caught up as well.

Luckily she was able to hit a phone pad with her free hand to let James know of her predicament.

He dialled 999 and emergency services went to the scene. It took more than hour to untangle the pair.

An ambulance spokesman said: "Every time someone got near the dog it moved. And every time the dog moved, Vicky had to move with it. It was a difficult job - and it was certainly very different."

[from a tripped out Ananova]
British forces have been accused of releasing a plague of ferocious, man-eating badgers in the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among locals that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

But several of the creatures, caught and killed by local farmers, have been identified by experts as honey badgers.

The rumours spread because the animals had appeared near the British base at Basra airport.

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra's veterinary hospital, confirmed the animals were honey badgers.

"They are known locally as Al-Girta. Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific," he said.

It's believed the badgers have been driven towards the city by flooding in marshland north of Basra but the assurances have done little to convince some members of the public.

One housewife, Suad Hassan, 30, claimed she had been attacked by one of the badgers as she slept.

"My husband hurried to shoot it but it was as swift as a deer," she said. "It is the size of a dog but his head is like a monkey."

[El Reg reports...]
Residents of the western UK and Irish coasts have been warned to expect an invasion by a vast flotilla of ghostly, immortal albino plastic ducks, according to reports.

The tale of the floating, whitened bird-simulacra migration is a strange one, dating back many years. It seems that the plastic bathtime companions were originally made in China. They were on their way to America in 1992 when a terrible storm struck their vessel in mid-Pacific, and shipping containers holding 30,000 of the hapless playthings were washed overboard.

A majority of the ducks - at that stage still tinted a healthy yellow - headed south, many of them reportedly finishing up in Australia, where they were doubtless accorded the traditional hostile reception.

Ten thousand of the plastic anatidaens, however, went north, embarking on an endless odyssey across the world's oceans. Like the legendary Captain Vanderdecken in his ill-omened ghost ship the Flying Dutchman, the flocks of plastic kiddy-pals seemed doomed to roam the oceans for eternity.

The luckless fleet of cursed, wandering sea-going toys - Flying Duckmen, perhaps - circled the northern Pacific for some years before a fresh horror befell them as they drifted into the Arctic. Here they became frozen into the pack ice, suffering untold torment in their icy prison as they slowly transited past Greenland into the Atlantic.

Bleached pale by their hellish polar ordeal, the doomed ducks drifted onward. Thawed-out plastic voyagers have landed since the turn of the century in New England, Iceland and Canada, and one may have been found in the western Hebrides in 2003.

A retired American oceanographer named Curtis Ebbesmeyer has monitored the ducks' progress for the past 15 years, and it's his prediction that the plastic playthings' perpetual peregrination may now be headed this way.

Ebbesmeyer briefed the Evening Standard yesterday, saying that "We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard.

"It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches.

"Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."

The Times claims that the globe-trotting bath toys have become collectors' items, and sell for £500. If true, this could mean another greed-crazed beachcomber salvage flotsam bonanza frenzy, with hordes of opportunists descending on Cornish beaches hoping to get rich on the sea's pale, plastic bounty.

We say: bad luck will surely come to those who seek to profit from the Flying Duckmen. Interfere with their eternal voyage at your peril.

[stuff.co.nz reports...]
Two Thai street mutts who became ace sniffer dogs at an airport near the notorious "Golden Triangle" opium-producing region have been fired for urinating on luggage and sexually harassing female passengers.

The pair, Mok and Lai, had been plucked from obscurity under a program initiated by King Bhumibol Adulyadej to turn strays into police dogs, the Bangkok Post said on Sunday.

Although they won plaudits from police for their work in sniffing out drugs at northern Thailand's Chiang Rai airport, near the border with Laos and Myanmar, so many passengers complained about their behavior they had to be fired.

"He liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside," Mok's former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, said. "He also liked to hold on to women's legs."

"Both were just as good as foreign dogs trained for use in drug missions," he added. "But they were stray dogs, so their manners were worse than those of foreign breeds."

Mok and Lai now work on a farm, herding chickens and pigs, the paper said.

[according to Ananova...]
Serbian men are swapping their prize cows to get a bigger penis.

The bizarre exchange was revealed by the country's top plastic surgeon Srecko Djordjevic who said dozens of farmers obsessed with the size of their penis had traded in their prize cows for larger members.

He said: "The size of a man's member seems to play a big role in our society and the price of the operation, around £400, is almost exactly what a good cow is worth - so farmers are choosing to swap a cow if it means a bigger penis."

The urologist, who is based in the central town of Kragujevac, told the news agency Sina that the only problem had been that some farmers had unrealistic ideas of what they could get for their money.

He said: "Some of them want to add 10 centimetres and that is just not possible - at least not for just one cow."

[El Reg reports...]
A doctor in Oregon flushed out the aching lughole of a nine-year-old boy to find two spiders had set up home inside his ear canal.

The Albany Democrat-Herald reports that one of the arachnids was still alive. Traumatised juvenile aural spider blockage victim Jesse Courtney said: "They were walking on my eardrum and I kept hearing this popping sound like Rice Krispies."

Jesse's mother Diane told the Democrat-Herald she thought the bugs had landed in his ear when he was helping her with gardening some a week earlier. "The dirt was really flying," the paper reports.

The first, dead, spider was flushed out with little difficulty, but doctors said the live arachnid took a second dousing.

Like any sane mother, Diane Courtney revealed: "My first thought was, I’m going to go home and bomb the house."

Happily, Ms Courtney decided not to napalm the family home, and has since taken the spider corpses to show off to amazed work colleagues.

[El Reg reports...]
A Japanese actress inadvertantly blew the lid off a scam which had duped thousands of women into buying coiffured sheep in the belief they were poodles, the Evening Standard reports.

Maiko Kawakami appeared on a TV talk show with snaps of her pet, and admitted she wondered why it "didn't bark and refused to eat dog food". She was soon set straight - her dog was in fact a sheep.

The revelation provoked a stream of women to contact the cops with "similar problems". The powers that be reckon that as many as 2,000 have fallen victim to the audacious ovine poodle con, perpetrated by internet company "Poodles as Pets", which offered the animals at £630 a pop.

A police spokesman told The Sun: "We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company was selling sheep as poodles. Sadly, we think there is more than one company operating in this way. The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain and Australia."

In case you're wondering how on God's Green Earth you could mistake a sheep for a dog, the Standard explains that poodles are "extremely rare in Japan, with many people having little idea what they look like". No, we're not convinced either.

A Croat footballer turned up for work to find a flock of sheep waiting for him.

Defender Ivica Supe scored 16 times this season for third division Zagora FC unaware that the club's sponsor, Josko Bralic, a local shepherd, had promised a sheep for every goal scored by a defender.

Supe, 29, said: "It was a surprise, I just don't know where I will keep them. And I am expecting to score more by the end of the season."

A club spokesman said: "We are only a small club, and we could not get anyone else to sponsor us.

"There is no industry in the area, it's only a small village, and we were delighted when Mr Bralic offered to support us with sheep."

[ananova claim that...]
A mouse munched its way through thousands of pounds of cash after climbing inside a cash machine in Estonia.

The animal was found in the machine after a customer withdrew some money and got partly-eaten banknotes outside the bank in the capital Tallinn.

Bank security experts are investigating how the mouse managed to get into the machine.

Kristina Tamberg, spokeswoman for Hansapank Bank, said: "We have never heard of anything even remotely like this happening before.

"At some stage over the weekend the chewed money jammed, and the mouse seems to have spent the rest of the weekend turning the notes into bedding.

"It probably was attracted by the warmth from the machine and decided to make itself at home."

A Chinese man is looking for a good home for his pet carp which he says is fully trained.

Fang Peng, from Pingsai town, Guizhou Province, claims 'Submarine' responds to his name being called out.

Fang runs a fishing pond and his family have been training the carp for six years, reports the Guizhou City Papers.

He said: "He is very smart, and never takes the bait of anglers."

Fang says the fish developed his ability to understand human speech from his father who used to spend four hours a day with him.

Fang added: "He would tie a piece of cake or bread on the top of the fishing pole and call 'Submarine'.

"On hearing his name, Submarine would emerge from the water and take the food. Or I would feed him by hand."

Fang needs to find a new home for Submarine as the river which runs into his fishing pond has been diverted for irrigation.
[from ananova]

Los Angeles Zoo has hired a feng shui expert to help design its new Chinese monkey house.

Simona Mainini was consulted on the feng shui of a new £3.8m enclosure for rare golden monkeys from China, reports Metro.

She said: "It's very experimental. We don't have any books on feng shui for monkeys.

"We just have to assume that Darwin is correct and that there is a connection and what is good for humans is good for monkeys."

Charles Mays, the main architect behind the enclosure, said: "The viewing building has a Chinese character.

"We thought it would be more authentic if we went that extra step and made sure it was done with good feng shui."

Among Mainini's contributions to the design was the suggestion to put a fountain near an observation tower, to 'soften, with moisture, the harsh energy'.

The golden monkeys have been borrowed from the Chinese government for ten years, at a cost of £50,000 a year.

A hairdresser is offering clients a new conditioning treatment made out of bull's semen.

The 45-minute treatment costs £55 and uses semen from Aberdeen Angus bulls on a farm in Cheshire.

Hari's, in Knightsbridge, London, combines the sperm with the root of protein-rich plant katera, reports Metro.

The mixture is massaged into the client's hair after it has been shampooed. Then the customer is put under a steamer so the treatment penetrates the hair. Finally, it is blow-dried.

Salon owner Hari Salem said: "I have been searching for an organic product with a lot of protein because that is what hair is made of and lacks when it is dry.

"The semen is refrigerated before use and doesn't smell. It leaves your hair looking wonderfully soft and thick."
[from ananova]
---

Talking of which, if you are wondering what to get your girlfriend for Valentine's Day, I would suggest giving her a pearl necklace.

ANTWERP: Mozart, an iguana with an erection that has lasted for over a week, will have his penis amputated in the next couple of days.

Veterinarians at Antwerp's Aquatopia had sought to treat the animal's problem, but decided removal was the only solution because of the risk of infection. The good news for Mozart and his mates is that male iguanas have two penises.

Mozart, sitting on the shoulders of his keeper as camera crews focussed on his red, swollen erection, seemed unperturbed by the news.

"It doesn't bother him. He doesn't know what amputation means," said vet Luc Lambrecht, adding that Mozart's sexual activity should be undimmed by the operation.

"I don't think so. That's all in his head."
[from stuff.co.nz]

Tigger is in trouble for allegedly punching a teenager in the face at Disney World in Florida.

Jerry Monaco complained to police after Tigger apparently struck his 14-year-old son, also called Jerry, at the theme park. [how lame do you need to be to not be able to think of a different name for your kid?]

Mr Monaco, from New Hampshire, caught the incident on his video camera, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

In the video, Tigger grabs and locks Jerry's left arm and then throws a left jab at the teenager's face.

Mr Monaco told TV reporters: "At first, I was upset at my son. I thought he did something to Tigger. But then I reviewed it and it is pretty clear; for no reason he just clocked him in the face."

Deputy Carlos Padilla, a sheriff's spokesman, identified the man in the Tigger costume as Michael Fedelem, 31.

"Of course, we see a little of that tape, and we see what appears to be a battery. We need to talk to all sides to see exactly what happened," he said.

Disney officials said Mr Fedelem had been suspended until an internal investigation and the sheriff's criminal inquiry are completed.

Zoraya Suarez, a Disney spokeswoman, said: "Naturally, a physical altercation between characters and guests is not tolerated."
[from ananova]

The Te Uku-bred Barnevelder chick - hatched at Marlene Dickey's property at the start of last month - has died.

But it wasn't the extra legs that led to its death, more likely an extra anus, Mrs Dickey believes.

"He developed two bottoms and I think he got glugged up," she said.

While she was surprised by Forzie's death - he weighed a "good pound of butter" and was gaining feathers slowly - it was not totally unexpected, she said.

And it was fun while it lasted.

"He was a bit of a laugh."

Looking ungainly on its extra legs but twice as cute, the bird was an exception to the rule that chickens with defects are not normally born alive.

He was found dead on Friday and is now in the Dickeys' freezer waiting to be stuffed.

After he's been to the taxidermist, the family plan to donate the bird to Auckland Museum.

---

I kinda like the way Kiwis use butter as a unit of measure. How heavy is that cheese? Ooh, a good pound of butter. Or maybe not - is a good pound of butter lighter or heavier than a good pound of cheese?

A cat has set up home in a bird's nest in Norfolk.

Wendy Hobbs, from Reepham, first spotted the cat up the tree a week ago, reports the Daily Mail.

She was about to phone the fire brigade when she noticed the stray had set up home in the nest.

The cat only leaves the cherry tree to beg for food at her back door then climbs back up the tree.

Mrs Hobbs said: "I don't know why she loves the tree. She sits there watching the traffic. My husband and I think the nest must have been a pigeon's because it's so messy."

Mrs Hobbs has tried to find the cat's owners, she added: "We have phoned the vet's and apparently there have been no cats reported missing.

"I'm sure someone must be looking for her and I've put adverts up everywhere."
[from ananova.com]
---

Surely the cat is just learning the ways of its prey to improve its kill-rate. Or it has gone soft and crossed to the other side. Or it is a pigeon pretending to be a cat. Or Mrs Hobbs is an attention seeking liar.