Getting a Dog May Save Your Life

Having a dog can bring a lot of love into your life. It could also make it last a little longer. A group of academics from Uppsala University in Sweden analyzed the health records of 3.4 million people in that northern European country, where databases contain detailed information on everyone’s hospitalizations, medical history and even whether they own a dog. Such detailed records made it relatively easy to suss out the impact of having a canine companion. People in possession of a pooch were less likely to have cardiovascular disease or die from any cause during the 12 years covered by the research, according to the study published in Scientific Reports.

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Via: Bloomberg

25 Benefits of Adopting a Rescue Dog

October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month; here are 25 benefits of adopting a shelter dog.

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Via: Mental Floss

Sand cat kittens captured on video in wild for first time

They are elusive and never leave behind remains of their prey as they travel under cover of darkness. 

The first footage of sand cat kittens in the wild has been captured after four years of extensive research in Africa.

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Via: Indepentdent

5 Creatures That May Not Exist, But Get Government Protection Anyway

Dave Shealy is founder of the world’s only research center dedicated to the skunk-ape (the 7-foot tall, 450-pound apes that supposedly stroll through Florida reeking of rotten eggs). He’s spent much of his life trudging through the Everglades looking for signs of the creatures and has even gone so far as to call for the state of Florida to pass a law outlawing the hunting of them.

This guy is nuts, right? No matter your answer, he’s not the first person to try this with the skunk apes, and certainly not the first to push for government protection of a cryptid (an animal whose existence can’t be proved with scientific certainty). In Florida, the US, and even elsewhere in the world, individuals, politicians, and organizations have fought for legal protection for cryptids.

Here are five times where they’ve been successful.

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Via: Metal Floss

Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists.

Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand.

It was said to be named after its cry and to have "raced the hawk to the heavens".

Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago, shows their study in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

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Via: The New Zealand Herald

The Weird, Wacky World of The Platypus

Long has the platypus been referred to as a “freak” or a “joke by God.” But darn it, these critters are awesome, interesting and unique. If anything, they’re really super animals and everyone else is just jealous. After all, they take a little bit of all kinds of good animals and make one excellent and one-of-a-kind family of animals.

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Via: Neatorama

Are human beings impossible to ape?

Chimpanzees share 98.4 per cent of our DNA, but the differences between us and them are still profound, as a new book argues.

Taylor agrees that chimpanzees "show many fundamentally human skills – to a degree that they have the ability to do maths, think abstractly, demonstrate altruism, make tools and imitate each other. There is nothing humans can do that apes can't do, however simplistically."

But, he adds, "we are talking about the difference between using a twig as a tool and using the internet. It is humans that have speech and language, humans that have culture, art, music, science and technology, humans who remember the past, plan for the future, fear death and pay taxes.

"Sometimes, amid all this scientific talk of genetic and cognitive similarity, we can lose sight of the most important facts."

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Via: The Telegraph

Great whites 'plan' attacks

Great white sharks do not aimlessly wander the ocean waiting to stumble upon their next meal.

Instead, the biggest sharks identify a location from which to strike, and then search the surrounding killing zone for their next victim.

That suggests that the sharks use a premeditated hunting strategy akin to that used by some human serial killers.

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Via: BBC News

What really prompts the dog's "guilty look"

What dog owner has not come home to a broken vase or other valuable items and a guilty-looking dog slouching around the house? By ingeniously setting up conditions where the owner was misinformed as to whether their dog had really committed an offense, Alexandra Horowitz, Assistant Professor from Barnard College in New York, uncovered the origins of the “guilty look” in dogs in the recently published “Canine Behaviour and Cognition” Special Issue of Elsevier’s Behavioural Processes.

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Via: PhysOrg

Animals can tell right from wrong

Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book.

Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.

Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality.

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Via: Telegraph

Ancient Snake Was As Long As a Bus

"It's the biggest snake the world has ever known," said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga and part of an international team who discovered and identified the snake bones. He added, "The snake's body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door."

Titanoboa cerrejonensis, were discovered in the Cerrejon Coal Mine in northern Colombia. From the fossilized vertebrae, the researchers conservatively estimate the snake weighed about 2,500 pounds (1,140 kg) and measured nearly 43 feet (13 meters) from nose to tail tip.

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Via: Live Science

The Cute and the Sinister: Huggable Primates

The Pygmy Marmoset, looking like a reincarnated Furby (did you already forget about those? - a must-have toy in 1998), is the world’s smallest monkey. They range in length from 5 to 6 inches not including the tail, which is an amazing 6 to 8 inches in itself. Their name comes from the French word marmouset, meaning “shrimp” or “dwarf”.

Follow the link for more.

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Via: Dark Roasted Blend

New Species Alert! Hot Pink Millipede, Collosal Spider, and Tiny Deer Emerge.

For the last ten years, two new species a week have been identified in the Greater Mekong, a swath of diverse ecosystems along the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. In a new World Wildlife Fund report, scientists say they have documented at least 1,068 new species since 1997.

These aren’t run-of-the-mill species, either. Take Desmoxytes purpurosea, a bubble-gum pink “dragon” millipede that looks like a Halloween prop. Scientists found the thumb-sized centipede just sitting around on rocks and palm trees. Its shocking pink color is actually a warning to would-be predators: get too close and they’ll have to contend with the deadly cyanide that the millipede secretes.

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Polar Bear vs. Huskies

The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his huskies when the polar bear materialized out of the blue, as it were:

But something else happened.

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Why are Broken Bones Lethal to Horses?

After a four-race winning streak, Eight Belles galloped past the Kentucky Derby's finish line to snag second place. The glory was shattered as the racehorse collapsed on the track. She had broken bones in both front ankles — a lethal injury for a horse.

Supersize Sea Monsters

The biggest monsters of the deep. You can begin to see how legends of Sea Monsters began. 8 pictures

Shock pictures: Is this what the Canadian government means by 'humane' slaughter?

The baby seal looks into the eyes of her executioner. Barely a flicker of emotion shows on the fisherman's face as he smashes a steel-tipped club into her mouth. She lies whimpering on the ice, blood pouring from her jaw and nose.


But she is not yet dead, so the sealer hits her in the face another four times before slamming a hooked "hakapik" club into her stomach and dragging her across the ice towards the ship

Secrets of an Ancient Killing Machine

Why Komodo dragons and great white sharks are the ultimate in predator design.

Sony World Photography Awards finalists

These stunning images are the finalists in the Science and Nature categories of the professional Sony World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year competition.

This dog just looks so fucking mean!

Gibraltar to cull Barbary apes that terrorise tourists

A pack of 25 of the Barbary macaques have “run riot” on a beach, have broken into hotel rooms and have been caught scavenging in bins in the town centre.