Cat
gregladen | April 21, 2008[hat tip]
OK we have room for one engineer joke:
A mathmatician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball and told to find the volume.
The mathmatician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple integral.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement.
The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in his red-rubber-ball table.
gregladen | March 11, 2008For the last several months, we've been cat sitting for our friends Gil and Gilliane. They are very good cats, and Amanda especially has bonded to them. Well, Gil and Gilliane are returning from their extended stay overseas, and want their cats back. There will be a certain emptiness when they are gone.
But even worse, we're gonna die of heart attacks!!!! ....
Whether it's a frisky kitten or a tubby tabby, a cat at home could cut your heart attack risk by almost a third, a new study suggests.
The finding, from a 10-year study of more than 4,300 Americans, suggests that the stress…
gregladen | February 2, 2008Tatiana was the captive Siberian Tiger who, on Christmas Day, leaped out of her cave to attack teenage boys who were taunting her. She killed one of them. Zookeepers are investigating how she did it, considering the possibility that the wall of her enclosure was not high enough (technically, it was lower than recommended height by a short distance). Tatiana's leap has, indeed, has rekindled a long term dialog regarding zoos, and big cats in zoos in particular.
Now, a physicist at Northeastern University in Boston, has produced an analysis indicating that what did happen was possible.…
gregladen | January 31, 2008Tatiana was the tiger that leaped from its enclosure in the San Francisco Zoo, killing one and wounding others.
Details of the investigation have been released, and apparently, the tiger was taunted.
One of the three victims of a San Francisco Zoo tiger attack was intoxicated and admitted to yelling and waving at the animal while standing atop the railing of the big cat enclosure, police say in court documents.
Paul Dhaliwal, 19, told the father of Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, who was killed, that the three yelled and waved at the tiger but insisted they never threw anything into its pen to…
gregladen | November 28, 2007This is a web site dedicated entirely to the collection of photographs of animals with gaping maws. Worth a look. But not too closely.
grrlscientist | November 27, 2007tags: crow, kitten, unlikely friends, streaming video
This is a story that I've linked to before, but the video is new since then; it tells the story of a wild crow that befriended a motherless kitten, fed and protected it and now that the kitten (now more a cat than a kitten) has found a home with humans, the crow still is fast friends. [7:29]
gregladen | November 20, 2007
My best photograph of a cheetah.
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I took this photo of a cheetah at De Wildt's in South Africa. It is a "King Cheetah." Although there was a period of time when some thought the King was a new subspecies of cheetah, it turns out to be a simple color morph. Although this was taken with a zoom lens, it was not set on telephoto ... In fact, I had to wipe the breath of the cat off the lens ... (And I'm only slightly exaggerating).
laelaps | October 31, 2007
What's Halloween with black cats? While the superstitious may dread a black cat crossing their paths, I live with one that follows me into the bathroom every morning to watch me shave (I don't know what she finds so interesting about it). Her name is Charlotte, and even though my wife and I adopted her one year ago this month as a kitten she hasn't gotten much larger than she was when we first brought her home. Indeed, she's so adorable that she gets away with nearly everything, often pawing at my pants legs whenever I open the fridge in the hopes that she'll soon be receiving a slice of…
laelaps | October 25, 2007
While I love to visit the zoo on warm summer days, I usually don't come home with many good pictures, and the reason why can be summed up in one word: Strollers. Anyone who's visited a museum, zoo, or other such institution with me knows that the never-ending sea of strollers is pretty high on my list of pet peeves, and on at least one occasion the shuffling mob gave me a migraine and sent me off home. There is an easy way to avoid this, however; visit in the wintertime. The above photo is of Zeff, a 14-year-old female Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), taken right around 10 AM on a cold…
laelaps | October 23, 2007A male Amur Leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) at the Philadelphia Zoo. To the best of my knowledge this animal is not involved in any breeding or conservation programs.According to LiveScience, a female Amur Leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) was captured, examined, and released by WCS workers this week. The leopards, being among the most endangered of big cats and estimated to number less than 40 individuals in the wild, are most likely inbreeding to continue their population, a problem that could have devastating long-term repercussions. While it is not clear whether the problem is…
laelaps | October 22, 2007
Cougars (Puma concolor), while currently ranging from Canada to the Andes Mountains in South America, still inhabit only part of their former range. Before European colonization, the big cats ranged from coast-to-coast in the U.S., the eastern populations being wiped out with the exception of a small population in Florida. Some have suggested that the cats may eventually make a comeback and reclaim their previous ranges, potential sightings popping up every now and again in Pennsylvania and other states, but by and large if you want to see a cougar and live on the east coast of the U.S. you…
laelaps | October 15, 2007
The WCS-run Bronx Zoo is one of my most favorite places to visit, their Snow Leopards (Panthera uncia) making a visit worthwhile in and of itself. While you may hear "George" the lion roaring or any of the many tigers resident at the zoo calling to each other, they are veritable chatterboxes compared to Snow Leopards, which don't roar despite possessing the proper vocal equipment like other big cats. Such silence was part of the reason for placing the Snow Leopard within it's own genus, Uncia, but it now seems that the Himalayan cats really do belong within Panthera although their exact…
laelaps | October 14, 2007
It's a whole new week, so I'm moving away from the artiodactyl theme (for now, at least) and the PotD will probably take on a more random aspect for a while. Today's photo is of the tiger cubs Terney (center, with tire), Changbai (left), and Koosaka (right), born at the Philadelphia Zoo a few months ago. They are Amur (or Siberian) tigers, Panthera tigris altaica, the largest of the extant tigers and also critically endangered. While the zoo notes that they contribute to tiger conservation initiatives like the Tiger Conservation Fund, it seems that these cubs will remain in captivity and…