Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is not a post about Firefly... it's actually a post about space monkeys.
Here's a news clip I came across about the first monkeys to survive being shot into space. Able, a rhesis monkey and Baker, a squirrel monkey.

These monkeys were not the first creatures to survive a trip into space. In 1947 the U.S. successfully sent (and retrieved) live fruit flies into space, one year later they began trying to send monkeys (after successfully sending mice, of course). Unfortunately, all the monkey flights failed for over a decade. One rocket exploded, two parachutes failed to open, one monkey's capsule descended into the ocean but the flotation device failed and it was never recovered, and one monkey returned to Earth safely but the shuttle didn't make it high enough to get to space. While America was having no luck with monkeys, the USSR was having fantastic luck with dogs. They managed to bring over 30 dogs back alive from suborbital flights and in 1957 a dog named Laika became the first animal to orbit the planet (she did not survive).

Able and Baker were sent up in 1959. Here's a picture of Baker inside her capsule, it was approx. the size of a small thermos:

Sadly, Able died a few days after her infamous adventure but Baker lived until 1984 at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center where she would get 100-150 letters a day from school children. More than 300 people attended Baker's funeral when she died of kidney failure & to this day people will leave bananas at her grave. Able's body is stuffed and on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. 

Since Able and Baker, NASA has sent fifteen monkeys into space, including Enos (the first chimp to orbit the Earth) and Multik (who died the day after touch down and raised significant questions about the ethics of using animals for testing. NASA continues biological experiments aboard space shuttles, but there have been no more primate missions since Multik). 

ZomBees

Zombees. They really do exist, I'm not kidding. When a regular honeybee is infected by the parasitic maggots of the scuttle fly, the maggot uses mind control to make the bee abandon its hive at night and cluster near outdoor lights wandering in increasingly erratic circles until it dies.

Well, mind control is one theory anyway. The other theory is that the bees are purposely committing suicide in order to protect the rest of the hive from being infected.

John Hafernik, an entomologist at San Francisco State University, has started tagging infected bees with tiny radio frequency identification tags (about the size of a single piece of glitter) which will tell them when the bee leaves the hive and whether or not it returns. The idea is that if the bees are abandoning the hive at all times of the day, they are committing suicide whereas if they are only leaving at night, they are being controlled by the parasite. The explanation is that bees don't normally leave their hives at night.

Researchers are hoping that this will help us to understand colony collapse disorder. Which is a disease that makes bees abandon their hives and has devastated the U.S. honeybee population.

**Now here's the part where you get to laugh at me a bit- I've been hearing about the disappearance of honeybees for quite awhile now, but I thought that it was a Doctor Who reference, so I didn't pay much attention to it. (To those of you poor saps who aren't Whovians, here's a clip.)

If you see potential "zombees" you can upload pictures to ZomBeeWatch.org. This will help researchers to map the spread of the parasite.

Talking whales?!?!

Quick! Name an animal that can mimic human speech. ... You said parrot didn't you? Almost everyone does, but did you know that Beluga whales can do it too?

Listen for yourself

Ok, so it's not exactly talking. He's not saying real words, but it is several octaves lower than normal whale vocalizations. Apparently he managed to do that by over filling his air sacs, making his head even bulgier than usual while he was "talking."

Noc (pronounced: no-see) the whale that you heard in the link above, would even tell divers to leave his tank by repeating a word that sounded like "out" over and over. Researchers say that it is unlikely that Noc understood what he was saying, but they built him a special underwater microphone to record this unusual vocalization and they have been studying him since 1984 when Noc was first heard "talking." The results of that research were released last Monday.

Longevity linked to little loved ones

On average, people with pets live 2 years longer than people without pets (keep in mind this is appropriate pets like cats or dogs. Having an inappropriate pet such as monkeys or big cats will probably shorten your life by a lot more than 2 years). Maybe it's just because I'm a pet person, but this seems like common sense to me. Some things are obvious, like a dog needs to be taken outside to go to the bathroom which requires you to get off your butt and go outside. Or seeing eye dogs keep their owners from crossing the street when a car is coming. But some of the research I've found is not quite so obvious. Here's a few examples:

A study done by the Minnesota Stroke Institute found that people who own cats are 30% less likely to suffer a heart attack. And psychologists have found reason to believe that owning a dog helps lower your blood pressure and cholesterol. Pets also help us to deal with stress, which can cause illness.

Zia- my miniature pinscher 

Apparently dogs can also smell bladder cancer in a patient's urine.  "Although the dogs were not accurate all the time, they identified the right patients at a rate much better than chance." 
Dogs have been used for years to help their owners during an epileptic seizure. They can get help by either finding another person or activating a pre-programmed phone, they pull potentially dangerous objects away from the persons body, they provide physical and emotional support and they carry information (usually in a backpack or a pouch on their collar) about the owners medical condition, instructions for first responders, emergency medication, etc.  Some of these dogs have developed the mysterious ability to warn their owner when he or she is about to have a seizure. Researchers can't explain it, but apparently these dogs start warning their owners approximately a year after living with them. 

Studies show that kids who grow up with furry friends are less likely to develop allergies or asthma. And they are better equipped to deal with emotional turmoil such as a death in the family.

Irma- my rat. 

Rats make remarkable pets. They are smart, easily trained and very affectionate.

 However, they are also very social, so if you are not willing to spend time

 with them everyday I'd suggest getting more than one. 

Alzheimer's patients have fewer "anxious outburts" if they are in a home with a pet. Interactions with animals helps to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in elderly patients, which helps the body rest and digest properly (thank you Dr. Ackman for cramming that little chunk of knowledge into my brain). 
As part of it's medical screening process Midland Life Insurance Company asks clients over age 75 if they have a pet at home, a positive answer will usually tip the scale in their favor. 

I could go on and on about all of the reasons to go to your local shelter and find yourself a new friend, but who am I kidding? If you're the kind of person who's going to make a trip to the shelter, you don't need me to talk you into it... and, in my experience, a trip to the shelter NEVER ends with me going home alone. 

Winston (left) is my roommate's dachshund (he's also the only boy in our house), Leia (center) is my roommie's yellow lab & Suki (right) is my aussie/ border collie mix...

Yeah- we plan to live forever in this house. 

Among the Great Apes by Paul Raffaele

I'll be honest- I had a really hard time getting through this book. I just didn't like the author's attitude. He made snide remarks about the locals, made a point of stating only what the (extremely underfunded) sanctuaries were doing wrong, and bullied the real experts into saying what he wanted them to say & if they didn't he'd just say something along the lines of "this is what he/she said- but they're wrong" without giving the reader any reason to believe that the expert is wrong except that he says so. At one point he even makes a volunteer feel bad for spending $4000 to volunteer at an ape sanctuary because "she could have given them the money she spent on a plane ticket as well" as if physical labor isn't also needed at sanctuaries. Obviously this is a guy who's never actually had to spend a day hauling crates of food around, maintaining enclosures or shoveling shit- I know I speak for most sanctuary employees when I tell you that we LOVE our volunteers.
These examples are not constants in the book (each example only happened once or twice), but because they happened at all, I felt like they poisoned the entire book.

Paul Raffaele is no expert. He's a travel journalist by trade who's written two other books, Among the Cannibals (Apparently he's not very creative with book titles either) and The Last Tribes on Earth.
 I have a hard time believing someone who tries to prove he's comfortable with animals by putting this picture on the back of his book:

He may be comfortable with animals, but he's not very smart with them. 

I will give him this; he's passionate about saving these animals, and his book does have some heart-warming stories & a call to action at the end. 

Hip(hop)opotamus

With all of the fearsome animals living in Africa (lions, hyenas & crocodiles to name a few), I think you'll be surprised by whats considered the most dangerous animal in Africa. It's the hippopotamus (unless you count bugs as animals, in which case the most dangerous "animal" in Africa is the mosquito because it spreads malaria). Imagining someone getting attacked by a hippo sounds kind of comical, but no matter how silly it may look 4 tons of angry animal coming at you is bound to do some damage.

Yeah- it definitely looks funny, but this park ranger

 had to sprint over 100 yards to escape with his life.

Hippos are very territorial. They are most likely to attack if you get between them and deep water or if you get between them and a young hippo, but that doesn't mean you're safe if you don't do those things. They may attack just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they didn't like the way you were looking at them, or any number of other reasons.

Their huge canine teeth (tusks) can grow to be the size of bowling pins and they can actually bite a crocodile in half. Although they usually choose not to, they are capable of running up to 30 mph, much faster than most humans (the average running speed of a person is 12-15 mph sprinting & 5-8 mph long distance). Hippos are responsible for more human deaths per year than all other African wildlife.

They're even dangerous when they're dead!! Hippo skin is two inches thick, which makes it ideal for making whips. Whips made from hippo skin are called kiboko (the Swahili word for hippo) and they are capable of killing a man in only 10 blows.

Just in case their large size, bad temper, surprising speed, huge teeth and thick skin wasn't enough to scare you off... they also sweat blood. ... Ok, not really. Their skin secretes an oily red substance that helps to protect them from the sun, but it looks like they're sweating blood.

Even the late Steve Irwin (a man who we all know to be fearless) has said that a five minute sequence where his camera team had to cross a river filled with hippos was the single most dangerous moment ever filmed on his show.

Another Zoo Story

I realized that I told you that I fell in love with the rhinos while working at the zoo, but I never actually told you the story behind that.

I was at the zoo for three months as a Vet. Tech. intern. Four days a week I was working in the hospital, but one day a week I got to go out and work with the keepers. One of the first animals I got to work with outside of the hospital were the rhinos. The zookeepers obvious favorite was the baby. She was full grown by the time I was working there but she was born at the zoo and was still the youngest rhino there, so she was the baby. She had vitiligo (the Michael Jackson disease), so she had large pink spots all over her body. This meant that she couldn't go on exhibit because she couldn't be in the sun for that long.

The keepers had made it their morning ritual to go say hello to her before starting their day. They all crowded around petting her and cooing. When they left to do their work, she'd cry for awhile, sad to lose all of the attention. But they'd come back periodically throughout the day to say hello.

This is Tucker (not Rudy), but he was pretty darn cute too. 

Being new to the group and not a normal keeper, I hung back during their morning love fest. I'm glad that I did, because if I hadn't I never would have met Rudy. I glanced over and there he was, a huge male rhino with the longest horn I'd ever seen on a rhino (admittedly not a huge accomplishment, seeing as how the only rhinos I'd seen at the time where the 4 at the zoo). He was standing there looking at me between the bars with his horn pointed away from me (as if he was trying to let me know that he wouldn't hurt me) and the back of his head facing the bars, like a cat waiting for you to scratch it behind the ear. How could I resist? I stuck my hand through the bars and scratched him on the soft spot behind his ear. He pushed his head closer to the bars and even rubbed them alittle (once again, like a cat begging to be pet). I stayed as long as they would let me, scratching all of his soft spots (behind the ears, under the eyes, the armpit, belly, groin...). Eventually, they made me stop petting Rudy and actually do some work. Every time I walked past his enclosure he would walk with me on the other side of the fence. You can imagine that rhino enclosures are somewhat large and it was nice to have the company for the walk.

I spent my lunch break petting him and playing with him. You know that game you play with dogs where you run really fast then suddenly jump and face him and the dog gets really excited and play bows? Rudy did that.

After that day, we were best buddies. He'd always come up to the fence to say hi, even when he was on exhibit. I'd go out to the public area to "get a drink" and he'd see me and come over. Even though he couldn't get close enough to get a rub down or a tasty morsel, he still wanted to say hello- the visitors loved that. I loved it too. The medical crew had a different uniform than the other employees and the animals knew that the ones in blue were the ones that caught, poked and prodded them. The  other animals hated us, the gorillas would run up and pound on the bullet proof glass every time we walked by (another thing that the visitors loved), but Rudy didn't care, he liked me no matter what my job was.