The Animal Thread (cuteness, bravery, animal justice, and the fantastique)

[Hypo]

That cat was fighting for its life.

[Hypo]

[Agent Purple]

I just realized my cat Oscar is becoming Basement Cat. He constantly wants to be let down there just to roam around or lay on the chair in my stepfather's old enamel shop.

[Mister Ed]

There Jeff, are you happy now?

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Agent Purple

I just realized my cat Oscar is becoming Basement Cat. He constantly wants to be let down there just to roam around or lay on the chair in my stepfather's old enamel shop.

You just opened up a can of worms, son. Or maybe better to say "a can of cats." I was once addicted to basement cat pics. It was a rough time.

Originally Posted by Mister Ed

There Jeff, are you happy now?

I'm always happy, deary, except when I'm not.

[Agent Purple]

Dehydrated dog rescued from roadside by good Samaritan driver

[Jeff]

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Agent Purple

Dehydrated dog rescued from roadside by good Samaritan driver

Tania just got a one way ticket to Heaven, non-refundable.

[Agent Purple]

Man worried about wife's pit bull when baby is born is completely blown away by what he does

Very, very moving.

[Jeff]

[Jeff]

33 Rescued Circus Lions set foot in their new home (Pics and video)

http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/...a003802e3.jpeg

[Space Cop]

Have any of you watched this show?



Dogs with Jobs

It's a two season (26 eps) [EDIT: In Canada it ran 5 seasons and 65 eps] Canadian documentary series about canines that are more employed than I currently am. There's the predictable police dogs, sheep dogs, seeing-eye dogs, and show dogs, but also some odder ones (seizure care, the RCA dog, etc).

It's expiring on Instant Netflix early next month, so I've been watching a couple episodes after every movie. I definitely recommend this for dog or animal lovers. Naturally, since some of the jobs are risky (bomb dogs, anti-terrorists), it could be tense for some of you, but so far they haven't showed any injuries on screen.

[Jeff]

/\ That looks very interesting, and I would be willing to watch it. I will have to scour the dark corners of the intarwebs tonight and see what Doom can find....

Thanks for the tense warning, too. I can do tense, but not injury or on screen death.

[Space Cop]

Yeah, so far (I've watched 11 episodes and each has two feature dogs) they haven't done it, and given the way they portray the dangers, I doubt they will. For instance, they mention a cattle dog getting laid up after essentially being rammed by a mad bull and all they did was show a current video of the dog in black and white slowmo. I only recall one death so far (an Army dog) and technically that dog was MIA. The sheer number of positive stories--dogs literally saving lives and drastically improving lives--far outweigh those.

[buffalorock]

[Jeff]

The poor misguided owner....


"If it fits, I sits" taken to a whole new level:




Self Explanatory:

[Space Cop]

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Space Cop

OH.
MY.
CORG.

That is THE funnies. LOLOLOLOLOL

I love cat memes that clearly make the cat superior in all aspects to people, even in language.

[Jeff]

Thai Man's penis bitten by Python in weird toilet terror scene

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/asia/t...inkId=24931042

PHEAR TEH TOILET

[Jeff]

[Jeff]

Gorilla shot dead by zoo keeper after child falls into enclosure

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...2211?cid=sm_fb


Um, hello? Where were you, parents/guardians/ whoever the fuck was in charge of this child?

[Space Cop]

Crocodile takes woman during night swim in Australia

A woman is feared dead after being seized by a crocodile during a late-night swim at a beach in northern Australia as her friend struggled to save her, police said Monday.

The women went for a stroll on Thornton Beach on Sunday evening in the far north of Queensland state before making a fateful decision to take a dip in an area known to be infested with crocodiles.

"The woman was swimming with a female friend, also in her 40s, at 10.30pm when the incident occurred," police said in a statement.

Nine News cited witnesses as hearing the woman yell "A croc's got me, a croc's got me!"

Senior Constable Russell Parker said the women -- Australians visiting the area -- were in the water when one of them was grabbed, with her friend desperately trying to drag her to safety.

"They decided to take a swim in the ocean just in waist-deep water and at that point, we believe that a crocodile has taken one of the women, taken hold of her," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Her friend tried valiantly to drag her to the shore but unfortunately wasn't able to do so and the woman subsequently disappeared.

"Now her friend raised the alarm with a nearby business and they subsequently contacted the police."

A rescue helicopter was sent up with thermal imaging equipment but was unable to find her.

Parker added that the surviving woman was "very, very shaken and shocked" but appeared to have escaped with only grazes.

The Brisbane Courier-Mail said Thornton Beach was next to a creek where croc-spotting tours were organised, and there were plenty of warning signs throughout the vicinity.

The attack is not the first in the area. A giant crocodile known as Big Jim took local postal worker Beryl Wruck in 1985 when she had a late-night swim about an hour's drive from Thornton Beach.

Crocodiles are common in Australia's tropical north and kill an average of two people each year.

Earlier this month, a desperate fisherman threw spanners and spark plugs to fight off circling crocodiles after his friend drowned when one of the animals overturned their small boat near Darwin.

Crocodile numbers have increased since the introduction of protection laws in 1971, with estimates putting the Northern Territory's population in the wild at about 100,000.

Originally Posted by MP-05

Gorilla shot dead by zoo keeper after child falls into enclosure

You're not the only one not happy.

Killing of gorilla to save boy at Ohio zoo sparks outrage

The killing of a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo after a 4-year-old boy tumbled into the ape's enclosure triggered outrage and questions about safety, but zoo officials called the decision to use lethal force a tough but necessary choice.

More than 2,000 people signed a petition on Change.org that sharply criticized the Cincinnati Police Department and the zoo for putting down the animal and called for the child's parents to be "held accountable for their actions of not supervising their child."

Cincinnati police on Sunday said the parents had not been charged, but that charges could eventually be sought by the Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Authorities did not identify the child or his parents. The family could not be reached on Sunday.

A Facebook page titled "Justice for Harambe" had more than 3,000 likes by Sunday afternoon, a day after the 400-pound (181-kg) gorilla was shot dead about 10 minutes after encountering and dragging the child. The animal, named Harambe, was a Western lowland gorilla, an endangered species, and the zoo said it had intended to use him for breeding.

"If we think it's acceptable to kill a gorilla who has done nothing wrong, I don't think our city should have gorillas," Manvinder Singh posted on the Facebook page.

A blog post on the website for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals questioned why it was necessary to kill the gorilla and whether zoos could meet the needs of such animals.

"A 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe is dead, and a child is in the hospital. Why?" blogger Jennifer O'Connor wrote. "Western lowland gorillas are gentle animals. They don't attack unless they're provoked."

Witnesses told local television that the boy repeatedly expressed a desire to join the gorilla in the zoo habitat. Moments later, the boy crawled through a barrier and fell about 12 feet (3.7-meters) into a moat surrounding the habitat, where Harambe grabbed him, zoo officials said.

It was the first time in the 38-year history of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden's gorilla exhibit that an unauthorized person was able to get into the enclosure, zoo president Thane Maynard said on Saturday.

"They made a tough choice and they made the right choice because they saved that little boy's life," he said, adding that a member of the zoo's Dangerous Animal Response Team fired the shot that killed the ape.

Maynard said the team decided to use deadly force instead of tranquilizers to subdue the gorilla because it could have taken some time for the drug to take effect when an animal was in agitated state.

The child was taken to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. Hospital officials, citing privacy laws, declined to say on Sunday whether the child had been released or to disclose any details about his injuries.

Western lowland gorilla numbers in the dense rain forests of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea have declined by more than 60 percent over the last 20 to 25 years, according to the World Wildlife Federation.

The Cincinnati zoo was open on Sunday, although Gorilla World was expected to be closed indefinitely. Neither the zoo nor the fire department responded to a request for comment.

At other U.S. zoos, similar encounters have ended in tragedy, including the 2013 fatal mauling of a 2-year-old boy by a pack of wild African dogs after he fell into an exhibit at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.

A man who in 2012 jumped into an enclosure at New York's Bronx Zoo to be "one with the tiger" suffered bite wounds and other injuries but survived.

But there was a happy ending when a 3-year-old boy fell into the gorilla den at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago in 1996, and an 8-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua picked up the unconscious boy and protected him from the other primates. The act of kindness won Binti Jua national attention as Newsweek's Hero of the Year and one of People's most intriguing people.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Additional reporting and editing by Frank McGurty and Nick Zieminski)

[Jeff]

/\ wow, that's a lot of sadness right there.

On the croc attack, I think Australia is going to have to start culling the crocs, especially the salt water crocodiles in the northern hemisphere of the continent. The article you posted estimates they number roughly 100,000; I've seen other estimates double that number (especially after doing homework on Gustave. In my opinion, the same thing that happened with the the southern gators of the U.S. Happened with the crocs in Australia- they were hunted to extinction, became a protected species, and in that time they somehow multiplied like bunnies, and now we have over-populated areas. Granted, the two women in question had the stupid for willingly swimming in an area they knew was populated by crocs, but these types of accidents are going to keep happening more and more if the population isn't kept in check.

On the gorilla attack, I've gone round and round with myself trying to find a reason to shame the zoo for killing the gorilla, but I honestly can't. However, I do question the words "fell" and "accident" being thrown around in describing this issue. I'm going to take an educated guess and say the gorilla enclosure was probably up to spec and not some random fence you buy at lowes, therefore it took a lot of willpower and intention to get through it,which is exactly what the kid had. Again, I have to go to the parents on this one. It looks to me like they were clearly being negligent on the supervision of the child. How can you NOT see your child trying to break through a gorilla-proof enclosure unless you weren't around?

In both cases,mint is sad that a human life and a simian life were cut short due to ignorance.

[Agent Purple]

Jack Hanna defends gorilla shooting

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by Agent Purple

Jack Hanna defends gorilla shooting

"mommy loves you!"

Fucking sickening.

Notice that none of these news stories are asking the question "where were the parents?"