Jason V. Brock's Blog, page 135
July 14, 2013
Your cat isn’t totally ignoring you — really!
Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Share on Facebook
GooglePlus
June 26, 2013 at 6:11 PM ET
technewsdaily.com
Cats may not do what we tell them to, but they usually adore their human caretakers, a new study finds
Cats may try to hide their true feelings, but a recent study found that cats do actually pay attention to their owners, distinguishing them from all other people.
The study, which will be published in the July issue of Animal Cognition, is one of the few to examine the cat/human social dynamic from the feline's perspective. Cats may not do what we tell them to, but they usually adore their human caretakers.
Co-author Atsuko Saito of The University of Tokyo explained to Discovery News that dogs have evolved, and are bred, "to follow their owner's orders, but cats have not been. So sometimes cats appear aloof, but they have special relationships with their owners."
NEWS: Cats Adore, Manipulate Women
"Previous studies suggest that cats have evolved to behave like kittens (around their owners), and humans treat cats similar to the way that they treat babies," co-author Kazutaka Shinozuka of the University of South Florida College of Medicine added. "To form such baby-parent like relationships, recognition of owners might be important for cats."
Their study, mostly conducted in the homes of cats so as not to unduly upset or worry the felines, determined just that.
The researchers played recordings of strangers, as well as of the cats' owners, to the felines. The cats could not see the speakers.
The cats responded to human voices, not by communicative behavior- such as by vocalizing or moving their tails -- but by orienting behavior. In this case, "orienting" meant that the cats moved their ears and heads toward the source of each voice.
The felines also, at times, displayed pupil dilation, which can be a sign of powerful emotions, such as arousal and excitement. Other studies have found that natural pupil dilation can be directly tied to brain activity, revealing mental reactions to emotional stimuli.
All of these reactions happened more often when cats heard their owners, and particularly after they had become habituated to, or familiar with, the strangers' voices.
The feline reactions are therefore very subtle, but cats have evolved not to be very demonstrative.
Cats, for example, hide illness because "in the wild, no one can rescue them and predators pay attention to such weak individuals," Saito said. Even though a watchful owner would try to save the cat, the feline's gut reaction is to remain stoic and avoid any possible threat at a time of vulnerability.
Felines may be hard to read sometimes, but not always. Saito said some of the cats during the study and elsewhere have "fawned over me eagerly," purring and displaying affection familiar to many other feline fanciers.
The researchers point out that, after 10,000 years of cohabitating with humans, domestic cats have the ability to communicate with us, and we seem to understand them, for the most part.
Humans who have never owned or been around cats much can pick up basic feline emotions solely by the sound of certain purrs and meows, Saito said. In studies, such people can classify the cat vocalizations according to particular situations.
Kazuo Fujita is a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Kyoto University who has also studied cats.
Fujita told Discovery News that "this is an important study" on how cats think, "which has remained mysterious due to difficulties in testing them."
Tags:Science,
Cats,
human-relations,
affection
Share on FacebookDiscuss
0
Duck gets 3-D-printed replacement for foul foot
Nidhi Subbaraman
NBC News
Share on Facebook
June 27, 2013 at 3:15 PM ET
Mike Garey
Buttercup the duck looks at a 3-D-printed replica of his sister Minnie's foot.
Buttercup the duckling hatched in November last year with one foul foot — his left flipper bent backwards and faced the wrong way. When his caregivers discovered he had trouble walking, they decided to suit him up with a replacement.
Since custom-made feet are hard to come by, Mike Garey, Buttercup's friend at the Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary in Arlington, Tenn., decided to make a twin.
Mike Garey
The 3-D-printed foot was designed by Mike Garey with a little help from NovaCopy. The foot took 13 hours to print.
The only way to get a foot for Buttercup, Melissa Ragsdale, president of 3-D printing services at NovaCopy in Nashville told NBC News, was to "scan Buttercup's sister's foot and turn that into a 3-D model and print that out."
That's exactly what Garey did, with a little help from NovaCopy.
Buttercup got his wonky leg surgically removed in February. Now that his stump is fully healed, a webbed plastic foot, a replica of his sister Minnie's foot, fits over Buttercup's "knee" and stays in place so he can walk around or swim just like any other two-footed duck, Ragsdale explained.
"This particular foot took 13 hours to print," she said. The translucent foot is made of a light-sensitive polymer and is about as bendy as a credit card, Ragsdale said. NovaCopy decided to donate the model to Buttercup, but it would otherwise have cost about $50. Buttercup will break in two 3-D-printed prototypes before being fitted with a webbed, flexible silicone prosthetic.
Buttercup seems to be doing splendidly. You can watch him take a nap next to his teddy bear, or take a springtime paddle in a backyard swimming pool — just head over to his Facebook page.
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Tags:TODAY Tech,
Your gadgets,
Internet,
3-d-printers,
duck,
Tails of survival
Share on FacebookTalk about it
Two-headed turtle and 7 animals to make you see double
Danika Fears
TODAY
Share on Facebook
June 27, 2013 at 4:54 PM ET
They say two heads are better than one, and that's certainly the case for San Antonio Zoo visitors, who now have twice as much to fawn over when they visit a healthy two-headed turtle born on June 18.
The Texas female is actually two twin turtles who share the same body, because their embryos never fully separated before birth. The condition is known as bicephaly, which most commonly occurs in snakes and turtles, according to a statement from the zoo.
San Antonio Zoo
The last two-headed animal the San Antonio Zoo had in its keeping was a Texas rat snake named Janus who lived at the zoo from 1978 to 1995.
Though they haven't proven themselves to be hell-raisers just yet, zoo staff members dubbed the duo "Thelma and Louise."
Mutations of this nature can present serious health risks to animals, but this turtle is doing just fine and made its public debut on June 25.
"At this time, Thelma and Louise are doing well on exhibit and eating with both heads," zoo curator Craig Pelke said in the statement.
Of course, Thelma and Louise are in good company. The most recent animal to have us seeing double is a two-faced kitten named Duecy, born on June 11 in Portland, Oregon. She was rejected by her own mother, so Duecy's owners are hand-feeding her kitten formula.
Two-faced cats are referred to as Janus cats, named for the two-faced Roman god.
TheSuperNews247 / YouTube
Duecy the cat has two faces fused together.
Then there's this royal python that hatched in a German pet shop in July of 2011. The pet shop owner's snake was born with one body but two brains, which can make simple things like deciding which way to turn a little bit more complex. But the snake's differences just made him all the more desirable to the shop's owner, who was not willing to part with the animal.
This two-headed tortoise from Slovakia was also born with an extra leg. Being special has its perks: Magdalena, as she's known, was chosen to predict the winners of Slovakia's Ice Hockey Championship in 2011.
Here we have a spur-thighed tortoise with two heads, found meandering around a backyard in Turkey in 2010. As its heads aren't right next to each other, this little guy tends to walk in a crab-like manner. The healthy 1-month-old tortoise was brought to a nature reserve. Though he has been under-the-radar ever since, this type of turtle can live up to 75 years.
In 2010, this two-headed bobtail lizard was rescued in the wild in Australia and brought to its new home at a reptile park. For some two-headed creatures, directional challenges are the least of their worries: The larger head of this lizard has tried to attack to the smaller one.
Paul Kane / Getty Images
Movement is difficult for this lizard, as both heads control its back legs. It also has a healthy sibling without any mutation.
And finally, we come to Venus the cat, a "two-faced" kitten but not in the literal way. She became an Internet sensation last summer with hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube, thanks to admirers of her dramatically color-bisected face and mismatched eyes.
Tags:Pets,
News,
On the show,
turtles
Share on FacebookTalk about it
‘Pandamonium’! Missing red panda heads back to zoo after capture
Danika Fears
TODAY
Share on Facebook
June 28, 2013 at 2:05 PM ET
Video: Rusty the red panda, who had last been seen on Sunday evening, was reported missing from the Smithsonian National Zoo Monday morning, sparking an “intensive search” until he was spotted about a mile away in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood. NBC’s Tom Costello reports.
After an hours-long panda hunt, Rusty, the red panda who went missing from his exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington D.C., is back home safe and sound. He was found about a mile away from his exhibit, taking a casual stroll in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.
The zoo shared the good news on Twitter Monday afternoon.
"Thank you so much to everyone who helped us look for and find him!" the National Zoo wrote.
Actress Ashley Foughty is among those who got involved. She was on a walk in her neighborhood with her husband and mother when she spotted Rusty and took to Twitter to bring her discovery to the zoo's attention.
She later described her surprise encounter in an interview with NBC's Tom Costello.
"It was pretty amazing!" she said. "I've only ever seen them through fences or glass enclosures."
Rusty made his way for a tree, where he remained until zoo staff could corner and collar him. He will remain in the zoo's clinic until July 4, but staff say he's doing well.
The precise route of Rusty's great escape remains a mystery, though zoo experts say it's very likely he left his exhibit with the help of the tree canopy in his enclosure and bamboo that grows just outside. Zoo staff has since trimmed those trees and all bamboo within five feet of Rusty's exhibit.
"Animal care staff have concluded that it’s likely Rusty got out of his exhibit by climbing across a 'bridge' created by rain-laden trees and bamboo," the zoo wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
His disappearance was first announced in a series of tweets on Monday afternoon.
Zoo staff saw Rusty after his nightly feeding on Sunday evening. But when keepers went to check on the 1-year-old panda at 6:30 a.m. the next day, he was nowhere to be found.
“They saw our female red panda, Shama, but they did not see Rusty,” zoo spokesperson Jen Zoon told TODAY.com. “They called a code green, which is our normal protocol when an animal goes missing.”
Staff searched the zoo’s trees all morning trying to locate him.
“Red pandas are territorial, arboreal creatures, so he could be very high in the trees or he could be hiding in an area off exhibit,” Zoon said.
Rusty is a fairly new addition to the zoo: He joined his exhibit-mate Shama in mid-June, after traveling from the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska.
“On the second day keepers saw the pair sharing space and even spied Shama grooming Rusty — a sign that this duo is doing well already,” the zoo wrote in a blog post.
Not to be confused with the ever-popular black-and-white giant panda, red pandas are much smaller and more fox or raccoon-like than their fellow bamboo-feeders.
Tags:Pets,
News,
pandas,
red pandas
Share on FacebookTalk about it
For KLG and Hoda, any day is Take Your Dog to Work Day
Eun Kyung Kim
TODAY
Share on Facebook
July 1, 2013 at 11:00 AM ET
Video: TODAY’s Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb bring their pups Blake and Bambino to visit the Fourth Hour, where Hoda shows off Blake’s new tricks. The ladies also discuss Paula Deen’s book publisher dropping the cook.
Take Your Dog to Work Day was officially June 21, but Kathie Lee and Hoda celebrated the dog days of summer by bringing their pet pooches to work on Monday.
KLG brought her Maltipoo, Bambino, while Hoda held Blake, the Cockapoo she adopted earlier this year, in her lap.
“They’re meeting for the very first time today," KLG noted of the pair of pooches. "And they like each other so far."
But she spoke a little too soon, apparently. Bambino later growled several times at Blake when he got a little too close. (Or maybe Bambino was just jealous over Blake’s attempt to be a hog the camera.)
Earlier, Hoda attempted to show off the new tricks Blake had learned. She got the pup to sit and then lie down, but Blake apparently wasn’t feeling up to rolling over on command for the camera.
TODAY
Still, it was enough to impress KLG.
“That’s two more Bambino can do,” she said. “Bambino can do eat and sleep. Those two he’s very good at.”
Tags:KLG and Hoda,
TODAY's Talk,
On the show,
Pets,
Dogs,
KLG and Hoda
Share on FacebookTalk about it
Fuzzy lynx kittens and 27 more amazing animal photos
Mish Whalen
TODAY
Share on Facebook
July 3, 2013 at 9:20 AM ET
Animal Tracks: June 26 - July 3
Sam Panthaky
From fuzzy lynx kittens to nuzzling monkeys, get your cuteness fix with irresistible photos of creatures great and small.
Tags:Pets,
Cutest thing ever,
Animal tracks
Share on FacebookTalk about it
What’s cuter than a baby meerkat? Six baby meerkats!
Danika Fears
TODAY
Share on Facebook
July 5, 2013 at 2:52 PM ET
Tiergarten Schönbrunn/Norbert Potensky
The mini meerkats enjoying a cuddle. Last year, visitors voted for meerkats as their favorite animals at the Vienna zoo.
Visitors often fawn over this meerkat family that resides at the Schöenbrunn Zoo in Vienna — and now there’s more of them to love. Six little ones were born at the zoo on June 2.
Tiergarten Schönbrunn/Norbert Potensky
Meerkats will often get up on their hind legs to keep on the look-out for predators.
“We are of course thrilled that all six are doing great at the moment,” the zoo’s director Dagmar Schratter said in a press release. “At birth, meerkats are blind and naked. They spent the first few weeks in the safety of their burrow but to the delight of the visitors they are now already exploring their surroundings (and) running the rest of the clan off their feet.”
Walter Wodal
The little ones play with each other. Meerkats are usually found in the south of Africa.
Part of the mongoose family, meerkats typically work together to raise their young. While these meerkats only drank mom's milk during their first few weeks of life, they're now just old enough to start eating insects on their own.
Tags:Pets,
Cutest thing ever,
meerkats,
Baby animals
Share on FacebookTalk about it
