In the Rut State of Mind…

Posted October 18, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal occurrences, animals, furry
Tags: ,

– -It’s “Deer Gone Wild” time, with mating season or “the rut” having begun last week and ending in late November.- -Yup, deer will be chasing one another in fits of passion    (Don’t look, Ethel!), making the roads in states and areas with significant deer populations a bit more hazardous.  Deer are not known for their prudence on roadways, anyways!

Nearly 50 percent of vehicle crashes statewide in Pennsylvania involving deer occur during the rut, according to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation.

“You have males chasing females; females running away from males; males fighting males for females,” said one naturalist.  “They’re not in their right minds.”

Ahh, love!- -A fine insanity!

Comments: 3 Comments

Sweatin’ Bullets…

Posted October 16, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: medical, research, science
Tags: ,

– – Someone once said that animals sweat, men perspire, and women have a rosy glow.–Well, a study performed at Osaka International University in Japan and reported in the journal Experimental Physiology indicated that men sweat more and more efficiently than women, with men who are physically fit sweating more than anyone else!

Physically fit people begin to sweat at a lower core body temperature, which is adaptive since sweating is the body’s way of cooling off and preventing overheating.    A sweating person can then perform longer and better at whatever it is that they are doing.  Fit men tended to sweat the most, whereas  fit women had higher sweat rates than inactive men or inactive women.

Sweating may be the manly thing to do, too, as prior research has shown a link between the male-sex hormone testosterone, physical training, and an increase in sweat rate…so sweat proudly, knowing that you are a manly man, and that the proof is in the nostrils!

Comments: 2 Comments

Too Many Cats…

Posted October 14, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal abuse, animals, deplorable practices
Tags:

– – How many cats are too many?–Well, certainly 77, especially if you’re keeping them in two cars.  I swear that I am not making this up…

Police in Bennington, Vermont cited two women for animal cruelty after finding 77 cats living in two cars.  Plates of food were inside the cars, and some of the cats had fecal matter matted to their fur.  One of the cats was found dead in the trunk of one of the cars Friday.

The women charged owned two of the cats, and were apparently looking for homes for the rest.  Police investigated after someone complained about seeing people sleeping in the cars with the cats.  Prosecutors will consider whether to upgrade the civil citations against the two women to criminal charges…

Comments: 3 Comments

The Hits Keep Coming!

Posted October 10, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: blog business, Off-topic
Tags: ,

 

– – Woo-hoo, we have reached 160,000 hits!–Your readership makes it all possible, and is appreciated!  We average slightly above 200  hits daily here, with a high of over 900 hits on our biggest day.–Hugs and scritches to y’all!

Comments: 5 Comments

The Japanese Kappa Monster on Destination Truth

Posted October 9, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, cryptozoology, imaginary animals, mysteries, scalies, unidentified, weird
Tags:

– –  Once feared as an evil cross between a demon and a turtle, the Kappa has become somewhat of a Japanese national mascot, more loved than feared and depicted on such innocuous items as lunchboxes.   The darker incarnation of the Kappa, however, is blamed for the disappearance of livestock and even children, prompting a segment on a Destination Truth investigation.

Journeying to the location of a recent reported Kappa sighting near Tono, Josh Gates and his team set up infrared and trap cameras to capture any images of the elusive beast, and broke into two groups to sweep the area.  They saw a large dark shape in the water,  which was later regarded by experts to be a large fish or perhaps an eel.  Also checking out skeletal remains of a reported Kappa foot at a Japanese shrine, the team returned with photographs of the same,  which were regarded by a mammalogist to be bones of a canine.

The conclusion?–Evidence for the Kappa is not convincing, and the creature exists at the juncture of folklore and animal misidentification…


Comments: 2 Comments

Smoking Dog…

Posted October 7, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal oddities, deplorable practices, furry, things humans do
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– – Animal abuse can take many forms, some of which are misguided efforts to be funny or clever.  One such example involves a chef from Wuchang, China who was recently accused of animal abuse after teaching his puppy, Little Black, to like cigarettes by blowing smoke into his face, and then rewarding the dog with food for putting the lit cigarette into his mouth…

The puppy was smoking within a month, and can now supposedly smoke a pack a day.  Local residents have called the man a “bad pet owner.”–You think?!

Comments: 2 Comments

Sheep Impersonator Arrested!

Posted October 5, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, strange happenings, weird
Tags:

– – Animal impersonations tend not to win many talent competitions, especially when they’re offered unsolicited in the middle of the night… and so one boozy German who regaled his neighbors by bleating like a sheep and doing other animal impressions, some for as long as twenty minutes,  found himself  arrested in the Bavarian town of Coburg on Sunday.

The 49-year-old man had an extremely high blood alcohol content, and became “unreasonable and aggressive” when police tried to get him to cease his bleating…I guess his impersonations were pretty baaad, and neighbors wanted to be counting sheep rather than hearing them…

Comments: 3 Comments

The Flintstones Turn 50…

Posted October 3, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, cartoons, television
Tags: ,

– – I’m more a fan of The Jetsons myself, but The Flintstones turned 50 at the end of last month.  Owing much to “The Honeymooners,” the Bedrock gang in turn set the stage for the success of more adult-styled cartoons such as The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and many others.

Running from 1960 to 1966, The Flintstones didn’t start their popular “Meet the Flintstones” theme until their third season. – -And who can forget the infamous commercials of the cartoon characters smoking, since the show was sponsored in part by Winston?

My personal cast fave Dino (pronounced dee-no), the Flintstone pet dinosaur, was not mentioned by name until the fourth episode, and in an apparent flashback story sequence of episode 18 was portrayed as very anthropomorphic indeed, complete with powers of speech! 

Comments: 2 Comments

The Quiznos Kittens…

Posted October 1, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, anthropomorphic, furry, furry commercials, television
Tags: ,

– – There are some clever and innovative commercials featuring furry characters, such as the Geico ad with Maxwell the pig.  Other commercials with furry characters do not serve the fandom well, such as the one with a trio of kittens screeching “five-four-three” to the tune of Three Blind Mice.

The kitten “Singamals” appear in a rhythm-challenged brass band, singing very badly about the joys of the fast food franchise’s Value Menu.  Internet condemnation of the ad is almost universal, with one commentator stating that the ad “is worse than one can possibly imagine,” and another saying that the kittens resemble “brain-damaged rejects from karaoke night.”  These kittens get old very quickly!

Not all Quiznos commercials have been horrendous; I rather liked a 2003 ad called Raised by Wolves which featured Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory as a businessman flashing back to suckling at the teat of a Siberian Husky.  While the kittens aren’t creepy, they certainly get annoying in short order… 

Comments: 3 Comments

–Frankenfish?

Posted September 29, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, scalies, science, trends
Tags: ,

– – It kinda feels like a Syfy movie offering, these tales of genetically-engineered animals for human consumption.   A fast-growing Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies in Massachusetts contains an extra growth gene that makes it grow twice as fast as conventional farm-raised salmon, and is the first such genetically-engineered animal to be promoted for a food source.

The FDA says that studies conducted by AquaBounty show that the gene is safe for the salmon, safe for humans, and safe for the environment.  Some scientists and consumer groups say, however, that the agency should slow down and get more information, citing concerns over potential consumer allergies to such fish and questions about what would happen if such genetically-modified fish escaped from fish farms into the wild, there to mate with wild fish, out-compete with them for food, or irreversibly change their environments.   Soon, such fish might be running for elected office…

It all sounds a bit fishy…and there’s gotta be a bad horror movie in this somewhere! 

Comments: 3 Comments

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