What’s In YOUR Backyard?

Posted July 8, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, evolution, extinct species, furry, strange happenings
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– – Just  when you think that everything’s been discovered, someone digs up something that’s new…and we’re not talking about mob hit victims!

A guy excavating for a swimming pool in his Brighton, Tenn. backyard unearthed the fossilized jawbone of a prehistoric mammal, possibly a trilophodon, part of the mastodon family who were in turn the extinct relatives of today’s elephants.  The remains later uncovered were estimated to belong to an adult who stood up to eight feet tall and weighed up to two tons.  This would be the first time that such a species has been found in the mid-American south.

…and why can’t I dig up anything good in my backyard?!


Comments: 2 Comments

Animal Aphrodisiacs

Posted July 6, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, deplorable practices, furry, things humans do
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– – Believe it or not, rhino horns sell for big bucks on the black market as an aphrodisiac, with a single horn selling for as much as $40,000!  Why, you might then ask, does the rhino enjoy such a great sexual reputation?–Well, the rhino’s mating time is not less than 45 minutes, quite higher than that of any other other animal (although foxes are no slackers in that department, ahem)! Rhino horns are then considered a kind of natural Viagra, and foolish humans believe that they can achieve the same kind of sexual power with the help of rhino horns.

Traditional Chinese medicine also uses rhino horns as a cure for fever and stomach ailments.  This is all in spite of the fact that the horns are simply compacted masses of agglutinated hair that rhinos use as defense against other animals…

Comments: 4 Comments

The Devil’s Endangered!

Posted July 4, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, endangered species, furry
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– – When you think of large carnivorous marsupials, you probably just naturally think of the Tasmanian devil, best known as the spinning tornado of destruction Taz in the Looney Tunes cartoons.- -Well, the genuine article’s in danger, and not from being outwitted by Bugs Bunny…

…60 percent of the wild devils in Tasmania have been claimed in a single decade by a cancer known as devil facial tumor disease.  By some estimates, the animals could be extinct within 25 years.  One colony in northwestern Tasmania has shown immunity to the disease, for which there is currently no treatment.  As this may not be enough to save the species,  zoos are critical to devil conservation, and 14 zoos are endeavoring to breed 1,500 disease-free animals.  Trouble is, only 24 devil joeys have been bred since the program began in 2008…

(…so obviously, we need more horny devils!)


Comments: 2 Comments

Coyotes Near New York City!

Posted July 2, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal occurrences, environmental, furry
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– – Well, foxes are infringing on Detroit, bears are in many suburbs, and now coyotes are causing problems about 25 miles northeast of midtown Manhattan!- -Can the revolution be far behind?


In the New York City suburb of Rye, N.Y., two coyote attacks on little girls have police officers shooting at them, and parents keeping their kids inside on summer evenings.  A six-year-old and a three-year-old have been injured in separate attacks, with both girls being treated for rabies as a precaution.  The state Department of Environmental Conservation has given Rye permission to shoot coyotes on sight and to kill any that are trapped, according to a wildlife biologist for the department.

Coyote attacks are rare, with news media reporting only 142 coyote attacks on people in the U.S. and Canada between 1960 and 2006.   The only known fatality of a coyote attack involved a California toddler in the 1980’s.  The natural prey of coyotes includes rabbits, birds, and rodents but in suburbia easy food sources include garbage and pet food left out.  Some people even unwisely feed coyotes.  One coyote necropsy showed that the animal had eaten pork chops!

I prefer my coyotes to be the frustrated genius types who buy a lot of Acme products and fruitlessly pursue road runners…

Comments: 2 Comments

Adopt a Simian Celebrity?

Posted June 30, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal oddities, animals, furry
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– – We’ve referred here before to Bubbles the Chimp, pet of the late Michael Jackson who in the 1980’s tripped the light fantastic, going to parties at Elizabeth Taylor’s house, having tea with the mayor of Osaka, Japan, and even sharing matching outfits with Michael.  Then Bubbles got too big to be kept as a pet, and he went to the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula, Florida.

Now age 26 and currently weighing in at around 180 lbs., Bubbles is part of a group of seven chimps that spend their time climbing, playing, grooming and tickling one another, and sharing food.  His best bud is a 19-year-old male chimp.  As it costs $15,000 a year to maintain Bubbles,  the animal sanctuary where he resides is asking people to adopt Bubbles for $150 a year.   Although chimps live to be about 60 years of age, they usually only work in animal entertainment until the age of six, after which time they become too large and strong to be safely maintained in human company.   Zoos characteristically don’t take animals like Bubbles, who was raised by humans and doesn’t know chimpanzee rules…

Comments: 4 Comments

Doggie Dreams…

Posted June 28, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, furry, science
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– – Those of us who share life with dogs and cats commonly observe their paws twitching as they slumber; other clues of pet dreams include whisker movement,  irregular breathing, and yelping in canines.  Just as humans recall experiences while dreaming, pets are thought to do the same things due to structural similarities in the mammalian hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. Pets also go through multiple sleep stages, from slow wave sleep to rapid eye movement stages, where most dreaming occurs.   Electrodes have documented REM episodes even in sleeping rats.

Growing evidence and documentation that animals dream challenges the notion that animals are reflex machines operating by instinct alone.  Darwin contended that if you can prove that an animal dreams, then you can prove that consciousness exists there as a dream is a conscious image.

All of which is something many of us have known for a long time!

Comments: 2 Comments

Really Bad Luck…

Posted June 26, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animal occurrences, furry, strange happenings, weird
Tags: ,

– – If not for bad luck, some people wouldn’t have any luck at all.  Consider the case of a guy in Raleigh, North Carolina who earlier this month was mauled by a black bear in his front yard, ending up with a deep gouge in his wrist…

…bad luck, right?–But as a topper, the same guy was struck by lightning  four years ago!  Now the odds of being attacked by a bear and surviving in any given year are one in 28 million, while the odds of being struck by lightning in a year and surviving are one in 1.213 million.  The odds of being both struck by lightning and mauled by a bear and surviving both in a four year span of time are 1 in 372 trillion!  Now some would say that such a person is either doomed to suffer more or is due for good luck, but such belief is what is called a gambler’s fallacy, and has no place in statistics;  one event has no bearing on the other.

And did I forget to  mention?- -The gentleman afflicted by both events is a minister, who may be seen as extremely unlucky or cursed for what happened to him, or lucky and perhaps blessed because he survived both.   It’s all a matter of perspective, really…



Comments: 4 Comments

Chicks and Jaguars Dig It!

Posted June 24, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, science
Tags: ,

– – How do you lure a jaguar?–Well, they seem to really like Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men.  It also seems to work well for other big cats like cheetahs.

No kidding!  An experiment by the Bronx Zoo in New York found that Obsession for Men drew jaguars for longer than other scents.  The practice made its way down to Guatemala, where biologists report similar success in observing and tracking jaguars in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve.  The use of the cologne in conservation programs will be expanded to other Central and South American countries.


I hear, however, that cougars are lured by younger males…


Comments: 6 Comments

Basil Brush, Superstar!

Posted June 22, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, furries, furry heroes, television
Tags: ,

– – Kids these days would probably roll their eyes at the notion of being entertained by a hand puppet, but in the days of yore young ‘uns were entertained by such as this and worse…

Combine a star who’s a hand puppet with British television and humor and you have Basil Brush, a fictional fox character who may be a glove puppet yet grows on you (like a glove), and can be hilariously entertaining. Created in 1963 as a children’s show character, Basil has evolved but always been portrayed as a well-spoken fox who can be appreciated on a variety of levels. A puppet who claims to dislike puppets, Basil’s most prized possession is his “brush,” the traditional name for a fox’s tail (for which we are rightfully known).

In more current incarnations, Basil has been depicted as having a family that is every bit as dysfunctional as many of our own. With his “Boom!-Boom!” catchphrase, I ‘d be proud to call Basil my foxy friend…



Comments: 1 Comment

Blond Bigfoot?

Posted June 20, 2010 by vulpesffb
Categories: animals, cryptozoology, mysteries, strange happenings, unidentified, weird
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– – A North Carolina man residing on a mountain in Casar reports having repeatedly encountered a ten-foot-tall yellow haired bigfoot with six fingers on his property.  The beast is reported to have looked like a giant ape with a man’s face, and it made whistling sounds.  It approached the man’s dogs and somehow became wrapped up in their chains, at which point the man poked the animal with a stick and rough-talked the creature before it left his property; no one likes trash talk, after all.   The man actually called 911 to ask if there would be a problem if he later found it necessary to shoot the beast!   As often occurs in such cases, there is no physical evidence or video/photograph of the reported cryptid.

The incident is not without area precedent, however.   In the 1970’s an unknown creature dubbed “Knobby” was often spotted in the same rural area, and was held responsible for killing chickens and other animals…


Comments: 3 Comments

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