Oakland Zoo to auction paintings by its animals

SAN FRANCISCO — Elephants, giraffes, lemurs, and even a cockroach at the Oakland Zoo in California have been exploring their creative sides to produce colorful paintings that will be auctioned for charity.

The painting sessions were conducted by zookeepers who used only positive reinforcement, including plenty of treats, as they worked with the animals, zoo spokeswoman Nicky Mora said.

Elephants were helped to hold paintbrushes in their trunks and giraffes in their mouths and produce their artwork one stroke at a time. Goats, lemurs, and meerkats had their hooves, paws or claws dabbed with nontoxic, water-based paint and ran over a blank sheet of poster board while chasing a treat.

Thirty-two of the works will be auctioned on eBay starting Thursday.

Andy, a Madagascar hissing cockroach, scurried around a canvas and the result was a piece in purple, green and yellow tones.

Maggie, a Nigerian dwarf goat, had her hooves dipped in blue, green and yellow paint and the keeper coaxed her with snacks to walk on a canvas.

"It was fun for them because they got treats for participating," Mora said.

None of the animals was forced to take part, she said.

Last year, Oakland Zoo auctioned off twelve paintings and raised nearly $10,000.

The bidding this year will end Sept. 20 and the funds raised will benefit Oakland Zoo's conservation partners, who are working in the field to save wild animals, Mora said.

source: philstar.com

Australians protest planned shark culling

SYDNEY -- Thousands of people rallied across Australia Saturday against a controversial shark culling policy designed to prevent attacks, saying killing the marine animals was the not the answer.

The controversial policy to catch and kill sharks off popular west coast beaches was given the green light last month after six fatal attacks in the past two years.

It is aimed at reducing the risks to water users and allows baited drum lines with hooks designed to capture large sharks to be set one kilometer offshore at busy Western Australian beaches for a trial period until April 30.

Any shark longer than three meters (10 feet) snagged by the lines and deemed to be a threat -- including great white, bull and tiger sharks -- will be destroyed, with the first casualty reported last week.

The move has angered conservationists and rallies were held at sites around the country, including at least 2,000 people at Manly Beach in Sydney and 6,000 expected at Cottesloe Beach in Perth.

Opponents claim the trial flies in the face of international obligations to protect the great white shark.

Anthony Joyce, who was attacked by a shark off a Sydney beach last October, once shared the Western Australian government's views on culling the animals, but after doing extensive research he now disagrees.

"The amount of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference in the scheme of things," he told reporters at Manly.

After speaking with shark experts and marine biologists, he now believes greater government support for marine biology programs and shark education in schools is the way to go.

Another protestor in Manly, Katherine Cook, said she was outraged at the shark killings.

"I'm really angry and incensed that we can't co-exist with anything," she said.

"We are going into their (sharks) environment. Why can't we co-exist?"

At Cottesloe, a female activist chained herself to a fisheries boat to prevent it leaving to set and monitor baited hooks off the coast, the ABC reported.

While sharks are common in Australian waters, deadly attacks are rare, with only one of the average 15 incidents a year typically proving fatal.

But experts say attacks are increasing in line with population growth and the popularity of water sports.

source: interaksyon.com

'Cat cafe' is purrfect spot for Paris animal lovers

PARIS - France's first "cat cafe" opens on Saturday in Paris with an in-house troupe of nine rescue cats ready and waiting to be made a fuss of by cat-loving customers.

Already popular in Tokyo where there are dozens, cat cafes allow customers who cannot have a pet at home to enjoy a cup of something hot with a purring cat perched on their knees.

Margaux Gandelon, the woman behind the new Cafe des Chats in Paris's trendy Marais district, says the cats were carefully selected for their social skills and stresses that hygiene and their welfare are her top priorities.

"My cats are free all day and all night," she said.

Cindy Engel from Strasbourg visited the cafe ahead of its opening for a preview.

The 31-year-old welcomed the concept saying it encouraged her to interact with other people rather than electronic devices.

"The cats allow us to not always be connected to our mobiles. What's more they create social connections," she said.

"Instead of typing on our computers while drinking a coffee we talk about cats to our neighbors," she added.

Not everyone, however, was convinced.

"It's a good experience but eating with cats is not my thing," said Edward Chrismars, adding that he was just there to please a friend.

"It's alright to have them sitting on the sofa, that's OK, but they can't jump on the table or eat from my plate. It's not hygienic!" he said.

source: interaksyon.com

With no real lion, Chinese zoo closed for going to the dogs

BEIJING - A zoo in central China has been closed after visitors were outraged to discover its lion was really a bushy and barking Tibetan mastiff.

The dog was not the only fake at People's Park Zoo in the city of Luohe, which tried to pass off other common mammals and rodents as a leopard and snakes, Chinese media reported.

Photographs showed the mastiff with its muzzle poking through the bars of its dingy enclosure. A grimy sign on the cage read "African Lion" in Chinese characters.
 

The zoo apologized for the exhibits and was closed down for "rectification", the Beijing News said, citing local officials.

Animal rights activists have criticized Chinese zoos for their record of poor conditions and other abuses.

source: interaksyon.com

Can the Internet help us communicate with animals?

LONG BEACH, California — Peter Gabriel joined big thinkers and one of the Internet’s founding fathers Friday in launching an “Interspecies Internet” for animals to communicate with us and each other.

“Perhaps the most amazing tool man has created is the Internet,” the famous British singer said.

“What would happen if we could somehow find new interfaces — visual, audio — to allow us to communicate with the remarkable beings we share the planet with?”



His allies in the effort include Vint Cerf, a revered father of the Internet, along with a cognitive psychologist and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

Gabriel showed a video of a jamming session he had with a bonobo playing the keyboard. The bonobo used one finger to improvise a tune that the singer overlaid with his distinctive voice.

“She did good,” Gabriel said with a smile.

He told of growing up on a farm and often looking into the eyes of animals and wondering what they were thinking.

“What was amazing to me was that they seemed a lot more adept at getting a handle on our language than we were at getting a handle on theirs,” Gabriel said.

“I work with a lot of musicians from around the world… Often we don’t have any common language at all. We sit behind our instruments and it’s a way to connect.”

His curiosity led him to Diana Reiss, a psychologist known for dolphin intelligence research.

“Animals are conscious. They have emotions. They are aware,” Reiss said. “One of my biggest dreams is that we give them the respect and attention they deserve.”

MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld signed onto the effort after seeing a video of Gabriel’s jam session and concluding that leaving the rest of the planet out of the Internet was an omission in need of correction.

“What is important about what these people are doing is they are beginning to learn how to communicate with species who are not us but share a sensory environment,” said Cerf.

“These other sentient species should be part of the network too.”

Cerf, now chief Internet evangelist at Google, spoke of an inter-species Internet as a test run for communicating with life encountered while exploring space.

“These interactions with other animals will teach us, ultimately, how we might interact with an alien from another world,” he added. “I can hardly wait.”

Seed money for the project will be used to develop a touchscreen device that dolphins can use to connect to the Internet.

source: interaksyon.com

Uncertain future for Japan's cat cafes

TOKYO — For the young women whiling away their evenings with a cappuccino in hand and a cat on their lap, Tokyo’s “neko cafes” are the ideal place to unwind and soothe their stresses.

“After a long day at work, I just want to stroke cats and relax,” said saleswoman Akiko Harada.

“I love cats, but I can’t have one at home because I live in a small apartment. I started coming here because I really missed having fun with cats and touching them.”

For Harada and others like her, the “neko cafes” of the Japanese capital are a harmless institution where customers pay a premium for their coffee in exchange for the chance to pet the cats that stroll among them.

But for animal rights activists, these cafes are exploitative places where animals are subjected to unnatural stress.

They welcome a new ordinance, coming into force later this year, that will ban the display of animals after 8 p.m.

The rules were drawn up by the environment ministry after it received more than 155,000 requests for action from the public—an unusually high number in politically ambivalent Japan.

The law is primarily aimed at the pet shops in Tokyo’s entertainment districts that regularly raise the eyebrows of Western visitors with their brightly-lit windows displaying dogs and cats in cramped glass tanks late into the night.

But cat cafe manager Shinji Yoshida says he will also be snared by the law and will have to close in the evenings—his busiest time.

Yoshida’s cat cafe in Ikebukuro, a busy commercial and commuter hub in Tokyo, keeps 13 cats in a carpeted room where they have the freedom to jump around and climb all over the large fake tree.

“It is a huge blow to us cat cafes, and it’s nothing to do with protecting cats’ health,” said Yoshida, 32.

“As you see, cats can walk and play freely. I ask customers not to touch them if they are sleeping. At night, we dim the room light,” he said. “And cats can rest during daylight.”

He says about 80% of his customers are salaried workers who drop in for a welcome change from the daily grind of work and long commutes.

“If I close this cafe at 8 p.m., I’ll see red ink,” he said.

Yoshida’s customers definitely want the cafe to be allowed to stay open.

Office worker Ayako Kanzaki, 22, began visiting cat cafes three years ago because she loves cats but her apartment is too small to keep one.

“I like to do things at my own pace, and I must say I am not a very social person. So I come here alone, because I want to focus on the cats,” she said.

“During the day, cats are mostly sleeping, and if they are awake, they often don’t pay attention to the people. In the evening they are very lively, it’s more enjoyable.”

Saleswoman Harada agrees.

“If cat cafes are shut down at night, I won’t have many opportunities to come any more,” she said.

Animal welfare campaigner Chizuko Yamaguchi says the sheer number of customers in cat cafes can make life difficult for the animals.

“From morning to night these cats are being stroked by people they do not know. For the animals, that is a real source of stress,” she said.

Fusako Nogami, head of animal rights group ALIVE, said the rule change banning the display of animals in the evening was a good thing, but acknowledges the cat cafes are not the target.

Nogami said the commodification of animals in Japan was a real problem, with many people looking at them purely as fashion accessories, and not as lives in their own right.

“What deserves more public attention is the way pets are sold in Japan,” she said.

“We need to ban the trade of newborn kittens and puppies just because they are pretty and sell well.”

source: japantoday.com