http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/10/02/animal-anarchy-when-animals-attack-video-top-10-115875-21715481/ from http://digg.com/pets_animals/Animal_anarchy_When_animals_attack_Video_top_10 ...

We have another crown in our midst, siftizens, and it's none other than Monsieur Arvana. By now everyone who's been here for more than a few months knows his name. He's the dude who routinely brings us some of the most interesting and most entertaining videos the net has to offer. That arvana. (You know, the one who reminds you of Jeff Bridges. Or maybe it's just me. Hey, I still remember his long-haired look, and even then he reminded me of Lebowski. Sort of. Or Patrick Swayze. Just ask rottenseed. Except he's alive. Arvana, that is.)

Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah, arvana just got a thousand stars, so I whipped up this half-assed shopped photo of him. Blame it on Monsieur John Daniels for its amateurish....ness. And my lack of shopping skills. But give it up for arvana while you're at it. He deserves it.

And here's my recent favorite arvana video, so vote it up if you haven't done so already. It's been such a long time, baby.

I really enjoy reading popular science and other non-fiction books and would love to get some suggestions from other sifters. Please add amazon invocations and a bit on why you like a particular book.

Boing Boing shares Museum of Animal Perspectives (MAP)'s photostream showing four Web pages of short video clips from animals' perspectives (cameras mounted on them).

Click the HQ button and select HD if your processor and internet connection won't bog down. Then go full screen.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46053000/jpg/_46053673_cat_bbc_226.jpg

From BBC News:

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.

The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.

"He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying," Dr McComb told BBC News.

"After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning."

While meowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cat's bowl.

To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats' vocal tactics - recording both their "soliciting purrs" and regular, "non-soliciting" purrs.

"When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant," said Dr McComb.

How annoying?

She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs - giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.

"We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs," explained Dr McComb. "The key thing (that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore) was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound."

"When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency," explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.

"But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds - stimulating them to vibrate," explained Dr McComb.

Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.

"How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry," said Dr McComb.

Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat's cry and the cry of a human baby - a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.

Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring. "But we think that (they) learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."

She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.

"Obviously we don't know what's going on inside their minds," said Dr McComb. "But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately."

So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?

"He's been the inspiration for this whole study, so I'll forgive him - credit where credit's due."

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1195215/Stunning-pictures-hole-clouds-astronauts-witness-volcano-eruption-International-Space-Station.html

Framed by a circle of clouds, this is a stunning illustration of Nature's powerful force. A plume of smoke, ash and steam soars five miles into the sky from an erupting volcano. The extraordinary image was captured by the crew of the International Space Station 220 miles above a remote Russian island in the North Pacific.



The round hole in the clouds is thought to have been caused by the shockwave of the initial explosion. At the centre lies the billowing mushroom tower of grey and brown ash.
For volcano experts, the most exciting part of the image is the layer of smooth white cloud that caps the plume - a little like a layer of snow on a mushroom. This cap of condensed air is created from the rapid rising and then cooling of the air directly above the ash column. When moist, warm air rises quickly it creates a cloud.



This cap, which meteorologists call a pileus cloud, is already beginning to break up in these images - and would have vanished soon afterwards. Far below, a thunderous line of light grey cloud can be seen falling down the sloping sides of the volcano.



This is a deadly pyroclastic flow - a mixture of hot gas and ash that destroys everything in its path. Reaching temperatures of 600C (1,112F) and moving at 130mph, a pyroclastic flow is the most dangerous part of a volcanic eruption. Thankfully, Matua Island is uninhabited. The eruption of Sarychev Peak began a week ago and is still under way. The International Space Station has continued to track the ash cloud over the last few days.

The plume is a few hundred miles from one of the world's busiest air corridors. Hundreds of flights across the Pacific have been diverted to avoid any chance of it knocking out plane engines. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in Russia's Kuril archipelago. Eruptions have been recorded as far back as the 1700s, with the last known one in 1989.

Embedding is disabled, so I can't sift it, but I felt a powerful urge to share this anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

The film is available on Youtube until June 14th, and is 1:33 hours long. I hope you enjoy and share as well.

Edit - It occurred to me that even though I submitted this to Eco talk, this post isn't quite descriptive enough for the other channels.

Home is a film which attempts to sum up the impact Humans have on our home planet and the possible future it would lead to. This film follows human societies around the globe and makes it's points through intelligent narration and spectacular nature images.

A long time in the making, but at last NicoleBee got her Gold 100. Finally she'll be able to include pictures in sifttalk posts. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hopes for more of her beautiful artwork in the future.

Besides being a talented artist, Nicole is the (un)official geek chick on VS. I feel pretty confident saying she has her veritable pick of the litter among the many male geeks of the sift.

Major congrats, Nicole, you're a funny and interesting girl and anyone who doesn't visit your pqueue will deserve getting stung. How does a bee survive in the arctic wasteland that is Canada anyway? Never mind that! CONGRATS!!!
... more inside ...

Not sure if we are allowed to promote our sifts here in the talk, but this is beyond awesome:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Live-Eurasian-Oystercatcher-hatching-cam

Here are some interesting studies I found on the subject since my assumption that it was an obvious truth didn't cut it. Should have started out this way, just didn't predict the opposition. So here ya go...the scientific method! Check it out

Animal Emotions Provide Clues to Autism, Other Disorders-

http://researchnews.wsu.edu/health/141.html

"Do animals have emotions?
Look deep into her eyes ... Is she sad or do we just think so? Many scientists now believe that animals feel emotions too"-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4595810.ece

Study Says Dogs Read Human Emotions on Faces-

http://petcare.suite101.com/article.cfm/study_says_dogs_detect_emotions_on_human_faces

"Researchers working in neurobiology and behavioral observation seem to be learning what pet lovers have known all along: animals have feelings."

"New evidence gathered from actually studying dogs, chimps and other animals, supports pet owners’ firm convictions that animals experience fear, jealousy, grief and love."


http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-10-2003-44071.asp

"Five years ago my colleagues would have thought I was off my rocker," said biologist Marc Bekoff. "But now scientists are finally starting to talk about animal emotions in public. It’s like they’re coming out of the closet."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2CLT0_QdbE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWOEHFUFnic

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/714055/amazing_pet_hippo/

http://www.greatpetnet.com/630/jasmine-the-mother-theresa-greyhound/

I find these stories amazing. There are so many instances where animals go against instinct and preform acts that do not benefit their survival. Why? To me its simply the obvious...because they are not dumb creatures who only act on impulse. Animals are smart, they feel love , some even suffer depression when separated from their companions. A lot of people argue that this is not possible, that animals are not capable to conscious decision and are only fueled by motives that contribute to their survival. I, and I'm sure many pet owners, have witnessed animals to truly be more than that.

"The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.

Other researchers have linked the parasite to schizophrenia. In an adult, the symptoms are like a mild form of flu, but it can be much more serious in an infant or fetus. Oxford University researchers believe high levels of the parasite leads to hyperactivity and lower IQs in children.

Lafferty, who is a parasite ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is an expert on the role parasites play in the ecology of other animals.

Building on research by scientists in the Czech Republic, Lafferty took a long look at areas of the globe where infection levels are quite high, or quite low. In Brazil, for example, two out of three women of child-bearing age are infected, whereas in the United States the number is only one out of eight."

http://a.abcnews.com/Technology/DyeHard/Story?id=2288095&page=1

WTF!

Could this be the start of the X-Men?

Associated Press:

ROOSEVELT PARK, Mich. -- Liam Hoekstra was hanging upside down by his feet when he performed an inverted sit-up, his shirt falling away to expose rippled abdominal muscles.

It was a display of raw power one might expect to see from an Olympic gymnast.

Liam is 19 months old.

But this precocious, 22-pound boy with coffee-colored skin, curly hair and washboard abs is far from a typical toddler.

"He could do the iron cross when he was 5 months old," said his adoptive mother, Dana Hoekstra of Roosevelt Park. She was referring to a difficult gymnastics move in which a male athlete suspends himself by his arms between two hanging rings, forming the shape of a cross.

"I would hold him up by his hands and he would lift himself into an iron cross. That's when we were like, 'Whoa, this is weird,'" Hoekstra said.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070530/strong_toddler_070530?hub

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/tenlapse.html from http://digg.com/general_sciences/Top_10_Time_Lapse_Videos_of_Nature_at_Work ...

"The world is filled with sluggish spectacles. Watching them would be painful were it not for time lapse photography, which can make those long stories short and remarkably entertaining..."

Three of our fellow Sifters recently achieved Gold 100 status: Raigen, Ornthoron, and gorillaman. None of them are American, but let's not hold that against them.

... more inside ...

By STEVE SZKOTAK – 6 hours ago

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark.

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

"This first case was no fluke," Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. "It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion."

source:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jopMqOO2So3dYy-hCo92NdE5aWuAD93ND98G0

swampgirl's deadpool sift of previous occurrence:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Nature-Finds-a-Way-Parthenogenesis-or-Virgin-Birth

This site outlines the problem, and one of the possible causes of the drastic decline in bee populations world wide.

http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3545166/

This sort of news highlighting our incompatibility with nature really scares me, I feel helpless and that humankind is in trouble so deep it cannot help itself anymore. Does anyone here think humankind will give up cell phones and wifi anytime soon?

http://www.funnyanimalvideos.com/ has embeddable video codes, but VS doesn't like it. Is anyone else having the same problem? I am running low to submit to VS. [grin]

Thank you in advance.