I noticed that lately. Mostly from newer members?

http://thefw.com/kids-with-zoo-animals/ -- "Kids and animals go together like peanut butter and jelly. And sometimes the animals even treat the kids as tasty snacks — or at least wish they could.

Here are just a few reasons to be really nice to the people who make glass enclosures..."

http://www.neatorama.com/2012/01/04/10-amazing-stories-of-animal-prosthetics/

A few videos.

Vimeo has many long Nerd Nite presentation recordings from four cities (Austin, Madison, San Francisco, and Seattle) on various topics/subjects.

I couldn't embed this:

http://www.livestream.com/teamcoco/share from http://holycuteness.com/2011/12/20/kittens-on-airplane-livestream/ ...

Currently showing cute husky puppies!

Sorry, but as a true Finn I have to post some articles about Swedish things that are just .. silly

(And I think Elks are moose that live in North America, but still, a moose is a moose. This is a moose!)

The Local: Drunken elk desperate for just one more mouthful of fermenting apples lost its balance in the attempt, leaving it stuck in an apple tree in western Sweden.

When Per Johansson of Särö, south of Gothenburg, returned home from work on Tuesday it was dark outside and the rain was coming down hard. Suddenly Johansson heard a bellowing noise from the garden next door.

“I thought at first that someone was having a laugh. Then I went over to take a look and spotted an elk stuck in an apple tree with only one leg left on the ground,” Johansson told The Local.

The unfortunate elk was desperately entangled in the tree’s branches and was kicking ferociously as Johansson approached.

“I thought it looked pretty bad so I called the police who sent out an on-call hunter. But while we were waiting, the neighbours and I started to saw down some of the branches and then the hunter arrived with a saw as well,” said Johansson.

The group tried to make the elk more comfortable but to no avail.

It wasn’t until the fire brigade arrived on the scene and managed to bend the tree to the point where the exhausted elk could slide out of the branches that the animal was finally freed.

According to Johansson, it looked very much like the elk was severely drunk after eating too many fermenting apples.

Drunken elk are common in Sweden during the autumn season when there are plenty of apples lying around on the ground and hanging from branches in Swedish gardens.

While the greedy animal was reaching ever higher to reach the delicious but intoxicating fruit, it most likely stumbled into the tree, getting itself hopelessly entangled in the branches.

And from what Johansson could gather, this particular animal had been on a day-long bender.

“My neighbour recognised it as the animal that almost ran into her car earlier in the day. She was pretty sure the elk was already under the influence,“ said Johansson.

When the inebriated elk was freed, it lay for a while on the ground, seemingly unconscious.

After emergency services had ascertained that the animal was still alive, Johansson was told to keep an eye on it and call the hunter straight away if it seemed to be suffering.

But by the morning the hungover animal had stood up and cautiously moved a few metres away.

After a while it went on its way, although Johansson suspects it is still skulking around the neighbourhood.

“We often see elk stuffing their faces with apples around here but this is the first time we found one perched in a tree,” he told The Local.

Just watching the live footages on local TV news. Ugh. Prayers to all of those affected.

Some enormous Ice- fuck -Storm has engulfed the top half of Texas. No one has gone to work, school, the grocery store or even wal*mart (except for drax, he got balls and walked there) since Monday afternoon. There are rolling brown outs to conserve energy, everyone is affected by them except for the the steelers and the packers at their fancy rich fuck hotel in downtown Fort Worth, apparently. Let's not embarrass ourselves in front of the visiting football players with our 3rd world infrastructure. Texas is now borrowing power from Mexico's grid. The Super Bowl is here on Sunday, I'm expecting the death toll will begin mounting by then.

Car accidents are at record highs. A friend from Houston told me this morning that there were 200 accidents in Houston between midnight and 6am. Ridiculous!

It's like living in someones freezers. Except all the food has freezer burn and you can't eat any of it because the microwave uses too much power. And you might slip on the ice and die.

I'm stir crazy, have the asspiss, and we're running out of food and cigarettes. Call out the National Guard, or the Mormom's... we need some MRE's.

I'm tired of this apocalyptic wonderland. And Canadians, I now think you're all just insane. I am not in awe of your ability to cope with this bullshit weather half of the year. I just don't understand why you haven't all moved to Florida. Or Brazil. Or Honduras. I think you could probably do a lot for human rights in the 3rd world actually, if you all just abandoned your frozen arctic palaces and migrated to the same few equatorial countries. But perhaps the harsh, unforgiving frozen tundra has crippled your will to live. This is an abusive relationship, Canadians.

Also, I can't pay any bills because my bank account thinks I'm broke. I actually have a few thousand dollars in checks that came monday evening, I just haven't been able to deposit them because I CAN'T GET TO THE FUCKING BANK. Even if pizza boys were delivering, I couldn't buy one. The pizza, or the boy.

My electric company just emailed me and told me not to call them if my power goes out because 1. it's just going to happen, deal with it. and 2. they've closed their offices due to inclement weather and they're not coming back until Monday.

The post office is the only thing still in operation, please mail us food.

GAH. I'M TIRED OF THIS ARCTIC BLAST, THIS APOCALYPTIC WONDERLAND OF FROZEN DEATH. THIS SnOMG HELL FUCK STORM.

I'd post pictures of how cold and dead we are here, but I'm too cold and dead to figure out how to do that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/comedy/2010/10/diy-walk-on-the-wild-side.shtml from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhKaVOnuzfE ...

"Above is a little look at how Walk on the Wild Side is made. Fancy having a go yourself? Could you put words in the mouth of a seagull, or a donkey? Now's your chance to find out! The Walk on the Wild Side team have made four clips available for you to download so that you can add your own voiceovers..."

I think it is only for British people?

As you can witness for yourself here, the oil spill must have made it's way into the water cooling system installed on the Videosift servers.



As Dag and Lucky break out the Dawn dish soap to clean off an oil soaked Siftbot, BP has assured us that the spill is well within their area of expertise and is encouraging dissenters to drink local water in copious amounts.

For more details on the particulars of those effected click here.

Update: Apparently the geniuses at Firefox have found a way to stop the spill through the use of Adblock Plus and Flash block. Those using Internet Explorer may still be affected by the spill though.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/unlikely-animal-friends-4317/ (embeddedable videos too).

NGC takes a fun-filled look at the stunning bonds animals form with other species, and even prey. A baby hippo is washed ashore after a devastating tsunami and latches onto a surrogate mother a 130-year-old giant tortoise. A lioness plays mom to a series of baby oryx calves, grooming and even fending off outside predators. These unexpected friends defy the laws of nature and demonstrate an evolution in the animal kingdom that would astound Darwin himself.

I thought these were pretty neat. Enjoy

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html

Check it out on this live webcam

http://www.mila.is/um-milu/vefmyndavelar/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

Forgive me if you don't find this as interesting as I do.. I am a geologist after all..

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."