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Our Flatulent Mother Earth

2005-12-28T10:39:00.000-05:00

Even mother earth has gas pains from time to time.

Maine Ocean Floor Has Mud-Trapped Gas

Portland, Maine - The Maine coast has dozens of methane gas fields on the ocean bottom where mud-trapped gas occasionally bubbles to the surface, according to a team of University of Maine scientists. Read More...

Love Is A Many Splendid Thing

2005-12-15T09:28:00.000-05:00

NAIROBI, Jan 6:

A baby-hippopotamus that survived the tsumani waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombasa.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms, was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsumani waves struck the Kenyan coast on Dec 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu said. "After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatised. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.

The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother.

Sound of Dog's 'Laugh' Calms Other Pooches

2005-12-13T13:40:00.000-05:00

From an ABC Original Report:
Researchers: Canine Laugh Is Long Loud Panting Sound

A group of researchers says dogs 'laugh' by making a long, loud panting sound. (ABC News)

Dec. 4, 2005 — Researchers at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service in Washington state say sometimes a bark is just a bark — but a long, loud panting sound has real meaning.
They say the long, loud pant is the sound of a dog laughing, and it has a direct impact on the behavior of other dogs.

"What we found is that it had a calming or soothing effect on the dogs," said Patricia Simonet, an animal behaviorist in Spokane who has studied everything from hamster culture to elephant self-recognition. "Now, we actually really weren't expecting that."
Nancy Hill, director of Spokane County Animal Protection, admits she was skeptical at first that this noise would affect the other dogs.
"I thought: Laughing dogs?" Hill said. "A sound that we're gonna isolate and play in the shelter? I was a real skeptic … until we played the recording here at the shelter."
When they played the sound of a dog panting over the loudspeaker, the gaggle of dogs at the shelter kept right on barking. But when they played the dog version of laughing, all 15 barking dogs went quiet within about a minute.
"It was a night-and-day difference," Hill said. "It was absolutely phenomenal."
Officials say it works every time, and researchers across the country are taking note.
"The laughing sound that they make is something that was not even considered a vocalization until this study was done," Simonet said.
Those who study dog behavior have varying opinions about exactly what Patricia Simonet's "dog laughing" sound really is. What they do agree on, however, is that to other dogs, it is at least a sound worth keeping quiet to listen to.