(Wahing­ton Post) Cathryn Wash­ing­ton, 67, left 14-​​year-​​old Delta in the vehi­cle as she ran in to buy some pet prod­ucts on an after­noon when the tem­per­a­ture hit 104 degrees, Sgt. David Luck­en­baugh of Fred­er­ick Ani­mal Con­trol said. She intended to just be 15 min­utes or so, she later told her estranged hus­band Charles Wash­ing­ton. She...
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By Margery A. Beck (AP) OMAHA, Neb. – A sub­ur­ban Omaha man has died after being stran­gled by his 9-​​foot, 25-​​pound pet boa con­stric­tor, author­i­ties said Thurs­day. Cory Byrne, 34, of Papil­lion died Wednes­day night at a local hos­pi­tal, just hours after police and para­medics pried the snake from around his neck, police said. Byrne...
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Tox­o­plasma gondii is not an alien; it is a rel­a­tive of that down-​​to-​​earth pathogen Plas­mod­ium, the beast that causes malaria. It is com­mon: in some parts of the world as much as 60% of the pop­u­la­tion is infected with it. A country’s level of Tox­o­plasma infec­tion seems to be related to the level of neu­roti­cism...
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By Mal­colm Moore (Tele­graph UK) Yang Liwei, the 44-​​year-​​old mil­i­tary pilot who com­manded the Shen­zhou Five mis­sion in 2003, revealed the menu on-​​board the space­craft in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, The Nine Lev­els between Heaven and Earth. He listed a menu includ­ing braised chicken, steamed fish and dog meat from Hua­jiang county in Guang­dong, which is famed for...
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(The Local) A man walked into a police sta­tion in south­ern Swe­den last week to com­plain about the qual­ity of the hash that he had been sold, ask­ing for a lump to be tested for traces of LSD. The 26-​​year-​​old cannabis con­nois­seur declared to sur­prised police offi­cers in the provin­cial Skåné town of Eslöv that...
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NEW YORK (Reuters) — Rather than spend­ing Valentine’s Day with their part­ner, one fifth of adults would pre­fer to be with their pet, although the French still came top for romance, accord­ing to a joint global poll by Reuters/​Ipsos. The sur­vey of 24,000 peo­ple in 23 coun­tries found 21 per­cent of adults would rather...
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(BBC) Peo­ple who own a cat are more likely to have a uni­ver­sity degree than those with a pet dog, a study by Bris­tol Uni­ver­sity suggests. A poll of 2,524 house­holds found that 47.2% of those with a cat had at least one per­son edu­cated to degree level, com­pared with 38.4% of homes with dogs....
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LJUBLJANA, Slove­nia — A Sloven­ian who saved his three dogs from being put down for attack­ing humans was him­self mauled to death by them, police said on Wednesday. “Three dogs bit their 52-​​year-​​old owner to death in Ljubl­jana yes­ter­day,” police spokes­woman Maja Adlesic said. via Man killed by dogs after sav­ing them from death...
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By Matt Walker (BBC) The world’s first film shot entirely by chim­panzees is to be broad­cast by the BBC as part of a nat­ural his­tory doc­u­men­tary. The apes cre­ated the movie using a spe­cially designed chimp-​​proof cam­era given to them by pri­ma­tol­o­gists. The film-​​making exer­cise is part of a sci­en­tific study into how chim­panzees...
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