Translation: "Alia, a Russian white whale, amuses her visitors in a Japanese zoo. A trick that whales living in the wild can do as well, but not when ordered to, and surely not that many times in a row. Alia does it just for fun and can aim pretty well. Some say that a bubble from her brings luck."
The gag order is lifted as the last defendant is sentenced and Bad Rap opens up about their experiences and discoveries made when evaluating the ex-fighting dogs.
See video, pictures, a timeline, and the entire process on Bad Rap's website here- A Second Chance for the Vick-tims
Their blogspot has also been updated and can be read here
These dogs were immediately labeled "ticking timebombs" by PETA and HSUS who took it upon themselves to decide it was best that they be put down with no further evaluation because of their fighting background. But evaluation of these dogs may help reinvent how to assess prior fighting dogs and show that shelters need to treat them on an individual basis instead of generalizing. You may recall that only ONE dog failed the rigerous temperament test admistered by both Bad Rap and the ASPCA.
Thanks to good people like Bad Rap and ASPCA EVERY dog no matter what breed, size, or background has an equal chance at finding that perfect home.
"High School Musical" star Ashley Tisdale takes her tiny pooch and new nose shopping at an upscale outdoor mall in Century City, CA.
Cloned Animals Safe to Eat, Says FDA
Lauran Neergaard, Associated Press
Jan. 15, 2008 -- Meat and milk from cloned animals is as safe as that from their counterparts bred the old-fashioned way, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.
The decision removes the last U.S. regulatory hurdle to marketing products from cloned cows, pigs and goats, and puts the FDA in concert with recent safety assessments from European food regulators and several other nations.
"The data show that healthy adult clones are virtually indistinguishable" from their counterparts, concludes FDA's 900-plus page safety report.
But for economic reasons, it will be years before many foods from cloned animals reach store shelves. At $10,000 to $20,000 per animal, they're a lot more expensive than ordinary cows. That means producers likely will us clones' offspring for meat, not the clones themselves.
In addition, several large food companies -- including dairy giant Dean Foods Co. and Hormel Foods Corp. -- have said they have no plans to sell milk or meat from cloned animals, because of consumer anxiety about the technology.
With FDA's ruling, "If you ask what's for dinner, it means just about anything you can cook up in a laboratory," said Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America, who pledged to push for more food producers to shun cloned animals.
The two main U.S. cloning companies, Viagen Inc. and Trans Ova Genetics, already have produced more than 600 cloned animals for U.S. breeders, including copies of prize-winning cows and rodeo bulls.
"We certainly are pleased," said Trans Ova President David Faber, who noted that previous reports by the National Academy of Sciences and others have reached the same conclusion.
"Our farmer and rancher clients are pleased because it provided them with another reproductive tool," he added.
Food producers have voluntarily withheld cloned animals from the market pending FDA's decision, and it wasn't immediately clear Tuesday if that moratorium was ending immediately -- or if other government agencies must weigh in first.
The ruling was long-expected -- and mirrors FDA's initial safety assessment back in 2003 -- but highly controversial nonetheless. Debate has been fierce within the Bush administration as to whether the FDA should move forward, largely because of trade concerns. Consumer advocates petitioned against the move, and Congress had passed legislation urging the FDA to study the economic ramifications before moving ahead.
It was a day forecast since 1997, when Scottish scientists announced they had successfully cloned Dolly the sheep. Ironically, sheep aren't on the list of FDA's approved cloned animals; the agency said there wasn't as much data about their safety as about cows, pigs and goats.
By its very definition, a successfully cloned animal should be no different from the original animal whose DNA was used to create it.
But the technology hasn't been perfected -- and many attempts at livestock cloning still end in fatal birth defects or with deformed fetuses dying in the womb. Moreover, Dolly was euthanized in 2003, well short of her normal lifespan, because of a lung disease that raised questions about how cloned animals will age.
The FDA's report acknowledges that, "Currently, it is not possible to draw any conclusions regarding the longevity of livestock clones or possible long-term health consequences" for the animal.
But the agency concluded that cloned animals that are born healthy are no different from their non-cloned counterparts, and go on to reproduce normally as well.
"The FDA says, 'We assume all the unhealthy animals will be taken out of the food supply,'" said Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety, a consumer advocacy group that opposes FDA's ruling. "They're only looking at the small slice of cloned animals that appear to be healthy. ... It needs a lot further study."
Cloned Pigs Glow Like Their Mom
Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press
They Have Their Mom's Hue Jan. 9, 2008 -- A cloned pig whose genes were altered to make it glow fluorescent green has passed on the trait to its young, a development that could lead to the future breeding of pigs for human transplant organs, a Chinese university reported.
Two of the 11 piglets glow fluorescent green from their snout, trotters, and tongue under ultraviolet light, according to Northeast Agricultural University, located in the city of Harbin.
Their mother was one of three pigs born with the trait in December 2006 after pig embryos were injected with fluorescent green protein.
"Continued development of this technology can be applied to ... the production of special pigs for the production of human organs for transplant," Liu Zhonghua, a professor overseeing the breeding program, said in a news release posted Tuesday on the university's Web site.
The birth of the glowing piglets proves such transgenic pigs are fertile and able to pass on their engineered traits to their offspring, Liu said.
"The smooth birth of these transgenic fluorescent green pigs testifies to the mature development of our country's use of somatic cell nuclear transfer technology to produce transgenic pigs," Liu said.
Calls to the university seeking comment Wednesday were not answered.
Robin Lovell-Badge, a genetics expert at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research, said the technology "to genetically manipulate pigs in this way would be very valuable."
Lovell-Badge had not seen the research from China's cloned pigs and could not comment on its credibility. He said, however, that organs from genetically altered pigs would potentially solve some of the problems of rejected organs in transplant operations.
He said the presence of the green protein would allow genetically modified cells to be tracked if they were transplanted into a human. The fact that the pig's offspring also appeared to have the green genes would indicate that the genetic modification had successfully penetrated every cell, Lovell-Badge added.
But he said much more research and further trials -- both in animals and in humans -- would be necessary before we could see the benefits of the technology.
Other genetically modified pigs have been created before, including by Scotland's Roslin Institute, but few results have been published.
Tokyo's Meiji University last year successfully cloned a transgenic pig that carries the genes for human diabetes, while South Korean scientists cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays -- an achievement they said could help develop cures for human genetic diseases.
LOLcat Bible
Genesis 1- "Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem..."
1) Terrific toadlets
Habitat loss, pollution and disease are hitting some of the smallest creatures on earth the hardest. Frog populations have been in sharp decline the past few decades, but a fortunate native species is getting a helping hand from scientists. Staff at the Detroit Zoo are raising 40 juvenile Wyoming toads, one of the most endangered amphibians in the United States. The species is now considered functionally extinct in the wild, with the last remaining individuals only found in zoos and aquariums across the country. The zoo breeding partnership, led by Central Park Zoo and Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo, has successfully released more than 6,000 tadpoles, toadlets and toads in Wyoming since the program's inception in 1995. Recent good news indicates that the recovery efforts may be paying off: this summer in a monitored protected area, conservationists discovered the first clutch of Wyoming toad eggs found in the wild in ten years.
2) Mice on the move
This summer, Santa Fe Community College Teaching Zoo in Gainesville, Florida, began housing 52 Perdido Key beach mice to protect the species from extinction. The mice originated from the University of South Carolina, but needed to be relocated after damage from Hurricane Ivan. The Brevard Zoo, Florida Aquarium and Palm Beach Zoo have since shared in the responsibility of caring for and studying the mice. There are only a few hundred individuals left in the wild, inhabiting just one barrier island off the coast of Pensacola. Scientists fear that a hurricane could be disastrous to the beach mice, potentially causing the species to become extinct in the wild. Breeding studies have commenced to safeguard their numbers.
3) The right stuff for right whales
The world's rarest large whale, the right whale, has been the topic of interest for scientists at the New England Aquarium this past year. Fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales currently exist in the world, and are threatened by ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear, habitat loss, pollution, and disease. The New England Aquarium's Right Whale Research Project recently developed a hormone test to learn more about the reproductive rates of the endangered species. This information is critical in helping these giant sea creatures survive.
4) Loose lemurs
Black-and-white ruffed lemurs born in zoos are getting a feel for their new home at the Betampona Natural Reserve in eastern Madagascar. The Madagascar Fauna Group (MFG), and the Duke Lemur Center coordinated the plan to reintroduce zoo-bred lemurs to the wild, with the help of other MFG partners and institutions, including Salt Lake City's Hogle Zoo, the Los Angeles Zoo and the Santa Ana Zoo. The released individuals are being monitored and have fared well so far, with four offspring born from three reintroduced lemurs.
5) International sea turtle success
The Kemp's ridley sea turtle population is in bad shape, but thanks to cooperation between U.S and Mexican officials and scientists, the species can rest assured that their nesting sites will be safe. The Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, and Mexican conservation workers have protected the turtle's nesting sites on beaches in Tamaulipas, Mexico and Padre Island National Seashore. The Zoo reports an increase in nests by the hundreds each year on the Mexican Gulf Coast, indicating success of the program.
6) Black and white is all the rage
Grevy's zebras are the hot topic in animal awareness thanks to the Saint Louis Zoo. The Zoo has partnered with several Kenyan non-profits and other zoo partners to spread awareness to communities in the zebra's home range across Kenya. Grevy's zebras are threatened by poaching and competition from livestock, but efforts to raise awareness in Kenyan villages have been paying off and benefiting their wild populations, reports the Zoo. Several communities have established livestock-free conservation areas, which benefit not only the zebras, but all forms of wildlife in the region. Additionally, over 30 Grevy's zebra foals have been born and raised at the Saint Louis Zoo over the past five decades.
7) Saving "Jaws"
For the third time since 2004, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has placed a young white shark on public exhibit. The shark was caught accidentally in commercial fishing gear off Southern California. Through its White Shark Research Project, the Aquarium has worked since 2002 to learn more about white sharks in the wild, and has since tagged and tracked 10 juvenile white sharks off Southern California. White sharks are in decline worldwide, in part because they are slow to reproduce and also because of growing fishing pressure that is decimating all shark species. Their fearsome reputation has also made them a target of trophy hunters and the curio trade. The Aquarium's hope in exhibiting a white shark is to change public attitudes and promote greater protection for these much-maligned ocean predators.
8) Blue skies for butterflies
Floridian zoos have teamed up to protect the small but mighty butterfly. The Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network, which includes Brevard Zoo, Central Florida Zoo, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Jacksonville Zoo, Lowry Park Zoo, and Miami MetroZoo, is working to survey butterfly populations throughout Florida. Saving this small creature is no small task, and volunteer citizen scientists trained by the zoos conduct monthly counts of butterflies in both natural and man-made habitats on zoo grounds. This information allows researchers to monitor populations and look into potential threats to fragile butterfly species.
9) Marmot Island
The Vancouver Island marmot is the most endangered animal in Canada. Native to British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, these critters are being threatened by massive habitat destruction in the wild. Their current wild population is estimated at nearly 50 animals, but thanks to breeding centers devoted to the species, such as the Toronto Zoo, the population is now around 150. Calgary Zoo in Alberta was the first to successfully breed the marmots at their facility, and produced an impressive five litters in 2007. The pups will be reintroduced in Mount Washington, British Columbia, where they will undergo pre-release conditioning to improve survivability in the wild. Veterinarians at the Calgary Zoo were also recently awarded an AZA Conservation Endowment Fund (CEF) grant to study diseases impacting Vancouver Island marmot populations at the breeding institutions and in the wild.
10) The regal eagle's recovery
This year, America's national symbol, the bald eagle, was removed from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Endangered Species List. This was a grand feat for the species, which just a decade ago faced dwindling populations. The San Francisco Zoo has been instrumental in breeding and releasing captive eagles, and has reintroduced more than 100 bald eagles over the past 22 years. The Zoo reports about 200 nesting pairs of bald eagles in California today.
~AZA.org
