From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

Animal Obituaries

Old Man,  32,  a naked mole rat born in Kenya,  died on Thanksgiving morning 2010 at the Barshop Institute for Longevity & Aging Studies on the Texas Research Park campus near San Antonio. Old Man was the senior member of the University of Texas Health Science Center’s colony of about 2,000 naked mole rats.  Captured with 75 kin in a sweet potato field in 1980 by physiologist Rochelle Buffenstein,  Old Man traveled with Buffenstein to the University of Cape Town in South Africa,  then to the City College of New York in Harlem,  arriving in San Antonio in 2007.  Naked mole rats,  who live to an average age of 26,  “in many ways confound what scientists think they know about how diseases progress and why living things age,”  Buffenstein told Richard A. Marini of the San Antonio Express News.  For example,  naked mole rats rarely develop cancer,  and although they develop the same type of brain plaque found in Alzheimer’s disease victims,  they do not suffer similar cognitive decline. Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

“I come to bury Caesar,  not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them.  The good is oft interred with their bones.” –William Shakespeare

Patricia Simonet,  51,  died of cancer on December 2,  2010. Earning a Ph.D. in animal behavior at the University of Nevada, Simonet from 1992 to 2000 researched topics including what children learn from live animal shows,  chimpanzee play,  and elephant self-recognition in mirrors.   Then,  recalled Robert Brost,  her husband of 26 years,  “While researching the meaning of sounds that dogs make,  she discovered dog laughter,”  the happy panting that characterizes dogs at play.  Hired by Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Services in 2003 to do temperament testing and training, Simonet in 2005 demonstrated that playing recorded dog laughter in the shelter helped to calm the dogs and increased the adoption rate of adoptions.  Brost and Simonet subsequently marketed dog laughter recordings,  which are typically played at less than the threshold of human hearing.   “While Trisha worked for SCRAPS,  she also volunteered at the Spokane Humane Society,”  Brost said,  “training their volunteers and serving on their board of directors.”  The Spokane County Board of Supervisors in June 2010 designated an off-leash area at Gateway Regional Park the Patricia Simonet Laughing Dog Park. Read more