A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
LINCOLN, Nebraska––Cliff swallows nesting under highway overpasses in southwestern Nebraska appear to have evolved shorter wings in only 30 years to help them avoid colliding with cars, ornithologists Charles R. Brown and Mary Bomberger Brown reported in the March 18, 2013 edition of Current Biology. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
LONDON––Though culling predators has come to be recognized as one of the larger ecological mistakes of the Romans, the Normans, the Georgians in the 18th century, and 20th century British governments, British environment secretary Owen Paterson on February 27, 2013 announced that badgers will be culled this summer in Gloucestershire and Somerset. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters Edited by Julie A. Smith & Robert W. Mitchell Columbia University Press (61 West 62nd St., New York, NY 10023), 2012. 380 pages. $19.24/Kindle, $105.00 hardcover, $35.00 paperback.
Experiencing Animal Minds is a fascinating collection of 21 essays by animal researchers and academic scholars. Many of the authors discuss how animals interact with each other and with humans, including United Poultry Concerns founder Karen Davis. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
WASHINGTON D.C.––Inflating the U.S. pet cat population by ten million, the outdoor pet cat population by closer to 50 million, and the best documented estimates of the feral cat population by up to 64 million, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute ornithologists Scott Loss and Peter Marra and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Will on January 29, 2013 alleged in the journal Nature Communications that domestic cats in the U.S. kill up to 3.7 billion birds and as many as 20.7 billion mice, voles, and other small mammals. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
BELFAST––Challenging the global scientific, regulatory, and humane communities to recognize crustacean sentience, Robert Elwood of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on January 16, 2013 published his third major study in six years to demonstrate that crustaceans feel and respond to pain. “Billions of crustaceans are caught or reared in aquaculture for the food industry,” wrote Elwood of his latest research, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. “In contrast to mammals, crustaceans are given little or no protection, as the presumption is that they cannot experience pain. Our research suggests otherwise. More consideration of the treatment of these animals is needed,” Elwood emphasized, “as a potentially very large problem is being ignored.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
WASHINGTON D.C.–– Bluntly stated the headline in the February 11, 2013 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
MADISON, Wisconsin––Maternal deprivation research appears to be again underway at the Harry Harlow Primate Psychology Laboratory on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin. “The research in question is a new type of maternal deprivation research designed to study anxiety by creating adverse early rearing conditions and then exposing the maternally deprived young [male] monkeys to a snake and other frightening stimuli. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2012:
Dear Animal People,
The year 2012 has, like most years, brought the animal
movement gains on some fronts and losses on others.
Very noticeably, it brought more than the usual amount of
controversy among animal defenders over a proposed piece of federal
legislation which would attempt to regulate the caging of egg-laying
hens. Those in favor of the legislation made a good case for the
bill, and those against had rational reasons to oppose it becoming
law. But along with the facts came a great deal of confusion and
misinformation about what the bill would do and, most unfortunately,
there was impugning of motives on both sides.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2012:
Can Animals Be Moral? by Mark Rowlands Oxford Univ. Press (198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016), 2012. 288 pages, hardcover. $29.95.
Responding to recent works by ethologists Marc Bekoff and Franz de Waal, who work from direct observation of animals, and have been accused of anthropomorphism for arguing that there are not distinctions but continuums between animal and human behavior, University of Miami philosophy professor Mark Rowlands ends his own discussion of real-life animals in his preface. Rowlands in gist seems to agree with Bekoff and de Waal, while finding fault with their approach. Read more