White rhino - endangered animal

The rhino is called “The Africa's Big Five”. The white rhino is the largest of the remaining 5 species of rhinoceros. Those species are divided into the southern and northern white rhinos. It was thought the northern rhino was extinct in the wild due to poaching, and only a handful remain in captivity.


Although some research shows the southern wild population numbers around 11,000, the IUCN red list shows over 17,000. At any rate, even though the white rhino has the largest numbers of any of the rhino species, it still is endangered and needs our help. (On a side note-the IUCN recently took the Asian greater one horned rhino of the endangered red list, but I along with others feel it is still needs the protection given by that status)


There are over 700 white rhinos in captivity world wide. The rhino is one of the few larger animals that can be introduced into the wild. Meaning a captive born white or black rhino could make its way to Africa. Recently in October 2008, a white rhino was born via artificial insemination at the Budapest Zoo.


Even with protection they can still be legally trophy hunted in areas of South Africa. This is very counter productive with all the time and money going into increasing their numbers. They can also be green hunted in which a tranquillizer gun is used to and the hunter gets a picture next to their "kill." These are less expensive, but not as popular as a regular hunt. The rhino horn is still found on the billion dollar animal black market which is driven mostly by China and the US.

Newborn baby giraffe

Zebras at Etosha national park in Namibia

Parrot performing tricks

Carrier crab carries a shield

Ukrainian lady lives with lions

Tatyana Efremova – a lady from Ukraine, has some unusual guests.


She is a Veterinarian and runs a home for exotic animals. She even sheltered three lion cubs. The little lions were living in terrible conditions at the local Zoo because of the lack of funding there. The lion cubs quickly found themselves at home with Tatyana's house and even made new friend with Tatyana's cat.


Tatyana said that the local circus refused to train the lions but this was a chance for her to take care of the animals. She is very impressed with the lions and the way they live and communicate with her and the other animals.


Unfortunately, when the lions become bigger she would have to find another home for them as it will be too hard to support the lions.

Baby elephants play at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo

Boogie Boogie Hedgehog

Brutus the amazing grizzly bear

Brutus was born in January 2002. He spent his first few months in a six foot square steel box that was his mother’s cage at a captive bear facility. Bears born in situations like this can never be released into the wild for two reasons. A captive born cub lacks the two years of learning how to survive that wild bears receive while living with their mothers in nature. Also a bear born in captivity lacks the fear of humans that makes wild bears avoid dangerous interactions with humans. 


Although Brutus will never be able to roam the wilderness himself, instead he is a true ambassador for his wild cousins. Thousands of people come each year to see Brutus in his home at Montana Grizzly Encounter Rescue and Educational Sanctuary. There they learn a greater appreciation for grizzly bears and learn about bear safety, preservation and conservation. When he is not at home at the Grizzly Encounter, Brutus also travels the country appearing in films, television commercials and live educational shows. All proceeds support the sanctuary and further the cause of wild grizzly bear education and conservation.

Mockingbird song

Yoda - the ugliest dog

Beautiful tiger in zoo

Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus, Thaumoctopus mimicus. This fascinating creature was discovered in 1998 off the coast of Sulawesi in Indonesia, the mimic octopus is the first known species to take on the characteristics of multiple species. This octopus is able to copy the physical likeness and movement of more than fifteen different species, including sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish, brittle stars, giant crabs, sea shells, stingrays, jellyfish, sea anemones, and mantis shrimp. This animal is so intelligent that it is able to discern which dangerous sea creature to impersonate that will present the greatest threat to its current possible predator. For example, scientists observed that when the octopus was attacked by territorial damselfishes, it mimicked the banded sea snake, a known predator of damselfishes.

Cute cat fights snake

Very smart parrot

Cute nice cat

Gustave - the giant crocodile

Gustave is a massive male Nile crocodile living in Burundi. In 2004 he was estimated to be 60 years old, 20 feet (6.1 m) in length and to weigh around 1 ton, making him the largest confirmed crocodile ever seen in Africa. He is a notorious man-eater, who is rumored to have claimed as many as 300 humans from the banks of the Ruzizi River and the northern shores of Lake Tanganyika. While this number is likely exaggerated, Gustave has attained a near-mythical status and is greatly feared by people in the region. Scientists and Herpetologists who have studied Gustave claim that his uncommon size and weight impedes the crocodile's ability to hunt the species' usual, agile prey such as fish, antelope and zebra, forcing him to attack larger animals such as Hippopotamus, large wildebeest and, to some extent, humans. According to a popular local warning, he is said to hunt and leave his victims' corpses uneaten.

Gustave was named by Patrice Faye, a French resident of Burundi and self-taught naturalist who has been pursuing the crocodile since 1998. Faye and a documentary team attempted to capture Gustave in 2002 using an enormous trap, but the crocodile not only avoided it, but seemed to taunt the team as well. The ill-fated attempt was detailed in a documentary titled Capturing the Killer Croc, which aired on PBS in May 2004.


Gustave was sighted most recently in February 2008 by National Geographic sources. In parts of Asia and Australia saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) 6 metres (20 ft) long are well known and easy to spot; individuals 7 metres (23 ft) long have been reported. In eastern India the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed the existence of a 7 metre individual. Therefore, although Gustave is not exceptional in size compared to other species of crocodiles, he is much larger than the average male Nile crocodile. He is known for the few distinct bullet scars that cover his body: one on his head and three on his right side.

Turlte and banana

Funny bird crashing into a tree

Sneezing panda baby

Tigers play in Africa wildlife park

Animals in love

Cute animals compilation

Cute animials slideshow

Cute raccoon

Kitty loves puppy

Amazing facts about animals

The funniest and craziest animal compilation (18+)

Dog and duck became best friends

Top 10 world's weirdest endangered species

Navigating Duality

The following is an excerpt from
"Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by My Side"

by Susan Krieger

I am blind and I am sighted. I am often not sure of what I see. Do I see what is there? The images look so small. People on the street at any distance seem tiny to me, with thin legs that disappear in the shimmering sun. Often the people themselves disappear if they are not in my direct line of sight. Cars on the street also look tiny, like toy cars in the distance. Up close, however, they appear so large that I must take them in piece by piece: a part of a fender, the blue oval emblem that says “Ford.” Though I can no longer read the brand names, I still play the game of guessing at the makes of the cars as Teela pulls me quickly past them.

Walking down the street with her, and everywhere I go, I feel self-conscious. People see me with a large dog and they notice me. Sometimes they think I am blind and being guided by Teela. Other times they think I am sighted and training her for someone else who is blind. The uncertainty of how I am perceived makes me anxious. I must emotionally navigate my identity at the same time as I physically navigate my route.

The contradictions abound for me. For instance, I do not see well, yet I keep trying to; I look around intently with my eyes. My vision is impaired, yet I enjoy my sight. When I step outside with Teela and I am wearing my dark glasses, I am overjoyed by the images that come in through the tinted lenses by bright contrast– a white edge of a house, a light tree trunk reflecting the sunlight, a set of large bright letters against the dark background of a store awning. Although the letters look bent and broken to me, and as if they are underwater, glowing with a phosphorescent shine, to me they are beautiful, magical. I stare at these letters and I think, “I can see.” It takes many internal steps, much going over in my mind, to remind myself that I take such joy in seeing the letters precisely because I can’t see, or can’t see well. Objects that have some clarity come through the hazy confusion in front of my eyes and make me happy.

As I walk farther down the street, I pause to stare at a stop sign ahead. The letters on the sign’s red background waver and disappear, then come into focus; I study them with my right eye, then my left, testing my vision, as I often do—trying to determine the exact state of my sight. Which eye is better now? Which sees with more of an edge? Has my vision changed since I last looked at this sign? I continue walking past pieces of sharpness, sections of buildings and streets. I know what I am looking at generally, but if I did not, it would seem a jumble.

Traveling in my familiar neighborhood in San Francisco, much like my more distant travels, is like being in a movie that I perceive in separate frames that do not flow smoothly into one another. In this choppy movie, I focus on what lies straight ahead, trying to make it out. A small figure down the street may be a child or a dog. I tilt my head, using the different parts of my eyesight in an attempt to bring the figure into focus, though it will only become clear closer up.

Teela, stopping, points her nose toward a square object farther away. Odd-looking at a distance, it turns out to be a wheelchair that someone has left on the sidewalk. I stand beside it and examine the arm rests and wheels, taking them in one section at a time, much as I do when using a magnifier. Maybe I’ll remember what a wheelchair looks like from a distance when I next see one.

I pass the child and I wonder why I thought it was a dog. Why am I always seeing dogs? Perhaps because I overlay new objects with memories of familiar ones, making assumptions until I find out what is really there.

As I walk, deciphering the world—guessing at and identifying the different pieces of it—I am constantly thinking about what I see, and by this I mean not only what an object is, but what it means to see it. Does seeing a child the way I do, or seeing a person’s thin shimmering legs in the distance, mean I am sighted? Does it mean I am blind? What does what I see say about who I am? Questions about my identity always lurk for me behind the more practical questions about what lies before me.

Listen to Susan's presentation to the Commonwealth Club and to her radio interview on "To the Best of Our Knowledge".

Giant octopus

Funny talking parrot

Penguins find a way over an obstacle

Animal partnerships - birds and mammals

From caterpillar to beautiful butterfly

Prehistoric frilled shark

57th - Most Discussed (All Time) - Pets & Animals - Global
Info-Copyright 2007 Reuters.


A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is about 2,000 feet under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.


The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.

Marine park staff caught the 5 foot (1.6 meter) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.


The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws.

"We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare," said an official at the park. "They live between 1,968 and 3,280 feet (600 and 1,000 meters) under the water, which is deeper than humans can go."


"We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," the official said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters.
Video- ITV News Wednesday January 24-2007

Nightingale song

Honey badger (commented by Randall)

Cute animals slideshow

Cute kitty playing suprised

Turtle in love with cat

Axolotl - one strange animal

This unusual looking creature is called an Axolotl. It is the Peter Pan of the animal world: It is an amphibian but unusual in that it reaches adulthood without metamorphosis, so always remain in their larval stage. As a result, they live permanently in water. They are threatened by pollution, and by being eaten by introduced fish species. They live in Central Mexico in canals and lakes and eat freshwater invertebrates.


The name axolotl is thought to have originated from the Aztecs, derived from two words: atl, meaning water, and xolotl meaning monster. Once eaten as a delicacy in Mexico City, they are now a protected species in Mexico and Critically Endangered in the wild.

Hippo and fish symbiosis

Lioness Meg swiming with Kevin Richardson

Archer fish

Rocket frog jumps over 4 meters

Baby wombat

Baby skunks eeping if separated from their mother

Wild baby skunks are put in a tub. If they are ever separated from a sibling or their mother, they frantically "eep" and look for them/her. As soon as they find their sibling or mother, they are quiet again.

White tiger growls

Black rhino calf baby

Cute baby bunny

Orca matriarch

Future animals /if no humans exist/

The Future Is Wild was a 2003 television series, which used computer-generated imagery to show a possible future of life on Earth if Homo sapiens became extinct -- and shows fictional living creatures in 5, 100 and 200 millions years from now. It has seven parts and is based on research and interviews with many scientists, and was played out in the form of a nature documentary.


Curiosity: the Discovery Channel softened the harsh outlook by stating the human race had completely migrated from the Earth and had sent back probes to examine the progress of life on Earth.


This video I made from cuts of original show. I wanted to show my favorites creatures. They are (in order of appearance):


Swampus: an amphibious octopus that can live in water and land, 4 of their 8 tentacles are modified in form of foots. It lives in swamps 100 million years from now.


Megasquid: an elephant-sized omnivorous terrestrial squid. Its 8 arms have evolved into walking legs. Lives in rainforests of 200 million years from now. It uses two long tentacles for feeding.


Flish: Analogue to theropod dinosaurs-birds, the fish went extinct, but they left descendents: a flying fish that lives in shores of 200 million year from now super-continent "pangea II".


Toraton: a giant animal that descends from turtles. Toraton is 23 feet (7 m) tall and weighs 120 tons. It lives in the same habitat of the swampus and is the biggest animal to take the floor on earth.

Great Blue Windrunner: My favourite one! In 100 million years in the future, It is a giant four-winged bird. It's legs have flight feathers on and can act as gliding surfaces. It lives in shores and in the summer migrates to a Great plateau, 12.000 m above sea level.


The music is from Yanni, "Looking glass" (edited).


For more information about this show, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_is_wild


Music and video copyright of their respectives owners.

Dolphins playing with dog

Cuttle fish mating ritual

Giraffe giving a kiss to Joanna Lumley

Grizzly bear not bothered by humans

Smart crows use traffic to break nuts

Leopard and baby tiger play together

Cat is trying to talk to another cat

Frog Conductor

Baby bunny eating flower

Gorilla walks like a man

Funny animals

Alcoholic Vervet monkeys

Amazing bird - imitating any sound

Wild animals in South America

Breeders Digest, April 2011

Here are the announcements for puppies born and breeder dogs named at GDB during April 2011. Follow the links below to see pictures!

Litter Announcements

Labrador Retrievers

• 4/2/11 Jenkins x Jillian – 3 males, 6 female – litter letter “H”
• 4/4/11 David x Nancy – 2 males, 3 females – litter letter “C”
• 4/12/11 Jenkins x Vintage – 1 male, 2 females – litter letter “D”
• 4/14/11 Eric x Joyous – 4 males, 5 females – litter letter “P”
• 4/15/11 Nevin x Basia – 3 males, 3 females – litter letter “E”
• 4/30/11 Hurley x Provence – 6 males, 1 female – litter letter “A”

New Breeders

Labrador Retrievers

• Cynthia – raised in CA
• Nerita – raised in CA
• Neva – raised in CA
• Stacy – raised in CA
• Stockholm – raised in CA

Blue whale - biggest animal on Earth

Cat and Rabbit

Monkey vs dog

Baby giraffe

Fox live with a guy

Rare frogs & endangered species

Dog and rabbit share carrot

North American Wood Frogs freezing for Winter

World's Largest Crocodile in captivity

Baby Black Panthers

Cute kitten

Giant Pacific Octopus is smart animal

Funny Talking Animals

Hedgehog swimming

Dog and monkey love

Otter family in the Amazon jungle

Cute owl plays hunter

Sea otters holding hands

Cat and Rat love

Sneezing elephant

Orangutan babies

Hedgehog babies

Cute panda babies

Dramatic lemur

Cute lemur Sonya is feeding

Cute lemur

Phoebe Makes a Difference

by Paige Furlong

Paige Furlong is a freshmen at The Athenian School in Danville, California. Recently, all the freshmen were asked to give a speech titled "This I Believe".

I believe in Phoebe. I believe in her ability to change a life and I believe in my ability to change a life through her. I believe that through raising Phoebe for Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) that I have been able to give someone a more independent and fulfilling life.

Phoebe is my little 39 pound black Lab who I cuddled with, taught, learned from, and then sent on her way to her true place in life. Phoebe graduated in January from GDB with Rachel, an 18-year-old college student. Rachel is only 5' 1"; Phoebe is the smallest Lab ever to graduate from the program. Phoebe is Rachel’s guide; Rachel is Phoebe’s person.

I always knew that Phoebe was never mine and could never be. Of course, I loved her and was sad when my family had to give her back to GDB for training, but that sadness cannot compare to the happiness that I felt when Phoebe and Rachel graduated together.

The first time that my family met Rachel was on the day of their graduation. We were welcomed into the dining room on the GDB campus, and after waiting a while with the other graduating dog’s puppy raisers, we were escorted to Rachel’s dorm room. There they were, Rachel and Phoebe. I hadn’t seen Phoebe for months; she was still part of our family but she was Rachel’s now. Phoebe and Rachel were a perfect fit. Phoebe greeted my family with enthusiasm but when Rachel asked her, she sat right by her side and was working just as she was supposed to do. Within the next two hours Phoebe and Rachel had gotten up on the stage in front of the dorm and became an official working Guide Dog team. My little puppy is now fulfilling her purpose in life.

Rachel and Phoebe live in Massachusetts. My family recently got an email from Rachel thanking us for all we did for Phoebe. When Phoebe is not going to college with Rachel, she plays with the other dogs in the house and runs on a beach. They live right on the Atlantic Coast.

Phoebe is the greatest gift that I have ever given. Because of her I have touched Rachel’s life; because Phoebe gave Rachel freedom, I gave Rachel freedom.

Being visually impaired does not only affect that person, but the people they rely on for guidance. At GDB events puppy raisers have a chance to talk to people who are visually impaired, as well as their families: their parents, siblings, and spouses. These people tell us that they, too, have the freedom of mobility because they trust the dogs we raise to take care of their loved ones. They know that their loved ones are safe and can be independent because of our dogs.

I would never give up my experience raising Phoebe for anything. I believe that through her, I made a difference in Rachel’s life. I believe that I became a fuller person because of Phoebe. I believe in my power to make a difference because of Phoebe.

Newshounds

Donna Litchfield and her Guide Dog Puppy Pravada made the Sunday Profile of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. Here are some other stories from around the country...

Raising guide dog puppies...makes life full of fun

Princess Welcomes Guide Dogs for the Blind Group

Healthy Parks Healthy People

Guide-Dog-in-Training Works the Red Carpet

Looking for Good Puppy People

Breeders Digest, March 2011

Here are the announcements for puppies born and breeder dogs named at GDB during March 2011.

Litter Announcements

Labrador Retrievers

• 3/4/11 Nicasio x Carlita – 2 males, 6 female – litter letter “A”
• 3/9/11 Forte x Paulina – 2 males, 5 females – litter letter “M”
• 3/21/11 Simon x Jakarta – 5 males, 2 females – litter letter “J”
• 3/30/11 McKinley x Nell – 2 males, 4 females – litter letter “L”
• 3/30/11 Simon x Dolly – 3 males, 2 females – litter letter “K”

Labrador Retriever-Golden Retriever Crosses

• 3/16/11 Simon x Leslie – 2 males, 6 females – litter letter “C”
• 3/31/11 Kash x Fame – 5 males, 3 females – litter letter “S”

New Breeders

Labrador Retrievers

• Charity – raised in CO
• Shane – raised in OR