This particular serving of interweb porridge is a blend of the usual adorableness to coo over mixed with a few freaky-deaky items. Halloween is in the air …

• Exhibit A: Veggie alien ponders its victim.
• Upping the creepiness—Newsweek offers further evidence that murderers often torture animals before moving on to human victims.
• More sad than frightening is my latest guilty pleasure: Beatles tunes remixed doggie-style. Goodness!
• Arachnophobes take heart! A jumping vegetarian spider was just discovered. Does "newly discovered" also indicate more highly evolved? Methinks yes.
• Rodeos are always an epic FAIL. At this one, a bull showed compassionless spectators how it feels to be humiliated—and it's HILARIOUS!
• Many zoos mistreat animals; others deceive visitors. With all its zebras dead of starvation after a siege earlier this year, somebody at the Marah Land Zoo in Gaza City has gotten a wee bit carried away with the hair dye …
• Chris Rock's comment "What the hell did Michael Vick do? Pitbulls ain't even real dogs!" has hurt my heart for weeks now. Thinking of all the abused pits we see on straw delivery and how his comment only stands to empower their abusers, I'm very happy that Richard Pryor's wife isn't letting him get away with it!
• P.S. For y'all who didn't know, Richard Pryor was an absolute angel to animals.
• Switching over to cooing, monkey mommies make googly eyes at their bambinos too!
• Always ending on a cute note, this little piggy thinks she's a doggie.

That's the haps, y'all. Catch ya next month!

Posted by Missy Lane

Griedel/Creative Commons

On the heels of its amazing cover story on gorilla slaughter, Newsweek has done it again this week with a superb web-exclusive commentary by Rabbi Marc Gellman, titled, "Tiger, Tiger Why it’s time to reconsider the whole notion of putting wild animals in zoos."

The piece is incredibly interesting, especially when you consider Gellman’s perspective. Gellman, a Rabbi, uses moving vignettes from his grandfather (a zookeeper) throughout his article, which is one of the most thoughtful pieces I’ve read in ages on the issue of animals in captivity. Here’s just one interesting bit:

"He would patiently explain to me that they did not want to be in their cages but that we put them there so that little boys like me could see up close what they look like, how they move and what sounds they make. Grandpa explained to me that this was a deal we humans made with the wild animals of the world. We capture and display some of them so that people would feel something for them and protect the wild animals that were not in cages. I asked grandpa if he thought the deal was fair. He thought and said, 'It's a good deal for us, and not such a good deal for them.' I still think grandpa was right."

Amazing . . .

You can check out the full piece here.

GorillaHaven/Creative Commons

Sadly, it’s not often that animal issues of any sort get front page coverage in a national news magazine. But, this week it happened. In case you haven’t seen it, I wanted to point out Newsweek’s superb coverage of the mass slaughter of gorillas in the Congo. For years, the largest threat to these animals has been habitat destruction, but as these stories point out, the tide has turned and hunting is now the biggest danger to the survival of this endangered species.

Here are links to the stories.

Cry of the Wild

Gorilla Warfare

Hugely Vulnerable- Q&A with Richard Leakey