Connection
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Maybe 500 drams?
Seeing eye cats are like seeing eye dogs, except they are the eyes for the dogs and the dogs are the disabled ones:
Cashew, a 14 year old Labrador Retriever owned by Terry Burns in Middleburg, Pennsylvania, is blind and deaf. Her best friend is a red tabby cat named Libby. Libby has become Cashew’s seeing-eye cat. She guides Cashew around obstacles, leads her to the food dish and even sleeps next to her every night.
There’s something about this video of panda babies that makes the little ones look animatronic or something. Don’t get me wrong, they’re astoundingly cute, but they look like youngsters in suits or something. It could be that their movements resemble toddlers so much that it looks odd.
In this lovely classic Sesame Street video, Kermit sings about how to tell if something is alive. The song is great and the concept is rather timeless, but I implore you to watch and see what the Sesame Street version of a cow looks like. For some reason I think it’s hilarious.
In what is probably my favorite news story this year, we learn about The world’s first bionic sea creature: Winter. Early in life, this wild dolphin was injured in a crab trap and found floating with no tail. She healed up in captivity, but was in need of a prosthetic. So, after over a year of prosthetic fitting and work to restore functionality, she got a new tail!
This is what happens when a hungry cat finds something that he can’t unwrap. There were just sprinkles of leftover bar in there.
Continuing the theme of baby animals this week, we have a baby bunny. As Weebl and Bob might say, sooo cute!
Weightless dogs are very funny, especially when they appear from out of nowhere.
A recent book called Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott argues how the preponderance of technology that claims to make life easier seems to, in a fundamental sense, make life harder. That, admittedly, is a rather poor exposition of the thesis… but you need know only the general idea here. Incidentally, this book is predated by a rather more famous example of a similar philosophical exploration called The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Basically, both works discuss the implications of “technology.” Don’t think of technology as simply computers, however. Here’s a helpful comment from the Amazon page selling The Technological Society (emphasis mine):
Follow a mini blog about a week-old beluga whale calf at the Shedd Aquarium’s Beluga Calf Update. This is all old-hat for the whale mom Mauyak (which means “melting snow” in Eskimo), because this is her 6th calf. I particularly appreciate Cute Overload’s commentary in their post titled My First “PPPBBBBFFFFTTTHH!!!:
I liked these mice. Unfortunately, immunology lab called for them to be killed.
Aggressive elephant seal menace sonoma beaches - As usual, you can’t make this stuff up.
“Before the time of European colonization, grizzly bears would have kept all the elephant seals in check,” Allen said. “Only harbor seals would have been there. They have the instincts to take off into the water if they see a land animal appear, then come back when that animal’s gone. Elephant seals don’t. They confront what shows up. They are used to inhabiting islands. So it’s an interesting example of what happens when an ecosystem is disrupted. Take grizzlies out of the picture, and elephant seals aren’t scared off of the mainland beaches anymore.”
Rat laughter - Animals laughing — I think that’s swell.
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