Category: animals
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My dog likes me
“I let the dog out or I let him in, and we talk some,” Kurt Vonnegut once said. “I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me.”
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Two gay penguins
In the award-winning documentary “The ABCs of Book Banning,” Ridley, who’s nine years old, discusses the children’s book And Tango Makes Three. It’s a book about two male penguins who adopt a baby penguin. Ridley says: “It’s about two penguins that are gay with each other and, even though they have their differences from the…
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Happy Birthday, Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall celebrated her 90th birthday on April 3, 2024. “I’ve spent my life working with and for animals. I was born loving them and wanting to learn about them,” Goodall said. “I’m sure all of you will agree; you can’t spend time with an animal and not know that we are not the only…
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Owls play
Owls are playful, says ornithologist Rob Bierregaard. ”We have videos of owls in the nest pouncing on feathers and jumping in the nest. No apparent purpose to this. Just playfulness.” Scientists suspect that play depends on cognition, and species with bigger brains play more, says Jennifer Ackerman, author of What an Owl Know—The New Science…
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Owls are wise
In her book What an Owl Know—The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds, Jennifer Ackerman says that owls are intelligent. It’s true that an owl’s brain would easily fit into a nut—but owls have relatively large brains for their body size. Also, scientists have discovered that what really matters in intelligent brains is…
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Owls are good parents
A mother owl sits on her next for nearly 24 hours a day, with her head low and stomach down. She keeps her eggs at the right temperature, cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold. A breeding Snowy Owl will keep her eggs close to 98 degrees, even when the temperature plummets to…
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Happy October!
Happy Autumn! Happy October! Happy Almost Halloween! I just read a book that seems appropriate for the season. It’s What an Owl Know—The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. Did you know that 260 species of owls exist today? They range, Ackerman writes, from the Elf Owl, a little nugget…
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A single thing in nature
My brother James and his wife Jeany have 14 turkeys on their nine acres in New Mexico. That 14 includes five babies and one mother about to give birth. I never knew that turkeys could be so beautiful, so elegant until I saw these turkeys. They are a beautiful part of nature. As John Muir…
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Catastrophizing
My neighbor took a photo of a bobcat one morning recently—at the house across the street from ours. Yikes! We overreacted—and worried about our dog Jack—and all of the smaller dogs and the cats in the neighborhood. Disaster! However, my friend Mary, a retired biologist, didn’t panic. “How exciting,” she said. “Not very many people…
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Peace of the parrot and the chickens
I am returning to Dallas from a visit with my brother James and his wife Jeany. They live on nine acres in Los Lunas, a small town outside Albuquerque. However, their home and the acres that surround it seem worlds away from Dallas. We gather eggs from the chickens and cook them for breakfast. We…