Brief bad behavior updates

-In a recent post, a passing mention was made of elephants attending prenatal classes.

I'd have made a bigger point of this if I'd realized it was the start of a trend. Now we see elephants being taught to play basketball.

I'm concerned that these attempts to infiltrate our educational system are just the tip of the iceberg - an ominous step up from the animals getting fake online degrees. If there are any college admissions personnel reading this blog, please be on the alert and report if you get any applications that smell of pachyderm.

-In another recent post we debunked the motivations of an orangutan that has become famous for taking photographs.

We are confident that readers of this blog will be equally unimpressed by chimps who are making a movie and will not be fooled into buying Valentines gifts painted by penguins. Check out the link at Zooborns for more photos and description of this flightless artistic hoax.

Animals behaving humanly, part 3

After our last post we hope that you'll no longer be fooled by animals that pretend to be artists, no matter how widely their fame is spread by credulous journalists and clever zoo fundraising staff.

But perhaps even more troubling are animals who claim to have advanced degrees, as attested by this list at Wikipedia - and of course, those are only the degree recipients who've been successfully outed as cats and dogs. There may be more.

One of these is a pug named Chester Ludlow (pictured above) who was awarded an MBA from an online school called Rochville University.

But like the orangutan photographer, he's not getting away with this so easily. As explained to him in this video by a puggle who is apparently employed by the Diploma Mill Police at GetEducated.com, a degree that you buy for $499 from an unaccredited institution isn't going to fool anyone:



Whatever else you might think about its value, it's good to know that an MBA degree - at least, a legitimate one - is still one of the last remaining things separating us from the animals.