Unlikely suspects

Regular readers of this blog should know this already: there is NO animal you can trust. But if you're still not convinced, watch out, because the most unexpected can even turn out to be killers, as some recent stories show.

-In California, a chicken committed murder: A man was stabbed by a knife attached to the leg of a fighting rooster. He was taken to the hospital but died about two hours later.

- A case of invertebrate manslaughter in England: A nineteen year old girl was killed in a collision caused by a malfunctioning traffic signal. A police investigator discovered that the problem was caused by a snail or slug: "There was a trail across the circuit board and it had short-circuited it – it was one of those things, it's a tragedy."

- And don't let down your guard because some poor creature has a disability: In Nepal, a blind rhino was recently given a one year jail term for murder. The ungrateful beast had been rescued from villagers who attacked it, causing it to lose its sight. It had long posed for pictures with tourists uneventfully, lulling everyone into a false sense of security - till it attacked the priest of a local temple, who died of his injuries.


Seriously, don't get as close to a chicken as MisterQueue did to take that picture.

Bad Animal Research Reports

Now there's a title for a journal I'd subscribe to in a minute. But since it doesn't exist, I'll try to keep you all up to date:

-In Wales, PhD student Hanna Nuuttila is using high-tech listening devices to figure out why dolphins beat up on porpoises.

This carries on from a previous acoustic monitoring study she did for The Seawatch Foundation, prompted by the discovery that Cardigan Bay dolphins were killing porpoises.

"When dead porpoises stranded, you could tell dolphins were involved from dentition marks in their flesh," she explains.

"The porpoises were also suffering massive haemorrhages and their internal organs were all mushed up. They were being battered to death, really."

My hypothesis is that the reason is "because they're assholes," but I understand: this is science and hypotheses must be tested, not assumed. We look forward to the results of this research.

-Purdue University scientist William Muir is working to breed a strain of chickens that won't kill one another. This is necessary because humans want to raise chickens more humanely, and here's how they thank us when they are kept in groups in large enclosures instead of in solitary confinement:

"If you have a lot of birds that want to be top bird there's going to be fighting," Muir said. "If you leave their beaks intact it's a bloodbath. They will literally kill each other. It's kind of a dominance thing. ... They just peck each other to death."

-Finally, scientists in England have found that wild birds are skeptics about the claims that organic food is better. In a three year study, birds consistently ate more of the non-organically-grown seed, searching it out when feeders were switched around.

Researchers suggested that this might be due to the fact that the non-organic seed was actually more nutritious, with a ten percent higher protein content. But I don't know if that's it. Have you ever tasted some of the stuff they sell in those organic markets? Animals may be bad, but they're not idiots.


Evil chicken by Flickr user Photo Lex.

The war between dogs and chickens

You'd think dogs would feel secure in their place as humanity's favorite pet. (Yes, statistically there are more cats, but that's because there are many multiple cat households. However, more people own dogs.)

And you'd think there's nothing unusual about killing a chicken, as far as bad dog behavior goes. Even a recent story like the one about the hen that adopted a litter of rottweiler puppies is unlikely to make a fundamental change in the dynamic between the two species.

But keep reading the story headlined "Plucky the chicken dies after dog attack" and the plot seems to thicken:

The loss has hit the Hawkes family hard. Plucky came into their lives a year and a half ago when Sharan Hawkes’s husband, John, found the chicken wandering around in front of their home.

She became the family pet, living in a coop in the backyard of the Dix Street home.

And the Hawkes family launched an effort to change Waltham’s zoning regulations to allow homeowners to keep one chicken as a pet.

Chicken-keeping is reportedly become more and more popular. Is it possible that dogs feel threatened by the possibility that our pet-owning choices could be broadened? That perhaps they realize that chickens not only don't get hair on the sofa or jump up and slobber on guests, but they even contribute something to the household in the way of foodstuffs?

If that was the underlying motivation for this heinous act, the Hawkes family of Waltham vows not to let it succeed:

If the measure does pass, the family intends to buy another pet chicken.

"In Plucky’s name we’re going to continue this," she said.

Hen mom who should not expect any gratitude from the Daily Mail.