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.

Don't feed the raccoons! Animals against science, part 2

Ever found muddy cat footprints all over your windshield? If you think it's hard to see the road, imagine if you were trying to see into the depths of outer space. That's what started happening to astronomers at the Smithsonian's observatory in Arizona in 2008. Not only was their view obscured, but five of the telescopes, which are more delicate than your car windshield, were eventually damaged.

The culprit was eventually caught: the ringtail cat in the photo, which despite its name is a relative of the raccoon.

But as so often happens, people just don't know what side they're on. Listen to the scientists in the video cooing at another ringtail who's broken in to steal their food - actually it might even be maybe the same one, since it was released from the trap:



And here's the reaction of the leader of the project, from the story on the Smithsonian website:

“We’re considering making the ringtail cat the unofficial mascot of the MEarth project,” said project leader David Charbonneau. “With those big eyes, they’ve certainly got the night vision to be natural-born astronomers!”

Don't feed the birds! Animals against Science, part 1

You think it's an innocent activity, giving stale bread to birds. But you're handing them a weapon - a weapon to halt the progress of science.

A piece of baguette dropped by a bird caused a short circuit at the Large Hadron Collector, the world's largest supercollider, so large that it is partly in France and partly in Switzerland.

OK, in fact the power failure did not shut down the massive device, but that's just because it has been out of commission since last September due to non-animal-related problems. All that means is that this time, we got off with a warning.

And yeah, maybe you won't lose any sleep if they never find the Higgs boson, but who knows what those former dinosaurs will think of next. Next time, that bit of stale croissant or seven-grain might prevent someone from discovering a cure for cancer or a new source of electricity.

So think of it, next time you want to toss some crumbs. Put those old baked goods in the trash where they belong and let those little feathered fiends fend for themselves.

Story via ZDNet UK; photo of WHAT NOT TO DO by Flickr user Mollivan Jon.