MelSkunk's stories

A lot of furries keep unusual pets, but how about a pygmy hippo?
The 500 pound endangered water animal was kept in the man's yard for over a decade along with many other species of unusual birds and animals. A realtor showing a house nearby tipped off the California Fish and Game, who seized the hippo after the owner could not produce a permit for it. It will be moved to a home for hippos in Florida.

You know it, I know it, cats love to exploit gulible humans. Now researchers are theorizing that our modern moggies are the best sounding decendents of miaowing wild cats.
Humans respond most to pleasant miaows as opposed to horrible yowls and reward nice sounding felines with food and preferential treatment. Some scientists think this has lead to supercats, vocally best prepared to mooch food and shelter. Others think cats are just damn good at learning what to do to get free chow from us and learn their miaows independantly.

A great way to avoid doing any useful work is the Animal AI site at Irresponsible Cybernetics. Simply fill in a descriptive sentance about your animal (such as "Large spotted cat from South America" or "Long and slinky pet weasel") and tell it if it's guessed correctly or not. It's great fun, and the more people use it the smarter it will get.
If you'd rather teach it to recognise that you don't need naked celebs or debt sollutions, there's Am I Spam or Not? from the same site.

Tsavo, Kenya has been known for a few things. First is the 1898 maneating frenzy by two lions (made infamous in the movie "The Ghost and the Darkness") and second are the maneless lions.
Unlike the beasts acting in the movie, the killing pair were maneless lions themselves, and originally scientists assumed they were unique outcasts, kept from prides and unable to find mates because of this emasculating lack of mane.
But new research into the Tsavo region shows that, far from being either uncommon or unsucessful, maneless males both seem to thrive and get the girls, garnering bigger prides of ladies than their maned Serengeti, and kept them alone.
Maneless males also tended to band together into larger fraternal groups or all male bands, sometimes numbering four, five animals or more animals.
Scientists are unsure of the reasons for these social differences in the Tsavo lions, and whether or not the lack of mane contributes, but maneless seems to be the more sucessful type of lion in this region.