MelSkunk's stories

Got Ferrets?
Wed 10 Apr 2002 - 15:53

Of interest in regard to our current poll, two psychologists have been running a study on what sort of people own ferrets, anyways?
They cite the increase of young, single women in an increase in popularity of both ferrets and rabbits as pet animals in England. Women especially see this traditonal country working animal for the affectionate, playful animal it is.

2 headed snake found
Thu 4 Apr 2002 - 12:27

A rare two headed snake has been found by a Spanish University. The ladder snake has two independant heads which even fight over food. A few months old, it's surprising that the reptile has survived in the wild. It'll be going back with the scientists to live in captivity.

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See planets like you (almost) never have before!
Wed 3 Apr 2002 - 10:47

The five planets we can see with our naked eyes (assuming you don't live in a bright city like I do) will be in the same part of the sky at the same time. This display will be easy to spot in most parts of the world, but it's not an alignment. It's a less glamourous and omnious clump.
Mercury,Venus, Mars, and Saturn will start converging in the same region of the sky on April 20th, and will be closest (within a span of 10 degrees) on May 4th. Jupiter will be a bit higher away.
Doomsday predictions, begin!

Tigers fight back
Tue 2 Apr 2002 - 18:50

Bangladesh has seen a soaring rate of tiger maulings this year, with 22 people killed in the last three months, compared to 24 in the entirety of last year.
Wildlife officials blame poaching, which has halved the tiger population in the last 5 years. They say it's taught the remaining tigers to consider man an enemy

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More furry (or is that feathery?) fun from Google
Mon 1 Apr 2002 - 15:07

Google is arguably the best web search engine out there, so how do they do it?
With pigeons! Thousands of pigeons!
With PigeonRank™, you don't have to look at pages ranked by birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl, like those other search engines.

British Forestry Commision to make happy, fun woods
Sun 31 Mar 2002 - 14:48

The British Forestry Commision is worried that people look at a dark group of trees and think 'Blair Witch'. So they want to turn woods into idyllic, fairy tale like places.

No, not those sort of fairy tales. They want to clear out some of the trees to make artifical glades (filled with bluebells) and make nice, broad paths. They also want to encourage kids to play unsupervised in the woods. Are they sure it's not like a fairy tale?

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Cloned bunnies
Fri 29 Mar 2002 - 19:56

Just in time for Easter, scientists have managed to clone rabbits.
This of course begs the question, "Sure you can clone rabbits, but why would you want to?"
Apparently, to milk them.

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Ferrets to be banned in NZ
Fri 29 Mar 2002 - 13:32

Well, after years of threatening, New Zealand is banning pet ferrets. The article is full of inaccuracies (NO other place overseas has a feral ferret population besides NZ, and NZ's was the result of intentional release of thousands of animals 100 years ago).
If you live in New Zealand, stick up for your friends with ferrets, please!

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Go go, dino robots!
Thu 28 Mar 2002 - 19:14

In the search for the perfect security robot in Japan, it's a dog eat dinosaur world.

'Ice Age' is all wrong!
Wed 20 Mar 2002 - 00:31

Sure, Ice Age is just a silly, furry, animated flick full of jokes, but some scientists feel the need to tell you the real thing wasn't all tae kwon dodos and sabretoothed squirrels.
As if we didn't know.

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