There will be howling, barking, screaming and squawking and that is just from the children. Halloween is right around the corner. So much commotion is sure to make even the most composed pets a little nervous. Marty Becker, a veterinarian at North Idaho Animal Hospital, said in a Good Morning America interview last year that Halloween is the second most
Read moreRelating toys to what your pet does naturally is the best way to brainstorm new ideas for enrichment. Listening to a radio podcast on parrots, enrichment guru Robin Shewokis discussed the different categories toys and devices can fall into. Below I have included examples for all types of pets, in each of the categories. Enrichment is not just a buzzword;
Read moreExotic pets, especially in North America, are becoming very common. Hedgehogs which are small, spiny coated, energetic animals are gaining popularity because of their uniqueness and relatively easy care. Most hedgehogs that are kept as pets are the African pygmy hedgehogs (Atelerix albiventris), weighing between 300 and 600 grams. Autumn Syracuse, a full time aquarist at the Aquarium of Niagara,
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DANTA is delighted to announce a new course offering for winter 2016! Neotropical Bat Biology will be held from January 1-15, 2016 at Osa Conservation‘s Piro Research Station in Costa Rica’s spectacular Osa peninsula. As the one of the largest tracts of rain forest north of the Amazon (roughly 400,000 acres in the Osa Conservation Area), it is renowned for high species
Read moreby Lisa Barrett In a previous blog post, I wrote about how Asian elephants are endangered and that there are only about 3,000 left in the wild. I discussed how, in reality, the best way to conserve them is through education about conserving (and mitigating the decline) of extant populations while giving current captive populations the best life possible. In
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This winter I went to Belize with 11 classmates and 5 veterinarians, where we spent a week providing care for the animals at The Belize Zoo (TBZ). A small, charming zoo integrated almost seamlessly into the tropical savanna, TBZ is probably better defined as a sanctuary- all of its animals are local species and are “rescues” in one way or
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Contrafreeloading puts a smile on my face. As a student of animal behavior, it is one of the coolest phenomena I know of. It has been studied in many species from rats to grizzly bears to humans. It is so incredible because these animals do the opposite of what you would expect, hence the “contra” prefix. Contrafreeloading means, when given
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A dog sits on cue. Do you give them a half a treat, one treat or two treats? I would probably give one quarter to one eighth of a treat. That isn’t just because I am particularly frugal. There are a lot of variables like breed and age of the dog and the size and quality of the treats to
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