Anthropomorphism was one of the first vocabulary words that I ingrained to memory. It was an interesting concept to me at a very young age: using words, that are only characteristic to humans, to describe animal attributes. Examples include describing your pets as happy, sad, jealous and playful. Animal behaviorists and biologists for about 300 years have been told that
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Spay and neuter your pets! Over the next few weeks, I reach an important milestone in my veterinary school career. Assisted by two of my classmates (and supervised by plenty of doctors in case things go awry), I will be spaying a cat, and thus performing my first surgery on a living, breathing patient. I’m very excited for this opportunity,
Read moreWhen talking about fact and fiction, going to Snapple caps might not be the most accurate way of learning new information. The very first Snapple fact for instance says that “A Goldfish’s attention span is three seconds.” I can reject that fact quite easily, but for the sake of science I have done some research. Performing a quick Google search
Read moreWe show our love through food. Roasted peanuts in creamy caramel covered on milk chocolate must scream affection. Avocado and tomato-garlic bruschetta sends signals of romance at any fine restaurant. I know I feel cherished when I bite into a vanilla ice cream cake shell with chocolate ice cream, fudge, and crushed chocolate sandwich cookies in the middle. And what
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Often, I find myself wrapped up in those whirlwind days where you don’t even have time to be tired until you actually fall onto your pillow. Because a lot of people I know are curious about how I spend my time here in Ithaca, I thought I’d share it with you. —- 6:45AM- It’s wakeup time! Did I mention this is
Read moreby Lisa Barrett What kind of parental care did you or do you enjoy? Food, shelter, college tuition? How does this compare to parental care in non-human animals? First of all, most animals do not receive any parental care at all. In other words, most animal parents do not invest in feeding, incubating, or defending their young after they are
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DANTA is delighted to announce a new course offering for winter 2016! Birds of Costa Rica 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
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Olive Ridley Sea Turtle Lepidochelys olivacea Taxonomy Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Reptilia Order: Testudines Family: Cheloniidae Genus: Lepidochelys Species: L. olivacea Overview An adult Olive Ridley Sea Turtle weighs around 100 pounds and is 22-31 inches long, while hatchlings weigh less than 1 ounce and are on average 1.5 inches long (NOAA, 2014). They spend most of their time at
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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It was the summer of 2009, and I was watching Whale Wars, one of the newest hit series on Animal Planet at the time. The Japanese whaling fleet had just harpooned a whale and they were hauling it up onto the deck of their ship. I remember being horrified as I watched them cut up the whale. There was blood
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