Tag: sheep

Cave dweller menus were limited by what’s available – from Woolly rhino to mushrooms

3 Comments

❝ Eating like a caveman meant chowing down on woolly rhinos and sheep in Belgium, but munching on mushrooms, pine nuts and moss in Spain. It all depended on where they lived, new research shows.

❝ Scientists got a sneak peek into the kitchen of three Neanderthals by scraping off the plaque stuck on their teeth and examining the DNA. What they found smashes a common public misconception that the caveman diet was mostly meat. They also found hints that one sickly teen used primitive versions of penicillin and aspirin to help ease his pain.

❝ The dental plaque provides a lifelong record of what went in the Neanderthals’ mouths and the bacteria that lived in their guts, said study co-author Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA in Adelaide.

“It’s like a fossil,” he said.

❝ While past studies showed varied Neanderthal diets, genetic testing allowed researchers to say what kind of meat or mushrooms they ate, Cooper said. The 42,000-year-old Belgian Neanderthal’s menu of sheep and woolly rhino reflected what roamed in the plains around the Neanderthal’s home, he said. The research is in Wednesday’s journal Nature…

There were no signs of meat in the diet of the two 50,000-year-old Spanish Neanderthals, but calling them vegetarians would be a stretch, Cooper said. Their own bones showed that they were eaten by cannibals.

I don’t doubt that the politicians, priests and pundits of the time provided believable reasons for every part of life – from diet to ritual – even if they were crap. Part of the job description that hasn’t changed.

Dolly’s clone sisters have aged like any other sheep, OK?

1 Comment


Click to enlarge — Press Association

The four clones from the same cell line as Dolly the Sheep

❝ Dolly the Sheep started her life in a test tube in 1996 and died just six years later. When she was only a year old, there was evidence that she might have been physically older. At five, she was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. And at six, a CT scan revealed tumors growing in her lungs, likely the result of an incurable infectious disease. Rather than let Dolly suffer, the vets put her to rest.

Poor Dolly never stood a chance. Or did she?

❝ Meet Daisy, Diana, Debbie and Denise. “They’re old ladies. They’re very healthy for their age,” said Kevin Sinclair, a developmental biologist who, with his colleagues at the University of Nottingham in Britain, has answered a longstanding question about whether cloned animals like Dolly age prematurely.

❝ In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, the scientists tested these four sheep, created from the same cell line as Dolly, and nine other cloned sheep, finding that, contrary to popular belief, cloned animals appear to age normally…

Dolly’s birth, 20 years ago this month, blew the world away. Scientists had taken a single adult cell from a sheep’s udder, implanted it into an egg cell that had been stripped of its own DNA, and successfully created a living, breathing animal almost genetically identical to its donor.

Now, based on results of this new study, researchers have confirmed what most scientists believed years ago: Cloning does not lead to premature aging.

❝ Many scientists hope that changes in perception will lead to advances in reproductive technology that will enable us to provide food for a growing global population, save endangered species and develop advanced therapies…Even then, welfare and ethical concerns will remain.

Some of those concerns are legitimate and should be the focus of scientific study. Most are crap grounded thoroughly in ignorance and fear.

In my reading, most of the self-titled scientific ethicists have little to do with science or ethics. They are religious moralists at root and dedicated to raising so-called concerns rooted in superstititon and retribution from their g_d.

Meanwhile, virtually all the laws governing clone research persist – even though they are about as legit as, say, laying on hands to raise the dead.

There are 500 sheep in this photo

Leave a comment


Can you see them?

❝Saskatchewan, Canada farmer Liezel Kennedy took these photos earlier this month, saying she drove straight past the flock before realizing they were all there. She quickly doubled back to take a closer look. Kennedy told BuzzFeed she had to get within 50 feet before she could easily make them out. Lamboflauge is real!

Now click on the photo for an explanation.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

German legislators vote to make bestiality a misdemeanor

1 Comment


The only American politicians who consider this a high priority

Germany’s upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat, voted Friday to criminalize for the first time “using an animal for personal sexual activities” and to punish offenders with fines of as much as $34,000. It was the final legislative hurdle for a bill the lower house passed in December.

The vote follows months of debate that pitted zoophiles against animal rights and protection advocates. Sexual mores seemed not to play a paramount role.

The ban, which carries only a misdemeanor charge, is an amendment to the country’s animal protection law, multifaceted legislation that, among other things, regulates animal testing and the sale of animals and prohibits animal abuse, including “using an animal for personal sexual activities or making them available to third parties for sexual activities and thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species.”

Zoophiles argue that their relationships with their pets, or “partners” as they prefer, are entirely mutual. Michael Kiok, a director of the advocacy group Zoophilic Engagement for Tolerance and Enlightenment, who now finds himself the de facto face of zoophilia in Germany, says animals are perfectly capable of expressing whether or not they desire sex.

Animal-rights groups have criticized men like Mr. Kiok, saying they put defenseless creatures in harm’s way.

The assorted and sundry tweaks of human sexuality never cease to amaze. Many of them are mirrored in other chordate species – and I doubt they get as excited, worried, philosophical or otherwise emotionally upset over discussion – or the acts themselves as do humans.

If something painful or too uncomfortable happens – well, you might get bit, I imagine.

Of course, outside of Texas sheepherders, I can’t imagine the question coming up in American politics. It’s that sophistication thingie, again.

Thanks, Honeyman

Sheep will be able to call for help against wolves via txt msg

1 Comment

Swiss sheep could soon be texting shepherds for help when they are being stalked or attacked by wolves…A Swiss biologist is developing a collar that can monitor a sheep’s heart rate and spot when it is distressed.

The collar will call a shepherd if it spots that the heart rate of an animal has increased for an extended period…

I hope it can differentiate between life-threatening panic and the joy of sex.

Early prototypes of the collar, employing heart rate monitors similar to those used by runners to fine-tune their training, have been tested on 12 Swiss sheep. The tests, carried out in the Bernese Alps above Les Diablerets, involved scaring the sheep with two muzzled Czechoslovakian Wolfdogs…

Wolf expert Jean-Marc Landry from Swiss carnivore research group Kora came up with the idea for the collar in a bid to limit the number of sheep lost to wolves reaching Switzerland from Italy.

Growing numbers of sheep are being eaten by wolves, especially among small flocks owned by farmers who cannot afford a sheepdog. Even those that are not eaten trample down fences and flee long distances when being hunted.

Dr Landry said the first collars would be produced in the autumn and he was considering three different techniques to help protect the sheep.

The collars could be fitted with a mobile chip that alerted a shepherd via text message when the sheep were stressed. Alternatively they might play a loud noise or spray a chemical repellent to frighten off the wolf.

Landry is considering other processes the chip might be programmed to trigger. So far, not especially productive IMHO.

Though, I guess we might try to think up other practical defense mechanisms that would be initiated by appropriate circumstances and signals.

Dog lover facing jail for walking too slowly — and snooping!

1 Comment


Vampire has no opinion

A dog lover could face jail if deemed to be giving her pedigree pets their “walkies” too slowly following a judge’s verdict on a bitter neighbours dispute…Farmer Linda Jefferies, 61, rears rare breed sheep in Essex and is also the devoted owner of a Hungarian Komonder and a Bouvier de Flandres, called “Vampire”.

She has for years been embroiled in a “needle match” over a right of way running to one of her fields across the land of her neighbour, smallholder, Pauline Robb, 54.

That resulted in Mrs Jefferies being handed an injunction under the Protection from Harrassment Act after a judge found she had been using the path for “snooping” on Mrs Robb and her husband.

The order stipulates that Mrs Jefferies must “move along at a reasonable speed” when using the disputed path – or face a maximum penalty of a £5,000 fine or six months’ imprisonment

Mrs Jefferies fought that injunction in the Appeal Court, complaining that it effectively bans her from walking her beloved dogs for fear that they might feel the call of nature of otherwise “dawdle” on the path, landing her in jail…

At the Appeal Court, Kevin Leigh, for Mrs Jefferies, defended her right to walk her animals down the path at any speed she likes…

Lord Justice Sullivan, however, ruled that the injunction must remain in place unchanged…”If Mrs Jefferies uses the footpath genuinely to walk her dogs, and not as a disguised snooping exercise, she has nothing to fear from the judge’s order,” he concluded.

No word from the dogs. I presume that as long as they continue to poop and pee regularly that’s sufficient testimony.