June 2010

Fruit flies give me the heebie-jeebies, and not just because they are bugs. One summer, when I was at the tender age of 16 and spending most of my disposable, fast food-earned income on my menagerie of pets, we had a nasty bout of fruit flies in our home. My dad, fed up with it after a while and blaming it on my hamster’s food source—we never really did find the source, actually—sprayed my room with chemicals and killed all of my darlings—two frogs, fish, snails, and a hamster—save one, my spiteful little hamster, Diane, who always bit. My beloved Jack, “the sweet one,” was gone. So when I see fruit flies, I remember my poor, ill-fated pets and my ineptitude with dealing with the insect pests.

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Although demonic apparitions and monsters are one thing, and ghost dogs are quite another, the British Isles have a long history of demonic apparitions of ghost dogs colloquially known as "Black Dogs."  These Black Dogs roam the British countryside at night, eyes glowing orange or green, frightening the locals and portending doom.  In fact, Black Dogs are so common that it seems that every area of the UK has its own resident Black Dog.


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When you think about animal testing, you probably imagine all kinds of different horrors. Maybe you think about how Proctor & Gamble is famous for sewing the eyes of baby kittens shut just to test human beauty products on them. You might imagine lab rats, bunnies, monkeys, and many other animals kept in cages, unable to see the light of day, injected with all kinds of harmful chemicals and diseases just to ensure that we won’t break out by using some new skin cleanser. (Of course, studies have proven this to be ineffective at best and harmful at worst; since humans are not the same as these animals, we often still get sick—even die—though studies showed ingredients safe on animals like pigs.)

But did you ever think that man’s best friend, the domesticated dog, would be the subject of animal testing?

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While looking for appropriate volunteer activities for preschoolers, I happily stumbled up on this super cool organization. NestWatch is a project of Cornell University, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center that engages citizens in monitoring bird nests. As the site proclaims, “Anyone can monitor nests—it’s a rewarding way to spend time outdoors and participate in science.”

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With all of the politics going on in the world, it can be hard to remember that climate change is rearing its ugly and melting head in places as we speak. Today’s news has to do with the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau where melting glaciers, albeit slower than what was predicted in the flawed statistics of the 2007 UN report, are in fact still threatening the food security of millions in Asia. Especially Pakistan. 

For this set of results and warnings, a group of scientists in Holland studied the impacts of climate change on five major Asian Rivers- 1.4 billion people depend on that water for drinking and crop irrigation- so this is a big deal.

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