Animal Report

Pick of the Litter is a must-see movie for animal lovers. It's about guide dogs for people with blindness and it follows them from puppyhood all the way until they graduate. It's about their training and all of the people involved as well as the relationships that develop along the way.

I think the most surprising thing, aside from how many people have to work to get the dogs ready, is that there are dogs that are rejected. Only the best of the best make it through the program in order to make sure they are as reliable as possible. You just don't think about that when you picture guide dogs.

Have you seen Pick of the Litter or any other great documentaries about animals lately? Share them in the chat.

Most of us expect to see vultures scavenging off other dead animals for sustenance, but I had no idea that butterflies did it! Can you believe that butterflies love the salt that's not only in our sweat (which is why you'll see them land on your arm), but on dead animals? They also like to lick feces and blood! Ew.

Most of us probably know that there are other birds, insects and other scavengers among us, from rodents to cockroaches, but why do they get such a bad name? Because they are eating gross food? It's actually super helpful to us. Imagine a world where all of that garbage was just left to sit around and rot! And animals like the hyena aren't only scavengers; most do a combination of that and hunting.

What other animals were you surprised to learn were scavengers? Share them in the chat!

A complete mummified wolf pup was discovered in Dawson City, Yukon, and is a rare, exciting find for scientists. Carbon dating places the animal at more than 50,000 years of age. The fact that this pup still has preserved fur is just incredible. A partial caribou was also discovered in a similar manner at another site, missing only its back end. The pup may be the first of its kind ever found.

The animals were discovered in an area with a volcanic ash bed, about a month apart. The pup was very young when it died at less than two months of age. Both were found by miners.

Have you read about any other incredible animal finds this week? Share them in the chat.

As a former vegetarian who knows most of our meat animals are treated poorly and that we need to cut down on meat production if we want to keep this planet as our home, I'm eager to embrace no-kill meat grown in a lab... as long as it's safe and ethically produced. Given how much garbage is already approved to be consumed, at least in the U.S., I have no doubt that it's possible such a product could be unsafe. But it could also be just what we need, so I'm following news like this closely.

A lab-grown meat is now approved for sale in Singapore. It's made by a San Francisco company called Eat Just who's trying to find a more sustainable way to consume meat. If that's true and their meat, which is grown in petri dishes from real animal cells taken through a biopsy and fed nutrients throughout its growth cycle, is the real deal, we could be looking at a big game changer here.

There are loads of ethics and concerns to consider, naturally. What do you think of lab-grown meat? Would you eat it?