Thursday, May 24, 2012

DC zoo hand-raising cubs after rare cheetah birth

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two cheetah cubs have a new home at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and are being raised by human hands after a risky birth last month at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia.

The zoo offered a first look at the now healthy cubs Wednesday and hopes to place them on view to the public in the cheetah yard by the end of the summer.
Cheetahs are the fastest animals on land, but scientists said every surviving cub is critical to sustaining the species, which is threatened with extinction in the wild. These cubs are genetically valuable because their mother and father were first-time parents.
When the cubs' mother, 5-year-old Ally, gave birth to the first cub in late April, though, problems quickly developed. Ally abandoned her first cub and left him in the cold on a snowy day. Then her labor stopped, even though she had three more cubs waiting to be born.
Zoo veterinarians performed a "rare and risky" emergency cesarean section and saved one more cub, along with the cheetah mother. Two other cubs died.
"You're always sad that you couldn't save them all," said veterinarian Copper Aitken-Palmer. "But I'm thrilled that we have two, and I'm thrilled that the mom is doing well, too."

The month-old cubs don't have names yet, but their fuzzy hair already has spots identifying them as cheetahs. What would you name these adorable cubs? Explain your choice!

There's one male and one female, and they're growing fast. At feeding time, they are eager to get their bottles, clawing and chirping to get milk from their handlers. The cubs are also beginning to transition to solid foods as their teeth come in, dining on moist grocery store cat food to start.
"Because they're cubs, everything is kind of exaggerated," Aitken-Palmer. "So they have really long legs, really poufy hair on their heads. But they're pretty cute."
Zoo veterinarians only knew of two other C-sections performed on a cheetah before they tried it to save this cheetah family. One had been successful, and the cubs died in another case.
"It's very rare and it's very risky," said cheetah biologist Adrienne Crosier. "We were certainly concerned about the welfare of the mother."
When the female cub was born, she had a heartbeat but didn't breathe on her own for several hours. Both cubs and mother were in intensive care for three days.
Because cheetahs are endangered, North American zoos are trying to build a self-sustaining population. It's been estimated there are only 8,000 to 12,000 cheetahs left in the wild, Crosier said.
"Every cub that is born into this population is critical," Crosier said, "and we're only producing a fraction of the cubs that we need every year to become sustainable."


 



 
 


Thursday, May 17, 2012

How Gross is Fast Food???

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?????

Teenage Boy Finds Finger in Arby’s Sandwich


Ryan Hart, a 14-year-old boy from Michigan, had a rude surprise when he bit into his Arby's roast beef sandwich. "I was like, 'that's got to be a finger,'" he told the Jackson Citizen Patriot. "It was just nasty."

Reportedly, a restaurant employee cut off her finger with a meat slicer while preparing the meal. She left her station to deal with the emergency, and other employees, who were unaware of the injury, continued to complete the order.


"Somebody loses a finger and you keep sending food out the window," said the teen's mom, Jamie Vail. "I can't believe that." She added that following the gruesome discovery, her son was "traumatized," couldn't eat or sleep, and had been prescribed medication Fox News reports.


John Gray, Arby's vice president of corporate communications, provided Yahoo! Shine with a statement saying, "Arby’s wants to reassure customers that we are committed to providing quality food in a safe and healthy environment. We are deeply concerned and apologetic to the guest involved in this unfortunate incident....An isolated and unfortunate accident occurred in a franchisee’s Jackson, Michigan restaurant in which an employee was injured. Upon learning of the incident, the franchisee’s restaurant team shut down food production and thoroughly cleaned and sanitized the restaurant. The franchisee fully cooperated with the Health Department during the investigation, and the restaurant was given the approval to remain open."


This is not the first time human remains have been found in a fast food meal but this case might be the most extreme.


A Dayton Ohio man sued Arby's in 2005 for reportedly serving him a chicken sandwich topped with a piece of human skin.


In a famous 2005 hoax, a Las Vegas woman found a human finger in Wendy's chili but police later discovered she had cooked her husband's colleague's finger (which he had lost in a work accident) and slipped it into the bowl herself.


An Albany-area man allegedly found a bloody bandage in the crust of his Pizza Hut pie in 2011.


Also in 2011, Texan woman found blood on her French fries while eating at a Houston-area Crackle Barrel.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The largest single-shot photo of Earth ever taken.

Check out a time-lapse video of Earth's norther hemisphere taken by Elektro-L

This image is a single-shot taken from 22,369 miles away by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1.
The colors on the 121-megapixel photo are quite different from the ones on NASA's photos of Earth. To capture the image, the satellite combines visible and infrared wavelengths of light. Infrared light is used to see plants, which is why the parts of the Earth that would normally be green are seen as rusty brown.