Eagle punches drone out of the sky

Concerned about the proliferation of drones and the loss of privacy? Just get yourself a pet wedge-tailed eagle.

GoPro captures friends saving pets from apartment fire

Spencer Butler and Grant Krause wanted to break in their new GoPro camera by going rock climbing. On their way back home, they spotted smoke coming from a nearby apartment building and thought they could get some interesting footage of firefighters in action. But when they realized that firefighters were not yet on the scene, they began going door to door checking to see if anyone was still in the building. The GoPro caught it all. They ended up saving three dogs, and no one was hurt in the blaze.


I couldn't help but be reminded of this Foo Fighters music video:

Dinosaurs wouldn't make good pets

Jurassic World has hit the theaters, and once again we are faced with the question of whether or not it's wise to be tampering with things we don't fully understand. Like resurrecting dinosaurs. I think we can all agree that probably isn't such a great idea. Just take a look at this video...


(via Tastefully Offensive)

Are you pumped for the 2014 Internet Cat Video Festival?

Tomorrow is the big day. I'm talking, of course, about the third annual Internet Cat Video Festival. This year's festivities will be held at Open Field near the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Don't worry. If you are unable to attend in person, you can watch a live stream of the event, courtesy of Animal Planet.

What can devour a 9-foot great white shark?

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that something in the ocean is eating great white sharks. The bad news is that there is something in the ocean big enough to eat a great white shark.

Eleven years ago, a film crew was tagging sharks to study their movements along the Australian coast. One tracking device from a nine-foot great white washed up on shore four months later, and the data it contained was disturbing.

The data indicated that the shark suddenly plunged over 1,900 feet early one morning. The temperature then shot up from 46° F to 78° F, something that could only have happened if the shark had been swallowed by...something.

From the Smithsonian Channel:

Time lapse video of a cat's busy day

I think the secret is storing up energy for when you really need it—like eating...

Things cats do that'd be creepy if you did them

Squirrel tries to hide nut in dog's fur

Poor dog doesn't realize what he's supposed to do to squirrels.

One guy's shopping trip goes horribly wrong

The latest animated short from the geniuses at Birdbox Studio:

Dog's incontinence causes truck to crash into house

From KRCR TV

Nothing all that interesting here. Just your average "dog pees in truck, slips onto accelerator, causing truck to crash into house" story.

Elderly tornado survivor finds her missing dog during TV interview

Barbara Garcia survived the devastating tornado that ripped through Oklahoma and destroyed her home, but her dog was missing. This is what happened during her interview with a local TV reporter:


(from Slate.com)

The invisible billion-bug highway in the sky

Someone on Facebook posted a link to this fascinating story featured on NPR a few years ago:

Plummeting paper profits poses problem for pooping puppies

Image: The Andrew Blog

The mainstream print news media has been in sharp decline as more and more people opt for the electronic delivery of information. Unfortunately, an iPad running the New York Times app doesn't work very well to potty train puppies.

That's the problem animal shelters face in San Francisco. Animal Care and Control has been relying on donations of the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers to line the cages of un-housebroken puppies, and paper supplies are dwindling. The San Francisco Public Library has promised to donate old newspapers, but it remains to be seen if this will solve the problem.

It is rather unfortunate that newspapers are becoming more scarce when people actually have a need for them.

Giant squid captured on video for the first time ever

Known as the kraken in maritime folklore, giant squid were once relegated to the realm of cryptozoology. Up until the 21st century, not one had ever been photographed alive. And up until last summer, a giant squid had never been captured on video in its natural habitat.

I think we need to send this film crew to Loch Ness.

Scientists discover the "anternet"

Harvester ants (photo: Steve Jurvetson)

An interesting article from Stanford discusses the striking similarities found between the internet and ant colonies:

On the surface, ants and the Internet don't seem to have much in common. But two Stanford researchers have discovered that a species of harvester ants determine how many foragers to send out of the nest in much the same way that Internet protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for the transfer of data. The researchers are calling it the "anternet."

Deborah Gordon, a biology professor at Stanford, has been studying ants for more than 20 years. When she figured out how the harvester ant colonies she had been observing in Arizona decided when to send out more ants to get food, she called across campus to Balaji Prabhakar, a professor of computer science at Stanford and an expert on how files are transferred on a computer network. At first he didn't see any overlap between his and Gordon's work, but inspiration would soon strike.

"The next day it occurred to me, 'Oh wait, this is almost the same as how [Internet] protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for transferring a file!'" Prabhakar said. "The algorithm the ants were using to discover how much food there is available is essentially the same as that used in the Transmission Control Protocol."

Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, is an algorithm that manages data congestion on the Internet, and as such was integral in allowing the early web to scale up from a few dozen nodes to the billions in use today. Here's how it works: As a source, A, transfers a file to a destination, B, the file is broken into numbered packets. When B receives each packet, it sends an acknowledgment, or an ack, to A, that the packet arrived.

This feedback loop allows TCP to run congestion avoidance: If acks return at a slower rate than the data was sent out, that indicates that there is little bandwidth available, and the source throttles data transmission down accordingly. If acks return quickly, the source boosts its transmission speed. The process determines how much bandwidth is available and throttles data transmission accordingly.

It turns out that harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) behave nearly the same way when searching for food. Gordon has found that the rate at which harvester ants – which forage for seeds as individuals – leave the nest to search for food corresponds to food availability.

A forager won't return to the nest until it finds food. If seeds are plentiful, foragers return faster, and more ants leave the nest to forage. If, however, ants begin returning empty handed, the search is slowed, and perhaps called off.

Still, if you have a problem with your internet connection, I would recommend calling your IT professional, not the Orkin Man.

Grizzly bear cub and wolf cub playing

No scissors? No problem. Use a piranha!

But please don't run with the piranha.

Chicken McNugget shaped like Secretariat for sale on eBay

Well...it sort of resembles something that may have come from Secretariat...

But it's from a top-rated seller, so it must be legit. Place your bid now!

(via Dave Barry's Blog)

Man attacked by mountain lion, saved by bear

Nothing unusual here. Just your typical mountain-lion-bites-man-bear-bites-mountain-lion story.

Town cancels fireworks to spare sea birds

Officials in Depoe Bay, Oregon, canceled the town's annual July 3 fireworks show, a tradition since 1993. The reason? They were pressured by federal wildlife managers who said the noise would disrupt sea birds roosting nearby.

Yep. It doesn't really get more American than that.