Peregrine falcons are the dive bombers of the natural world, flying at speeds over 200 mph to snag their prey. Read the rest

Yesterday, a church group of little kids were playing at a creek in Preble County, Ohio when an adult spotted a big shadowy shape moving under the water. It turned out to be a seven-foot saltwater crocodile, a species not native to Ohio. A wildlife office was called to the scene and, sadly, shot the crocodile.

According to WLWT, pastor Jim Hazelwood "was impressed with the remarkable poise the children displayed and how their first words after the close call were how God had protected them." Read the rest

“I was scrolling through old videos of my pup Copper, who is no longer in my possession,” says the human who captured this adorable video footage of a cute Husky pup demonstrating their hunting prowess. Read the rest

Meet Mia and Emilka. Read the rest

Choices. https://t.co/o3bJPCDApG pic.twitter.com/uYrI6mype5

— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) August 10, 2019

I can only hope that there was a second chance.

(via Daily Grail) Read the rest

Earlier this year in Painesville, Ohio, police arrested a gentleman after he took out his pet iguana, named Copper, swung her around by her tail, and hurled her at the manager of a Perkins restaurant. Arnold Teeter, 49, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. A judge has just sentenced Teeter to 90 days in jail with 77 days suspended, five years of probation, and he must also pay restitution to the Lake Humane Society that cared for Copper who lost part of her tail. But that's not all:

The judge also entered a handful of other stipulations. Tetters is not allowed to publicize about what he did or why he did it. He’s not allowed to seek media attention about the case and he can’t brag about what happened.

"Judge tells man who threw iguana at fellow Painesville Perkins manager to stop bragging about it" (Cleveland.com) Read the rest

Winston the French bulldog fell from a six-story building in Manhattan's Lower East Side on Friday night. Fortunately, he only sustained minimal injuries and will be just fine. Emma Heinrich was walking Winston when he ran off, raced up the stairs of a building onto the roof through an open door, and then... jumped. "He managed to break his fall perfectly on top of (a) car’s closed sunroof," Heinrich wrote on Instagram. "He crashed through it and tumbled safely into the front seat." From CNN:

"I was told by the vet initially that despite not having broken any bones, X-rays showed significant bruising to his lungs," Heinrich said.

Due to the bruising, Winston had to stay in an oxygen chamber for 36 hours to make sure that he could breathe.

Now, Winston's home and is "doing absolutely amazing," she told CNN. "He is still a little bit stiff (as to be expected), but that is quickly fading and we are seeing him start to return to his regular playful self."

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We now interrupt your regularly programmed negative news stories to bring you one with a miracle happy ending! *Winston is unenthused about being on the local news. He told me he won’t settle for anything less than @theellenshow moving forward.* . . Our Frenchie Winston got loose in the stairwell of our LES apartment building and managed to make it onto the roof. Trying to play a game of keepaway he dashed away from me and ran the length of the roof toward the front edge.

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You're gonna want to unmute for the happycrys. Read the rest

Penn State engineers have devised a circuit inspired by the way barn owls can so precisely determine where a sound is coming from and track their prey in the dark. Eventually, this fine example of biomimicry could lead to more accurate electronic navigation devices. Essentially, the owl's brain calculates the difference between when a sound arrives at the left ear compared to the right ear and uses that information to locate the source of the sound. After that is when things get interesting. From Penn State:

The speed of sound is faster than the owl's nerves can function so after the owl brain converts the sound to an electrical pulse, the pulse is slowed down. Then the brain's circuitry uses a lattice of nerves of different lengths with inputs from two ends, to determine which length is where the two signals coincide or arrive at the same time. This provides the direction.

Saptarshi Das and his team have created an electronic circuit that can slow down the input signals and determine the coincidence point, mimicking the working of the barn owl brain...

The team created a series of split-gate molybdenum sulfide transistors to mimic the coincidence nerve network in the owl's brain. Split-gate transistors only produce output when both sides of the gate match, so only the gate tuned to a specific length will register the sound. The biomimetic circuitry also uses a time-delay mechanism to slow down the signal...

"Millions of years of evolution in the animal kingdom have ensured that only the most efficient materials and structures have survived," said Sarbashis Das.

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Many non-human animals, from apes to rats to crows, appear to be able to keep track of the order of items in a list. Read the rest

Mama bear and her cubs make off with some dog food on Elizabeth Loflin's North Carolina porch. Read the rest

We're told that these French bulldogs made mischief with a bag of green food coloring but I suspect that an accidental overdose of gamma radiation altered their body chemistry.

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The dark lords of the underworld are best summoned by sparkly glitter bait. Read the rest

New research reveals that sleep patterns of zebrafish are similar to the slow-wave and REM sleep of humans and other mammals, birds, and lizards. Furthermore, the study suggests that these sleep signatures emerged in the brain of our common ancestor more than 450 million years ago. According to the scientists, a better understanding of how sleep evolved could shine light on the biological processes behind it and perhaps lead to new treatments for sleep disorders. From National Geographic:

Based on our understanding of the evolutionary relationships between fish and mammals, the team suggests that REM-like sleep states evolved more than 450 million years ago, making this type of sleep a deeply held biological phenomenon.

“We share a backbone, but we share much more than that,” says study coauthor Philippe Mourrain, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. “It makes it easier to understand sleep and what it does in ourselves..."

Lead author Louis C. Leung, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, built the microscope responsible for the complex imaging done for the study. Most body activity is choreographed by an intricate network of nerve cells, or neurons. When neurons are active, they release calcium, so researchers genetically engineered the zebrafish to include a protein that would flash fluorescent green when it detected calcium, indicating an area of the body is active...

The advance could be particularly valuable for health professionals seeking to design new drugs to combat the growing epidemic of sleep deprivation in many countries. Better sleep-enhancing drugs could provide some relief for people who struggle to drift off.

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Darius Brown, an awesome kid from Newark, New Jersey, makes bow ties for shelter animals to help them get adopted (because they're more cute). The cause is righteous, and so is the creativity he puts into designing and making the bow ties.

His organization is called Beaux and Paws. There's a GoFundMe. You know what to do. Read the rest

Drivers on a highway in Buckinghamshire, UK spotted this very strange orange bird on the side of the road and called the nearby Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital. Further investigation by veterinarians revealed that the bird's feathers were not naturally orange but rather stained with curry. From CNN:

Vinny, named by veterinary workers in honor of the Vindaloo curry he was covered in, had a "pungent smell" but was otherwise healthy, the hospital said.

All he needed was a bath. Rescuers were finally able to clean the curry off of the herring gull after he put up a bit of a fight and covered the veterinary team in curry water.

Now that he's been thoroughly scrubbed and returned to his natural white coloring, Vinny will soon be ready to fly free...

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Their paws were fast as lightning. Read the rest