Paw Prints.
"True, feel-good stories from the world of pets, found and curated for the Talking With Pets family. We do not retell them, we point you to them, with a little Talking With Pets flavor along the way."
"The second real cycle, published two weeks after Edition No. 3, which is the cadence Paw Prints keeps."
The parrot who made scientists rethink what a bird's brain can do
In 1977, researcher Irene Pepperberg walked into a Chicago pet shop and asked the clerk to pick her research parrot at random, so no one could later say she’d cherry picked an unusually gifted bird. What she and the African grey she named Alex proved together, over three decades side by side, reshaped how scientists talk about animal minds. Whether a parrot can truly understand what it says, not just repeat it, turns out to have a real answer.
“He really did show that this creature with a brain the size of a shelled walnut could do the same types of tasks that the apes did and the dolphins did and in many cases, young children could do.”
Read the full story at NPR →Story and quote via NPR
Six prime ministers came and went. One resident stayed.
Downing Street has seen six different occupants move in and out of Number 10 since February 2011, from David Cameron through the present day. Only one arrival from that same month never left, and never once had to run for reelection. Rescued as a stray from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and brought in to help with a rodent problem no minister wanted to discuss publicly, this particular civil servant just marked fifteen years in the job.
“His journey began in February 2011 when he arrived from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, according to his official government page.”
Read the full story at IBTimes UK →Story and quote via IBTimes UK
The burrs in a dog's fur that turned into a world-changing idea
In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral took his Irish Pointer Milka for an ordinary walk in the Jura Mountains, the kind of walk the two of them probably took often. What came home stuck all over Milka’s coat annoyed him enough that he did something almost nobody else would have done: he got out a microscope. What he found there did not stay in a lab notebook. It ended up in nearly every home on earth.
“While on holiday one day in 1941, Swiss engineer and inventor, George de Mestral decided to take his dog, Milka, for a walk in the Jura Mountains.”
Read the full story at BBC Science Focus →Story and quote via BBC Science Focus
Paw Prints curates and links to reporting by others, with full attribution. We do not claim authorship of the original stories, and every headline above goes straight to the people who did the work.
Every other week, straight to your inbox.
Good stories about animals, found and pointed at. Nothing else.