animals (Page 16)

If you’re the one who empties the cat litter, you’re morelikely to have a car crash. Scientists warn that the diseasetoxoplasmosis can increase your risk of an auto accidentbecause the cysts which form your the nerves and muscletissue could reduce your ability to concentrate. Theparasites live in soil and are carried by cats, so you canget the disease from touching your mouth after gardening orfrom cleaning a cat’s litter box. Pregnant women can passtoxoplasmosis on to their babies, so Daddy should empty thelitter.
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Cats, which have lived alongside people for thousands of years, have adapted their “meows” to better communicate with humans, according to Nicholas Nicastro and Michael Owren of Cornell University’s Psychology of Voice and Sound Laboratory. “Cats are obviously very dependent on people for their needs,” says Nicastro. “I think cats have evolved to become better at managing and manipulating people.”

One way they are trying to prove this is by analyzing a range of vocalizations of domestic cats and then screening people’s reactions to them. To compare their results, they are doing the same thing with the calls of wild cats.
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French chefs are going to have to think up some new dishes, since new kinds fish are appearing in the waters off the French coast. Along with the oceans in the rest of the world, these waters are warming, and scientists think this may be the cause of the arrival of these non-native species. Othercauses could be new feeding patterns or pollution.

Flying gurnards, moonfish, triggerfish and tropical turtles are among the examples. The traditional homes of these species are as far away as Africa.

“It could be a climatic phenomenon. The waters have warmed a little and we are certainly seeing different species [compared] to 20 years ago,” said Stephane Auffret, of the French Croisic Oceanarium.
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Animals seem to be getting more intelligent lately?and they?re also getting MAD!

In India, a wild elephant pulled a man down from a tree, trampled him to death, and has been carrying the corpse around as a grisly souvenir for the past 2 weeks. Police haven?t been able to get it away from him.

The man climbed the tree to get away from the herd of elephants that was rampaging through his village. We have no information about why the elephants may have been angry at the villagers. The elephant grabbed the man, pulled him to the ground, and broke his legs.
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