Looking for a present for your pet? How about a domain name? Let’s face it, Spot is tired of all the tennis balls. How about doing something different this year and give Spot his own domain on the web? Not only will your friends appreciate knowing what is going on in his life, he will appreciate the extra time you spend with him, even if it is spent dressing him like a reindeer.

My cat watching me workout lol

via My cat watching me workout lol on Twitpic.

A 19-year-old male sea lion from California has mated himself to death at an animal park in Germany.

The lion, called Mike, died of exhaustion after a series of marathon lovemaking sessions with his female counterparts in Nuremberg.

Mike was the father of 12 offspring through three different females – Farah, Tiffy and Soda, reports The Telegraph.

He showed signs of tiredness at around midday on Monday, the southern city said in a statement.

The statement said: “Mike could no longer get out of the pool and was brought ashore by staff. The extremely weakened animal was treated by a vet but died from acute heart failure around 3.30pm 1330 GMT.”

“Mating season is a common time for fatalities when bulls often stop eating for days to devote themselves fully to mating. For sea lion bulls with a harem this is the most exhausting time,” it added.

Mikes offspring can be found in zoos as far afield as Berlin, Spain and the Netherlands, and that the 285-kilo animal was so “good natured” that people could touch him, the statement added.

“He will be remembered fondly by visitors of the animal park for his appearances during shows in the dolphinarium where he had close contact with the dolphins,” it said.

via Randy male sea lion dies of exhaustion after series of marathon romps.

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a “soliciting purr” to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a “cry”, with a similar frequency to a human babys.

The team said cats have “tapped into” a human bias – producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.

“He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying,” Dr McComb told BBC News.

“After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning.”

While meowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cats bowl.

To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats vocal tactics – recording both their “soliciting purrs” and regular, “non-soliciting” purrs.

“When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant,” said Dr McComb.

How annoying?

She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs – giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.

“We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs,” explained Dr McComb. “The key thing that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound.”

“When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds or cords held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency,” explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.

Impossible to resist: Cats use sounds that humans are “highly sensitive” to

“But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds – stimulating them to vibrate,” explained Dr McComb.

Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.

“How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry,” said Dr McComb.

Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cats cry and the cry of a human baby – a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.

Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats normal purring. “But we think that they learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans.”

She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.

“Obviously we dont know whats going on inside their minds,” said Dr McComb. “But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately.”

So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?

“Hes been the inspiration for this whole study, so Ill forgive him – credit where credits due.”

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Cats exploit humans by purring.

A kitten must have used up a few of its nine lives after surviving a 30 minute spin in a washing machine!

Six-week-old Toby is thought to have climbed into the machine in Stonehaven, Scotland, before it was switched on.

The soggy kitten was rushed to the local vets, where staff managed to save the cold and almost drowned pet.

Vet David McLaren said: “The kittens belly was full of water. But we slowly warmed the kitten up and it came back to the land of the living.”

via CBBC Newsround | Animals | Kitten survives spin in washer.

watch and enjoy this collection of VERY funny animals! thanks to icanhascheezburger.com for the pictures song : Madonna, Like a Prayer (Dance Remix). I DO NOT OWN THE SONG.

Cockroaches may be tiny enough to slip through the smallest of cracks, but just like humans, these eternal pests can get fat on an unhealthy diet.

As part of a decades worth of research on cockroaches, Patricia Moore of the University of Exeter studied how female cockroaches change their mating behavior in response to their diet, specifically what they eat when they are young.

“We already knew that what they eat as adults influences reproductive decisions,” Moore said. But just how the food they consumed early in life shaped these decisions wasnt known.

To find out, Moore and her colleagues picked young female cockroach nymphs and divided them into two dietary groups. Half were fed a good-quality balanced diet of protein-rich fish food and high-carbohydrate oatmeal, while the rest were raised on fish food only.

Both groups were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. The difference in diets “was not quantity but variety,” Moore said.

After the last molt, when the nymphs became adults, the team switched the diets of some animals. Half of the cockroaches raised with good quality diet lost their oatmeal, while half of the bugs fed poorly were promoted to a good-quality diet.

Eighteen days after the switch, the diet control ended and some of the surviving cockroaches were dissected. The rest were allowed to live on and reproduce.

The results: While the lifespan of the members of both groups was about the same, the cockroaches on the poor diet were fatter and took longer to mature.

Moore suggests that the poorly fed bugs were storing up excess fat at the expense of their growth in case their dietary options got even worse.

“This was a surprising result,” Moore said, “but it shows the importance of a balanced diet for healthy development.”

The effects of unbalanced meals continued throughout the cockroaches lives, even for the few that were switched to good-quality food.

Females that ate a poor-quality diet were less willing to mate and less likely to produce offspring. They were also more picky and spent more time considering possible mates.

The findings, detailed in the June 24 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found, that “poor diets [during early life] have an effect on the way cockroaches respond to their environment and cannot be reset later on,” Moore said.

via Even Cockroaches Get Fat on Bad Food | LiveScience.