Animals 24-7

News on dogs, cats, horses, wildlife, zoonoses, & nature

Death of Koko, 46, raises question what will become of her rejected mate Ndume?

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Koko was among the last great apes used in still controversial 1970s language research             WOODSIDE,  California––With Koko deceased,  what now will become of Ndume,  37,  the last and least famous of the three gorillas who once shared the Gorilla Foundation sanctuary and primate language research laboratory in the Santa Cruz Mountains,  south of San […]

Hitler:  Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover,  by Rynn Berry

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Pythagorean Publishers (P.O. Box 8174, JAF Station,  New York,  NY 10116),  2004. 81 pages,  paperback.  $10.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Rynn Berry,  the late historical advisor to the North American Vegetarian Society,  who died on January 9,  2014 after collapsing during a New Year’s Eve jog in New York’s Central Park,  established his reputation as […]

Animals In The Third Reich:  Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust  

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by Boria Sax Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.,  (370 Lexington Ave.,  New York,  NY  10017),  2000. 206 pages,  paperback.  $19.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Hitler was a vegetarian,  probably in emulation of the composer Richard Wagner,   Boria Sax asserts,  but claims,  as vegetarian historian Rynn Berry and others have documented,  that “Hitler was probably […]

Are feminists right to resist comparison with the females of other species?

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by Karen Davis, PhD.,  president of United Poultry Concerns A woman employed on a chicken “breeder” farm in Maryland wrote a letter once to the local newspaper berating the defenders of chickens for trying to make her lose her job, threatening her ability to support herself and her daughter. For her,  “breeder” hens were “mean” birds who […]

#DontGetMilked makes a splash in the heart of hypocritical cow worship

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Animal advocates wean themselves from the “gaushala” dairy tradition             NEW DELHI,  India––The billboard message “#DontGetMilked.  Ditch Dairy!  Go Vegan!” posted recently in Nehru Place,  New Delhi by the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO),  is a crowd-stopper. It might not rate a blink, let alone a shocked doubletake from visiting American and European […]

Heads & Tails, by Maneka Gandhi

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People For Animals (A4 Maharani Bagh,  New Delhi 110 065,  India).184 pages,  paperback; 1993.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12498154-heads-and-tails Reviewed by Merritt Clifton “I have always detested milk,”   Maneka Gandhi opined in the first line of her first syndicated column,  entitled “Milk,  Meat and Animal Violence.” “My son too refused to drink cow’s milk when he was weaned,”  she continued,  […]

The many faces of Nasim Aghdam, vegan turned YouTube shooter

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Social media performer more engaged in self-promotion than in message-focused statement             SAN DIEGO,  California––Claiming more than 300,000 people had viewed her 60-odd (and sometimes very odd) YouTube videos on vegan and animal rights themes,  Nasim Aghdam on April 3,  2018,  two days before what would have been her 38th birthday,  abruptly multiplied her audience and […]

Who is the “outlier” now?

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Something changed on Groundhog Day Did you ever see the film Groundhog Day,  in which actor Bill Murray lived the same day over and over until he made some of the right ethical choices? We had already seen much of the humane cause leadership endlessly repeating unethical conduct,  at the expense of animals,  volunteers,  and […]

Naming Nature: The clash between instinct & science

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by Carol Kaesuk Yoon W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2009.  344 pages, hardcover.  $27.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Though you may never have heard of either “taxonomy” or  “cladistics,”   the two central concepts in Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s 2009 opus Naming Nature,   it remains a fascinating read for […]

Are politicians sentient? British animal advocates wonder

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Nothing yet on animal sentience in U.K. law             LONDON,  U.K.–– “Sentient,”  a word seldom used by mass media and little recognized by the public before a much decried vote of the British Parliament on November 15,  2017,  is overnight at the center of debate raging throughout the United Kingdom. Who is sentient?  What is sentience?  […]