Animals 24-7

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

COVID-19 skins fur trade: Ireland bans fur farming; Finland vaccinates mink

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Ireland becomes 15th European Union nation to ban or phase out the mink industry             DUBLIN, HELSINKI––Responding to continuing discoveries of the COVID-19 coronavirus in factory-farmed mink,  the government of the Republic of Ireland has elected to ban fur faming. The Finnish Food Authority,  by contrast,  is experimentally vaccinating farmed mink in hopes fur demand […]

Second Finn dog study conflates defensive behavior with aggression

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But the Finn study does not discount the influence of genetics on aggression             HELSINKI, Finland––The same Finn researchers who in March 2020 published a study strongly affirming the importance of breeding in dog behavior have in May 2020 published a second analysis of the same data which––at a glance––argues just the opposite. The second […]

Mink ranching survives in Denmark despite risky COVID-19 mutation

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Danish mink industry was to be liquidated from fear that COVID-19 mutation could neutralize vaccines in development             COPENHAGEN, Denmark––The Danish mink industry,  on the verge of liquidation as of November 4,  2020 to control a COVID-19 coronavirus mutation,  appears to have politically mobilized to win a reprieve––for the mink ranchers,  however,  not the mink […]

Iconic animal use events fall to COVID-19: “Running of the bulls” is latest

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“Social distancing” also shuts down SeaWorld, seal hunt, fur auctions, Kentucky Derby,  & the carriage horses in Central Park             PAMPLONA,  Spain ––The 700-year-old Festival of San Fermin, featuring bullfights and the “running of the bulls” through the cobbled streets of the oldest part of Pamplona, Spain, was on April 21, 2020 indefinitely postponed due […]

Dog study let pit bull owners lie & still found behavior is breed-specific

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Finn study is third in six months to refute the saw that “It’s all in how you raise them.” HELSINKI, Finland––For the third time in six months a major new study of the heritability of dog behavior,  published by a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal,  has refuted the shibboleth of pit bull advocacy that “It’s all […]

Why U.S. furriers don’t advertise much any more

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Mink coat ads vanish from newsprint  SACRAMENTO,  California––A furrier somewhere in the U.S. may yet buy a page of advertising,  in what little remains of 2019,  in one of the thousands of newspapers that are electronically searchable at www.NewspaperArchive.com. As of December 29,  2019,  however,  the year appeared to be ending without a single NewspaperArchive […]

Drove out the snakes? What did St. Patrick do with the Irish wolves?

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He made friends with them!             DUBLIN, TEL AVIV,  ROME––As of St. Patrick’s Day 2019,  there are still no wild snakes in Ireland,  more than 1,660 years after the patron saint of Ireland allegedly drove them all out. Paleontologists say there were never any wild snakes in Ireland in the first place. But there were […]