Kara Jean

Mo, a North American River Otter born at the Oregon Zoo in late January, took his first dip last week, but not without a lot of help from mom, Tilly. She initiated the swimming lesson by nudging Mo to the water's edge and then plunging in with a firm grip on the scruff of her pup's neck, just as otter moms do in the wild. Even though Tilly is a first-time mom, she has been doing all the right things for her pup, according to keepers.

"A lot of people don't realize it, but swimming doesn't come naturally to River Otter pups," said keeper Becca Van Beek. "They have to be taught to swim by their moms, and so far Tilly's been an amazing teacher. It might look kind of scary to a casual observer," Van Beek continued. "She'll grab Mo by the scruff of the neck and dunk him in the water. But that's a very natural behavior. Baby Otters are extremely buoyant, so Mo has built-in water wings! It's exactly what we've been hoping to see."

Now that the threat from fur trappers has declined, North American River Otters are once again relatively abundant in healthy river systems of the Pacific Northwest and the lakes and tributaries that feed them. Good populations exist in suitable habitat in northeast and southeast Oregon, but they are scarce in heavily settled areas, especially if waterways are compromised. Because of habitat destruction and water pollution, River Otters are considered rare outside the Pacific Northwest.

Photo Credit: Oregon Zoo/Shervin Hess

Upon baby-proofing the exhibit, zookeepers gave Tilly and Mo outdoor access during the mornings.  The best time for zoo visitors to catch them is between 9:30 a.m. and noon, though the Otters don't always decide to venture out.

Mo, named for the Molalla River, is the first River Otter to be born at the Oregon Zoo. He weighed around 4 ounces at birth, but has been growing fast and now is approaching 5 pounds. Adult River Otters usually weigh 11 to 30 pounds. You can read more about Little Mo, see more pictures and another video of the pup from a past post  HERE on ZooBorns.com.

Read more after the fold:

Since both Tilly and the pup's father, B.C., were born in the wild, they are considered genetically important for the breeding otter population in North American zoos. Both parents are rescue animals who had a rough start to life.

Tilly was found orphaned near Johnson Creek in 2009. She was about 4 months old, had been wounded by an animal attack and was seriously malnourished. Once her health had stabilized, Tilly came to the Oregon Zoo in a transfer facilitated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which oversees the species' protection.

The pup's father, B.C., was found orphaned near Star City, Ark., also in 2009. He was initially taken in by the Little Rock Zoo, but transferred here the following year as a companion for Tilly. The two otters hit it off quickly and have been playful visitor favorites ever since. (B.C. arrived at the Oregon Zoo with the name Buttercup; when he was little, keepers thought he was female.)

Metro, the regional government that manages the Oregon Zoo, has preserved and restored more than 90 miles of river and stream banks in the region through its voter-supported natural area programs. By protecting water quality and habitat, these programs are helping to provide the healthy ecosystems needed for otters, fish and other wildlife to thrive. River otters are frequently observed in Metro region waterways.

For the last six weeks or so, some type of business has been under construction around the corner from my apartment. Nobody seems to know exactly what’s going to end up there, but today I noticed some new signage that, uh, raises more questions than it answers.

theclearlydope: Sunday is brought to you by …

1915 Broadway opening of “GhostBusters” source

rustindwyer:

FOUND DOG…NOW WE ARE BROS

Roger Ebert’s voice was literally silenced by cancer in 2006 but the world was still able to experience his invaluable thoughts, and his kindness, and his true liberal-hearted warmth.

He was more than just another well-read wiseass who knew how to craft a universally accessible message. For all the power that he had as America’s most notable critic, Roger Ebert was a man who deployed his well-regarded opinions through the lens of a strong and brave moral constitution. It was Ebert who more than anyone else realized the importance of Michael Moore’s narrative documentary “Roger and Me” and why a movie about the existential war on the working class needed to be seen by a country still huffing the fumes of Reaganomics. It was Ebert who understood the visual impact of his own fragile human form and used it to force Americans into understanding the moral importance of establishing healthcare as a right within our modern democracy.

Ebert’s clarion call against the rising tide of fascism within this country — as evidenced by our fascination with simplistic, yet enticing films celebrating social order through violence — shows that he wasn’t just a gentle man, he was also clear-sighted. Reading Ebert’s 1971 review of the entirely awful “Dirty Harry” in 2013 should send shivers down the spine of anyone who has paid attention to how our society views the existential issues democracy and safety:

There is a book named ‘From Caligari to Hitler’ that tries to penetrate the German national subconscious by analyzing German films between 1919 and the rise of the Nazis. I have my doubts about the critical approach (it gets cause and effect backwards), but if anybody is writing a book about the rise of fascism in America, they ought to have a look at “Dirty Harry.”

………

It is possible to see the movie as just another extension of Eastwood’s basic screen character: He is always the quiet one with the painfully bottled-up capacity for violence, the savage forced to follow the rules of society. This time, by breaking loose, he did what he was always about to do in his earlier films. If that is all, then “Dirty Harry” is a very good example of the cops-and-killers genre, and Siegel proves once again that he understands the Eastwood mystique.

But wait a minute. The movie clearly and unmistakably gives us a character who understands the Bill of Rights, understands his legal responsibility as a police officer, and nevertheless takes retribution into his own hands. Sure, Scorpio is portrayed as the most vicious, perverted, warped monster we can imagine — but that’s part of the same stacked deck. The movie’s moral position is fascist. No doubt about it.

I think films are more often a mirror of society than an agent of change, and that when we blame the movies for the evils around us we are getting things backward.

Ebert’s unassailable integrity, unmovable moral convictions, and fantastic sense of humor will always be an essential guide to those of us who look at the world and feel the need to make a few publicly accessible cogent remarks about it. Furthermore, his bravery in facing such a painful and prolonged march to death has undoubtedly touched us all as we ponder our own inevitable future. So tonight in his honor feel free to make something from his wonderful rice-cooker cookbook while watching Citizen Kane for the umpteenth time.

Oh and fuck Jim Hoft and his nasty-ass little brownshirt followers.

[NYT]

This post made possible by the Patty Dumpling Endowed Blogging Chair for Oil Spills and Whatnot.
Today in “just who in the hell is running this place?” Wonkette presents: Exxon. Ya know, usually our corporate overlords do a swell job with this Potemkin democracy illusion – the country’s farce in Washington with the “Senate” and “House” and “President” who supposedly constitute our “government.” But in the SAME WEEK Monsanto anonymously placed a provision into a spending bill to make sure all our seeds and farms and food are belong to them, Exxon is now controlling our airspace.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday that until further notice, no aircraft will be allowed to operate over the Mayflower oil spill in Conway, Arkansas. While there was scant explanation for the mandate, it was “effective immediately” – and ordered to stay in place “until further notice.”

The FAA’s online posting raised some questions Wednesday, though, by noting that “only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff” are permitted in the area. On his LinkedIn profile, Suhrhoff lists himself not as an emergency expert or safety official, but as an aviation adviser for ExxonMobil. Prior to ExxonMobil, according to his profile on the professional social network, he worked as a US Army pilot for 24 years.

Read that again. The FAA has said that ONLY Tom Suhrhoff can tell planes at a thousand feet if they can be there, and Tom Suhrhoff works for ExxonMobil. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, GO AWAY. Of course this “keep the ‘free’ press out of our business” thing is as common as an oil spill here in these United States — the FAA did the same thing for BP in 2010 and surely they will do it again for the next multi-billion dollar corporation who has an oopsie with their noxious land-ground-ocean-water poisonous petroleum. And is it a coincidence that EXXON IS JUST ONLY THE RICHEST THING EVER in the history of the universe, or maybe that’s why they get to do whatever the fuck they want? As CNNMoney notes, the company “earned $44.9 billion overall in 2012, just $300 million short of the world record.” Dang Exxon, maybe 2013 will be your year.

Meanwhile, our Congress is gonna cut Social Security and Medicare cause, well, you know, fiscal emergency and all, but Exxon still gets its $2 billion tax subsidy! We can’t cut that! ExxonMobil did not help direct Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force for nothing, people! Even when they do not spend their moneys to maintain their 65-year-old pipelines that just burst for no reason whatsoever in the middle of people’s neighborhoods. Exxon has more important things to do with its money, like funding the climate science denialist movement! Pay no attention to the rising sea level — it’s illegal to even say “sea level rise” in Virginia and North Carolina! — or the massive freakish annual once-in-a-century apocalyptic death storms.

So, are we all on the same page here? It is now illegal to view an oil spill in America, or video mountain top removal mining operations. You may not take notice of gigantic scams perpetrated by our too-big-to-fail-OR-jail banksters, or worry about how completely unregulated commodities futures trading has caused the prices for the most basic foods to sky-rocket over the last few years, and oh yes you will so eat genetically modified and genetically engineered food. What do you think this is? A Democracy?

[RT.com]

Twitter Twitter Twitter – @FakaktaSouth

Scientists managed to link the brains of a conscious human and an anesthetized rat, allowing the human to wiggle the rat's tail with his thoughts. And all God's creatures said, "Holy shitballs!"

Marko Popadic's photo "Oko" captures a spooky, sweet moment in which a butterfly alights in the eye-socket of a skull.

Oko (via Neatorama)

Last Dog

The village of Akazu’yw lies in the rainforest, a day’s drive from the state capital of Belém, deep in the Brazilian Amazon. Last week I traveled there, carrying a dozen Android phones with a specialized app for recording speech. It wasn't all plain sailing…

Read the full story here.

8.5 million geolocated tweets.

Above: a map created by James Cheshire, Ed Manley, and John Barratt, who collected 8.5 million geo-located tweets between January 2010 and February 2013.

Fast Company Design reports: "To build the image itself, they placed a point every 50 meters across the city. Tweets falling in close proximity were translated into a grid that you see here."

Among the revelations: Midtown is massively multilingual, "like a someone spilled a jar of confetti across the island."

More: Infographic: The Languages Of New York, Mapped By Tweets

Nathan Vedal wrote to tell me about an interesting mistranslation into Chinese that he recently came across.

Having purchased some not particularly healthy, but quite delicious, instant noodles produced by a Korean company, he was perusing the Chinese instructions, which included the following sentence:

Jiāng 550CC de shuǐ fàngrù guō zhōng, dài shuǐ kāi hòu, fàngrù miànguǐ jí tāngfěn.  Guò 4 fēnzhōng hòu, jué bàn jí kě shìyòng.

將550CC的水放入鍋中，待水開後，放入麵鬼及湯粉，過4分鐘後，覺拌即可適用。

"Pour 550 CC of water into pot and wait till it boils, then add the noodle devils and soup flavoring.  After 4 minutes, sense/feel-stir; can be eaten at once."

The directions are baffling.  What in the devil is miànguǐ 麵鬼 supposed to mean?

miàn 麵 ("flour; noodles")

guǐ 鬼 ("demon; devil; ghost")

Are they telling us to put "noodle devils" into the boiling water?

Nathan was ultimately unable to solve the problem until he found someone online who proposed a reasonable explanation.  As the author of this blog points out, it seems likely that what is intended is miànkuài 麵塊 to refer to the "block of noodles".  A similar omission of the radical (semantic key; semantophore) occurs in the last phrase where juébàn 覺拌 ("sense/feel-stir") should read jiǎobàn 攪拌 ("to stir"), the hand radical having been dropped from jiǎo 攪 ("stir; mix; disturb; annoy").

One would expect this kind of orthographically incorrect character to appear in handwriting, and, in fact, I've often encountered such mistakes in reading old manuscripts and letters from friends.  For typing with phonetic inputting (which is employed by the overwhelming majority of those who enter characters into electronic devices such as computers and cell phones), the more common kind of error would be to call up a different character or characters with the same or similar pronunciation, thus:

miánkuài 綿塊 ("cotton block")

instead of:

miànkuài 麵塊 ("block of noodles")

And, instead of:

jiǎobàn 攪拌 ("to stir")

the following might be mistakenly entered:

jiāobàn 交辦 ("assign to take care of")

jiǎobǎn 腳板 ("sole of the foot")

jiàobǎn 叫板 ("rhythmic passage at the end of a spoken part in an opera")

jiāobān 交班 ("hand over to the next shift [at work]")

jiàobān 轎班 ("palanquin / sedan-chair bearers")

jiāobǎn 膠版 ("offset plate" [for printing])

jiǎobàn / chāobàn 剿辦 / 勦辦 ("suppress by means of military action")

Whether as the result of phonetic inputting or shape-based inputting, one must be wary of entering incorrect characters in texts one is typing.  The only real safeguard against making such errors is to have a high level of literacy to begin with and to check constantly in dictionaries when one is unsure of oneself.

May your Easter dinner not consist merely of instant noodles, much less demon noodles!

A couple of days ago, Joe Fruehwald and Bill Labov were on WHYY, the local public television station, in a NewsWorks Tonight segment about "How the Philly accent is changing". The text version on the newsworks.org web site is nicely presented, with illustrative inline sound clips. You should read (and listen to) the whole thing!

A couple of years ago, Geoff Pullum put it this way:

Long-time Language Log readers will recall that we have often said here before that whenever someone says that the X people have no word for Y in their language you should put your hand on your wallet — to make sure it's still there. The people who witter on about who has a word for what hardly ever even know the languages they are talking about, and in the vast majority of cases (check out some of the cases on this list) their claim is false.

Yesterday, Tom Scocca was even more acerbic:

Whenever you hear someone explain that a concept is so foreign to this or that culture that people cannot even use their language to describe it, it is safe to assume your passport has just been stamped for entry into the Land of Bullshit.

Tom was talking about David Brooks' recent column on "The Learning Virtues", which claimed that "American high school students tease nerds, while there is no such concept in the Chinese vocabulary." As Tom notes,

There are multiple dictionary entries for "nerd" in Chinese, including terms for a dull and tasteless person (乏味的人, fáwèi de rén) and for someone excessively enthusiastic about computers (电脑迷, diànnǎomí).

The word for "nerd" in the sense Brooks means—"pedant" or "bookworm"—is "书呆子" (shūdāizi). If you're too shiftlessly American to have an English-Chinese dictionary handy, you can literally type "nerd" into Google Translate and find it.

I've already linked to a longer list of word-for-X debunking than any rational person would want to read, and I'm not in a position to evaluate the linguistic and cultural congruence of Chinese and English words for nerd-like states and actions, beyond repeating Geoff Pullum's advice to watch out for your conceptual wallet. So let me pick up on Tom's observation that "it wouldn't be a David Brooks column if he didn't try to reduce those complexities to a glib and shaky factoid".

In my opinion, David Brooks has an unparalleled ability to shape an intellectually interesting idea into the rhetorical arc of an 800-word op-ed piece. The trouble is, a central part of his genius is choosing the little factoids that perfectly illustrate his points. No doubt he's happy enough to use a true fact if the right one comes to hand, but whenever I've checked, the details have turned out to be somewhere between mischaracterized and invented.

The emblematic case remains Brooks' claim that it was impossible to spend $20 on dinner in Franklin County, PA, dissected in a Philadelphia Magazine article that Tom Scocca linked to ("Boo-Boos in Paradise", April 2004). Some examples from previous LL posts:

"David Brooks, Cognitive Neuroscientist", 6/12/2006
"David Brooks, Neuroendocrinologist", 9/17/2006
"David Brooks, Social Psychologist", 8/13/2008
"The butterfly and the elephant", 11/28/2009

thehipsterlifestyle:

This was created by the brilliant Judith Ann Braunn. Those of you lucky enough to live in or near Indianapolis can see an original (and definitionally temporary*) fingerprint graphite work created by Braunn at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as part of GRAPHITE, a show curated by none other than my wife.

It’s really encouraging to see good contemporary art getting >100,000 notes on tumblr, particularly because everyone is always telling me that no one is interested in contemporary art.

Here at Wonkette, we like to provide you with news you can use. Lately, we’ve been trying to keep a handy list of states we don’t want to live in ever, and we advise you Wonkigonians to avoid as well. We’ve already provided you with key reasons to get the hell out of Texas, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. We’re just going to keep this up until you liebruls have nowhere to go and have to stay in your effete East Coast enclaves. Today’s place to avoid is Tennessee, where healthcare for the poors has mutated into a hellish dialing for dollars scheme:

Two nights a year, Tennessee holds a health care lottery of sorts, giving the medically desperate a chance to get help.

State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through.

Two nights per year. Unless we didn’t make that clear enough: TWO NIGHTS PER YEAR. For one hour. FOR ONE HOUR. That’s how long you get to try to get through on the phone. It is just like you’re trying to get tickets from your local Clear Channel juggernaut radio station for that sweet-ass New Kids on the Block (with special guests 98 degrees, y’all) reunion tour, but instead you’re trying to get healthcare so you don’t go bankrupt or enjoy the exquisite pleasure of dying slowly in the streets. This is what freedom tastes like, America. And let’s not forget that it isn’t just that you get to speed-dial to help, a pathetic enough arrangement all by itself.  Nope, even if you get through, you just get the chance to apply for help:

She had called about 50 times when, at 6:40, she got through. The woman on the other end of the line asked for Ms. Gordon’s name, birth date, Social Security number, telephone number and address. Ms. Gordon wrote down a confirmation number, thanked her and hung up. The application, she was told, should arrive in a few weeks.

So Tennessee is so broke and poor and just plain fucked that they run a phone line for what works out to be 2 hours per year and all that phone line gets you is the right to ask for an application that will allow you to beg further. Oh! But Tennessee could get more money to help people, at a net cost of fucking ZERO dollars to the state for 3 years, but something something argle bargle black president:

TennCare already provides health coverage to 1.2 million people, more than half of whom are children, at a combined state and federal cost of about $9 billion a year. Many in the Republican-controlled legislature, which includes a strong Tea Party element, opposes its expansion even though the federal government has promised to pay the full cost for the first three years and 90 percent after that.

Now that, motherfuckers, is some principled opposition. It takes a special kind of balls-out horrible to deny health care to a bunch of people with steel plates in their back, crippling arthritis, and other conditions that make working sorta kinda out of the question just so you can stick it to the president. Way to keep hangin’ tough, Tennessee.

[NYT]

The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden
Mary Chase ~ Don Bolognese ~ Borzoi, 1968

I have no memory of knowing this book as a child (unlike this rabid fan), but I've certainly enjoyed it as a read aloud to the boy for a number of nights. And it was most definitely the sort of book that I would have loved as a young one. I found it on the library shelves and picked it up based solely on the awesomeness of the cover. Little did I know it was a collector's item and a little-known cult classic. The aforementioned rabid fan does a better job of telling the author's history (Tony-winning playwright and screenwriter of Harvey) and replaying that Knopf republished the book in the early 2000s (under the name The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House), so I'll stick with my own impressions of the story.

Let's just say if garden gnomes never freaked you out before, they will now.



Maureen is a troubled child. Known for being a bit of a bully and all-around wretch.

Maureen Swanson was known among the other children in her neighborhood as a hard slapper, a shouter, a loud laugher, a liar, a trickster, a stay-after-schooler. Whenever they saw her coming they cried out, "Here comes the Old Stinky," and ran away.

Known for being kept after class and having to write "I must not start fights on the school ground" on the blackboard, she is everyone's least favorite brat. But one day she sneaks onto the grounds of the neighborhood haunted house and meets a leprechaun.






































Now there are two kinds of people in the world who behave in two different ways when something unexpected happens. Most people take a step backward. A few step forward with a clenched fist. 

Maureen was one of these.



































This pretty much sums up Maureen's reaction to just about everything that happens in this book. It ends up she is trespassing on ghost-ridden soil and angers the spirits of a gaggle of seven of sisters who live inside their portraits and can transform into pigeons and cause a whole mess of trouble. Things really ramp up when menacing Maureen steals something from the sisters, and things spiral out from there.



































The illustrations are sparse but excellent and help to bring this killer spooky story to life. There are lessons here in taking responsibility and learning the virtues of lending a helping hand, but mainly it is a juiced-up ghost story involving lots of time travel and mystery. Full of all sorts of awesome.


--------------------------------------------------

What an exciting time it is to be a mother, especially one who loves to buy books, read books, and share books for, to, and with her child. Holding onto seven years old for another month, my son is still possessed by audio books (hometown boy Rick Riordan his perennial go-to listen), is still obsessed with all things graphic novel (Amulet, Big Nate, Astrix with comics like Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield and Lil' Abner's Shmoo sprinkled in), still loves to pull out pictures books for me to read to him (tonight was Moon Man, An Anteater Named Arthur and One Monster After Another)... all while using his alone time to read chapter books in Spanish to himself (Big Nate El Grande and Captain Calzoncillos y el ataque de los inodores parlantes) and then cap off the night snuggled in his bed reading Harry Potter. Though the boy has always loved books, spending the first two years of his academic life reading primarily in a language he didn't understand majorly curbed his love of reading to himself there for a while, so I'm happy to see it finally catching on!

On the flip side, he's also discovered all sorts of less literary things like Dr. Who (the tenth doctor is his fave) and Pokemon (he's never owned a card, played the video game or seen the show, he just likes looking at the characters in the Pokedex) and Where's Waldo (including finding on his own the disruption-inducing X-rated sketch tucked among the images). Which leads me to my post today. An adult (though not that kind of "adult") version of Where's Waldo, that's one part M. Sasek and one part Eloise with a wee bit of Martin Hanford (the randy) sprinkled in.

Illustrated by celebrated mid-century architectural illustrator Robinson (born Werner Kruse) in the early 1960s, after Rizzoli re-released his book New York Line by Line a few years back to much acclaim, they followed up that success by reissuing this a few days ago. Paris Line by Line was send to us by the publisher a while back and has been perused for a month plus by everyone in the house, daddy included.

From the forward in the original edition...

"Joie de vivre" are the key words of this old and yet so astonishingly young city. Nothing displays this better than the fine defense displayed in the clochard's retort to an impertinent stranger: "My bottle is not half empty, as you claim--it's half full!"




Paris Line by Line is a visual masterpiece. An intricately illustrated tour of Paris, each little line drawing holds all sorts of hidden treasures, making every read a new celebration. Notre-Dame with its stone gargoyles and kings. The Paris Opera in cutaway. The city by night. Mod hipsters.

Though it would be impossible to bottle up all the romance of Paris and house it in book form, this one comes pretty damn close.



Large and wonderful. Perfect.

Twisted Sifter has a great gallery of snowflake and ice crystal electron microscope photos. At this level of magnification, the ice looks like metal that has been machined by space aliens.

25 Microscopic Images of Snow Crystals

Giant Pandas don't much like to breed. This is bad news for the species and bad news for those of us who demand more panda cubs in our lives!

Fortunately, researcher Meghan Martin is taking on this prudish-panda-challenge. Her new project aims to determine whether providing pandas with a choice of mates, rather than just one, increases reproductive success.

Meghan is raising money on a new crowd-funding platform called Microryza, which allows individuals to directly follow and fund scientific research. How cool is that? She only has 18 days left and A LOT of fundraising to go. She won't meet her goal without our help. So ZooBorns fans, here's your chance to directly contribute to the science that results in the babies you love and the conservation causes you care about. Learn more about Meghan's work and do your part on the project page - Increasing the reproductive success in captive Giant Pandas

To whet our baby panda appetite, she also shared these wonderful photos of cubs born at BiFengXia Panda Base, where her research will be conducted.

Meghan Martin provided the following background on the cubs in these photos: 

The babies don't have names of yet.  They were born in the BiFengXia Panda Base (right outside of Ya'an, China) in July-August making them about 8 months old.  This is the base where all of the Wolong pandas were moved after the 2008 earthquake.  We've actually collected our first year of research data on these babies, their moms, and their dads.  
The babies don't have names yet - it's tradition in China to wait until they're older to name the cubs.  Right now they just call them "xiao" (small) and then their mother's name.  The pictured cubs are Hua Mei's cub, a San Diego born panda, Long Xin's, Shui Xiu, and Xi Mei cubs.   All of these pandas except for Hua Mei had two cubs.  Si Xue, Guo Guo, and Ye Ye all had cubs as well but they are not pictured.  
I've spent the most time watching Hua Mei's cub - she's a climber and is the one pictured in the tire swing!  Just yesterday she climbed to the top of a tree in one of the natural enclosures (picture attached).  In the wild the mother will often leave the cubs up in the trees while she finds food (kinda of the opposite from deer).  Long Xin's cub likes to curl up into a little ball on the platform and sleep all tucked in on himself.   At this age, they mainly love playing with each other, climbing, and getting into trouble. They're so inquisitive and investigate even the smallest bug in their enclosures. They all have this cute little instinct to roll up into a ball if you scratch the top of their tails and then you can roll them along the ground. 

So make a direct impact on the future of a species and invest in new Giant Panda cubs with a small donation to Meghan's groundbreaking research here  

For the first time in fifteen years, there are baby Goats at the Oakland Zoo. Mom Annie gave birth to four healthy babies, or kids -- two males and two females, all weighing between 3-4 pounds (1.3-1.8 kg) at birth. This is the first time the Oakland Zoo has had kids in about fifteen years, so it ‘s very special.

The gestation period of a doe is approximately 150 days long. Twins are the most common and quadruplets are much less common.  The kids will nurse for a few months, but the weaning process is slow. They will likely be eating some solid foods in addition to nursing for quite some time. A goat's digestive system will break down just about any organic substance, but their diet consists of mostly plant-based materials.

Annie was dropped off at the Oakland Zoo last October in need of a home. Zoo staff agreed to take her in as a rescue. The Oakland Zoo does not breed their Goats. "Like many companion animals, there are plenty of Goats out there that need good homes. Annie was one such Goat, but she was already pregnant when she arrived, so this is a rare opportunity for us to enjoy kids!" explained Zoological Manager Margaret Rousser. "Annie has been a fantastic mom so far and we are very proud of her."

Photo Credit:Oakland Zoo, Photo 1: Elizabeth Abrams, Photo 2, Adam Fink,  Photo 4: Emily Denes, Photo 5: Margil Haight

Watch below as the kids wag their tails and practice their natural climbing skills:

Read more after the jump:

Since Annie's family lineage is unknown, keepers are not sure what breed she is. It is believed that there is Nubian Dwarf and possibly some Pygmy in Annie, but it is difficult to say for sure.

Maggie, one of the female kids, was born with minor problems in the tendons of her hind leg. This prevented her from being able to stand on her own at first, but veterinary staff took proper action and splinted this leg which has allowed Maggie to stand, walk, and keep up with her siblings. She no longer needs her splint, so it was removed yesterday and she is having no trouble keeping up with her sibling! It is expected that the tendons will continue to strengthen as Maggie gets older.

Annie and her kids will be separated from the rest of the herd for an undetermined amount of time to allow them to bond and to give young Maggie's leg time to fully recover before being introduced to the herd. 

She stands just a few centimetres tall but this tiny new arrival at Chester Zoo is making a big impression. Aluna, the tiny Kirk’s dik-dik antelope, is not much taller than a TV remote. 

For now, she is being bottle-fed milk five times a day by the zoo’s dedicated curator of mammals after she failed to bond with her mother. She will be given a helping hand until she is old enough to tuck into a diet of buds, shoots and fruit on her own.

Photo credits: Chester Zoo

He said: “Our little one is growing stronger and stronger by the day and, all being well, it shouldn’t be too long until she‘ll be able to really hold her own. For the time being though her feed times are staggered through the day and she has her first bottle in my living room at home at around 7am. I then pop her into the car and bring her to work where she has another three feeds in my office. Finally, her last one is at 10pm back at my house.

“She’s already pretty quick on her feet and gives us quite the run around in the office. That’s why we’ve called here Aluna which means ‘come here’ in Swahili. It’s rather apt!”

Many more photos below the fold...

Native to Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia, the dik-dik gets its name from the noise it makes when running for cover. They can live for up to 10 years and reach a maximum size of just 40cm tall, making it one of the smallest antelope species in the world. 

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