Perhaps the only good thing we can take out of the long incarceration and murder of Lennox, the black terrier-mix mutt whose only crime was to resemble a pit bull in Northern Ireland where the breed is banned, is that his plight inspired thousands of people from all walks of [...]

The day Obama was sworn in as president, my neighbor flew his Hummer-sized American flag at half mast. I thought it was pretty funny. At that point I still had a lot of hope for the whole “Change you can believe in” mantra. Based on the position of the United [...]

On July 4th, South Korea’s delegate, Kang Joon-suk, unveiled to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) that his country intends to start hunting minke whales for scientific research. Ultimately, South Korea intends to analyze the ecological and biological data in order to gauge the quality and size of nearby whaling populations. [...]

As humans retreat to our air-conditioned malls, movie theaters and homes, many pets and wildlife are stuck outside dealing with the most intense heat wave in the country since the 1930s Dust Bowl era when crops wilted and water was a cool commodity. “During the past 30 days, a stunning [...]

Every now and then, nature gives us things that make us look twice. Bio-luminescence is one of those things, literally meaning bio and light, it refers to the production of light by living creatures. There’s something a bit magical and otherworldly about light anyway. It fuels so much of our [...]

The dog and cat anti-mutilation bill is back, despite already being terminated once before by the Governator in 2010. California SB 1229 would prohibit landlords from requiring a tenant or a potential tenant to have a pet declawed or  devocalized as a condition of occupancy. In reality, declawing entails amputation [...]

From Monsanto to MSG, there are a million reasons to pay attention to your food. Meet million and one. People finding gross things in their grub hasn’t been the topic of conversation since this woman found a chicken’s head deep fried into a McNugget in Virginia in 2007. Sure she [...]

I need my gun so I can shoot people who cut me off on the 405. Wait. Did I say that out loud? No, no. I need my gun so I can shoot animals who’ve done nothing to me. And, I need to be protected by law to choose any [...]

New research published last month in the journal Polar Biology suggests that courtesy of global warming, the population of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) is on a steady decline with more than a third of their colony gone over the course of the past 20 years. Researcher Andres Barbosa and his colleagues counted the [...]

“We don’t eat animals,” my 3-year-old told our new neighbor proudly before her smile turned to deep seriousness, “but, my papa kills black weirdos ’cause they will hurt me.” “Widows,” I said quickly. “He kills black widows. Well, he used to.” Despite warnings from friends, family, strangers, the postman and [...]