Many Ubiquitous TV Jingles Make Dogs Sing, But Why?

Dogs sing to the most ubiquitous songs on TV. Do they hate the Empire Carpet jingle as much as we do? Or do they like the familiarity of another Law and Order?

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Zombie Birds shows us we still have a lot to learn about animals

The latest animal research seems to prove that animals are sexually and morally freaky in ways we never imagined. This book turns biology into fun sideshows.

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Would you be nicer to pigeons if they were green?

Artist Julian Charrière gave the despised pigeons of Venice’s St. Mark’s Square a flamboyant makeover in green, blue and red. Tourists went nuts for the pretty birds. What did the other birds think?

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Beagles howl to shofar on Bastille Day in Prospect Park

30 or so beagles partied for Bastille Day in Prospect Park. We blew a shofar to set off the baying and activate their inner beagle.

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Beagles compete for singing dog prize on Bastille Day in Prospect Park

Beagle in a beret

Dozens of beagles are meeting up Prospect Park on July 14 for a singing contest and Bastille Day coffee and bagels. Beagles love all hounds, so if you think your mutt might be part beagle, you’re officially invited. Free biscuits till 9 am.

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700 Helmet hummingbird feeders floating around North America

Can you not stand sitting feet away from amusing hummingbirds as they steal sweet nectar from your feeder? Inventor Doyle Doss solved the age-old problem by devising a red face shield that serves the sugar water from a tube between your eyes. Since 2008 he says he’s sold about 700 of these. So while people may be freaked out to see one, hummingbirds may actually begin to recognize what they are and come right over.

Doss has some serious, boring inventions and then a side-line in goofy stuff like the face feeder, which he came up with after a hummingbird hovered in front of his red bird.  “A hummingbird came out of nowhere and just hung there, two inches from my nose,” he says. “My immediate response was, I froze. I never forgot the experience. It was such a magical type of thing.”

Decades later, Doss took a professional welding face shield and covered it in a red pattern that hummers love. Then he put a rubber tube between the eyes to be filled with sugar water. The birds came. This isn’t the first attempt at a hummingbird helmet. This adorable video shows a little girl watching hummingbirds in the more popular variety–and initially flinching and scaring them away.

The face shield serves to draw hummers in (they love red) and to make humans confident they won’t get their eyes poked out. Hummingbirds are so agile, they’re not going to go bumbling into your face.

Doss says the tube was the hardest part to figure

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Curious Critters: local animals with excellent PR

Photographer David FitzSimmons gives local birds, frogs and other common animals the spotlight in a kids book with sharp macro pictures and funny text.

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Ambitious squirrel plays in baseball playoffs. Twice.

Squirrel runs onto baseball diamond during playoffs in St. Louis for the second time this week. I think he’s an adolescent male–typically obnoxious in any species–drawn in by peanuts.

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Miniature Daleks take on UK's gray squirrels

Chris Balcombe, a BBC props expert, enticed a gray squirrel to put on a Dr. Who dalek custume by putting some nuts inside it.

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Stuffed animals fools my dogs, Hampshire police

Police in Hampshire, UK, responded to reports of a white tiger in a field by sending in armored officers and a helicopter, only to find out it was a toy. My beagles are looking smarter.

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