Bits for Pets Blog

A virgin birth is expected this Christmas, though this particular nativity scene will be set in a zoo instead of a stable.

That’s because the virgin in question is Flora the Komodo dragon, a giant lizard at Chester Zoo in England that has laid fertile eggs despite never having had a mate.

DNA tests confirmed Flora was the sole parent, says Chester Zoo curator of lower vertebrates Kevin Buley.

“Essentially what we have here is an immaculate conception,” he said, adding that the eggs could hatch as soon as Christmas.

“We will be on the look-out for shepherds, wise men, and an unusually bright star in the skyover Chester Zoo,” he joked.

Flora, along with another female Komodo dragon from the London Zoo, represent the first known cases of virgin birth in the world’s largest lizard, according to researchers.

The two reptiles are examples of a process called parthenogenesis, in which offspring are produced without fertilization by a male, according to a report in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Single-parent reproduction is hardly ever seen in such complex animals, having been documented in just 0.1 percent of vertebrates, the study team says.

The finding that Komodo dragons are capable of self-fertilization may open the way for many more such discoveries in other animals, says team member Richard Gibson, curator of herpetology at the London Zoo.

Virgin birth, he says, is “considered a very rare phenomenon, but the fact that we’ve got these two lizards suggests it’s not as rare as we thought. We recorded it in two unrelated females within the space of a year in two different collections.”

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WE all know that a dog is for life and not just for Christmas. But every year many people do not heed that message.

Now a Swindon surgery is asking potential Christmas kitten and puppy buyers to stop and think before they purchase their pet.

A number of rescue shelters near Swindon close their doors to adoptions in the days before Christmas for fear that animals are being bought as presents.

Jo Mitchell, 35, a nurse at the Drove Veterinary Hospital, is urging such potential pet owners to look carefully at the costs of buying a pet for Christmas.

Jo said: “Christmas is a tough time for all of us. We have the presents, family visiting, getting the dinner ready and then there are all the decorations up, and giving a present like a kitten or a puppy when all that is going on can be extremely stressful for the pet too.

“Suddenly it is surrounded by a lot of people, and there are lots of things it can climb on and chew and puppies can be particularly destructive, especially if distressed.”
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Jo is inviting families looking to buy a Christmas pet to come to the surgery to discuss what sort of pet might be suited to the family, its dietary needs, exercise and vets’ bills.

“The old saying about a dog is for life, not just for Christmas is still just as important today as it has ever been, and when we are talking about life, that can be for up to 20 years - so people could still be looking after pets long after the children have grown up and left home.

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A drag queen bridesmaid, a “page dog”, and a gay men’s choir have helped to mark a wedding on the first anniversary of civil partnerships becoming law.

Jamie Hakim, 36, and Graeme Youngs, 41, became the 680th couple to tie the knot in the Sussex city of Brighton.

Their vows focused on love, honour and respect, and they exchanged rings each set with a diamond taken from a ring worn by Mr Hakim’s late grandmother.

The unorthodox supporting cast also included a best man and a best girl.

The couple met more than 12 years ago and moved to Brighton in 2001.

Mr Hakim said their key reason for Thursday’s ceremony was to cement their relationship.

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A freshwater dolphin found only in China is “effectively extinct”, an expedition has declared following a fruitless six-week search.

The Yangtze River dolphin, or baiji, was listed as “critically endangered” on the Red List of Threatened Species.

It has been dying out due to habitat degradation, overfishing, pollution and ship traffic - which confounds the sonar the animal uses to find food.

Zoologists announced a plan to save the mammal earlier this year.

“We have to accept the fact that the baiji is extinct. We lost the race,” said August Pfluger, co-head of the expedition and director of baiji.org, an environmental group dedicated to saving the animal.

“It is a tragedy, a loss not only for China, but for the entire world,” he added.

Mr Pfluger admitted it was possible that animals had been missed despite the use of optical and acoustic equipment and trained observers.

The baiji lives along the lower reaches of China’s environmentally-degraded Yangtze River and is thought to have been in existence for about 20 million years.

If confirmed, it would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Californian monk seal in the 1950s.

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A man whose dogs killed a rare animal at Belfast Zoo in January has been ordered to pay £3,500 compensation.

Emma, an adult vicuna (a member of the camel family), was killed and Boris II, a six-month-old calf, badly injured after being attacked by four dogs.

The dogs were uncontrolled and unaccompanied at the time.

John Hennessy, of Ben Madigan Heights, was found guilty on Tuesday of 11 charges arising from the incident. Two of the dogs are to be destroyed.

Belfast Magistrates Court ordered him to pay fines and compensation totalling £3,500 to Belfast City Council, which runs the zoo, as well as issuing destruction orders against two of the animals.

Speaking on behalf of the council’s Dog Warden Service, which brought the prosecution, a spokesman said: “None of the dogs were covered by the Dangerous Dogs legislation but they were clearly dangerous.

“This prosecution again underlines our determination to deal effectively with aggressive behaviour and actions by dogs, irrespective of breed, in order to protect the people of Belfast.”

Zoo manager Mark Challis said dog owners must understand the importance of controlling their pets, “particularly those who live in close proximity to the zoo”.

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Rabbits are the most abused domestic pet in England and Wales, with 35,000 abandoned every year, says the RSPCA.

The animal charity said a survey found that 70% of rescued rabbits had been kept hutched 24 hours a day.

Almost 40% had had no food, and half had been living in filthy conditions, it told the BBC.

It found that people bought rabbits but then quickly lost interest. On average the abandoned pets it came across had been dumped after just three months.

Many were simply released in the street or into the wild.

Responsibility

Rabbits are the third most popular pet after cats and dogs and the RSPCA says that rescue centres are struggling to cope with the 35,000 unwanted pets abandoned every year.

Anne Mitchell from the Rabbit Welfare Association warned that parents needed to realise the responsibilities that go with caring for rabbits.

The animals can live for up to eight years and cost £4,000 over their lifetime.

“If you didn’t have the children, would you be keen to have the rabbit? If you wouldn’t, don’t do it,” she said.

“Ninety percent of children get bored, they’re tired very quickly of the chores.

“You can’t treat it like Barbie doll and Action Man and just stuff it in the cupboard under the stairs, although sadly some of these rabbits do end up like that, totally neglected.”

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His eldest son Amjad Khan, 21, said his father had been performing at a show in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday when he was bitten by a King Cobra.

Ali Khan, who regularly performs with his beloved snakes for charity and for a living, died at 1am yesterday at Kuala Lumpur Hospital where he had been recuperating.

Amjad Khan related that when his father contacted him on Tuesday to tell him he had been bitten, the family had not been too worried.

“He had been bitten by snakes many times before, including three times by King Cobras. The first King Cobra bit him in Taiping when he was 21.

“So we didn’t think anything would happen. I was just relaks saja (calm),” said Amjad Khan at their flat in Kampung Boyan here yesterday.

On Thursday night, his condition took a turn for the worse. Family members here received a call from Amjad Khan’s uncle to go to the hospital.

Well known for his daring feats with cobras, Ali Khan had also made it into the 1997 Guinness Book of World Records, living in a glass enclosure filled with more than 5,000 scorpions for 21 days. He set another record by living with 400 snakes for 40 days.

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A gruesome trap has snared a pet cat in Worcester, leaving it badly injured.

The metal gin trap is eight inches long and is illegal because its jaws are serrated, enabling it to hold its prey.

But that didn’t stop someone using it in the Bath Road area of Worcester.

Marianne Davies believes her three-year-old silver tabby, Codie, is lucky to be alive after getting her leg trapped in the lethal device.

Codie went missing on Sunday, November 19, and Miss Davies put up posters around her home in The Hill Avenue, off Bath Road, the following day in the hope someone might have seen her.

Later that night a resident in nearby St Dunstan’s Avenue heard a wailing sound and spotted Codie stuck between their garden fence with the trap around her leg.

The trap had torn a hole in Codie’s paw and she had to have veterinary treatment and take anti-inflammatory medication for the swelling.

Miss Davies has now reported the matter to the police and RSPCA and is calling on them to find the trap’s owner. She said she believed it was placed on the allotments off Hill Avenue.

“Luckily she didn’t break any bones but what if it was a child? I was absolutely disgusted as she was out minding her own business and then gets caught in this trap,” said the 25-year-old office worker.

RSPCA spokeswoman Judith Haw said an inspector had been called and had seized the gin trap.

She said door-to-door enquiries had been carried out to see if anyone knew who it belonged to. “Obviously whoever set the trap is committing an offence - they’re indiscriminate and cause a lot of pain and suffering to animals,” she said.

“A child could even get caught in them so they’re very, very dangerous.”

A Worcester police spokesman said officers were investigating to see if an offence had been committed. “Unfortunately, it’s not un-common for domestic pets such as cats, to be caught in snares.

“There are many regulations relating to the use of snares and similar apparatus. Although there are, in reality, 17 different types of snare that can be used legally in the UK, others not included in legislation are periodically found in use.

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Ageing cats can develop a feline form of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.

A team from the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Bristol and California have identified a key protein, which can build up in the nerve cells of a cat’s brain and cause mental deterioration.

Alzheimer’s disease in humans is thought to be the product of the protein ‘tangling’ inside the nerve cells, inhibiting messages processed by the brain.

The scientists believe that this protein is present in cats too, and is proof that they can develop this kind of disease.

By carrying out post-mortem examinations of cats that succumbed to the disease naturally, the team are now able to investigate how the condition develops in felines. This may eventually help scientists to come up with possible treatments.

Scientists have suspected for a long time that cats could suffer from dementia in their old age, and previous research has already revealed the thick, gritty plaques on the outside of elderly cats’ brain cells which are similar to those found in humans.

But, by pinpointing this second key marker, the Edinburgh-led team says we can be sure that cats can suffer from a feline form of Alzheimer’s.

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George Clooney’s beloved potbellied pig Max has died.

The pet passed away at the ‘Syriana’ actor’s Hollywood home from old age. He was suffering from arthritis and partial blindness.

Clooney told the USA Today newspaper: “He was as old a pig as the vets had ever seen. I was really surprised when he went. I’m really upset, he’s been a big part of my life.”

The 45-year-old actor had Max for 18 years, and often spoke of his affection for his pet hog, referring to him as “Max, the star”. He even shared his bed with the pig.

Max is not the only animal friend Clooney has lost this year.

He explained: “It has been a bad year for my pets. I had a bulldog that died this year, too. It’s strange how animals become a bit part of your family. They really become a big issue with you.”

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