Bits for Pets Blog

A colossal shire horse in Australia has been proclaimed the biggest horse in the world by its owner, beating the current Guinness World Record by several inches.

The giant five-year-old, from Pakenham, S.E Australia, measures a staggering 20.1 hands, or 2.057m tall. He weighs over 1.3 tonnes (1300kg) - about the same as a small car - and is still growing.

His owner, horse trainer Jane Greenman, 47, says the only time the lumbering beast runs is when there is food on offer.

“It sounds like a mountain moving when he gallops across the paddock to come and get his breakfast,” she says. “He eats an incredible amount. I would hate to run a team of eight horses his size - it would send you broke.”

Mounting the horse is no easy task, either. “We have to use a ladder to get on top of him, or swing off a tree,” says Jane.

The massive horse, whose full name is Luscombe Nordram, was born in Australia to a mare and sire imported from England. Noddy’s grandfather, Ladbrooke Edward (UK) was the world’s tallest horse during the 1980’s.

But Jane had no idea that the foal she hand-reared from the age of six months would grow this big. Noddy immediately began to rocket and soon overtook both his parents in size.

“Every year I measure him on his birthday and we discovered that he was getting really huge.”

Although she says that she is not interested in the Guiness Book of Records, nevertheless Jane has carried out her own research and is sure that Noddy comes top.

“The nearest is a horse in Texas, at 20 hands,” says Jane.

“Noddy is already an inch taller than that. The scary thing is he still hasn’t finished - shire horses aren’t fully grown until they’re about six or seven”.

Jane has hinted that Noddy could be sold overseas, possibly even fetching a record price to match his height.

She is reluctant to sell, but to fund the immense cost of keeping him she needs to put him to work. Despite Noddy being trained to harness heavy loads, this is not easy for a horse his size.

“He needs a job. It’s very hard to find jobs for such a big horse in Australia. I wish he could stay here but I’ve tried everywhere,” she says regretfully.

“I just want people to enjoy this beautiful animal as much as I do.”

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The RSPB has launched an appeal to help the UK’s fastest declining mammal, the Water Vole by purchasing an extension to one of its wetland reserves near London.

The RSPB’s Rainham Marshes reserve, next to the River Thames, is home to the UK’s largest remaining concentration of Water Voles. Its miles of reed-filled ditches form a stronghold for the species and it is hoped that by extending the reserve, the number of voles can also be increased.

The wetland habitat of Rainham Marshes not only supports Water Voles but also birds that feed on them like Short-eared Owls and Grey Herons, along with breeding waders like Redshank.

Water Voles declined by almost 90 per cent during the 1990s. Last month it was added to the list of creatures protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, making it an offence to kill, injure or take Water Voles from the wild.

Nick Bruce-White, the warden at RSPB Rainham Marshes, said: “We hope to buy more land at Rainham Marshes, creating a new and improved home for Water Voles and many other animals, such as wading birds and dragonflies. We are immensely grateful to our young members, who are working hard across the country to raise money to buy this extra bit of land.”

The appeal is being aimed at children everywhere who are being asked to raise money through sponsored activities. Every young person who raises money to help the appeal will get a certificate and a set of stickers.

Visit www.rspb.org.uk/youth to download a Rainham Marshes sponsor form.

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A gecko’s tail is as crucial to the animal’s acrobatic ability as its “sticky” feet, scientists report.

High-speed video reveals that the creature uses its tail as a “fifth leg” to prevent it from slipping as it climbs wet surfaces.

And the footage shows that if it does fall, a flick of the tail is all it takes for the gecko to land feet-down.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, said the discovery could aid the development of improved climbing robots and unmanned gliding vehicles.

The gecko is one of nature’s best climbers - its feet are covered with millions of microscopic hairs that allow it to effortlessly cling to smooth surfaces.

But while the reptile’s hairy toes have been extensively studied, little has been known until now about the role of the gecko’s tail.

Bob Full, director of UC Berkeley’s new Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research, and an author on the PNAS paper, said: “Initially, we thought the gecko’s climbing ability was all in the feet, but now we know that this is clearly not true and the tail is critical.”

The researchers discovered that if a gecko was climbing up a slippery surface and lost its footing, the creature would press its tail to the wall to prevent itself from slipping backwards while it recovered its grip.

Professor Full said: “We set up an experiment where we could see what would happen if a gecko fell off of the underside of a leaf.

“They started off with their backs to the ground, but when they start to fall, they swoosh around their tails, and by doing this they are able to rotate themselves so they move into a sky-diving or ’superman’ pose.”

This enabled the gecko to land on its feet, he told the BBC News website.

While other animals, such as cats, can rotate their bodies when falling to manoeuvre into a safer landing posture, the gecko is one of the few to use its tail to do this.

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In a laboratory in the heart of the east end of London, an unmistakeable buzz fills the air.

The small room is packed with bumblebees - hundreds upon hundreds of them going about their business in small wooden hives.

Despite their scientific setting, the insects look just the same as bumblebees found in the wild, apart from one small - really small - difference.

Most are adorned with minuscule silver tags, so tiny that at first they are hard to see. But every so often, as they catch the laboratory lights, they glint and sparkle, standing out from the bees’ fuzzy bodies.

These tiny accessories are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags - the same technology used to track stock in warehouses or supermarkets or employed for transport systems such as the Oyster Card payment scheme used on the London Underground.

They have been fitted to the bees by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), who want to keep track of the animals’ whereabouts so as to better understand these brainy bugs.

The tiny RFID tag can be just seen above the bee’s wings
Biologist Nigel Raine said: “Bumblebees have a relatively small brain - they have about 950,000 brain cells, humans have 100 billion - but they can achieve rather impressive feats of learning and memory given what they have got.”

Recent research has revealed that bees are able to recognise individual human faces, which, according to Dr Raine, is not that surprising given the daily challenges they face whilst foraging.

He explained: “When you think about your average park or meadow there might be dozens of species of flowers which are all different in terms of colour and shape and scent, and they are all differing in the rewards they are providing.

“Ultimately, the bees’ job is to go and find the best rewards from these flowers and they have to be flexible and learn and remember information, all the while making and breaking associations. This is all really quite complicated.”

Their navigational skills are impressive, too.

“These tiny animals leave their nests, fly back and forth between flowers, then they are somehow able to add all of these vectors together and fly back to their nest in a straight line,” said Dr Raine.

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Endangered heathland species in England could become extinct because of the poor condition of their habitat, conservationists have warned.

Natural England says wildlife, such as the stone curlew, nightjar and sand lizard, could disappear if lowland heathland is not protected.

It found all of the 104 sites surveyed were in poor condition, even those which were in conservation schemes.

Heathland is currently a priority for the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

Expansion of cities

Until about 100 years ago, heathland was a valuable resource for local communities. Trees were felled for fuel, animals grazed the land and the wildlife that favoured such open areas flourished.

Now, due to the expansion of urban areas and arable land, only 60,000 hectares (148,263 acres) remain covered by lowland heathland in England.

But even these do not meet the standards set for protected Sites of Special Scientific Interest, the latest survey for Natural England, the RSPB, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has found.

Sir Martin Doughty, chairman of Natural England, said such habitats needed to be protected to ensure the plant and animal species they support were “not lost forever”.

“There is clear evidence that many of the larger heathlands - such as the Devil’s Punch Bowl in Surrey and the East Lizard peninsula - managed for conservation and recreation are in better condition.

“To help restore other sites to these high standards we must ensure that they are properly targeted through stewardship schemes to secure appropriate management.”

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It may come as a surprise to most people that there are any seahorses at all in British coastal waters, and more surprising still that numbers appear to be increasing.

Seahorse experts met in London this month to discuss the apparent population surge in seahorses and their close relative, the pipefish.

The reasons for this increase, described as “rapid and dramatic” is not yet clear and a number of theories have been put forward including a natural population boom or warmer waters.

As with any shift in population, it is also having a knock-on effect upon other species, including sea birds.

They say although there have been changes in water temperature in the North Sea since around 1988, the large numbers of snake pipefish have only appeared in the last four or five years - putting a global warming theory in doubt.

“There is no doubt that numbers of snake pipefish have increased. In the last few years they are just everywhere,” said Professor Mike P Harris of CEH.

“Although climate change may well have had an effect, the jury is, we think, still out on this matter.”

Cindy van Damme of the Netherlands’ Wageningen IMARES - the Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies, believes she may be nearer an answer.

She says recent shifts in ocean currents have led to a change in the composition of plankton - it has shrunk.

“Plankton is the major food item of pipefish and sea horses. The mouth opening of this group of fishes restricts the prey size they can handle. We think this mechanism explains the huge increase of snake pipefish. Hence this outbreak may very well last for only a limited number of years.”

However long it lasts, it is impacting startlingly upon pipefish predators - which include everything from mackerel, dolphins, otters and sharks to seabirds.

Although they are eaten by birds such as gannets, kittiwakes and puffins, their spiny, ‘armoured’ forms, like seahorses make them difficult for young birds to swallow and digest - some young birds even choke to death on them.

Pipefish form a distinct family with seahorses (syngnathids) and as the name would suggest, look like straight-bodied seahorses with tiny mouths.

Numbers of the snake pipefish, once rarely seen in northern British waters, now often end up in the region’s trawler nets in vast numbers, say scientists.

Once associated with deep northern waters, they have even been found recently further south by fishermen in the Thames Estuary.

A European team led by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) says that the numbers of snake pipefish in British waters has increased more than one hundredfold since 2003.

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A Californian dog-lover has agreed to pay $150,000 to have her dead pit bull recreated in the world’s first commercial pet cloning project.

The dog, named Booger, died a year and a half ago but his owner kept part of his ear in cold storage and South Korean scientists will now attempt to create an exact replica of the pet.

RNL Bio, based in Seoul, said it is already working on the order. The work will be carried out by a team of Seoul National University (SNU) scientists led by professor Lee Byeong-chun, a key member of disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk’s research team.

Most of Hwang’s well publicised breakthroughs in cloning human stem cells were discovered to be fake last year. But the SNU team was successful in creating the world’s first dog clone, an Afghan hound named “Snuppy”.

Bernann McKunney, the American who really misses her dead dog, is thought to have become especially attached to it after the pit bull saved her life when another dog attacked her.

Specific breeds of pit bull are banned or restricted in several countries including the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

Cho Seong-Ryul, RNL’s marketing director, said the company’s success rate for producing dogs by cloning was high with around one out of every four surrogate mother dogs producing cloned puppies.

Cells have been extracted from Booger’s ear tissue and inserted into ova which were then implanted into eight bitches.

Since Lee and Hwang cloned Snuppy no other scientists have succeeded in creating cloned dogs.

“This will mark the first time that a dog is being cloned in a commercial contract,” Cho said. “The cost for cloning a dog may come down to less than $50,000 as cloning is becoming an industry.”

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A pet boa constrictor has gone missing from a family home in Newcastle.

The 5ft (1.52m) snake, a Colombian rainbow species, escaped from the property in St Anthony’s House, Byker, on Wednesday.

Police said the reptile, called Shakira, is not believed to be dangerous but its owner is concerned it may intimidate residents in the area.

Anyone who finds the family pet is advised to call Northumbria Police or RSPCA officers.

Sgt Paul Roberts-Bee said: “While the snake is a pet and has been brought up around children the owner is concerned it might intimidate anyone who comes across it.

“The reptile is not venomous and not thought to be a risk to the public.”

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Rusty, the obese chocolate Labrador, who hit the headlines a year ago when his owners were found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering, has reached his target weight.

Rusty weighed 74.2kgs, more than twice his ideal weight, when he was removed from his owners in March 2006.

Between March 2006 and January 2007, Rusty lost 24.6kgs in RSPCA care. He was returned to his owners in January 2007 on condition that he did not put the weight back on and remained under the treatment of his veterinary surgeon, Alex Wylie of Eastgate Veterinary Group in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

In December 2007, Rusty finally reached his target weight of 40kgs after receiving a special Royal Canin diet.

Rusty had also been suffering from untreated arthritic conditions, which have eased since his weight loss, and he is receiving arthritis medication donated by Meriel Animal Health Limited.

Rusty’s vet, Alex Wylie, said, “Rusty has made huge progress. We can now feel his ribs and he has a waistline at last. He is a much happier and healthier dog now, his pain is well-controlled and he walks much better than he could before. He can stand for long periods of time and doesn’t tire as easily.

“Prior to his treatment and weight loss Rusty was the most disabled dog I have ever seen in practice. However, he now has a proper life again.

“I honestly think that without the help of the RSPCA, Meriel’s donation and Royal Canin, Rusty would have been put to sleep by now.”

Give your pet a new lease of life and visit: www.petsgetslim.co.uk

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Six abandoned kittens have found an unexpected new mother figure - a pet rabbit.

Veterinary nurse Melanie Humble took the three-week-old kittens to her Aberdeen home.

The kittens seemed to think Summer the rabbit was their mother and began to climb all over her and try to feed from her.

Efforts will be made to find the four males and two females permanent homes in the coming weeks.

Melanie, 29, told the BBC Scotland news website: “The abandoned kittens were handed in when they were about three weeks old and I took them home.

“Summer the rabbit was taken inside on Bonfire Night because of the fireworks and the kittens seemed to really like her and thought she was their mother.”

‘She’s gigantic’

She added: “They were trying to get milk from her and climbing over her. And Summer was not bothered by them at all.

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