Today would be Jack London’s 134th birthday. The man was not only one of the most popular writers at the turn of the last century, he was also one of the first writers to see his novels be turned into a movie. In fact, his novel, The Sea Wolf, was adapted into the first full-length feature film. Also notably, he was one of the first celebrities to use his endorsement to advertise a product --in his case, grape juice and dress suits. To honor this prolific man, let’s take a look at the life and times of Jack London.

Who’s Your Daddy?

Jack London never was certain of who his actual father was, although most biographers believe his dad was astrologer William Chaney. His mother, Flora Wellman, claimed that Chaney insisted she have an abortion and that when she refused, he refused all responsibility for the child and left the city. Flora shot herself as a result of her overwhelming depression. Although she survived, she was temporarily deranged, and after Jack was born, she gave him to an ex-slave named Virginia Prentiss. After Flora married a Civil War veteran named John London, baby Jack was given back to the her, but Virginia remained a strong maternal figure to Jack throughout his life.

When Jack was 21, he searched for newspaper reports of his mother’s attempted suicide and was able to research the name of his supposed biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, but William claimed he couldn’t be Jack’s father because he was impotent. He claimed Flora slept around and that she had slandered him when she said he told her to get an abortion. Needless to say, Jack was devastated.

Education Versus Working Life

Jack grew up very working class and was forced to educate himself in the public library, as he could not afford to attend primary school. He was mentored by Oakland public librarian Ina Coolbrith who became California’s first poet laureate later on. Jack referred to Coolbrith as his “literary mother.” At only 13, Jack started working at Hickmott’s Cannery clocking in for anywhere between 12 and 18 hours per day.

In an effort to get out of this difficult life, he borrowed money from his foster mother and bought a boat. He then started working as an oyster poacher. Within only a few months, his boat was damaged beyond repair and he soon started working for the California Fish Patrol to hunt down fish poachers. A few years later, Jack started protesting and fighting for labor unions in Kelly’s Army.  He was known for giving stump speeches on Socialism to eager-eared workers. Soon enough, he spent 30 days in jail in Buffalo on vagrancy charges. The experience disturbed him seriously and he later wrote about it:

"Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were unthinkable to me until I saw them."

He returned to California where he finally started school at Oakland High. It was here, in the school magazine, that he was first published. His first story was Typhoon off the Coast of Japan, a recount of his experiences as a sailor. While attending classes, he was inspired to become a writer when he read the book Signa by Ouida, which told the story of an unschooled Italian peasant who became a famous opera composer. He credited this book as being the seed of his writing career. After high school, Jack eventually was able to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Unfortunately, the depression he began to experience after recently hearing from his father, paired with crushing financial circumstances, forced him to leave school only a year later.

Inspiration For "Bucks"

Most people know that Jack London was part of the Klondike Gold Rush, as this was the setting for his most popular story, Call of the Wild. Not everyone knows that the main character in the story, a dog named Buck, was based on a dog that Jack’s landlords had lent to him while he stayed in Dawson. While in the north, he developed a number of health problems, including scurvy, which eventually led to the loss of his four front teeth. The many hardships he faced during this period later served as inspiration for what is often called his greatest short story, To Build A Fire.

Breaking Into The Business

When Jack left the Klondike, he wanted to escape the difficulties of working class life and he realized his ticket out was his writing. Jack's first work printed by a major publisher, To the Man On Trial, ended up almost causing him to quit as soon as he started because the publisher was so slow to pay and the pay itself was so low. His second published story actually ended up being his first paid assignment, as they actually came through with payment on time. Luckily, that second story’s payment gave him the motivation he needed to continue writing, he entered his field at just the right time, as magazine production (and subsequently, the market for short fiction stories) was skyrocketing due to new technologies that allowed for lower production costs. Among the first stories he sold were Batard and Diable, which were two very similar stories about a French Canadian man who brutalized his dog, who then kills the man out of revenge. Those familiar with The Call of the Wild will recognize these plot lines as being fairly similar to the novel.

Eugenics Versus Love

Jack’s first marriage was to a friend Bessie Maddern. The couple never actually had a romantic relationship together --even after their marriage. They agreed to be married because they believed they would be able to produce strong and healthy children. While they had a loveless marriage, things remained exceptionally cordial before the children came along; Bessie edited Jack’s manuscripts and helped him improve his writing. After they had children though, the relationship became strained. Jack complained that “every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it." Not surprisingly, the couple’s relationship ended in divorce.

Jack’s next marriage was notably more successful, largely because it was based on love and not good genes. While his nickname for Bessie was “Mother-Girl,” his nickname for his new wife, Charmian Kittredge (pictured at right), was “Mate Woman.” With Charmian, Jack found more than a friend, he found a soul mate and a lover. She had been raised without prudishness and was very open to any and all of Jack’s lustful fantasies --this certainly helped keep Jack interested, as he was known for being a bit of a womanizer at the time.

The Making of a Historic Park

Speaking of his true loves, Jack was enamored with the ranch he bought in Sonoma County in 1905, saying, “next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." Jack wanted his ranch to become its own money making enterprise and dedicated a lot of his time to growing and improving the farm. It wasn’t long before he started writing only to support his farm. His daughter, Joan, noted that after 1910, "few reviewers bothered any more to criticize his work seriously, for it was obvious that Jack was no longer exerting himself." While the ranch ended up being a failure, Jack was largely ahead of his time and would likely have thrived in today’s eco-friendly world. He was one of the first U.S. farmers to practice the concept of sustainable agriculture and designed the first concrete silo built in California. His home was designed and constructed by the finest Italian and Chinese stonemasons. Unfortunately, just before the mansion was completed, it was destroyed by fire. Nowadays, his ranch is a National Historic Landmark and part of the Jack London State Historic Park.

A Rip Off Artist?

Many people, both past and present, have claimed London plagiarized much of his work. To some extent, the accusations were fair. When accused of basing The Call of the Wild on Egerton R. Young’s My Dogs in the Northland, Jack admitted that it was a "source" and he said he wrote a letter to the author thanking him for the inspiration. Jack even bought plots and novels from Sinclair Lewis and used them as his own.

The most damning case against him involved a chapter in his book The Iron Heel. Jack claimed that he based this chapter on a speech by the Bishop of London that he clipped from an American newspaper that he didn’t realize was actually an excerpt from an ironic essay by Frank Harris called “The Bishop of London and Public Morality." Harris was angered by this use of his essay and he argued that he should receive 1/60^th of all royalties for the book. On the other hand, some of the plagiarism accusations against Jack were merely a result of his using newspaper stories to inspire his plots.

A 1901 newspaper article criticized how similar his “Moon-Face” story was to Frank Norris’ “The Passing of Cock-eye Blacklock.” London defended himself by proving that both stories were inspired by the same newspaper story. Soon, there was even a third similar story discovered to have been written about the same article. This one was published a year earlier. When criticized for writing a story directly from a non-fiction article by Augustus Biddle and J. K Macdonald, London argued that it was fair game, saying, "I, in the course of making my living by turning journalism into literature, used material from various sources which had been collected and narrated by men who made their living by turning the facts of life into journalism."

A Contradictory Nature

Like most of us, Jack London was an extremely complex individual. As a result, many of his views seemed contradictory, even hypocritical. He was a life-long socialist, but was devoted to monetary pursuits. While he always looked to his black foster mother as a role model and worried about the white man destroying indigenous cultures, he also bought into Social Darwinism and eugenics. While he was a self-proclaimed alcoholic, he supported prohibition.

Death and Conspiracies

Jack died in 1916 of uremia. The kidney stones and dysentery he was suffering from at the time were extremely painful, so he was taking morphine, which may have contributed to his death. Because he wrote so many stories about people who killed themselves though, many people mistook his death for a suicide. A decade later, a writer known as B. Traven started to become known as “the German Jack London.” This author kept his identity secret his entire life, which led to some people speculating that Jack actually was B. Traven. Some supporters of the theory claim that Jack faked his own death only to reappear as the German later on. Funny enough, Traven’s own widow revealed his identity after his death, but some conspiracy nuts still claim he was actually Jack London, while others claim he was actually Ambrose Bierce.

Sources #1, #2, #3, #4

It seems strange that a man best known for creating the quintessential detective, who based his deductions solely on reason, would also be one of the biggest proponents of Spiritualism around the turn of the last century. Equally strange is that a man who based his career of performing illusions and magic tricks was one of the most stringent disbelievers of the same religion. Perhaps strangest of all was the friendship of these two men, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.

Good Beginnings

Houdini met Doyle while doing a performance tour in Europe. While the magician did not believe in Spiritualism, he had a strong interest in the subject and said many times that he did desperately want to believe, as he truly wished to speak to his beloved deceased mother. Doyle was already well-known for his support of the belief by this point, and was considered by many to be a saint of Spiritualism. When he met Houdini, he went about bringing him to some of the best mediums in Europe in an attempt to convert the magician. At this point, Houdini attempted to lead Doyle to believe that he was very open to the idea, but just undecided. He did enjoy hearing about the religion from a person he considered to be on the same intellectual plane as himself and not an entirely gullible person. Still though, the magician was able to see through the parlor tricks used by the mediums that Doyle brought him to. The more of the mediums he saw, the less convinced he became. While he did not yet begin exposing the frauds, he did record their methods and become increasingly frustrated with their taking advantage of people’s trust.

At Cross Purposes

Soon enough, Houdini started to begin his famous crusade against fraudulent mediums. He eventually even became part of a Scientific America committee offering a massive reward to anyone who could prove their methods were authentic --of course, no one ever managed to claim the reward. As his fame grew for these acts, Houdini even started attending séances in costume, taking with him a reporter and a police officer. Funny enough, Doyle actually supported these efforts at first, because he was afraid the fakes would damage the religion’s legitimacy. Although Houdini offered to show Doyle how to spot the tricks used  by mediums, Doyle insisted that the mediums he knew were extremely honest and would never cheat their followers. As Houdini started to push Doyle even further to admit the people were acting dishonestly, Doyle soon converted to the belief that Houdini himself was one of the most powerful mediums around. Doyle and other Spiritualists who held this belief claimed the magician actually dematerialized himself to make his famous escapes. They believed he was working to discredit other mediums so he could gain publicity and take his act even further. Doyle expressed many of these beliefs in his last book, The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini, unfortunately, was caught between a rock and a hard place with these accusations. He couldn’t actually reveal his tricks, but by not doing so, the Spiritualists still had ammo to claim he was a medium. While he simply stated that his escapes were all performed by physical means, these tales haunted him until his death.

Attempting to Convert Doyle

In an attempt to prove to Doyle that his performances only involved trickery, Houdini offered to perform a special trick for his friend. The two men were joined by the Bernard Ernst president of the American Society of Magicians for the test, which started with a room filled with a slate, five cork balls and some white paint. Doyle was instructed to choose one of the balls at random and then place it in the container of paint. He was then given a pencil and a piece of paper and was told to go wherever he wanted to write a message of his choice on the paper. Houdini and Ernst stayed in the room, while Doyle left the house, walked three blocks away and then wrote a message on the paper. He then folded the paper, put it in his pocket and returned to the house. Upon his return, Houdini instructed Doyle to pick up the ball and put it on the slate. The ball then began to roll over the slate, where it spelled out the words Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin, the same words Doyle wrote on the paper. While Houdini devised this test to show Doyle these methods all involved simple tricks, Doyle was convinced more than ever that Houdini was a medium.

Attempting to Convert Houdini

The two continued to be friends and spent a vacation together in Atlantic City shortly after Doyle’s speaking tour in New York. During the vacation, Doyle’s wife, lady Jean offered to perform a séance for Houdini. He accepted, trusting her sincerity and honesty, and tried to completely accept the realism of the experience. As stated earlier, Houdini wanted to believe, he still had not found anyone who was worth believing in though. He was particularly excited about the séance when Jean announced that she would be try to contact his mother. Houdini said, “I had made up my mind that I would be as religious as it was in my power to be and not at any time did I scoff during the ceremony… with a beating heart I waited, hoping that I might feel once more the presence of my beloved mother." Lady Jean entered a trance during the séance and her hand started moving, scribbling words across paper, which Doyle then handed to Houdini. The message detailed his mother’s pleasure in finally getting to contact her son. They started off saying, “Oh my darling, thank God, thank God, at last I'm through. I've tried, oh so often -- now I am happy. Why, of course, I want to talk to my boy -- my own beloved boy -- friends, thank you, with all my heart for this." After the séance, Houdini wrote a small note on the bottom of the paper, saying, “Message written by Lady Doyle claiming the spirit of my dear Mother had control of her hand -- my sainted mother could not write English and spoke broken English.” A few months after the Doyle’s returned home to England, Houdini went public about the incident. He said there was no chance his mother had been summoned in the séance based on her poor English and the fact that she never learned to read or write. He said he believed the Doyle’s did not deceive him intentionally, but were victims to their own gullibility. Doyle tried to argue against these claims by saying that language is universal to the dead. He also said Houdini was too nervous about the encounter to accept that it was his own mother speaking to him from the beyond.

The End of It All

After this, the pair tried to maintain some level of strained friendship, but the final blow came when Houdini began publicly attacking Mina “Magery” Crandon. His Scientific American panel was fervent in discrediting Mrs. Crandon after she came forward to claim the prize. Doyle was a huge supporter of Crandon, even praising her in his later book The History of Spiritualism. “The commission is, in my opinion, a farce," he wrote, "and has already killed itself." The two began privately quarreling, but by 1923, the were exchanging criticizing letters to one another via the New York Times. After they publicly feuded when their tours happened to cross in Denver, they stopped talking for good. A few years later, Houdini died. When his wife, Bess began clearing out his property, she uncovered a huge collection of books on Spiritualism and she opted to send them to Doyle. The author wrote back to her, stating his reluctance to accept the gifts though, because he thought Houdini harbored bad feelings against him up until the time of his death. Bess wrote back and said that Houdini had, in fact, held out hope of contacting his mother up until his death and even told her so on his death bed. She assured Doyle that Houdini carried no resentment towards him and that the press had greatly exaggerated the feud between the two. She best summed up Houdini’s thoughts by writing, “he was deeply hurt whenever any journalistic arguments arose between you and would have been the happiest man in the world had he been able to agree with your views on Spiritism. He admired and respected you --two remarkable men with different views.” Source #1, #2, #3, #4

When passengers on a Continental flight out of Houston were told their flight would be delayed because of otters, a lot of them laughed, thinking it was a joke. It wasn't.

There were a number of otters set to travel in the cargo area, but one somehow managed to escape its cage. "We watched them take them off the plane in a box, and the next thing we know one of the otters got loose and took off across the tarmac," said passenger Harvey Bullock.

The flight ended up being delayed a full 80 minutes, but at least the passengers were able to make cheesy 'otters on a plane' jokes for the rest of their lives.

Link Image Via Savagecat [Flickr]

If you don't celebrate Christmas because you belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, there's no reason you can't still enjoy delicious goodies this holiday season. Here's instructions on how to make your own edible spaghetti monster, complete with edible googly eyes.

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Being raised in sunny San Diego, I never even got to build a snowman before.  That's why I find snow sculptures to be purely impossible and amazing. Even if you've grown up in the harshest winters around though, you're still certain to be impressed with these detailed snow sculptures on Web Urbanist.

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Most people, including myself, tend to avoid getting close up to snakes,  photographer but Guido Mocafico sees the beauty in the animals and managed to photograph them in an amazing way that makes the rest of us able to appreciate them.

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Most gingerbread houses are humble homes with simple cookie walls and roofs and candy decor. Some gingerbread architects are far more inspired and artistic though, like the designers of the amazing gingerbread artworks on WebUrbanist.

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If you've ever wanted to have your own Christmas Story bunny costume from Ralphie's nightmare, here's your chance to make one all by yourself.

Link Via Craftzine

2009 has been a great year for weird news. Asylum has collected the best weird stories this year that were featured on the Digg homepage. Remember when Woody Harrelson attacked a photographer, claiming he thought he was a zombie? Or when the girl with stars all over her face lied about falling asleep in the tattoo artist's chair?

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Not Martha has instructions for making your own little tiny gingerbread houses that daintily sit on the edge of your mug, making for a festive and delicious accent to any cup of holiday coco. Link Via Laughing Squid

Some scientists say that bowling has existed since Egyptian times and that one of the earliest Egyptian pharaohs was uncovered with primitive bowling pins and balls in his tomb. Others dismiss these findings, but historians agree the sport has existed in some form or another since at least 300 AD in Germany. Needless to say, the sport has come a long way in the last millennia. In fact, it is now the most popular sport outside of soccer (football) worldwide and there’s even an active movement to make bowling an Olympic sport.

A Sport of Soldiers and Kings

The sport was referenced in writing for the first time when the English King Edward the III banned his troops from lawn bowling in order to prevent their being distracted from archery practice. While the game is now considered to be largely blue collar, Henry VIII is said to have been a fan of the game and used cannon balls in sport. Source

Evolution of An American Classic

Meanwhile, Germans continued playing a traditional outdoor version of the sport known as skittles, which used heavy balls to knock down small pins called skittles. This game served as the inspiration for the more popular modern forms of bowling, starting with ninepin, which was introduced in America in the colonial era. Unfortunately, the sport began being associated with gambling, workplace truancy, and crime, leading to its illegalization in many cities. In 1841, the entire state of Connecticut banned ninepin bowling, which some claim led to the invention of tenpin bowling by people who were circumventing the law. Others claim the game started earlier though and that it only gained popularity in the area due to the outlawing of the more common ninepin game. It is said that the wooden version of the modern bowling ball was invented on December 29, 1862, but it’s difficult to find more information on this claim than the date. Regardless, the first standardized rules for tenpin were undoubtedly established in New York City in September 9, 1895. Sources #1, #2 Image Via John McNab [Flickr]

Innovations Galore

In 1914, Brunswick improved the game switching out wooden balls with hard rubber balls. In 1936, bowling became a lot quicker and less expensive because the pinboys were replaced with semi-automatic pinsetters. In 1946, AMF created the first completely automatic pinsetter, which was soon replaced by a 1955 Brunswick model. The later versions of this machine are in operation in the majority of alleys today. The game’s popularity exploded in the U.S. in the 1970s after automatic scorer became commonplace in bowling alleys across the country. Because the scoring for bowling is somewhat complicated, bowlers before this invention came out had to have a somewhat detailed understanding of the game. Nowadays, casual bowlers, professionals and kids can all share the same lanes and not have to worry about the difficulties of keeping score. Source #1, #2 Image Via Hryck. [Flickr]

Scoring Is Harder Than It Sounds

I’m sure most of you know that in bowling, when you knock down a pin, you get a point for that pin. The confusion about scoring comes into play when the bowler gets a strike or a spare. When you get a strike, you get 10 points, plus the points for the next two balls thrown. When you get a spare, you get 10 points and the points for the next ball thrown. So, if you got a strike and then you get four pins and then six pins (a spare) and on your next frame you get one gutter ball and then one pin, you would get 20 points (10+4+6) for the strike, 10 points (4+6+0) for the spare and then 1 point for the open frame, for a total of 31 points for all three frames. In the last frame, if you get a strike, you get more balls. One reason the experts will still count their games by hand sometimes is that the pinsetter will occasionally knock down a pin that moved positions during play. The automatic scorer will often count these pins, but according to the official rules of the game, only pins that fall over on their own are supposed to be counted. If you happen to make strikes the entire game, you get 300 points for the twelve roll game. This is known as a perfect game. Source Image Via Roadsidepictures [Flickr]

Bowling Celebrities

While you may have laughed at the pathetic professionals in the movie King Pin, bowling celebrities, particularly in the 60’s were actually a big deal. In fact, the first athlete of any kind to receive a million dollar endorsement deal wasn’t a basketball or football player, but instead a bowler. Don Carter received this extraordinary deal in 1964 when he signed a multi-year deal with Ebonite International. In more modern times, there are still some notable celebrities in the sport, like Jeremy Sonnenfeld, who, in 1997, became the first person to ever roll three perfect games in a row in a three-game series. Also impressive was 2006’s 10 year-old star Chaz Dennis who was the youngest person in history to bowl a perfect game. Source

Controversy

With 1024 possible outcomes in a game of bowling, it is easy to see just how hard it is to achieve the perfect game. Still, a number of bowling purists claim that technology has been making this feat increasingly easy to accomplish. Changing materials in balls, synthetic lane materials, oiling machines that lay out the oiling patterns in ways that make it easier to hit the pins, have all made bowling increasingly easy. Reports of perfect scores have increased by several thousand percentage points between the 80s and today. As a result, these dedicated bowlers have developed a specific set of rules for what they call “sport bowling,” that makes the game more challenging, as it was in the 1970s. Source Image Via Johnathan Cohen [Flickr]

Terminology

Like all sports, bowling has its own jargon that can be difficult for non-bowlers to understand. In case you want to hold a conversation with some league players, here’s a few terms you may want to know (note the number of food-related terms, should bowling replace American football as the national Thanksgiving Day sport?):

-Bedposts: A 7-10 split -Dutch 200: A game where the player consistently alternates between strikes and spares, resulting in a score of exactly 200

-Goal posts: A 7-10 split -Golden turkey: Nine strikes in a row -Ham bone: Four strikes in a row -Six pack: Six strikes in a row -Thanksgiving turkey: A perfect game -Turkey: Three strikes in a row -Turkey sandwich: When someone gets a spare and then a turkey, followed by another spare -Wild turkey: Six strikes in a row

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The Healthy Side of Bowling

While most people have a less-than-athletic image of bowlers, the sport can actually be a good form of exercise and may help improve social relationships. Studies have shown it helps burn calories, regulates blood pressure and prevents osteoporosis and works muscle groups that are not normally exercised. Source Image Via calaggie [Flickr]

Seinfeld fans are sure to remember the Festivus episode starts with George giving cards to his co-workers that claims he made a donation on behalf to an imaginary charity. In a perfect example of life imitating art, Care4Less is now offering you the opportunity to make donations in the names of your loved ones to imaginary charities. The service doesn't cost a thing --except your integrity.

Link Via Consumerist

California man, Erik Estavillo, is suing Activision Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, for one million dollars because he claims the slow game pace is designed to take the player longer to get where he needs to go. He says the slow game pace is causing him anxiety, agoraphobia, depression and Crohn's Disease.

Lest you think that was the highlight of the suit, just wait until you hear the witnesses he is calling on his behalf: Winona Ryder and Martin Lee Gore, the founder of Depeche Mode. He thinks Winona's interest in Catcher In The Rye makes her qualified to discuss alienation and that Gore's songs make him an expert in alienation because he is "sad, lonely and alienated, as can be seen in the songs he writes."

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Zoos, or at least animal menageries, have been around since at least Roman times when exotic animals were collected for the purpose of being used in battles in the coliseum. During medieval times, the greatest zoo around was actually contained in the Tower of London. It was opened to the public for the first time during the reign of Elizabeth I.

During the 18^th century, guests could visit the zoo for only three half-pence, or they could come for free if they brought a dog or cat to feed to the lions. This animal collection was eventually moved into the world’s first official “zoo,” the London Zoological Gardens. Over the years, zoos have moved from being collections of caged animals designed to please the public to expansive parks dedicated to maintaining ecological diversity and conservation. While modern day zoos are mostly safe places where the public can go to see wild, exotic animals, this isn’t always the case. Here are some weird stories relating to modern zoos in honor of Visit The Zoo Day on December 27. Image Via www.theedinburghblog.com [Flickr]

Gaza’s Painted Donkeys

When the only two zebras in the Mara Land Zoo in Gaza Strip starved to death during the Israel-Hamas war, zoo officials knew they needed the popular creatures in order to entertain the crowds. Unfortunately, replacing the expensive attractions through the secret underground tunnels in the area was not an option for the financially strapped zoo. So keepers did what any good zoologists would do and just faked their zebra collection by painting donkeys to look like their stripped cousins.

To give them the dye jobs, zoo keepers used masking tape and black hair dye to create “authentic” stripping patterns on the creatures. While it may sound like a bad solution, many of the zoo’s young guests had never seen a real zebra and were equally impressed by the frauds. I guess it is still better to see a mock wild animal than no wild animals. Source Image Via Associated Press

The Loneliest Pig In the World

What’s exotic to one culture may just be a standard farm animal to another, as evidenced by Khanzir, the only known pig in all of Afghanistan. Because pork products are illegal in the country, the pig is a true rarity in the country, who received Khanzir as a gift from China. As if the poor pig wasn’t lonely enough grazing beside goats and deer, when fear of the swine flu hit the country, he was forced to spend his time in quarantine all by himself.

The zoo director, Mr Saqib explained the zoo’s decision to isolate the animal, despite the knowledge that it would not actually be able to infect the general public, "The only reason we moved him was because Afghan people don't have a lot of knowledge about swine flu, and so when they see a pig they get worried and think they will get ill." Mr. Saqib does have hopes to alleviate the pig’s loneliness though, he says after the swine flu concerns die down, he would like to get Khanzir a female companion. Perhaps then, poor little Khanzir could at least be a member of the only pig family in the country. Source #1, #2 Image Via BBC

In Case of Escaped Rhino…

If you’ve ever wondered how keepers prepare for the possibility of an animal escaping the zoo, you’re not alone. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the internet, a Japanese training session to get keepers prepared for a potential rhino escape has been caught on tape and made its way into your home. The “rhino” in this case is pretty darn terrifying, what with its eight legs and all. While the team’s efforts seem effective, you have to wonder if they would work nearly as well when the beast is actually 1 ton and angry as all heck.

Orangutan Escape

Perhaps those zoo keepers should have worked on their plans for escaped primates rather than escaped rhinos. A video seen on Animal Planet (sorry its not embedded, but they don't offer that service) demonstrates the terrifying things that happened when a four-hundred pound angry orangutan broke out of its cage and chased tourists and charged security guards. During his escapade in the outside world, Blacky also smashed some scooters and took control of a camera tripod hoping to use it as weapon against the guards who shot him with a tranquilizer dart. In the shot, you see just how long it takes for a huge animal to fall after getting shot with a tranquilizer dart --meaning the rhino training exercise certainly was optimistic about that part of the procedure.

Nuts About Knut

In nature, it is not uncommon for a mother to abandon her cub. Some environmentalists claim that the best thing to do in these situations is to let nature take its course and let the cub die off. But when the animal is already affected by human intervention because it lives in a zoo, it seems more than a little cold-hearted to just abandon the cub. Zookeeper Thomas Dörflein agreed, which is why he saved a two newborn polar bears that were abandoned by their mother.

One of the bears died of an infection within four days, but the other, Knut, was hand raised by Dörflein, who provided the cub with around-the-clock care. Only a few months into little Knut’s life, a German tabloid carried an article about Knut that featured a quote by animal rights activist Frank Albrecht, who said the bear should have been left to die rather than be subjected to a life as “a domestic pet.” The director of another local zoo agreed with Albrect and said that keepers should have “had the courage to let the bear die.”

To be fair, both of the people quoted said they were taken out of context and Dörflein has said that he was making a point about a German court's decision saying that it was OK for another zoo to have euthanized an abandoned cub in a similar situation. Naturally, animal lovers everywhere rallied in support of the little bear and the Berlin Zoo vowed to keep him alive and care for him. As a result of the controversy, Knut became a worldwide celebrity and videos of the little cub with his zookeeper were loaded onto YouTube for everyone to marvel at. His fame brought so many visitors to the zoo that it soon experienced its most profitable year out of its entire 163 year history.

As Knut grew older, he continued to be a popular attraction for visitors and he is still living at the zoo. Unfortunately, Dörflein died of a heart attack in 2008, although he remains a hero to many residents of Berlin.

Source Image Via Jean-Luc [Wikipedia Commons]

Human Exhibits

A long time ago (actually as recent as 1958 in Brussels), it wasn’t uncommon for humans of other races to be displayed in zoos alongside exotic animals. While racism in that time is not unusual, having people live in a zoo these days certainly is. But in 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia ran a zoo exhibit where humans were housed in a former ape enclosure (they did get to go home at night). Inhabitants took part in a number of exercises and the amused onlookers were then asked for donations towards a new enclosure for a new exhibit for the chimpanzees.

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I've always thought there was something magical about the Pixar Studio's compound located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but getting to see these cool pictures of the inside just confirmed my wildest fantasies about how awesome it is. Imagine working at a place loaded with giant cartoon characters, free food, pool tables, video games and more.

http://topcultured.com/a-look-inside-pixar-studios-20-pics/