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10 Weapons That Animals Use We've come a long way from thinking that what separates us from the animals is, say, using a rock to bash in the skull of our competitors. It turns out that there are a lot of creatures out that that re-purpose tools to make their personal world better and someone else's world a lot worse. Take a look at the world's craziest and most intimidating weapons wielded by animals. 10. The Herring Gull's Bread This bird has learned how to use bread to construct a trap. Herring gulls live in large colonies in the urban...

A little break from the class warfare obozo has declared.... Cat on boat plays with dolphin

Dolphin and cat together at last.

Recently-posted video footage showing a cat's incredibly cute encounter with dolphins at a marine park in Islamorada, Fla., is touching the hearts of viewers from around the world.

FISHERMEN use tarpaulins in a bid to cover up the slaughter of dolphins - as secret filming exposes their horrific killing methods. Officials had claimed the mammals were destroyed humanely after 2009 Oscar-winning documentary The Cove told how 2,000 were killed every year in Taiji, Japan. Video's and Pictures at the site, not pretty

This little dolphin of about 10 days, was found by tourists, apparently showing marks of a fishing net. (see link for more photos)

Researchers studying dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean have found that, contrary to expectation, dolphins are not opportunistic feeders that take whatever prey is available.

Israel Navy's submarine fleet: an intimate but demanding unit The navy's submarine fleet is due to triple in size in the coming years. A glance into the intense lifestyle of soldiers in this most secretive unit. The Israel Navy's submarine fleet is one of the Israel Defense Forces' most intimate units. The atmosphere in the unit derives not only from the nature of its missions, which require several dozen men to remain together underwater in an iron tube for many long days, but also because very few soldiers serve in the unit. In the coming decade, the fleet is to...

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Sub order: Israel to ask for German cash Published: Oct. 8, 2009 at 11:48 AM BERLIN, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Germany has been asked to help fund yet another submarine for the Israeli navy. Jerusalem plans to order another submarine of the Dolphin class from German Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG and has asked the German government to subsidize the order, German news magazine Der Spiegel reports. Berlin has helped Israel pay for five previously ordered submarines. The first two (named Dolphin and Leviathan) were a gift by Germany after it surfaced that German companies were involved with Iraq's chemical weapons program....

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Israel has taken delivery of two German-made submarines capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads. "We have received two Dolphin-class submarines built from Germany," Israel and Arab media reported quoting an anonymous Israeli military spokesman. Called U212s, the submarines were upgraded in Germany by Israeli technicians and engineers in order to enable them to carry nuclear warheads. Initially in 2006, when the sale was confirmed, the German government said the two vessels were not equipped to carry nuclear weapons. The submarines were ordered in 2005, and delivery was originally scheduled for 2010. With...

Every year on the first of September, in a small town called Taiji on the southeast coast of Japan's Honshu Island, a new fishing season begins: the dolphin season. Twenty-six fishermen in 13 boats corral a few dozen dolphins into a small cove, where they kill the animals by stabbing them repeatedly with long harpoons and knives. The 50-square-foot (4.6-square-meter) inlet turns crimson, as if filled only with blood. In the course of a six-month season, fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about U.S. $500 a dolphin. The fishermen supplement their income by...

If you happen to be walking down the streets of Brooklyn and a tuxedo-clad dolphin tries to sell you crack, don't be concerned. It's not real. Neither is the dolphin. The not-so-illegal narcotics scheme is just performance artist Nate Hill's latest act. Every other Saturday night, Hill dons a dolphin headpiece and white tuxedo and delivers $1 bags of "crack" – packs of crushed up sugar cubes flavored and colored with snow cone syrup, in actuality – to anyone in Williamsburg and Greenpoint who calls in an order. He peddles his wares between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. like a...

A dolphin or porpoise (there are subtle differences between the two) somehow wondered into Coyote Creek in Santa Clara. The mammal was discovered just outside the 49ers training facility. The find quickly attracted a crowd of both onlookers and reporters alike. Experts from the Marine Mammal Center out of Sausalito came down and made quick work of rescuing the animal. The team took the creature to its Sausalito-based center for medical treatment. By midday, the tide was starting to turn taking the water out, which put a real time pressure on the rescue effort. If you know the area, you...

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Lunocet swimmers have already hit about eight miles per hour, almost twice the speed of Michael Phelps at his fastest The human body does many things well, but swimming isn't one of them. We're embarrassingly inefficient in the water, able to convert just 3 or 4 percent of our energy into forward motion. (Even with swim fins, we're only 10 to 15 percent more efficient.) But a new, dolphin-inspired fin promises to fuel the biggest change in human-powered swimming in decades, putting beyond-Olympian speeds within reach of just about anyone. Culminating decades of research, engineer and inventor Ted Ciamillo, an...

The world's only pink dolphin... THE only pink dolphin ever spotted has surfaced again in a saltwater estuary in Lousiana.=============================================================================================================== Think pink ... you're not seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses: This albino dolphin is pink. Unique ... the bottlenose - first spotted in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary in Louisiana, by boat captain Erik Rue, 42, in 2007 - has surfaced again. ===================================================Attraction ... tourists are flocking to the lake in hopes of seeing the rare mammal. ===================================================Rare sight ... "Pinky" is believed to be the only pink dolphin in the world, and has "reddish" eyes. It is...

The world's only pink Bottlenose dolphin which was discovered in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA, has become such an attraction that conservationists have warned tourists to leave it alone. Charter boat captain Erik Rue, 42, photographed the animal, which is actually an albino, when he began studying it after the mammal first surfaced in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern USA. Capt Rue originally saw the dolphin, which also has reddish eyes, swimming with a pod of four other dolphins, with one appearing to be its mother which never left its...

Dolphins are fantastic sea chefs who have mastered the art of rustling up a soft meal of calamari, say scientists. The intelligent sea mammals have been spotted going through precise and elaborate preparations to rid cuttlefish of ink and bone to produce a soft meal of calamari. Australian researchers observed one wild female Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin The research team, writing in the science journal PLoS One, said they repeatedly observed a female dolphin herding cuttlefish out of algal weed and onto a clear, sandy patch of seafloor. The dolphin, identified using circular body scars, then pinned the cuttlefish with its...

Researchers in Great Britain and the United States have imaged the first high definition imprints that dolphin sounds make in water. They consider it a real breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language. Certain sounds made by dolphins have long been suspected to represent language but the complexity of the sounds has made their analysis difficult. Previous techniques, using the spectrograph, display cetacean (dolphins, whales and porpoises) sounds only as graphs of frequency and amplitude.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- A married couple riding in a boat in the Intracoastal Waterway got an unexpected guest this morning when a dolphin leaped onto their boat and slid onto their laps. The woman, Barbara Howard of Mansfield, Ohio, was brought ashore at an Edgewater boat ramp and taken to Bert Fish Medical Center, where she was listed in stable condition this afternoon, Coast Guard officials said. Her husband, Norman Howard, 64, also was hospitalized for some scrapes and bruises but has since been released. The incident occurred about 10:40 a.m. near the North Causeway in New Smyrna Beach,...

Dolphin and whale mate to create a 'wolphin' By Stephen Adams Last Updated: 6:55am GMT 27/03/2008 If life on Earth was not strange enough, nature occasionally throws a very unusual creation into the genetic mix. Most hybrids tend tend to be sterile, but Kekaimalu the 'wolphin' has given birth to two calfs Although it is extremely rare, animals occasionally succeed in producing offspring with mates from closely related species. Scientists believe some actively try to mate outside their own species to increase the diversity of their wild populations. But most hybrids are born in captivity - which may suggest sexual...

Moko is well known locally for playing with swimmers in the bay A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand. Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea. The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said. But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety....

They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning, No-one you see, is smarter than he.... When Mitt Romney first appeared at CPAC in 2007 as a presidential candidate, a man in a dolphin costume began following him to highlight his "flip-flops" on policy. Flipper made an appearance at this year's CPAC as well, but found himself out of a job on the first day when Romney withdrew from the presidential race. If he reads today's Washington Post, he might find new material to extend his gig by making appearances at Barack Obama rallies instead: Top Obama Flip-Flops 1. Special interests...

DHAKA (AFP) — An extremely rare river dolphin has been beaten to death by fishermen in southern Bangladesh. Fishermen at Mongla, near the Sunderbans mangrove forest, netted a Ganges river dolphin on Monday and beat it to death as they had not seen this kind of creature before, the state-run BSS news agency said Tuesday. A group then tried to sell it as a rare fish, before giving up and dumping it outside a museum. The Sunderbans area straddles the borders of Bangladesh and India's West Bengal state and lies on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. According to the World Wildlife Fund,...

Actress Hayden Panettiere has been involved in a violent confrontation with Japanese fishermen as she tried to disrupt their annual dolphin slaughter.

The Yangtze River dolphin enjoys a rare and depressing distinction, according to new research. The grey white, long-beaked animal is the world's first cetacean -the order of whales, dolphins and porpoises -to be made extinct by man, concludes an international team that has conducted comprehensive surveys of its habitat. The demise of the near-blind mammal also represents the first extinction of a large vertebrate (backboned animal) for more than 50 years, since overhunting claimed the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. A zoologist said it was a "shocking tragedy." The paper, lead-authored by Dr Sam Turvey of the Zoological Society...

It's sleek, fast, cute — and pink. A charter-boat captain from Lake Charles, La., photographed a rare pink dolphin a couple of weeks ago in Calcasieu Lake, an estuary just north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern Louisiana. According to Calcasieu Charter Service's Web site, Capt. Erik Rue was on the lake June 24 with fishing customers when five dolphins came into view — four normal-looking gray ones, and a bright pink one that appeared to be an adolescent. There is a species of pink dolphin that lives in the Amazon River in South America, but this one appears...

KEYPORT, Wash. - Critics of a Navy plan to use dolphins and sea lions to guard waters off the coast of a major submarine base say the ocean is too cold for the plan to work. Other critics who showed up at a public open house Tuesday questioned the use of live animals rather than sophisticated technology at Hood Canal, home of the West Coast Trident submarine base. The animals are trained to alert a handler when they detect anyone in the water. The handler, in a small boat, then places a strobe light on the nose of the animal,...

If so, officials are baffled by how they could have gotten there. SEMINOLE -- Cue the theme song from Flipper. A reported sighting of three dolphins in Lake Seminole has city, county and state officials scratching their heads over what appears to be an impossibility for a landlocked, freshwater lake. The lake does have a weir for outflow, but even then "there's just no possible way for a dolphin to fit in there," said Kelli Levy, a Pinellas County environmental program coordinator. "They would have to swim through a few feet of water under Park Boulevard, then jump like 12...

SAN DIEGO - Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner. That's not quite how the notice is worded, but that's the message from the Navy, which is looking for someone to take over the USS Dolphin, one of the oldest submarines in its fleet. The Dolphin, a one-of-a-kind research vessel, was commissioned in 1968. In a notice published in this week's Federal Register, the Navy said it will accept offers from government agencies, nonprofit groups or other institutions willing to make the submarine into a museum. The Navy hopes to keep the vessel in its...

Link Only: Leaping dolphin leaves woman seriously injured

The first species to be erased from this planet’s great and ancient Order of Cetaceans in modern times is not one of the charismatic sea mammals that have long been the focus of conservation campaigns, like the sperm whale or bottlenose dolphin. It appears to be the baiji, a white, nearly blind denizen of the Yangtze River in China. On Wednesday, an expedition in search of any baiji, run by Chinese biologists and baiji.org, a Swiss foundation, ended empty-handed after six weeks of patrolling its onetime waters in the middle and lower stretches of the river, the baiji’s only known...

Beijing, China, Dec 15: An expedition searching for a rare Yangtze River dolphin ended Wednesday without a single sighting and with the team`s leader saying one of the world`s oldest species was effectively extinct. The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction. A few baiji may still exist in their native Yangtze habitat in eastern China but not in sufficient numbers to...

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards. Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun was called in after the dolphins swallowed plastic used around their pool at an aquarium in Fushun, north-east China. Attempts to use instruments failed as the dolphins contracted their stomachs. Guinness World Records list Mr Bao, 54, as the world's tallest living man at 2m 36.1cm (7ft 8.95in). Veterinarians turned to Mr Bao after attempts to extract the plastic shards at the aquarium in Fushun, Liaoning Province, had failed. The mammals had...

(Long, detailed article; I've provided the first page here.) MURKY water, hazy sky and dull brown riverbanks. Strained eyes peering into the mist. Ears tuned electronically into the depths. And with each hour, each day that passes, a nagging question that grows louder: is this how a species ends after 20 million years on earth? When they write the environmental history of early 21st-century China, the freshwater dolphin expedition now plying the Yangtze river may be seen as man's farewell to an animal it once worshipped. A team of the world's leading marine biologists is making a last-gasp search for...

WEIRD BUT TRUE By MARSHA KRANES, Wire Services November 15, 2006 -- Holy humming mammal! Dolphins at Disney's Epcot Center were recently taught to "sing" the theme song from the "Batman" TV series - a stunning development that scientists hailed as the first time a mammal other than a human showed it can recognize and recreate voice rhythms.

Four-finned Japanese dolphin an evolutionary throwback, researchers say   Divers with the four-finned dolphin. (Mainichi) A bottlenose dolphin captured last month off western Japan has an extra set of fins, providing further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once had four legs and lived on land, Japanese researchers said Sunday.Fishermen netted the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi.The second set of fins -- much smaller than the dolphin's front fins -- are about the size of adult human hands and protrude from near the...

TOKYO — Japanese researchers said Sunday that a bottlenose dolphin captured last month has an extra set of fins that could be the remains of back legs, a discovery that may provide further evidence that ocean-dwelling mammals once lived on land. Fishermen captured the four-finned dolphin off the coast of Wakayama prefecture (state) in western Japan on Oct. 28, and alerted the nearby Taiji Whaling Museum, according to museum director Katsuki Hayashi.

New evidence from unmanned underwater cameras has proved that dolphins are only pretending to be friendly to humans and that the moment that our backs are turned, a sour and indignant expression returns to their faces. The discovery, which will traumatise animal lovers the world over, was made when Californian marine biologist Mike Varney sensed that the smiling, chattering manner of dolphins and porpoises was somehow a little insincere. He set up a series of remote controlled underwater cameras to record ceteceans interacting with swimmers and divers and then filmed the same dolphins as they left their human companions. ‘It’s...

An enraged dolphin has been terrorising the French Atlantic coast for several weeks, attacking boats and knocking fishermen into the sea. "He's like a mad dog," said Henri Le Lay, president of the association of fishermen and yachtsmen of the port of Brezellec, in Brittany. "He has caused at least 1,500 euros ($2,530) worth of damage in the past few weeks." The dolphin, named Jean Floch, has destroyed rowboats, overturned open boats, flooded engines and twisted mooring lines. Two fishermen were knocked into the sea after the dolphin overturned their boat. Jean Floch has been a popular and familiar sight...

In the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear power, Israel signed a contract with Germany last month to buy two Dolphin-class submarines that will, according to foreign reports, provide superior second-strike nuclear capabilities... The submarines will be assembled in Germany and provided with a propulsion system allowing them to remain underwater for far longer than the submarines currently in the Israel Navy's fleet... The navy is considering installing a Fixed Underwater Sonar System (FUSS) off the coast to detect foreign submarines. In 1993, Iran bought two Russian Kilo-class submarines and eight mini-submarines from North Korea, although officials said this...

Germany pays €170m advance on submarines for Israel The payment will be transferred to HDW shipyards in Baltic port of Kiel in a few days. Amnon Barzilai 18 Jul 06 19:23 The German government will pay a €170 million advance payment to begin construction of two Dolphin II class submarines for the Israel Navy. The payment will be transferred to Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) shipyards in the Baltic port of Kiel in a few days. When the advance is paid, the agreement between the Israeli and German governments for construction of the two submarines for €2 billion will come...

GERMANY READY TO SIGN ISRAELI SUB DEAL LONDON [MENL] -- Germany has been preparing to formally approve the sale of advanced submarines to Israel. The German daily Die Welt said on July 1 that the Berlin government would approve the sale of two Dolphin-class diesel submarines to Israel in July. The newspaper said Israel and Germany would sign an agreement over the next few weeks. The agreement was said to have resolved a long dispute between Israel and Germany over the price of the submarines. Die Welt said Israel would purchase the two Dolphins, manufactured by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, for $1.27...

Cindy the dolphin gained fame after 41-year-old Jewish millionaire from London married him in 2005; 'Cindy swam slowly and he had problems eating,' reef employee says Cindy the dolphin, the head of a pack of dolphins at the Eilat Reef, and father of all the dolphins born in the area, died Sunday and was buried at sea. The dolphin's body was discovered Sunday morning by reef workers floating in its favorite place – the entrance of the diving and swimming instructors. Reef workers put Cindy's body in a boat and sailed into the sea, where they departed from it. "We...

Till death do us part? An unusual wedding ceremony was held in the southern resort town of Eilat on Wednesday, as Sharon Tendler, a 41-years-old Jewish millionaire from London married her beloved Cindy, a 35-year-old dolphin, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.  The groom, a resident of the Eilat dolphin reef, met Tendler 15 years ago, when she first visited the resort. The British rock concert producer took a liking to the dolphin and has made a habit of traveling to Eilat two or three times a year and spending time with her underwater sweetheart.  "The peace and...

On Monday, the British newspaper "The Observer" quoted an accident investigator who claimed that three dozen U.S. military dolphins, supposedly trained in secret near Lake Pontchartrain, had been washed away by Hurricane Katrina. ...OLBERMANN: Make sure I'm right on this one point here, that dolphins could not actually fire poison dart guns, even if they are wearing them, even if they are loose, because they don't have hands. Am I right about this so far? SOLANGI: No, I think that's science fiction. And these animals are trained. It's common knowledge, to look for underwater mines and divers. But I think...

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill...

Sept. 20, 2005 — The NOAA Fisheries Service and the Marine Life Aquarium of Gulfport, Miss., working with a number of other partners, rescued the last four of the eight trained bottlenose dolphins that were swept out of an aquarium tank torn apart by the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. Normally held in captivity, the dolphins don't have the necessary skills to survive on their own. They have survived various injuries and predators and have stayed together since the storm. (Click NOAA image for larger view of first eight dolphins to be rescued that were washed out...

A team of scientists has identified a new dolphin species - the first for at least 30 years - off north Australia. The mammals - named snubfin dolphins - were initially thought to be members of the Irrawaddy species, also found in Australian waters. But one researcher found the snubfins were coloured differently and had different skull, fin and flipper measurements to the Irrawaddys. DNA tests confirmed that they were two distinct species. The researcher, Isabel Beasley of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, said that because they live in shallow waters, both types face the same threats to their...