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A Columbus police officer accidentally wounded a 4-year-old girl in Whitehall on Friday when he fired at a charging dog, police said. A neighbor and the girl’s uncle identified her as Ava Ellis, who was taken to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where police said she was in stable condition. The officer was at a house in the 4100 block of Chandler Drive investigating a hit-and-run case about 3:10 p.m., Columbus police spokeswoman Denise Alex-Bouzounis said. As the officer was walking from the home to his patrol car, a woman a few houses away called out to him, saying her sister and...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For the first time, a Los Angeles shelter's Hero Dog award has gone to a cat. In May 2014, Tara the cat fought off a dog that attacked her 6-year-old owner as he rode his bicycle in the driveway of his Bakersfield home.

Dobe & Dog Rescue, a nonprofit group that rescues Doberman pinschers and other dogs, is holding a garage sale June 18-20 to help a dog in need of medical care. The sale, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at 13th and St. Paul, will raise money for Jojo, a Doberman with arthritis and nerve damage that needs acupuncture and water therapy. The dog’s family could no longer afford the treatments and surrendered her to the Kansas Humane Society, said Carlene Hinton, president of the Wichita-based rescue group. Jojo, a gentle “couch potato” dog, 7 years old, is...

Ginger Wolfe said ever since her 9-year-old golden retriever Chelsea was a puppy, she has always been a big softie. "There's not a mean bone in her body," Wolfe said. "She's just a sweetheart." But as Wolfe found out over the weekend, nobody messes with Chelsea's family. The 85-pound dog showed her mettle when she took on an angry mama moose that had charged at Wolfe's boyfriend and his family — including two young children — while they were camping between Nederland and Ward. Wolfe, of Louisville, and her boyfriend, Jeremiah McLaughlin, of Boulder, were camping near Ruby Gulch. McLaughlin...

Here are five (mostly) scientific reasons why dogs trump cats. 1. Exercise motivation While dogs demand physical and recreational activity, all cats demand is food and a comfy sofa to sleep on all day. Great job being a role model, Felix! **** 2. Give the elderly a purpose Pets are wonderful stress relievers for people of all ages, but the elderly in particular benefit from owning a dog. **** 3. Sniff Out Cancer Cats have an attuned sense of smell, but they're difficult to train. The top cats also can't match the top dogs nose for nose. **** 4. Smarter...

The release of Jurassic World has reignited our love for palaeontology. Many of us share a longing to understand the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth long before we arrived. But palaeontology is a discipline much broader than this. Dinosaurs dominated the land for 135 million years, but what happened during the rest of the Earth's 4.6 billion-year history? The role of palaeontologists past and present has been to unravel the mysteries of life on Earth, and in doing so they've found a lot more than just dinosaur bones. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. The spiky-backed ocean dweller: Right side up? Credit: Natural Math/flickr,...

Kangaroos have been banned from all restaurants in a Wisconsin town after a woman took a baby specimen to McDonald's with her wrapped in a blanket. Beaver Dam in Wisconsin enacted a law changing the rules about what kinds of pet can accompany humans in food establishments, barring the marsupials. Customers at the McDonald's were shocked in February when farmer Diana Moyer brought a baby kangaroos - named Jimmy - into the hamburger chain with her.

Nanfang Yu, assistant professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, and colleagues from the University of Zürich and the University of Washington, have discovered two key strategies that enable Saharan silver ants to stay cool in one of the hottest terrestrial environments on Earth. Yu's team is the first to demonstrate that the ants use a coat of uniquely shaped hairs to control electromagnetic waves over an extremely broad range from the solar spectrum (visible and near-infrared) to the thermal radiation spectrum (mid-infrared), and that different physical mechanisms are used in different spectral bands to realize the same biological function...

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine —It is not uncommon for firefighters to get called to rescue a cat stuck in a tree, but crews in northern Maine recently had to rescue a cat's owner. A woman climbed 75 feet up a tree in Presque Isle to try and save her cat, but then she panicked and called 911. The fire department came with a ladder truck and brought her to safety.

A study of lakes in Connecticut reveals that recreational angling pushes largemouth bass to evolve.Fishing a lake may, over time, make the fish in that lake harder to catch. A new studysuggests that recreational fishing, aka angling, causes evolutionary changes over the course of decades. Largemouth bass living in waters popular with anglers have been adapting to become less active. New generations of increasingly timid fish may eat less and be less likely to bite. “When your grandfather told you the fishing was better back in his day, it’s possible he was right,” says Jan-Michael Hessenauer, who reported the finding...

When lifeguards at a popular Southern California surfing spot decided to use a high-tech drone to keep swimmers safe from shark attacks, they got a chilling eyeful. The drone flies up about a 100 feet, looks down at a wide area and when they see shadows they can focus on them. In a matter of minutes the lifeguards can see just how many sharks may be lurking just yards from the shoreline. “This morning, we launched it and 10 minutes later, we knew there were 10 to 12 sharks in the Surfside [Beach] area,” said Chief Joe Bailey, a Seal...

On May 27, The Roanoke Times ran a deeply irresponsible opinion piece entitled “Beware of rescue dogs.” According to The Times, it was written by a “semi-retired registered nurse who has never been without a family dog.” That is a bit like allowing me a platform to pontificate on brain surgery because I have had a brain all my life. Bonny T. Lee’s ignorance with regard to shelter dogs, pit bull type dogs and the responsible use of statistics is shocking. She provides dubiously sourced statistics on the numbers of human deaths from dog attacks in terms like “13 and...

A wildfire sparked by a turkey vulture that caught fire after shorting out two power lines according to a witness burned parts of an RV and two properties in Martinez Tuesday morning, causing an estimated $80,000 in damage, a fire official said. Firefighters responded at 10:42 a.m. to the vegetation fire in the 800 block of Howe Road, Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Fire Inspector Steve Aubert said. The witness told KPIX 5’s Don Ford that he saw the large turkey vulture short out between two power lines. When the bird began to burn, it started the brush fire....

The co-op board of a luxury Upper West Side tower has instituted a doggy-discrimination policy that requires pet-owning residents to prove the breeds of their pooches, ruffled residents say. The policy is designed to purge the building of any pedigrees the board deems troublesome. As of last month, dog owners at 170 West End Ave. must have their veterinarian sign off on the canine’s pedigree and, if the pet is a mix, detail the percentage of each breed, according to a copy of the policy the co-op board sent to residents last month. If the breed is unknown, then the...

Richard Jones was exploring Ocala National Forest with his family when they captured a photo of a raccoon balancing on an alligator.A Florida man exploring Ocala National Forest has captured an unusual photo of what appears to be a raccoon riding an alligator. Richard Jones, of Palatka, told several local media outlets Sunday that he and his family were searching the Oaklawaha River for alligators, when his son accidentally startled a raccoon out of its hiding place. "It must have been asleep because it stumbled toward the water and hoped on top of the gator we were watching," Jones...

Doing the rounds on social media is a picture that explains the difference between dogs and cats. A dog is shown looking desperate to please, over the words: ‘These people feed me, shelter me and love me . . . They must be gods.’ Next to him is a cat with the comment: ‘These people feed me, shelter me and love me . . . I must be a god.’ And there, in a nutshell, is everything you need to know about the two species. Dogs are pack animals, eager to please and desperate to be adored. Cats are not....

A canine deputy in Fort Myers, Fla., was rendered unconscious in a brutal struggle with a theft suspect outside a Wal-Mart but recovered during the fight and helped apprehend the man, according to the (Fort Myers) NewsPress.com. The suspect, later identified as Liferein Lenord Bell, 25, was allegedly trying to steal two area rugs by switching price tags when store security officers caught him Friday evening (June 12). Bell fought with the security officers and then with deputies who arrived on the scene but he was able to escape through the front door of the store, the website reported. A...

<p>MAYNARD, Mass. (AP) — It was a summer day at the dog park when Fred Levy, a professional pet photographer, overheard a conversation that he couldn't shake off.</p> <p>A woman was talking about "Black Dog Syndrome" — a theory that black dogs are less likely to be adopted than those with lighter coats, perhaps because of superstition or a notion that black dogs are aggressive. Experts debate whether it's a myth or reality, but it struck Levy.</p>

OCALA, Fla. — A Palatka, Florida, man says he snapped a picture of a raccoon on top of an alligator in the Ocala National Forest on Saturday morning. Richard Jones said he and his family were walking along the Oaklawaha River watching alligators when his son walked through some palm fronds to get a good picture.

The dachshund in the video above is called Lolli. She’s the official model for Disco Dog, an LED vest for your pooch that can be controlled using your smartphone. Party New York, the creative agency behind Disco Dog, just closed a successful $22,527 Kickstarter campaign to create 45 vests for a select band of backers. Bad news though! It has no plans to make more. That means you won’t be able to dress your beloved canine up in colored lights or make use of the iPhone app which lets you choose colors and design custom patterns. There’s even a ‘lost...