Golfina Turtles, also known as Olive Ridley turtles are endangered and listed on the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Whew! It’s a good thing the turtles don’t have to know the name of that organization from memory to survive.

Salvadorans released 1,500 of the little critters that had been born into capitivity into the sea on October 10th.

“Swim, little buddy, swim!”

“Uh, where should I go?”

“You’re free, you’re free!”

“Um, when’s dinner?”

I don’t know about rearing animals in captivity then setting them free. I don’t think that always works right, does it?

What do you think are the chances for the little fellows?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe free for our updates via RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and please do come back!

Anjana is a two year old chimpanzee that plays a surrogate mother role for two 21 days old white tiger cubs that had to be separated from their mother due to safety reasons, when a hurricane flooded their sanctuary.

However, that’s not the only case. China York the care taker at The Institute of Greatly Endangered Species in South Carolina, along with the help of Anjana, who has been with her ever since the day she was born. Together they take care of many such animal babies

“Anjana has been with China, side by side, ever since she was born and has joined her in caring and raising baby animals,” said Dr Bhagavan, founder of TIGERS. She began copying everything that China did, so this is how her caring instinct was born. Today, the motherly chimpanzee bottle feeds these babies and forms a close bonding with them making them feel as though she was their own mother.

Images copyright Barry Bland @ Barcroft Media

When they are not eating the creatures, they are playing with them in Manila, PI. World Animal  day was celebrated in the PI. On world animal day, a man wrestled a boa, children antagonized a Bengal tiger, a priest baptized by sprinkling a baby Bengal tiger and a baby, diaper-wearing orangutan held up another priest and blessed him, er, the other way around.

GP is for celebrating the existence of our fellow inhabitants here on the planet we call home, but we wonder, why do they need to have a special day to do it. And, do the animals have a special World Human Day - a day when they decide to not eat us?

Babies are cute…especially baby animals.

I suppose that’s what the animals say about human children, no? What’s your favorite animal?

Question: What did the one alligator say to the other alligator after he ate the human?

Answer: I love these things. They are soft and chewy on the outside and crunchy on the inside.

it might be funny if it weren’t true.

It seems that there’s an 18-feet crocodile down under who ate a camper, a 62-year old bloke on vacation with his wife. Now his wife is on permanent vacation from her husband.

Charlie is the name of the croc and is considered the likely depository of the man who has been missing for a couple of days. Charlie is normally “pretty docile and pretty shy.” Yeah, animals can be that way when they have a full belly.

Let’s take care of the animals before they take care of us, eh?

Image courtesy of Alberto F.

Really, why can’t we all just get along? I’m for kissing and making up, aren’t you? A dolphin and a sea lion, not your best of friends, have learned to kiss their hostility away at an aquarium in Beijing. China has a National Holiday coming up. To prepare the aquarium folk taught the two how to kiss in order to entertain anticipated crowds. Whatever!

At first, the sea lion fled from the dolphin and the dolphin fidgeted at the sight of the sea lion. I get both of those responses when I meet people of the opposite sex. So, I am wondering what the big deal is.

Here at GP we are just happy to see animals getting along and showing us humans that we can do it, too, if we just think about kissing and making up.

We also wonder what happens if these two get really close together? Seaphins? Dollions?

IAMS Home 4 the Holidays has found homes, presumably by the holidays, for more than 2 million pets. This year, the IAMS people are teaming up with Felicity Huffman to place 1 million orphaned animals between October 1, 2008 and January 5, 2009.

“I’m proud to be a part of Iams Home 4 the Holidays to help raise awareness about the importance of pet adoption so we can place 1 million animals in loving homes this holiday season,” said Huffman. “When our family decided to get a new pet, we chose to adopt, and now, Tucker is more than a
wonderful pet, he’s part of our family,” says Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives.

But IAMS says -

“Felicity’s first-hand knowledge and experience from adopting Tucker, coupled with her passion to educate people about the millions of homeless animals looking for homes, makes her an amazing ambassador and voice for Iams Home 4 the Holidays,” said the General Manager, P&G Pet Care in North America. “Last year, our pet adoption drive found homes for nearly 500,000 animals, and this year, we’ve doubled our adoption goal. All of our partner animal organizations, including the team at Helen Woodward Animal Center and the pet passionate folks here at Iams are committed to working together to help place at least 1 million orphaned pets into new homes.”

Fido said, “Woof, woof.”

Pussy said, “Meow, meow.”

Both can be translated to mean, “Take me, take me.”

Beautiful puppy image, courtesy of heraldpost

Thomas Doerflein (44) died of natural causes, a heart attack. Berlin investigators said “other causes of death, in particular involvement by another party, are ruled out from a medical point of view”.

Thomas became famous as the keeper of Knut, a polar bear. Doerflein hand-reared Knut, spending some 150 straight days with cub giving him milk and porridge and telling him stories of how he didn’t have to worry about melting glaciers because the big bear maker in the sky would care for him.

Doeflein (sounds like ‘doer of fine’ things) made front page news when he died. I remember when my dad died. We were all sad to seem him go, but for the most part we could understand his death. It happens. The problem was his miniature poodle Samson. Samson just walked about looking sad and wondering where his master was. This is my question - Who’s going to tell Knut that his keeper is gone?

Chinese stars are trying to score points with the public and save God’s critters, too. Or maybe she is thinking about dinner. (Bad joke). Chinese Actress, Sun Li wrote a book with the title “Take Me Home” which shared stories of stray animals. Yeah, I hear some fellows thinking out loud they wish Sun Li would take them home. It’s not that kind of stray!!

The book will be released in Beijing in conjunction with the opening of a photo exhibition.

So…does Sun Li really care about the animals or is this a publicity thing? GP doesn’t know. But, we do know that it’s not above stars and starlets to make such moves for a good PR image. Let’s hope she does really care. And, not just about dinner.

So, the question is “Will Sarah Palin deny that polar bears are resorting to cannibalism?” Or is it “bearbalism?”

On CNN news this morning the announcer said that Sarah Palin and presidential candidate John McCain are at odds on human caused global warming. In my mind, this is a good thing. If both of them were thinking exactly alike, one of them would be redundant, no?

Palin acknowledges climate change, melting glaciers in some parts and all that, and that the polar bears are scrambling. She doesn’t think it’s caused by humans. FWIW, I agree with her.

But, another CNN report says that the polar bears are starting to feast on one another for survival. GP wonders what Palin has to say about that. My bet is she’ll say something like, “they must be really really hungry. But, not because of human caused global warming.” Sometimes these kinds of things happen when you look at the big picture of history.

What do you think?

One of the things I love the most about writing on GP is that I learn while I do it. Do you know what’s the largest freshwater fish in South America? It’s called pirarucu or arapaima and can reach up to 4.5 meters and 200 kg, as an adult. Large pirarucus of more than 2 m are seldom found in the wild today because the meat is said to be delicious and they get harpooned or caught in large nets, even though it’s illegal.

But why am I telling you all these?

A catch of 66 pirarucus has been confiscated from poachers who were transporting them to a market in Manaus, capital of the Brazilian Amazon region, and as you can obviously see, those fish are extremely big. I do agree with the Police to hunt down those who don’t care about laws and prevent making money from harpooning the pirarucus to death (even put them in jail for that), but where is all that fish meat going?

The other day Bill joked that the police officers and the judges went out to a delicious fish dinner. I hope that’s not true, but I also hope they don’t waste it all, leaving it to rot. How about feeding the hungry? They do delicacies, too, if given for free. Right?

Images copyright : REUTERS/Antonio Menezes-A Critica (BRAZIL)