Tag Archives: gorillas

How Do Monkeys Keep Their Nails Clipped?

Do they even have nails to keep clipped? These are the type of burning questions that keep me up at night. (Okay, they don’t keep me up at night. But I was thinking about it before I drifted off last night.) So I did some cursory Internet searching today and found that apes and most monkeys do in fact have nails, but some have claws. I could not find any mention of how they keep them trimmed. While clever, I’m fairly certain no ape or monkey colony has come up with a nail salon out in the wild. But if … Continue reading →

A World without Gorillas?

Back in September, for National Wildlife Day, I wrote about animals on my mind. Among them were the mountain gorillas in the Virunga National Park. They’re on my mind again today because last night on 60 Minutes Anderson Cooper did a report called “Gorillas: Kings of Congo.” The gorillas have never before been in as much danger as they are now. Yes, since I wrote about them just three months ago, their situation has gotten even worse. The rangers responsible for protecting the gorillas and the park have been completely driven out. The land where the gorillas roam has fallen … Continue reading →

National Wildlife Day: Animals on My Mind

National Wildlife Day, which is today, is a day to celebrate wildlife. Which gives me the perfect excuse for writing about some animals I’ve had on my mind recently. Ones Close to Home At the beginning of the summer I went to Art Pancake’s Tusculum Feed Center. No, it’s not a pancake house. It sells animal and pet food of all kinds, and also rents out various equipment as well as fills propane tanks. That’s why I went. Our tank was empty but we were fixing to grill soon. As I waited in line, the people in front of me … Continue reading →

Going Ape Over Prehistoric Fossils and Baby Gorillas

Recently I figured out how to subscribe to BBC News’s Daily Email. Hence blogs like Radioactivity Less Dangerous to Animals Then Man? and now this one might be created with more frequency. Today’s BBC email sort of had a theme to it: primates. Very, very old ones as well as a precious little newcomer. New Species of Great Ape Discovered Researchers studying the Afar rift in eastern Ethiopia found nine fossilized teeth estimated to be 10 million years old. They suspected the teeth belonged to a member of the gorilla family, but after running tests, making comparisons and doing whatever … Continue reading →

Buddy (1997)

I was pleasantly surprised by “Buddy,” the true story of a baby gorilla no one thought would live. Renee Russo stars as Trudy Lintz, an animal lover who lived back at the turn of the last century. She has a houseful of animals, from horses to ducks to dogs to kittens to birds – and two adorable chimps named Maggie and Joe. She’s raising the chimps like children, down to teaching them manners and dressing them in clothes, and things are going fairly well – except that Maggie is a little bit of a trouble maker. She likes to let … Continue reading →

Celebrity Marriages – Lessons We Can Learn – Part II

We were discussing what we can learn from celebrity marriages earlier. We discussed some power couples that broke up and some that stayed together. Why a couple works or doesn’t is a complex issue that can not always be defined by fault or by pointing blame in one direction or another. More often s not, marriages do not work because there is blame on both sides. So what else can we learn from celebrity marriages? Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Maria Shriver Politics and glamour are part of life, but they do not have to be the bedrock of a marriage. A … Continue reading →