Weird Animal Behaviour.

[peter]

I've come across a few weird occurences in the animal world in my time - here are a few.

Bullying cows that have their horns removed often stop their aggresive behaviour toward their cohorts - it's like they know their 'teeth have been drawn'.

On one occasion I knew a ferret owner who kept a vasectomised hob [male] running with his females to deal with the 'persistant ovulator' problem you have with unmated jills. They tolerated him mating them for about two years [with obviously no progeny being born] and then one night they killed him.

On two occasions I've met people who have witnessed the very rare but documented event of a rat migration. When the population gets too big for the food supply to maintain all of a sudden the population will swarm and the [approximately] half will strike of in a given direction to find a new habitat to occupy. These migrations don't occur for generations, and them when the time is right the event occures just as programed into the rats brain. One man I knew was driving up a country road in the early hours of a moonlit autumn night, and in the headlights of the car he saw what appeared to be a river flowing down over the bank of the road, over the road and up the bank and into the wood on the opposite side. He pulled up his car and to his horror in the headlight he saw the road was teeming in rats, headed with a single purpose in the direction stated. He told me the 'river' was at least fifteen feet wide and continued unabated for at least ten minutes. The rats were so tightly packed he claimed, that you could not see the road between them. It is said that such a swarm will kill anything that gets in their path and the man was certainly not going to pu it to the test!

Anyone got any weird but true animal stories?

[JIkj fjds j]

I had a gerbil that would sometimes do the oddest things ... like one time I'd let it have the run of the flat, with its cage door left open for it's food and water.
I had returned home one evening and looked around for the little thing only to find it inside the electric fire, beneath the the red bulb, (which I'd left switched on thinking it might need light). It was laid on it's back with all four legs stiffly pointing into the air.

Ah...I'd thought the little thing had popped it's clogs, but when I went to pick it up discovered it was only playing possum...then watched as it leaped out the fireplace to dash off across the carpet.

It also chewed through the mains cable to the refrigerator. There were only two strands of copper wire left intact - one positive and one negative. To this day I still can't explain how the little animal managed it. And also how on earth the refrigerator continued to operate.

When I lived in Cambridge there was a girl I would visit. She lived a few streets from a very unusual parrot. It would whistle just like the way a human does to grab the attention of someone at a distance.
When it first occurred I would turn round as you might do to see if the call was directed at me, only to find there was no one in sight. Then, when I continued walking the whistle would happen again. I thought it was some person playing silly buggers until I mentioned this to my girlfriend. She laughed and told me all about the crazy parrot, somewhat famous in that neck of the woods.

[peter]

We had a starling in the practice that started mimicking the kittens in the cages around him [we used to re-home loads every summer, kittens not starlings] and a parrot that used to shout the most filthy abuse at all and sundry, but without doubt our rudest guest was a rhesus monkey whose penchent for.....errr.......onanism [shall we say] would have matched a sixteen year with the most questionable moral compass.

But in case any of you are not keen on sea-gulls [not universally popular due to their destructive activities with black bin-bags and the like], here's a story that may show them in a different light. We used, every summer, to get chicks brought to us that had fallen from rooftop nests and been hit by cars or whatever. Most we had to destroy, but occasionally we had one that was not so badly injured, and so we would put them out on the rear [enclosed] lawn and feed them on waste cat food etc untill they were big enough to release. One year we had an especially young chick brought in and put him as described, onto the lawn to see if we could rear him. Ten days later with a squawk and a rush, all of a sudden I was dive-bombed by two adult gulls as I went out onto the lawn to feed him. It had taken them 10 days of searching [or maybe it was just luck], but whatever - his parents had found him, and they weren't letting him go again. They stayed on the practice roof untill he eventually gained the strength to join them some weeks later, and then as a trio they left. Respect!

[JIkj fjds j]

This little story, I should impress upon you, has absolutely no relation whatsoever to the parrot story above - 0%.

Anyway, here's a funny dog's tale.

On my second visit to Cambridge I had the wonderful offer of a spare room from a couple of friends I'd met.
As it turned out, after only a few short weeks, things weren't going well with their teenage daughter and her boyfriend and she decides to move back in. So I'm now sharing bunk-beds with a young girl five months (until eight months) pregnant.

My friend had a little Jack Terrier that was getting a bit old. A kind of mopey house dog that always seemed to be gruffling and huffling and terrorizing the cat.
One day I decides to buy a soccer football. I thought I might do some keepy-ups in the back yard.
No sooner did I start when the dog suddenly leapt in and claimed the ball for itself. You can imagine it's small mouth trying desperately to bite into the large round football. As it's teeth took a bite the ball would fly off across the garden, immediately followed by the dog eagerly wanting to get another bite.

That dog chased that ball around the garden for hours - no kidding!
I'd gone indoors and was upstairs when C_____ came into the room urging me to the window to watch the crazy circus act outside.
The dog was at this point, frantic, and making the oddest howling sounds.
C______ was laughing, then soon began laughing uncontrollably.
I'd never seen her in this mood before, shedding so many happy tears.
A joy to see.

Eventually the dog burst the ball and chewed it to bits.
I could swear those odd howling sounds were doggy laughs.

[Sorus]

I don't know why that reminded me of my friend's dog, who was a corgi that had been trained to herd sheep. He was a city dog, and lacking in actual sheep in his home, he would 'herd' a trio of rubber squeaky hedgehog toys - basically shuffling them around with his muzzle and paws. He was showing off his new skills to me, proudly depositing his precious flock at my feet. I was unaware of exactly what he was doing and thought he wanted to play fetch, so I picked one of his 'sheep' up and threw it across the room.

You have never seen a little dog look so utterly aghast.

Fortunately he was the forgiving kind.

[Avatar]

It would have been great to see what he'd do if exposed to actual sheep.

--A

[peter]

I've seen bitch rear alitter of orphan kittens before: gosh knows what those cats tuned out like!

[Sorus]

It would have been great to see what he'd do if exposed to actual sheep.

--A

His original training did involve actual sheep - I saw a video of it. He took it very seriously. Some dogs just like to have a job.

Cats, on the other hand...

I've seen bitch rear alitter of orphan kittens before: gosh knows what those cats tuned out like!

I imagine they probably do end up a bit confused - my newest cat was raised with (though I don't think by) dogs, and I'm fairly convinced that she just doesn't speak the same language as my other cats.

[JIkj fjds j]

I'm fairly convinced that she just doesn't speak the same language as my other cats.

That's an interesting thing for you to say, Sorus!

How many cat's do live with you?

[Sorus]

I have a total of 4, with my newest adopted a little over a year ago. She's not quite 4 years old and I am at least the 3rd or 4th human she has owned. She's a beautiful cat, but a bit of a problem child - not least of which is due to the fact that she's one of the smartest cats I have ever known. She gets bored easily and goes looking for trouble, and she is quite adept at finding it.

[JIkj fjds j]

I do miss the company of cats and kittens.
My lifestyle the past two decades has been much too transient to own one.
I'm now quite settled living on the top floor of a tower block, and as much as a cat might live quite content indoors, I on the other hand wouldn't.
I would need ground floor space with a window it could use.

Lately I've been thinking about a small fury animal; a (funny acrobatic) hamster, or some type of gerbil.

But I despair at the way they will gnaw for hours on the bars of their cage. Indicative of severe mental distress.
I need to give them the run of the place.

Maybe I'll knock up a wooden box and fill it with rags, insulated with scraps of carpet. The cage could be fitted on top of the box with a hole (in the tray) for easy access. Pagoda-style.

[Sorus]

Have you considered a rabbit? They can live outside a cage as long as there aren't any wires and such for them to gnaw, and they can be litterbox trained, which is a plus. They also have a longer lifespan than hamsters and gerbils, though they require more attention.

[JIkj fjds j]

A rabbit sounds interesting. And I never knew they could be housetrayned.
One of the reasons I'd been thinking of a hamster pet is that I have very little living space. I mean very little, and a small animal could get more run of the flat than a larger pet.

Actually, there are many residents here that have smallish canine companions.
My main interest in the rodent is whether they can communicate ideas in a form of suggestive language - the, show rather than tell principle.

Sometimes there are House Martins nesting here in late summer, in the eaves of the roof. But not every year it seems.
I can watch them for ages. Flying around at incredible speeds feeding on airborne insects.

I observed the House Martin making at least four different types of chirps.
...a tweet, two tweets, three, and four.
My theory on this was that one chirp meant - I'm off.
Two chirps meant - I'm off over there.
Three chirps to meant - food.
And four was - over here.

To test this, I copied as best I could at four whistles. And it seemed to work. They would fly in close every time.

[Avatar]

But I despair at the way they will gnaw for hours on the bars of their cage.

Rodents have to gnaw all the time, because their incisors keep growing continuously. You can Google images of what happens if they don't. Personally I prefer rats to hamsters or gerbils.

--A

[peter]

Odd little story about a bridge in Dumbarton where over the last 70 years since it's construction there have been hundreds of cases of dogs leaping over the parapet, many to their deaths and nobody knows why. Suicidal tendancies are apparently unkown in dogs [more on which in a minute] and a reason proposed as an alternative is the fatally attractive lure of the combined odours of colonies of mice and mink that live under the bridge.

On the suicidal thing, I knew a French girl who kept a German Shepherd Dog living in a Paris high-rise [5th floor], and used to leave it shut in every day while she went to work. From a pup untill it was three or four she had no problems, but then one day it inexplicably launched itself from the kitchen table out through a closed 18 inch square window some 6 feet of the ground, a leap of some seven or eight feet. The dog was badly injured but survived the fall and returned home intact from hospitalisation at the vets. All returned to normal, with no more problems untill four years later, with no warning, it repeated the process and this time was killed by the fall. A sad but true story, and one I always remember [perhaps mistakenly but nevertheless] as a stark example of the misery you cause a dog by keeping it in such palpably wrong conditions.

[Sorus]

But I despair at the way they will gnaw for hours on the bars of their cage.

Rodents have to gnaw all the time, because their incisors keep growing continuously. You can Google images of what happens if they don't. Personally I prefer rats to hamsters or gerbils.

--A

Agreed. Rats are about the smartest and friendliest when it comes to rodents.

[Avatar]

Yep. I've had a couple when I was a kid.

--A

[Cheval]

Used to have a Samoyed puppy (a rescued animal from abuse) who was jealous of my wife.
During the night when we would be asleep, the dog would climb into bed between us,put his back against mine and
straighten his feet out to try to push my wife off the bed.
This went on for several months.

Also been told by a friend (who studies insects and other critters)
that ants, roaches, and other "pests" will act irradically just before earthquakes and major floods.
This had been documented in journals.

[Sorus]

Also been told by a friend (who studies insects and other critters)
that ants, roaches, and other "pests" will act irradically just before earthquakes and major floods.
This had been documented in journals.

I've heard the same about cats, though never observed it firsthand - acting strange is basically a cat's default setting.

[Orlion]

- acting strange is basically a cat's default setting.

Yep. My cat will, after his naps, stretch and announce with loud meows for five to ten minutes that he is done napping.