Tag: Animals

8 Smart Species Challenge How We Think of Animals

8 Smart Species Challenge How We Think of Animals

Animals are smarter than we thought.

This matters not just because it’s cool and fascinating. It matters because people use lack of intelligence as the reason to treat humans and non-human animals differently. It’s okay to eat animals and experiment on them, the rationale goes, because they are just dumb animals.

Science is biting itself in the butt on this one by continually discovering that animals aren’t so different from us after all, which will make it harder to justify experimenting on them.

These are some of the smartest animals in no particular order.

Read more here.

Dumpster Puppies Rescued by Heart and Soul Animal Sanctuary

When you visit Heart and Soul Animal Sanctuary you will arrive at what looks like a Disney movie set, The Giant Dog House. This is were the motley crew of all types of dogs reside. It’s also Natalie’s home. There among all the small, medium and large dog beds is a king sized bed where Natalie sleeps each night along with a variety of doggies who jump up to snuggle with her. Yes, it is a little slice of heaven!

Read more here.

More online communities

At one time or another I’ve been on most of the major social networks (MySpace, HI5 and Friendster). I suppose I liked MySpace the best, but in the end, I left (twice). I read somewhere that it’s a bit like coming to a major central railway station hoping to meet people. It won’t work. You’ll need to get to know them from somewhere else or get someone you know already to introduce you. That’s very true. I never made any friends, and the only contacts I really had were with people I knew from somewhere else.

Ning is a social network for – creating social networks. You get to have your own network or networks. It’s really quite cool. You get most features that you get on other social networks, but this one is all yours and you can customize it, invite the members you like etc. There’s a photo gallery feature, a chat room, a forum and a blog among other things. You can also add widgets – little mini programs that can do all kinds of things.

My favorite social networks are special interest sites. Some of them will undoubtedly be interests you don’t share, so you’ll just have to skip them.

First of all, I’m a vegan, animal lover and animal rights advocate. I’m also concerned about the environment.

One of the biggest’green’ social networks I’ve joined, is Care2. You can get a free webmail address, a photo album with unlimited storage – limited per month, send virtual e-cards that help save the rainforest, join groups (some of them are very active), sign online petitions, click to generate free donations and much more. There are also many interesting articles about all kinds of causes – the environment, politics, human rights, animal rights (they call it *welfare* and that’s one of the things I don’t like so much about it) etc. You also get a profile page you can customize. Recently, they added a sort of payment system where you can earn ‘credits’ and then use them to pay for something or other, for instance, give a cup of clean water to a Haitian child. When you’ve donated or redeemed your credits or signed a petition you can tweet it to your friends or share it some other way. Care2 makes sharing easy.

I’ve also joined several vegan and animal rights sites. Feel free to ignore this bit.

VegSpace
VeganWorld
VeganForce
Vegppl
AnimalRights Community Online

So far I haven’t made any new friends at any of these, so maybe I shouldn’t even have recommended them, but for me it’s important to be a part of the veg*an community. I like them, but they feel very much like MySpace except with a cause I can relate to. I’ve also joined several vegan dating sites. (You can specify you’re just looking for friends, if that’s what you want). I’ve actually made a few friends that way, but unfortunately, just like all other friends, online or otherwise, some have drifted away. It’s been quite a long time since I made any new friends, so maybe the sites have changed or rather the people using them. In fact, though I’m still single, I’m not really looking for dates online anymore. In any case, these are the ones I’ve tried:

VeggieConnection
VeggieDate.org
VeganPassions (there are many other passions sites – for just about any interest you might have) and you don’t have to look for a partner, just friends will do.

Since i’m an animal lover, I’m also a member of several sites for animal lovers.

Petster
Dogster
Catster
Bunspace

You get to upload photos, fill out a profile page, mainly for your baby, but also for yourself – on Petster. On Catster and Dogster there are also plenty of articles about cats or dogs and groups with forums for people who love the same type of animals you do.

Social networks

I thought I’d continue my computer/internet “school”. This time I’d like to get into social networks, the ones I like best.

Since I’m a vegan, animal and human rights advocate and so on, Care2 is one of my favorite sites. It’s a social network for people who ‘care’. Features include free email, messaging, free e cards that help save rainforest and free donations. There are also groups that you can create and/or join. There’s even an instant messaging service. You also get a personal profile page that you can customize, where you can add photos, movies etc.

There are several veggie related communities – CrueltyFree, Vegan World, VegSpace. They’re all nice, but don’t feel very active. Maybe I haven’t really gotten to know them well enough yet. You get a profile page, messaging etc.

For other specialized interests I can mention LiveJournal and Vox. LiveJournal is a community that evolves around blogging/journal writing. Vox is quite similar to LJ, but here you get to upload media – photos, movies, music etc.

Speaking of media – Zooomr is a very cool photo site. You get unlimited storage space and hotlinking is allowed – that means you can store your photos, then link to them on your blog, profile page, home page etc.

If you’re into animals there are several different networking sites intended for animal lovers. Petster is for people with all kinds of pets. Catster is for cat lovers and Dogster is for dog lovers. There are others – BunSpace is another example, but the basic level doesn’t really allow you to do anything, so I can’t tell you much about it.

For those of us who are passionate about our writing, there are online archives where you can post your stories and poems and hopefully get comments. Naturally, you can also look for things to read.

FanFiction.net is probably the main site for fan fiction enthusiasts, but there are others – FanWorks is another I can mention. There you can also upload artwork.
FictionPress is for original fiction.

Finally, I’d like to mention a language learning network – LiveMocha. I’ve only started using the site so I can’t tell you all that much, but so far it looks impressive. You can learn new languages or practice one you already know and get help from native speakers.