City Animals

On the train ride there I spotted this unfortunate fox next to one of the platforms, so on the way home I got off to take some photos. Luckily he was close enough to still get some decent shots in the dark. 

Hsin-Yao Tseng.

Twenty-seven year old Hsin-Yao Tseng presents San Francisco in emotive strokes that revel in the city’s murkiness that is not often shown in paintings with the same subject.  The darkness is given glimpses of beauty with flashes of street lights or brilliant sunsets and though I’ve only featured Tseng’s cityscapes within this post his entire body of work is mystifying as it is gorgeous:

“Why do you do it?”

"The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. And this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs.

DOGS have long been considered property. Though the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and state laws raised the bar for the treatment of animals, they solidified the view that animals are things — objects that can be disposed of as long as reasonable care is taken to minimize their suffering.

But now, by using the M.R.I. to push away the limitations of behaviorism, we can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs, and probably many other animals (especially our closest primate relatives), seem to have emotions just like us. And this means we must reconsider their treatment as property.”

Scientists track cougar’s wild nightlife above Hollywood

The mountain lion — known as P-22 — living in Griffith Park is giving scientists insight into the behavior of an urban puma on the prowl.

by Martha Groves

For more than a year and a half, the solitary mountain lion known as P-22 has made himself right at home in Griffith Park within view of Hollywood’s Capitol Records building.

By night, he cruises the chaparral-covered canyons, dining on mule deer, raccoon and coyote. By day, while tots ride the Travel Town train and hikers hit the trails, he hunkers down amid dense vegetation.

To researchers’ knowledge, the 125-pound 4-year-old is the most urban mountain lion in Southern California and possibly beyond — surviving and thriving in a small patch of habitat surrounded by freeways and densely packed human beings that he reached, somewhat miraculously, by crossing the 101 and 405 freeways…

(read more: LA Times)