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A Minnesota resident captured a video of the bushy-tailed rodent’s drunken smorgasbord A close-up photo of a squirrel sitting on a wooden rail while holding a nut to its mouth. The squirrel has speckled gray and brown fur, and its mouth is open as it goes in for a bite. The background is green and black. It may seem a little absurd, but wildlife getting drunk off of fermenting fruits isn't a rare occurrence. Bats, moose and birds are known to consume copious amounts of fermented fruits. (likeaduck via Flickr under CC BY 2.0) Last week, a wide-eyed, tipsy squirrel...

Officials say a wild mink in Utah tested positive for the coronavirus. Story at a glance The USDA has been carrying out screenings of species around mink farms in Utah, Michigan and Wisconsin for several months over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine if the virus has spread to nearby wildlife. A mink found in the immediate vicinity of one of the affected farms is the only wild animal caught in the area to test positive. “To our knowledge, this is the 1st free-ranging, native wild animal confirmed with SARS-CoV-2,” USDA officials wrote. The first known case of...

The outbreak was caused by a 2019 leak of contaminated waste gas at a pharmaceutical plant that manufactures animal vaccines. The firm was found to be using expired disinfectants, allowing residual bacteria to be released through exhaust gasses. It is thought the leak began in late July and continued until late August last year. In December, it was reported that 181 people at a nearby veterinary research facility had been infected, and in January, authorities revoked the plant’s vaccine production licence. The full scale of the outbreak has not been widely reported until now. In addition to the confirmed 3,245...

Nobody wants to discover two wild animals barging into their home and jumping onto their bed. However, this is exactly what happened to a family in India. Two black wild boars broke into a home in a village in Kerala, a state in southern India, barged into the bedroom and began jumping on the bed. The incident, which happened last week, left residents terrified. The animals also reportedly destroyed the furniture in the room. The family immediately locked the bedroom, ran out of the home and managed to escape unhurt. A video of the break-in showed the two animals roaming...

Nearly 10,000 minks have died across several farms in Utah due to COVID-19 in a matter of weeks, a state official said. State veterinarian Dean Taylor told NBC News that the deaths have been spread across nine mink farms in Utah over just two weeks. While the official noted “research indicates there hasn’t been a spread from minks to humans,” he said that the minks suffered from respiratory issues, which have also been reported among humans. “Minks show open mouth breathing, discharge from their eyes and nose, and are not sick for several days before they pass away. They typically...

Damage to the retina is the leading cause of blindness in humans, affecting millions of people around the world. Unfortunately, the retina is one of the few tissues we humans can't grow back. Unlike us, other animals such as zebrafish are able to regenerate this tissue that's so crucial to our power of sight. We share 70 percent of our genes with these tiny little zebrafish, and scientists have just discovered some of the shared genes include the ones that grant zebrafish the ability to grow back their retinas. "Regeneration seems to be the default status, and the loss of...

Cape Lejeune Marine Corps Base on the North Carolina coast has issued a safety alert after multiple people reported being attacked at the military facility by coyotes. At least four attacks have occurred recently on the eastern side of the base, near the Wallace Creek area, officials said in a Facebook post. Investigators did not give details of the injuries, but noted all victims “were running after dark in the vicinity.” The latest attack occurred at 4 a.m. Sept. 23. All the victims reported being near offices of the II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group Command when attacked, officials said....

Eddie Lynch couldn’t believe it. He’s lived off of Clearwater Beach for more than 35-years and has never had an issue in the water, until Saturday. It was shortly before noon when he went out for a swim when he noticed a large dolphin swimming next to him and then he stopped. So did the dolphin. For a moment the two were face to face. Eddie Lynch speaks from the balcony of his residence. “And, uh, I said I gotta get out of here,” said Lynch. “And I started turning my body this way and he caught my hand and...

YECHANG, China - There are many challenges to applying facial recognition technology to animals: Pigs don't have distinguishing features and cows often want to lick the cameras. But there is an advantage: Farmyard inhabitants tend not to complain about impingements on their civil liberties. Having mastered facial recognition for humans to an alarmingly precise degree, even picking out wanted criminals from huge crowds, Chinese tech whizzes are turning their attention to furrier faces. "We've been using it for sheep, pigs and cows," said Zhao Jinshi, who studied at Cornell University and founded Beijing Unitrace Tech, a company developing software for...

LIVE COVERAGE: Widespread damage reported in downtown Chicago after night of looting Chicago News / 35 mins ago CHICAGO — Widespread damage is reported in downtown Chicago after looting and rioting began around midnight. Witnesses report hundreds of people smashing their way into stores throughout Michigan Avenue, areas in the South Loop and the near North Side. WGN’s Judy Wang was on the scene early and reported seeing people filling trash bags with merchandise. She also saw crowd trashing the streets outside the stores and turning over garbage cans. 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins told WGN he witnessed people driving...

Muslims around the world continue to celebrate Eid al-Adha as they slaughter livestock amid scaled back festivities because of the coronavirus pandemic. Today marks the second of the four-day Feast of the Sacrifice, which coincides with the last days of the Hajj in Saudi Arabia. Eid al-Adha commemorates Muslims' belief that prophet Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, before God replaced his son with a ram to be sacrificed instead. Many Muslims who can afford it sacrifice cattle as part of the celebrations, as well as camels, goats, sheep or rams.

An outback Australia watering hole has barred the big birds from the premises following a series of flaps, according to reports. ...But as they grew older, they began climbing the steps into the pub and wreaking more havoc than any over-served patron by stealing customers’ food, drinks and car keys — and relieving themselves inside. The solution was to erect ropes in front of the joint’s doors, along with signs reading, “Emus have been banned from this establishment for bad behaviour. Please let yourself in through the emu barrier and then reconnect please!”

Leading conservative activist and entrepreneur Michelle Malkin was attacked by Antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs Sunday at a “Back the Blue” rally in support of police at the Civic Center amphitheater in Denver. Ironically, the Denver police on the scene did not intervene at first, apparently under orders by police Chief Paul Pazen who marched with BLM protesters last month. Malkin says she was not hurt in the attack in which Antifa and BLM thugs rushed and took over the stage, though video shows her being roughed up. The attack was recorded on Malkin’s livestream Periscope video. After about...

Our boy Mic’s symptoms were so subtle and their onset so gradual that we didn’t initially see them. In fact, our other dogs noticed them first. Mic, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi then 12, had always embodied good dog manners. He’d never met a dog who didn’t like him. Suddenly, he was enraging his pack-mates. We sympathized: his nighttime barking was fraying our nerves. Though a number of vet visits and lab tests revealed nothing, Mic continued to decline. When his spatial perception deteriorated, we realized that he was acting like some elderly people we had known, and concluded, almost tongue-in-cheek,...

The monkeys are snatched from the wild and trained to pick up to 1,000 coconuts a day, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said The animal rights group said pigtailed macaques in Thailand were treated like "coconut-picking machines". In a statement, Waitrose said: "As part of our animal welfare policy, we have committed to never knowingly sell any products sourced from monkey labour. Male monkeys are able to pick up to 1,000 coconuts a day, Peta says. It's thought that a human can pick about 80. It said it also discovered "monkey schools", where the animals were trained...

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Since the museum has already explicitly stated Roosevelt had 'troubling views on race,' its condemnation is not merely of the monument, but of the man. As the woke mob continues its crusade, pillaging cities and purging history, the next victim of the “tear it all down” impulse is Theodore Roosevelt, or at least a statue of him. But if Teddy is so problematic he must be canceled, mustn’t we also cleanse all the artifacts connected to his legacy, including thousands of animals?The desecraters never intended to stop at Confederate monuments, of course, and now the sculpture honoring the 26th president...

It all started when Tina Marie Lythgoe noticed a man at a protest shaking a harmless puppy by the neck to get attention on live TV. She offered a $500 reward to the whereabouts of this puppy & the name of this man. In her quest to find the puppy, she was told the puppy was dead and strangled. She wanted to confirm if this was true or not.

Apparently, cops don’t love doughnuts just because they taste good; but also because they make effective tools in protecting the public. For proof of this, look no further than Fort Myers, Florida. That’s where animal control officers saved helpless citizens from a menacing bear with nothing more than a box of Krispy Kremes. After a young 250-pound bear was spotted wandering through the streets of Fort Myers Tuesday morning, officers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were called out to tranquilize it, says Officer Adam Brown. However, because tranquilizers usually don’t take effect right away, they felt using...

Members of the media are bemoaning the “baby pig” abortions that are happening because of the coronavirus’ impact on the meat industry – as they should. But in their coverage, they’re missing a broader point: If we can mourn animals aborted because they’re unwanted, how much more so should we mourn aborted human beings destroyed for the same reason? On April 27, Reuters published a story with the headline reading, “Piglets aborted, chickens gassed as pandemic slams meat sector.” Following their lead, other media, along with animal-rights activists, drew attention to the same issue. In their coverage, Reuters writers called the...