Animals

Lower Makefield Township supervisors have put the bite on barking dogs by authorizing the police department to issue citations to their owners. At their meeting Monday night, the supervisors amended the animal nuisance ordinance to cover excessive noise caused by continuously barking dogs. Previously, the ordinance, which includes only dogs and horses, required only that owners clean up after their animals and prevent them from running free. According to township Police Chief Charles Ronaldo, the amendment was prompted by complaints from residents who contend that barking dogs are disturbing the peace.

CANCEL MY trip to Kathmandu! I find your picture of a man getting ready to chop the head off of a young animal in the name of religion disgraceful. These animals look to be very young and I don't see anyone preparing them for dinner. Heads and bodies are lying everywhere. In a country of poverty, can't these animals be used for food? Why any religion sacrifices living creatures is beyond me. As a member of PETA and the USHS, I protest this kind of behavior. Joe Hamilton Philadelphia

THE advent of Easter and the phenomenal popularity of "The Passion of the Christ" bring to the fore Jesus' powerful message of love and compassion. How can Christians reconcile this message with subsidizing the agony of billions of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses? Cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and other animals raised for food are sentient beings who share many of our own feelings of joy, love, sadness, and pain. Yet from birth they are caged, crowded, drugged, mutilated and manhandled in today's factory farms.

An open season on hunters is an idea suggested by Cleveland Amory as a way of keeping down the growing number of hunters in this country. Amory insists that he is only thinking of what's best for the hunters themselves when he suggests that some of them should be harvested every year. If their ranks are not thinned out, he says, they'll become so numerous that food supplies for them will be inadequate and many of them will die of starvation. Amory wants the hunting of hunters to be carried out in a civilized way. For instance, if someone bags a hunter, Amory does not feel that the dead hunter should be tied to the roof or hood of the hunter hunter's car when being brought back from where it was shot.

Autistic children from the Center for Autistic Children and the Project Learn School in Mount Airy had a chance to meet a variety of animals yesterday when representatives of Busch Gardens and Sea World visited the center on Conshohocken State Road. Relating to animals is believed to help autistic children form relationships with people.

RE THE LETTER about the cats and dogs that don't pay taxes: These animals didn't ask to be here. A homeless person chooses that life when he or she turns down a shelter that would take them in. When you read what some of these humans do to animals, it's sickening - and, in case you don't know it, they are the same ones killing and torturing humans. You should move because it's an insult to say you're from Philadelphia if you actually feel that way about animals. Sandy Ward Philadelphia

Christina Smallet (left) and Christie Bush, Camden County College vet-tech students, take blood sample at the Humane Society

Monica Wall, 3, with mom Barbara (left) and grandmom Dolores Whitehead, checks out the creche animals at Old First Reformed Church, 4th and Race streets, last night. The famous live-animal Nativity scene is on display through Dec. 28.

THE CITY OF Philadelphia (once again) should be ashamed of itself. Money for investigation (in which the data was skewed), planning and implementation of bike lanes, which hardly anyone wants - yes! Money for two rounds of fireworks on New Year's Eve - yes! Money for the Mummers - yes! Money to save poor defenseless animals - hell, no! Makes perfect sense to me. It makes me sick! Denny Braccia, Maple Shade, N.J.

CALL ME crazy, but it seems as though ever since Michael Vick came come to town, there are more and more cases of animal abuse. I cry myself to sleep at night watching the news. From Sticky the cat who was duct-taped to the pig of a human being who let her animals waste away in her home to the person who lit the tiny kitty on fire, I am just sick. Man is ruining the life of domesticated animals. They put so much trust in us to take care of them. And what does Philadelphia do?

Q: Our dog will sometimes come into the bedroom and be startled at the sight of herself in our mirrored closet doors. Sometimes she'll even bark. Other times she takes no notice of her reflection at all. Does she recognize that it's her? Or think it's another dog? A: The answer is actually a little more complex. In psychology circles, the mirror test is considered an important evaluation of self-awareness in animals and a sign of the normal development of cognitive skills in children.

Pennsylvania Ballet revived Carnival of the Animals on Thursday at the Academy of Music, and it continues to be a delightful, colorful piece that, like ballet, transforms characters into other beings. Written and narrated on stage by John Lithgow, and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Carnival is the story of a boy, Oliver Pendleton Percy the Third (the personable Lucas Tischler, notable in winters past as both Fritz and the Nutcracker Prince)

THURSDAY they treated me like an animal. OK - I'm an animal every day, and you are, too, so don't be giggling behind your hairless paw. You may think you're something special, but to biologists you are an animal, a mammal to be precise. Yes, yes, you have a really big brain, but most of it you don't use. Yes, yes, you have an opposable thumb, a high order of communication and the ability to theorize, but, really, you're just an animal. Thinking about animals leads to the zoo, and this is a big weekend for the Philadelphia Zoo, America's first.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Sumeth Budhraja is a 40-year-old golf nut from Bangkok, a 3-handicap with a nice short game. In October, he won a local tournament at Siam Country Club in Pattaya, a beach resort about 70 miles south of the capital city. He shot 78 in the first flight. Barclays, the international finance monolith, sponsored the tournament. First prize: a trip to the Masters. Budhraja is a Sikh, bearded and pleasant, so proud of his heritage that he not only wore a blue turban on Thursday but also a T-shirt that explained the reasons why he wore it. (Final reason: It makes him look good.)

The Rutgers basketball scandal bounced into the political arena Monday, with Gov. Christie calling the coach an "animal" even as he disagreed with Democratic calls for hearings and the dismissal of another top official. The Republican governor repeatedly expressed support for Rutgers President Robert Barchi as he fielded more than a dozen questions about the topic in his first appearance before reporters since videos showing Coach Mike Rice throwing basketballs at players and using anti-gay slurs went public last week.

By Crystal Miller-Spiegel 'De-extinction," the idea that extinct animals can be brought back through cloning or genetic engineering, has caught the interest of a small group of scientists. The topic graces the cover of this month's National Geographic. Proponents say they are doing it for moral reasons and because we "miss" the extinct animals. They cite human exploitation (e.g. hunting, habitat destruction) for the extinctions, but their plans, though they sound exciting, are exploitation in another form.

Do animals have a sense of fairness? Do they empathize with another's pain? A few decades ago, such questions would have been dismissed as nonsense. Even today, they'd be rejected by many ethicists who argue that moral reasoning is unique to humans. Frans de Waal begs to differ. He holds that morality springs from our instincts as social animals, not from God, Society, Reason or any other capitalized Higher Being. The Dutch-born primatologist, who will speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia on Thursday at 7:30 p.m., has spent three decades upending our assumptions about the origin of morality.

The Philadelphia Zoo's new children's area - its largest construction project ever - is a place where sheep have four horns and trained chickens will turn a light on and off. A place where a kid can climb opposite a monkey, watch a bug walk on water, and get eyeball-to-antenna with ants. "It will be a game-changer," said Marina Haynes, curator of the new KidZooU. "Until now, the children's zoos have had a simple focus - the barnyard, the backyard, and pets," she said. The zoo's new $33.3 million children's area, which took nearly two years to build and opens Saturday, is taking a more sophisticated approach.

The Humane Society of the United States will be offering a one-day seminar for area law enforcement on animal cruelty investigations, the organization announced. The training, through the affiliated Humane Society University, will be on Wednesday at the New Castle County Police Southern Headquarters in Middletown, Del. The course will include information on drafting arrest and search warrants, preparing for prosecution and testifying in court. Animal cruelty laws, including those for dog fighting, are on the books in all 50 states, but are often a low priority for prosecutors, according to the group.

School buses of drunk college kids are never a good thing. Especially in Old City. That's the message Capt. Brian Korn of the 6th Police District wanted made clear after large crowds of college students arrived at a Market Street lounge in yellow school buses Thursday night. "This lends itself to an 'Animal House' atmosphere, which of course is not a very inviting atmosphere for the non-fraternity type of visitors Old City businesses like to attract," Korn wrote Friday in a e-mail to Graham Copeland, executive director of the Old City Special Service District.