Friday Ark #90 is available and will grow over the weekend, so go take a look at all the animal news you can use.

I and the Bird #25 has some great photos alongside the plethora of avian news.

The 194th Carnival of the Vanities is replete with the best blog content regardless of topic.  This is always an excellent and diverse carnival.

“A British vet and an animal sanctuary are in a race against time to save a family of baboons from a firing squad.  Five adult baboons and two young at a former zoo in Portugal will be put to death in eight weeks unless help arrives soon.”  The primate family lives in a zoo in Portugal that closed 12 years ago, and now the baboons are housed in deplorable conditions, the animals are not healthy, and euthenasia is the kindest thing if they can not be rehomed (although a firing squad is unnecessarily brutal, IMO).  [via Monkeys in the News]

Scientists in Western Australia’s Pilbara region have discovered “the earliest evidence not only of life on Earth, but also of biodiversity.”

I agree with The Editors: We need more kittens in baskets.  WARNING: Cute kitty pictures enclosed.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

— Abraham Lincoln

I wish I could say this will be the final nail in the coffin of the “homosexuality is a choice” camp, but I doubt it.  Still, it’s a very important piece of work.  I strongly suggest you go read The Gay Animal Kingdom:

Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a terrible mistake. Not about natural selection—she’s no bible-toting creationist—but about his other great theory of evolution: sexual selection. According to Roughgarden, sexual selection can’t explain the homosexuality that’s been documented in over 450 different vertebrate species. This means that same-sex sexuality—long disparaged as a quirk of human culture—is a normal, and probably necessary, fact of life. By neglecting all those gay animals, she says, Darwin misunderstood the basic nature of heterosexuality.

Male big horn sheep live in what are often called “homosexual societies.” They bond through genital licking and anal intercourse, which often ends in ejaculation. If a male sheep chooses to not have gay sex, it becomes a social outcast. Ironically, scientists call such straight-laced males “effeminate.”

Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads, surprisingly enough, to ejaculation. They also give each other genital massages.

As this list of activities suggests, having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450 different vertebrate species could be beheaded in Saudi Arabia. You name it, there’s a vertebrate out there that does it.

I guess those more than 450 species are all choosing to be gay, huh?

It’s internet quiz time!  I knew you’d be as excited as I am.

These results are interesting as it’s not the first time I’ve been told screenplays are the way to go.  In any case, the description for this result is completely accurate for me, something I find quite provocative considering the test is not scientific.

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don’t just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?