Music for Bossie
Do cows like music well enough to give more milk? Miss Nora Johnston of Thorpe, Surrey, in England, believes they do, and has set out to prove her theory. She travels about a large farm with a portable carillon of her own design, playing a musical accompaniment while the cows are milked. She says figures accumulated over a period of time prove that the milk yield has increased since she started her program of music for Bossie.
RAISING GOLDFISH BY THE MILLION
IF YOU own a goldfish, the chances are two to one it came from Martinsville. This southern Indiana town is the goldfish center of the world. Seventy-five million fish have begun life in the 600 ponds of its famous Grassyfork Fisheries.
When I spent a week, not long ago, watching the work of caring for these miles of goldfish, 10,000.000 baby fish had just rolled from their round white eggs and were darting about ponds and hatchery tanks. For the older fish, men were cooking mush breakfasts in giant 7,000-pound boilers. Other employees were busy shooting weed-killing chemicals into ponds; stalking watersnakes, musk-rats, fish hawks; sorting, counting, packing goldfish and sending them racing across country in a giant truck that resembles a submarine and can carry 200,000 fish in a single load.
Shark Octopus Undersea Battle Filmed
A most remarkable battle between a shark and an octopus has been photographed by a daring cameraman for the film, “Samarang”—(Out of the Deep). With his camera and equipment inside a diving bell, open at the bottom, the internal air pressure being sufficient to keep the water out at shallow depths, he placed a piece of meat in the water to attract the shark, the octopus already being in the vicinity. The battle which ensued between shark and octopus lasted twenty minutes, but it was quite one-sided.
Sick Python Fed With Special Rubber Hose
WHEN the throat muscles of a 22-1/2 -foot python in the St. Louis, Mo., zoo became paralyzed recently, it became necessary for the zoo officials to use force-feeding methods to keep the reptile alive. The feeding equipment developed for the job consists of a five-foot length of special rubber hose fitted with a removable plunger. Ground rabbit meat is fed into the hose and is forced into the snake’s stomach by means of the plunger.
This is kind of sad. It almost warrants it’s own unicorn chaser.
BULL WITH SINGLE HORN IS MODERN UNICORN
What might be called a modern unicorn has been produced by Dr. W. F. Dove, University of Maine biologist. From a day-old bull calf, Dr. Dove removed the two small knots of tissue which normally develop into horns. These horn buds he transplanted in the center of the bull’s forehead, thereby inducing the growth of a single massive horn. The bull, now nearly three years old, has developed much of the proud bearing ascribed to the mythical unicorn.
Wait. That’s a zoo? I thought it was the Alaskan wilderness!
MURALS MAKE BEAVERS FEEL AT HOME
Beavers in a den at the Belle Isle Zoo, in Detroit, Mich., now cavort amid scenes resembling their natural habitat. To minimize the artificial appearance of the surroundings, an artist reproduced a colorful forest panorama, complete with pine trees, scrub brush, streams, and lakes, upon the concrete walls of the open beaver pit. Visitors are attracted by the novelty of viewing the animals against a woodland background.
Rose Glasses on Chickens Reduce Fighting
There was murder going on in a New Jersey penitentiary yard. The prison chickens were killing each other. One after another, the young White Leghorns would fight among themselves to the death. Nothing was effective in preventing the quarrels until the warden tried putting rose-colored glasses on the birds. That stopped the fighting instantly. The Leghorns, the only fighters in the poultry lot, now are all equipped with aluminum-framed spectacles with center pieces extending in front of the bill.
There is something very disturbing about a person who kills and stuffs thousands of animals while proclaiming that he is granting them “Eternal Life”. It sort of reminds me of a fanatically religious serial killer who thinks he’s actually helping his victims when he kills them.
Taxidermist Gives Eternal Life To Birds
ARMED only with a forked stick, a hunter walked warily through the squat bushes of the San Fernando valley in Southern California the other day. Suddenly he froze in his tracks, warned by a series of rattles that hidden danger lay waiting.
He advanced slowly, saw a Pacific rattle snake lying coiled and ready to strike. With the skill acquired from many such hunts, he pressed the stick down over the snake’s neck, stuffed the reptile into a box, and hastened back to his Hollywood studio.
There John Schleisser, famed naturalist-taxidermist—for it was he who captured the deadly reptile—chloroformed the rattler. A few minutes later he could be seen taking exact measurements by making a plaster cast of the body. Then he skinned the rattler, made a mannikin of papier mache duplicating the late deceased, and a few days later fitted the skin, perfectly tanned, back over the artificial body.
He’s a Rat Farmer
A strange little livestock ranch in the attic gave Norton McKinney a new life and a $10,000 crop.
By William Gilman
“FUNNY kind of a business for a fellow to get into,” the villagers shake their heads as they glance up at the old mansion Norton McKinney bought in quiet little Middletown Springs, Vermont.
And it is a funny setup, all right. The attic in his antiquated home swarms with rats—mice, too. Last time he took a census there were 1500 adult rats and mice, with new litters running up the rodent population practically every day. You’d think his wife Georgia would raise the roof about that ratty situation up in the attic—but, no, she only wants to hear more rats racing around over their heads. She even helps him nurse and coddle new-born rats with germ-free water and purify the air they breathe with ultra-violet lamps. No wonder their place is called Funny Farms!
Cat’s are still fun to photograph. They’re even more fun with a caption though.
Cats Are Fun to Photograph
An expert reveals tricks that help you get good pictures of Tabby. Patience is the biggest requirement.
By Walter Chandoha
CATS are easy to photograph—if you can tap an unlimited supply of patience. Beyond that, all you need is a camera (I prefer a reflex) with flash attachment. An assistant, portrait lenses, a tripod and a flash extension are helpful, but by no means essential.
Science Remakes the Dog
How Breeders Are Changing The Appearance and Nature Of Our Canine Population To Bring Out the Qualities That Are Made Desirable By Modern Living Conditions
By Jesse F. Gelders
DOGS are getting smaller. Subject to style trends, the same as clothing, automobiles, and houses, they are adapting themselves— or, rather, being adapted—to the changed conditions of modern life.
People today are demanding dogs that can live in small homes or apartments, and ride in automobiles, without crowding out their human companions; dogs that can keep fit with a minimum of exercise; smart, good-natured dogs, and—an important consideration, sometimes—dogs that will not eat their masters out of house and home.
TEST NEW PARACHUTE FOR THE DOGS OF WAR
Foreseeing that troops may be dropped with parachutes from speeding planes, in future wars, Soviet experimenters are trying out a similar means of landing the dogs used in army service. A recent invention is a cylindrical coop for the dog, provided with a parachute that opens automatically when it is tossed from a plane. The shell of the coop, locked closed during the descent, springs open of its own accord when the device strikes the ground. The photographs reproduced here show the device in action during recent successful tests by Soviet aviators.
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