Each face is a complete separate face, meaning it has two nose, two mouths and four eyes.

The vet, Dr. Erica Drake, said she thought that the kitten was born with a rare condition called diprosopus.

According to Drake, both of the kitten’s mouths operate independently, and she suspects that in addition each mouth has a separate oesophagus leading to the stomach.

Currently, Two Face is said to be doing well and seems healthy – despite the fact that kittens born with the extremely rare condition don’t usually survive long.

However, the kitten’s anatomy will have to be examined in more detail to find out its long-term prospects for survival.

Researchers compared the behaviour and brain activity of fish during one-on-one encounters with a mirror and another male of about the same size.

The team from Stanford University found male African cichlid were scared when they saw their reflection, and that this fear increased when they realised it was making the same movements as them.

It’s said this means fish are actually smarter than most people give them credit for and their brains work in much the same way as humans.

I think we all know someone who gets confused by their own reflection and will pick a fight with it — especially after a few drinks on a Friday night.
“It seems like something they don’t understand,” said Julie Desjardins, a postdoctoral researcher in biology.

“But I think it indicates there is more going on cognitively than people have long assumed in fish. I think this stimulus is just so far outside their realm of experience that it results in this somewhat emotional response.”

The discovery was made by examining the fishes’ brains, which showed high activity in the amygdala, the brain region crucial to fear, in those which had encountered their reflection.

“The amygdala is a part of the brain that has been associated with fear and fear conditioning, not only in fish but across all vertebrates,” added Desjardins.

The only zoo in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) plans to stuff its animals after their deaths and put them on show in a museum, officials say.

The move follows a ban by India’s central zoo authority on new animals being kept in confined spaces.

Mumbai zoo says it is unable to replace animals as they die because existing enclosures for some animals do not conform with anti-cruelty guidelines.

Stuffing the animals will at least allow people to see them, the zoo says.

Officials plan to set up a taxidermy museum as part of a $100m makeover at the zoo, which occupies 53 acres of land in central Mumbai.

Mangal, a 35-year-old Himalayan black bear, was a star attraction at the zoo until he died last week. He has already been stuffed along with a python and a leopard.

Renovation plan

Zoos across the state of Maharashtra are now sending animal carcasses to a taxidermy centre in Mumbai, the only one of its kind in India.

Zoo visitors will still be able to see the lion couple, Maya (left) and Ranga

Taxidermy is the ancient art of preserving an animal’s skin and skeleton and then stuffing it to make it appear lifelike.

The museum is expected to open to the public in two years time.

Mumbai zoo director Sanjay Tripathi says stuffing the animals and putting them on display will be educational.

“The public will be able to see and appreciate the animals and even study their body structure,” he told the BBC’s Prachi Pinglay.

Dr Tripathi said the zoo would not for now be adding to its existing population of more than 200 mammals, 500 birds and 45 reptiles.

“The existing enclosures do not accord to the new guidelines,” he said, “and the taxidermy museum is part of the renovation plan.

“Once the open spaces surrounded by trenches are created we will be able to get new animals. It could take up to five years.”

‘Dying art’

Taxidermist and veterinarian Santosh Gaikwad – who runs the taxidermy centre in western Mumbai – says it is a multi-disciplinary art involving skills in leather tanning, animal anatomy, sculpting and painting.

Preserving an animal by taxidermy takes weeks of painstaking work

“It takes about two months to make a trophy [out] of a medium-sized animal like a leopard,” he said.

“We have received requests from other states like Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh also. It is a dying art and needs to be preserved. Such museums will spread awareness about the animals as well as this art.”

However, animal rights activists are not so enthusiastic.

Campaigners are increasingly against confining wild animals in small spaces

They say stuffing animals may increase the illegal trade in animal skins and carcasses.

Debi Goenka, an environmentalist who studies taxidermy, says it is an ancient practice that was carried out for scientific studies or to show off hunted animals.

“Both these purposes are redundant now. Hunting as a sport is not allowed… so to stuff an animal’s body which has anyways lived in captivity is just adding insult to injury,” he said.

“How would ministers and civil servants like it if they were stuffed instead of the poor animals?”

The pet insurance business however, evades the troubles from the credit crisis that is arising; this is one of the few markets that have managed this kind of problem. In this case there are several reasons why it happens; one of those is that the insurance company doesn’t need to borrow funds from the wholesale markets for loans. Another thing is in insurance providing the chances of failure is less than in a loan providing.

Pet insurance is a financial product but really far different from mortgages and loans, like for instance when you are getting a pet insurance they are not requiring to have an outstanding credit rating. In the market trend today, you will notice that more people are considering on finding products via online. That also goes well with the pet insurance customers; they are looking for the best pet insurance in the internet.

Since the beginning of credit crunch, it is noticeably that the pet insurance availability does not change immensely so therefore it is because of the insurance products’ nature. There is also the important consumers’ trend that is looking online for a pet insurance company and searching for an inexpensive pet insurance product and taking time to read reviews and using it as guidance in their decision making.

The celebratory cull is known as Toad Day Out and was advocated by a Queensland politician, Shane Knuth.

The toads have to be captured alive and unharmed, examined by experts, and then killed humanely under the event rules.

Cane toads were introduced to Australia from South America in 1935 to eat beetles, but became a pest themselves.

“This is an example of how the war against cane toads can be won,” said Mr Knuth, who hopes to take Toad Day Out nationwide.

Critics of the toads blame them for the deaths of crocodiles that may have feasted on them, inadvertently poisoning themselves.

Children also took part in collecting the creatures. “I’ve got no clue how many we’ve got but they’re all fat!” said one boy involved in the hunt for the toads.

The majority of toads will be turned into fertiliser or donated to the science department of James Cook University.

But a few of the largest ones will be stuffed by a local Queensland taxidermist.

An aquarium spokeswoman said stunned visitors saw the injured shark and alerted staff that they had also seen things float from the gaping wound.

The babies were removed from the tank to prevent stingrays and other sharks from eating them.

When staff also moved the mother they found a further four sharks inside her.

The mother’s wound was stitched by a vet at Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World in Auckland.

“She’s doing well, but we’re watching her closely as it’s a one-off occurrence, so we’re not sure how she’ll do,” a spokeswoman told the BBC.

All eight baby sharks survived.

Aquarist Fiona Davies, quoted by the NZ Herald website, said it was common for sharks to take chunks out of each other, even in the wild, but she had never heard of anything like this.

Ms Davies said the unusual delivery had probably saved the baby sharks’ lives.

If the mother had given birth naturally, most likely at night, the babies would have been eaten by adult sharks and stingrays before staff could rescue them.

Which may explain why a polar bear cub has recently been seen riding on the back of its mother as the bears swim across parts of the Arctic Ocean.

The cub then briefly rode her back as she clambered out of the icy water, a unique event photographed by a tourist.

Experts have rarely seen the behaviour, and they say the latest find suggests it may be a more common practice than previously thought.

Dr Jon Aars from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso describes what happened in the journal Polar Biology.

On the 21 July 2006, Mrs Angela Plumb, a tourist from the UK, was aboard a ship in the mouth of a fjord in the Svalbard archipelago.

Holidaying in the wildlife hotspot of Duvefjorden, Nordaustlandet, Mrs Plumb spotted the mother bear with a seven-month-old cub hitching a ride on her back.

“The cub was on the back of the polar bear when it was in the water, then it got out of the water and stayed on its mother’s back a little, then she shook it off,” Mrs Plumb explains.

For large parts of the year, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) live among the sea ice, feeding mainly on seals.

The challenge for the bears is to navigate the many areas of open water between the islands of floating ice.

Seeing the bear had a radio collar, Mrs Plumb got in touch with Dr Aars to report her sighting and asked if this was a common behaviour.

“I hadn’t seen this behaviour before or heard about it so I asked other researchers and found out it is something that has been observed but not frequently at all,” Dr Aars says.

Out of the cold

Cubs are known to ride their mother’s back when moving through deep snow as they leave their den areas.

Cubs of other bear species such as the sloth bear also ride on their parents.

However, the the extent to which polar bear cubs hitch a ride on swimming adults in open water is unknown.

Dr Aars was especially interested if this behaviour might have some adaptive value for the bears.

“This could be potentially important because it means that the cubs get exposed to less water. If they are in the water they would have to swim and very small cubs are very badly insulated in water,” he says.

Adults are well adapted to swimming in the cold water with insulating subcutaneous fat and and large body mass.

However, young bears have very little insulating fat, as they do not develop brown fat stores until adulthood. Their fur coat also loses most of its insulating properties if immersed in ice water.

Dr Aars suggests staying out of the water could be vital for the cub’s ability to survive in habitats where sea ice is scattered across open ocean.

Speedy transport

Another reason for the behaviour could be that it aids the mother’s mobility in the water.

“I would imagine a big benefit is the ride is faster, an adult female polar bear is a strong swimmer, cubs of this size are much slower and time in water is time lost hunting,” suggests Professor Andrew Derocher from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

“The mother would rather put her time into gaining more food by reaching good habitat rather than swimming and using energy,” he explains.

The scientists are interested to find out if this behaviour might be a regular occurrence within the polar bear population.

“It’s important to remember the vast areas it may happen in. It has not been observed that much, but it could be more common than we think,” says Dr Aars.

Prof Derocher also wonders if the people who share the bears’ habitat might be able to help unravel this behaviour.

“It would be interesting to hear if Inuit have seen this behaviour, I’m always very impressed that our observations match what local people have seen before, but they don’t tell you about them unless you ask.”

NEW YORK – A WIRE-HAIRED dachshund that held the record as the world’s oldest dog has died on Long Island at age 21 – or 147 in dog years.

Chanel died on Friday of natural causes at her owner’s home in Port Jefferson Station, a village 80km east of New York City.

Guinness World Records officials honored Chanel as the world’s oldest dog in May at a 21st birthday bash hosted by a pet food company at a Manhattan dog hotel and spa.

Owners Denice and Karl Shaughnessy adopted Chanel from a pet shelter in Newport News, Virginia, when she was 6 weeks old.

They say Chanel in her later years wore tinted goggles for her cataracts and favoured sweaters because she was sensitive to the cold. But they say she remained lively for her age. — AP