Hoax Museum Blog: Animals

Dog Gives Birth to Green Puppy — A golden retriever has given birth to a green puppy, appropriately named Wasabi. Local 6 News reports:

The dog is healthy and green, according to the report. Local 6 News showed video of the puppy rolling around with its normal-looking newborn brothers and sisters. Skeptics said the dog had to be dyed green but the owner said the puppy was born green. Veterinarians said it is possible for a newborn puppy's fur to be green because the placenta, which is green, rubs off at birth.

This reminds me of the guy whose sweat turned green. I'm inclined to think the dog case might be real, because if you're going to dye a puppy, why do such a bad job? Go all out and make him glow in the dark. The puppy in the pictures hardly looks green at all (though maybe that's just because of the poor quality of the video images). Of course, if their next move is to sell the puppy on eBay, then I might suspect a hoax.

Hippo With Tortoise — This is a slightly old story, but very heartwarming. A baby hippo in Nairobi that survived the tsunami has apparently adopted a tortoise as its surrogate mother:

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP. "After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.

As far as I can tell, this story is completely true. But the real reason I'm posting about it is because I think it might provide me with a great title for my next book: Hippo Eats Tortoise. Kinda catchy, don't you think?

Pet Rat Grooming — Gary emailed me this article with the comment "Please tell me this is a hoax." Sadly, I think it's not. Here are some highlights from the article:

Grooming isn't just for dogs anymore, and many pet owners are bringing in their rats to groomers like Garrison, who uses waterless shampoo to make their coats shine and smell sweet... "We need to be there for all our clients," Garrison said. "I think we might be the only place around that grooms rats."...
"The most difficult part of grooming rats is trimming their nails," Garrison said. "They have very small feet." Ferguson recommends pet owners get their animals groomed at least once a month to protect them from parasites. "I love rats," she said. "It's an obsession to me. Sometimes when they get nervous they (urinate) but they don't usually bite. We know how to handle them because that's what we do."

A quick Google search brings up quite a few resources for rat owners who want to groom their pets. The biggest challenge for rat lovers seems to be the little drops of urine the delightful creatures leave as they walk around.

Do Round Bowls Make Goldfish Go Blind? — CNN reports that the city of Rome has passed a set of laws to prevent cruelty to animals. For instance, dog owners will be forced to walk their dogs regularly. And round goldfish bowls have been banned because round bowls supposedly cause the fish to go blind. Specifically, the article says:

The newspaper [Il Messaggero] reported that round bowls caused fish to go blind. No one at Rome council was available to confirm this was why they were banned. Many fish experts say round bowls provide insufficient oxygen for fish.

I have never before heard this claim about the dangerous effects of round bowls. I tried to google "round bowls goldfish blind" to see if anyone has written about this, but no luck. However, depending on the size of the opening in the bowl, it does seem logical that the fish may not get enough oxygen. And if they don't get enough oxygen, maybe they'll go blind (shortly before they die).

Incidentally, I'm totally in favor of laws forcing people to walk their dogs. I hate it when people (such as my neighbor) keep their dog chained up in their yard all day, every day.

Great Pointed Archer Society — Not many people like rats. But the members of the Great Pointed Archer Society do. As they proclaim on their very slick website: The immediate goal of this website is to replace the offensive name ‘rat’ with the untainted, and beautiful name Great Pointed Archer. By doing away with this all-to-common slur, we can begin to repair centuries of disrespect and hatred. After all, it’s not their fault they live in the sewer and eat trash.

It's not clear who's the creative force behind the Great Pointed Archer Society. It seems to be a little too well designed to actually be a society of rat lovers. For instance, compare it to the much less flashy (and therefore more obviously real) Rat Fan Club website. So almost everyone is guessing that it's a stealth advertising campaign whose ultimate object has yet to be revealed. The Great Pointed Archer Society is selling t-shirts (which is always a strong indicator of a hoax), but I can't believe that the entire site was created just to sell the shirts. (Thanks to S.M. Elliott for the link)

Victor the Talking Budgie — Victor is (or rather was) a budgie that, according to its owner, could speak in context. In other words, Victor could not only mimic words, as many birds can, but also carry on meaningful conversations. Victor has been a topic of discussion on the internet for over four years. However, I just became aware of him thanks to an email from Gretel Shuvzwichinstov. So here are the basic facts about Victor, as I understand them:

Victor belonged to Ryan Reynolds who, as he became aware that Victor was saying intelligible things, began to record him. Victor's conversations go something like this: Victor so cute. What will you do for Victor? Give me some carrot. I get lots of cheese, mmmm, cheese, cheese. So I talk too fast, so whatever! Reynolds has made many audio recordings of Victor available on his website. There are also videos of Victor speaking. Victor died in 2000, so it's impossible for anyone else to study him. Which is one of the reasons why a lot of people suspect Victor is simply an elaborate hoax concocted by Reynolds.

Another reason why this all might be a hoax is that budgies are not generally known for being able to carry on meaningful conversations. Also, Reynolds seems to be one of the very few people who can extract anything intelligible out of the weird noises Victor made. Though I can definitely catch the occasional word, most of Victor's squawks sound like something out of The Exorcist to me. I half suspect that if you played them backwards, you'd discover Victor was muttering Satanic curses in ancient Aramaic. If the Electronic Voice Phenomena advocates (the people who swear they can hear coffee pots talking to them) got hold of Victor, they would probably conclude he was channelling spirits from beyond.

In Reynolds' favor, he seems to passionately believe in Victor and, more generally, in the idea that birds possess the capacity for complex speech. He states that:

A majority of the people that come to this site embrace it for what it really is. A truthful study of a talking parrot that could speak in conversational language. However the claims that some make about it being a hoax are ridiculous and have no grounds whatsoever. Individuals who make these claims should understand that they are slandering me, especially if they say it in an open forum in writing. I do not take this lightly as I have worked very hard on these sites during the past few years to be libeled so unfairly.

So my hunch is that Reynolds is sincere (i.e. this isn't a deliberate hoax), but he's convinced himself there's something meaningful in a bird's random chatter. Making this an example of audio pareidolia.

CitiKitty: Cat Toilet Training Kit — I'm sorry. I refuse to believe it would be possible to train a cat to use a toilet, despite what the CitiKitty company might claim. After all, you can't train cats to do anything. (At least, not my cat.) This is how the CityKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit is supposed to work:

The specially designed training seat securely sits on your toilet filled with litter. Your cat naturally uses CitiKitty as its new litter box. The rings are removed thus reducing the amount of litter. Once all rings are removed your cat is toilet trained!

I think the cat might use the citikitty thing while it has litter in it. But once the litter is gone, the cat will not keep going back to where the litter used to be. Instead, it'll pee on your bed (or somewhere else designed to punish you and force you to bring back the litter). But in the interest of fairness, if anyone has successfully used this device, I'd be curious to hear about it.

Python Swallows Gator — A recent news story about a python swallowing a gator has been receiving a lot of attention. It's already been posted in the forum (by Stephen), but I've been getting so many emails about it that I decided to post it here as well. These are the facts, as I understand them: The body of a six-foot gator was found last week in the Everglades, inside of a python. The python had tried to swallow the gator, but this caused its stomach to burst open. It's stomach subsequently burst open. (Must have been an unpleasant way for the python to die.) I don't see any reason to doubt this information. Skip Snow, the biologist who found the bodies of the python and gator, seems like a credible source. The unresolved question, as Snow states, is why the python swallowed the gator, and under what circumstances. Did the python attack the gator while it was alive? Or did the python try to swallow a dead gator? No one knows. Either way, that was a pretty suicidal python. Inevitably this will add fuel to all those urban legends about people eaten by snakes.

Seattle Attempts to Save Rat Population — Signs that appeared in a park in Fremont near Seattle announced that the city's park department "was planning to build a habitat to save the declining canal-rat population, species name: Rattus Norvegicus. The signs said the city was going to plant thorny bushes along that bank of the Lake Washington Ship Canal to make a safe and human-free habitat to increase the 'canal rat community.'" It all turned out to be a hoax, though according to the Seattle Times, many people were fooled: "At the Indoor Sun Shoppe across the street, customers were abuzz that Seattle is trying to save rats... Only one person said he thought it was a good idea, to protect them from the herons."

Killer Dolphins Set Loose by Katrina — I've received a lot of emails about a story in The Observer a few days ago alleging that thirty-six dolphins "trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater" and "carrying 'toxic dart' guns" were swept out of their tanks by Hurricane Katrina and are now at large in the Gulf of Mexico. This story is very doubtful for a number of reasons.

First, it seems to be a wild rumor inspired by the true report that eight bottlenose dolphins were washed out of their marina by Katrina, but were later recovered. Second, The Observer's story relies entirely upon one source, a "respected accident investigator" named Leo Sheridan. But as The Register points out, Mr. Sheridan has been the source for many dubious conspiracy-style claims in the past.

In 2003 he told The Guardian that he didn't believe the official explanation that the English aviator Amy Johnson's plane crashed in 1941 because it ran out of fuel. He believed she had been shot down.

In 1998 he told the Observer the cause of death of 22 dolphins found washed up on the shore in southern France was that "'these were dolphins trained by the US navy, and that something went badly wrong... They were disposed of to conceal the existence of the American's military dolphin programme.' According to Mr Sheridan, the United States navy launched a classified programme, the Cetacean Intelligence Mission, in San Diego in 1989 with the approval of President George Bush. The dolphins, fitted with harnesses around their necks and with small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught first to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea."

And in 1991 The Observer used him as the source for a story about crop circles: "Britain's crop circles are caused by squabbling birds marking out their feeding territory, says environmental investigator Leo Sheridan. 'Each morning birds that feed off the crops, such as starlings and sparrows, squabble over their patch of field,' he says. 'The birds sometimes two or three hundred of them whirl round in circles close to the top of the crops, flattening them with the action of their wings as they fight each other for a patch of field.' Mr Sheridan, who is employed by aviation authorities to investigate atmospheric and environmental influences on air disasters, claims he has witnessed the phenomenon in Devon and Cornwall."

In other words, Leo Sheridan is The Observer's resident crackpot-on-call. They must phone him up whenever they want to add a bit of drama or weirdness to their stories.

Further discrediting the story is the US Navy's insistence that it has never trained dolphins for attack missions. The dolphins are only trained to locate suspicious objects. Not to destroy them.

Plastic Deer Shot By Hunters — Jim Heffernan reports for the Duluth News Tribune that: "Homeowners who decorate their yards with life-sized plastic deer are complaining the sculptures are being damaged by those stalking real deer during Duluth's special season for bowhunters." That seems believable enough, but the article gets a little stranger with the first interviewee, Orval Pussywillow (that can't be a real name), whose "decorative doe, Felicity, had an arrow sticking out of her hind quarter," but whose "lawn ornament depicting the posterior of a fat woman bending over" was unmolested. Other locals interviewed include Randy Waxwing, Thelma Twelvetrees, Msgr. Ernest X. Chasuble, and Professor Michael Angelo (head of the Sculpture and Human Sexuality Department at the Arrowhead College of Carnal Knowledge).

I like the part where Heffernan reports that "religious leaders are concerned that fake donkeys in Christmas nativity scenes will be shot at by hunters when churches erect creches on their lawns around Thanksgiving... Religious leaders said either the hunt should be suspended during the holidays or characters in the displays should be adorned with blaze orange garments."

So most of the article has to be a joke. However, I'm wondering if any of it is real. Was there really a report of a plastic deer shot by a hunter in Duluth? Or did Heffernan make the whole thing up?

Fake Fly in Urinal — A pair of images showing a urinal with a fake fly etched into the porcelain is doing the rounds. (I'd guess it's been circulating for at least two years.) The images are accompanied by this caption:

In Amsterdam, the tile under Schiphol's urinals would pass inspection in an operating room. But nobody notices. What everybody does notice is that each urinal has a fly in it. Look harder, and the fly turns into the black outline of a fly, etched into the porcelain. It improves the aim. If a man sees a fly, he aims at it. Fly-in-urinal research found that etchings reduce spillage by 80%. It gives a guy something to think about. That's the perfect example of process control.

Apparently this is true. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam does sport fly urinals. (Though I'd be interested in getting first-hand verification of this.) The Straight Dope reports that New York's Kennedy airport is considering using the same fake-fly technology.

Monster Crocodile in New Orleans — Michael Maffei sent me some giant crocodile pictures that have begun doing the rounds. They're accompanied by this caption:

Now this is a Crocodile ! This crocodile was found in New Orleans swimming down the street. 21 FT long, 4,500 lbs, around 80 years old minimum. Specialists said that he was looking to eat humans because he was too old to catch animals. This crocodile was killed by the army last Sunday at 3:00 pm, currently he is in the freezer at the Azur hotel. The contents of it's stomach will be analyzed this Friday at 2:30pm.

The pictures are real enough, but they're weren't taken in New Orleans. These are pictures of the Monster Crocodile of Pointe-Noire (in the Republic of the Congo). They've been circulating for over two years. David Emery notes that the crocodile was really estimated to be 16 feet long and weighed about 1874 lbs. That's still a lot bigger than I'd ever care to encounter.

Fuel From Dead Cats — The German newspaper Bild yesterday reported that an inventor, Christian Koch, had developed a method to make bio-fuel out of dead cats. 20 cats would be enough to fill one gas tank. The story quickly spread to other media outlets, and animal-rights activists expressed concern: "The president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, Wolfgang Apel, said using dead cats for fuel was illegal... 'We're going to keep an eye on this case,' Apel said." But it now turns out that Bild's story wasn't totally accurate. What they meant was that, in theory, one could use dead cats (or any other organic material) to produce the fuel. But the inventor insists he never mentioned the use of cats: "It’s an alternative fuel that is friendly for the environment. But it’s complete nonsense to suggest dead cats. I’ve never used cats and would never think of that. At most the odd toad may have jumped in." It seems that Bild got the idea for the use of cats from the name of Koch's company, Alphakat GmbH.

New Orleans Alligator — Here's another New Orleans image that's begun to circulate. (Travis of Ohio State sent this one in.) Evidently this alligator has just enjoyed a good meal. However, this photo isn't a fake. It appeared in Der Stern accompanying an article about the many dangers that now exist in New Orleans, and is credited to photographer Marvi Lacar. The photo's caption reads (in English): "An alligator in the church: the 'swamp critters' are an additional danger."

Opossum in the Attic — Over the weekend my wife and I discovered that we have an uninvited guest living in our attic crawlspace: an opossum. (This isn't a hoax.) As we were sitting on our patio we heard it moving around and soon discovered that it had found a gap (that we had never been aware of) in the side of the overhang above the kitchen door whereby it could gain access to the crawlspace. I rigged up a camera and managed to get a picture of it sticking its face out. So my question is, does anyone know what to do about an opossum in the attic? Will it leave of its own accord after a while? (We suspect it's been there for at least a couple of weeks.) Or do we have to get professionals out to remove it? I don't want to hurt it, because from what I understand they're fairly useful animals that kill rats, snakes, cockroaches, and other rodents.

Dead Jackalope — In Jackalope news: a Minnesota woman found in her yard a dead rabbit with horns growing out of its head, exactly like a jackalope. A veterinarian declared that it had been infected by Shope papilloma virus, "a highly contagious disease that causes rabbits to grow things on their head and face that look like horns." The veterinarian's explanation is, of course, part of the continuing conspiracy to conceal the existence of jackalopes from the general public.

Sharks in New Orleans — David Emery throws some cold water on rumors that sharks are swimming through the streets of New Orleans. He points out that the shark sightings seem to be the "seen by a friend of a friend" variety:

I found repeated references to unnamed "authorities" and "officials" reporting one "3-foot shark cruising the city." Which authorities? Which officials? Digging further, I could only find mention of one by name: Mayor Aaron Broussard of Jefferson Parish (a New Orleans suburb), who, according to the August 30 issue of the Palm Beach Post, "told residents Tuesday that at least one 3-foot shark had been spotted." Again, that's one small shark reportedly sighted — exactly where and by whom, we don't know — and as far as we know he hadn't eaten anybody.

But alligators are a different matter altogether. Officials assume there will be alligators in the water.

Wrinkled Egg — Brian Edwards has sent in these photos of a wrinkled egg. I've never heard of an egg getting wrinkled, but the pictures don't look photoshopped. The egg, however, does look a bit like a potato. Soon I'll have to start a new category for odd eggs, what with my previous posts about a spoon-shaped egg, and a tall-tail egg.

Hoof Hearted — I received this email from "Doctor Psi":

I remember a British horse race in which one of the entrants was named 'Hoof Hearted'. This horse was obviously named so as to cause the maximum amount of amusement when listening to the commentary! Anyway, I was looking for a picture of said horse to show a friend, and found the following website:

http://www.hoofheartedoutfitters.com/index.htm

It looks genuine, but I can't believe that these guys haven't stopped to think just how their business name sounds when spoken at a slightly quicker tempo than usual!

It took me a few seconds to get the double meaning, but I eventually got it. I'm guessing it never occurred to HoofHearted Outfitters.