Here are the most interesting ways people have used animals around the world:
7 - Special Service Dogs Dogs truly are man's best friend. In 2012,
in the United States, 36.5% of households had dogs as pets. That's about 43 million
households with one or more dogs in the U.S. alone. On top of that, you've probably heard
of service dogs who help blind people navigate the streets. And let's not forget police
dogs that assist their co-workers or actual owners on the force in finding drugs, finding
illegal explosives, and also protecting fellow policemen as well.
But did you know that there are service dogs trained to deal with seizures for people with
epilepsy? That's right, man's best friend is stepping it up a notch. Seizure response
dogs are trained to deal with life-threatening seizures, in various ways. They might look
for someone to help its owner having a seizure. Or they might stay by their owner during the
seizure to stimulate them. Or they might prevent their owners from injuring themselves on dangerous
objects. These dogs are so smart, they can even grab
medication or food for their owner if necessary. What's even more ridiculous is the fact
that some seizure response dogs even develop an ability to predict seizures in their companions
if they've spent many years together! How this happens exactly isn't known yet,
and of course it's definitely best not to depend on it. All I know is that the faster
the dog can get someone to help out its owner, the better the chance its owner has. You guys
think dogs can be therapeutic and actually prevent seizures?! Dogs can learn to do a
whole lot of amazing things, and this is just one of the many reasons that keeps dogs up
there at the number one spot for pets. 6 - Electric eels
Electric eels can be pretty dangerous in the wild, but you might be SHOCKED to find out
that an electric eel has been used to power a Christmas tree in Japan. You see what I
did there?! Tell me you didn't laugh! ANYWAYS, electric eels produce electricity by using
three pairs of abdominal organs in their bodies. They hunt by sensing movements and electric
currents in the water to detect their prey, and then they shock it with 850 watts of electricity,
enough to kill most small animals, and to seriously hurt a fully grown human.
You can almost think of their bodies as batteries, as they produce their electricity in similar
ways to a battery set up in series. It turns out that you can use them like batteries too.
By setting up electrodes in the right position, you can harness the electricity that the eel
produces just by moving. An aquarium in Japan did just that when it used an electric eel
to power a Christmas tree. The Enoshima Aquarium, south of Tokyo, showcased
the set-up which involved an electrode in an aquarium which was home to an electric
eel. Since it uses electricity to detect its surroundings,
the eel swimming around meant power for the christmas lights. Now, powering a christmas
tree is pretty cool, but we probably won't be lighting up a whole city using electric
eel power anytime soon no matter how cool that would be.
5 - Hungry Cats In 1914, an officer walking down James Street
in the middle of the night in New York City heard noises coming from a butcher shop. Thinking
that perhaps it might be a burglar, he called for backup. Bursting through the front door
with their pistols out, the police found the culprit. Or rather, culprits. About 25 cats
had managed to find their way into the butcher shop, and they had eaten nearly all of the
meat. After chasing away the cats, no arrests were made, but a mystery was left behind.
How had the cats gotten in? Okay you're probably wondering what the h*ll I'm talking
about, but trust me, the story gets better! Apparently this particular butcher always
left the transom open at night. A transom is a little window above a door, for those
of you who don't know. He only meant to air out his shop, and keep his meat aired
out I guess, but him leaving the transom open ended up putting him out of business. The
strange part was that there was no way the cats could have gotten in alone. Well, at
least without human help that is, in theory. Either they managed to form a feline ladder
and climb up to the window themselves, or somebody gave them a helping hand.
Let's be for real here, the latter explanation makes a h*lluva lot more sense. Apparently,
the butcher had a rival who had been studying his habits. Officers theorized that a rival
butcher had collected 25 cats and starved them for days before giving these hungry cats
a helping hand up through the transom. Since they had no proof, or suspect, no arrests
could be made. SO what do you believe more guys? 25 cats formed a nice feline ladder
so they can help themselves to a nice feast or a rival butcher orchestrated this entire
master plan?! Actually, for those of you believing in the cats don't out yourselves in the
comments! ANYWAYS, it goes to show just how creative people got with their schemes back
before the age of security cameras, and just how destructive a large group of hungry hungry
cats can be! 4 - Truffle Hogs
Domesticated pigs have become a trend in recent years, with many videos of cute piglets people
have taken in as pets. But some pigs have been kept as pets for an entirely different
reason, for hundreds of years. The Truffle hog is a type of pig that's
capable of locating and digging up truffles, which are extremely rare mushrooms that are
used in many expensive dishes, in case you didn't know. As it turns out, german researchers
found that truffles contain a substance that is also synthesized in the male hog's testicles.
This substance is secreted into the saliva when the hog is trying to mate with a female
hog, or sow. The sows can smell this chemical, and it leads them right to the truffles, which
they're trained to dig out of the ground. So, the only reason that we can find truffles
efficiently is because of the sex life of the pig. Of course, if this wasn't the case,
and hogs couldn't find truffles, truffles would probably be even more ridiculously expensive
than they already are. I'm gonna thank the female pig for wanting the d and mistaking
truffles for what they want, keeping the prices as low as possible for all us truffle lovers
out there! 3 - Hero Rats
To some people, rats are gross. To others, rats are smart, cute, and friendly. Don't
ask me what I think though. To the citizens of Cambodia, rats are heroes. These hero rats
have been trained to smell TNT, and they do it very well.
So much so in fact, rats can clear a 200 square meter area of TNT faster than a person carrying
a metal detector. The metal detector would pick up all of the fragments of exploded land
mines, instead of just finding the intact ones, but the rats can smell the TNT inside
the bomb. It may seem dangerous for the rats, but before
you start wondering how humane this method is, I'll just let you know that you don't
need to worry about them. They're actually too light to set off the landmines, making
them the perfect choice. The rats will walk along a line of string held by two handlers,
and when they find a bomb, they'll start scratching the ground. Some people doubt the efficacy
of the rats, but they are tested somewhat frequently by their handlers who test them
by burying fake bombs and other distractions. The rats can distinguish real bombs from everything
else, and are trained not to scratch the ground unless they actually find a bomb. I guess
you can call that an effective QC process. In exchange for their services, they get rewarded
with food. Thank god that's not how it is for the most of us! In Cambodia alone, there
are an estimated 4 to 6 million unexploded landmines, which means that this job is one
of the most important jobs in the area. Annnnnnnnd it goes to rats. Hopefully, the dinner that
they get is nice enough to thank them for their hard work.
2 - Homing Pigeons Homing pigeons have been used to carry messages
over long distances for almost a thousand years. These pigeons are remarkable for their
ability to find their way home from up to 1100 miles, or 1800 kilometers. The exact
way they do this is actually unknown. Research has been performed with the intention
of discovering how pigeons can find their way back from distant places they've never
visited before. Most researchers believe that the pigeon's homing ability is based on
a "map and compass" model. The compass feature allows pigeons to know which direction is
north and the map feature allows them to determine their location relative to their destination.
While the compass mechanism appears to rely on the sun, the map mechanism has been highly
debated. It's believed that they use their innate ability to detect the earth's magnetic
fields. Because of this ability, they can be transported to any distance within their
range, and then released, and they'll fly back to their starting point. Scientists have
found that on top of a pigeon's beak contains a large number of particles of iron which
act like a man-made compass, which helps the pigeon in determining its home.
As impressive as this ability is, in case you didn't know, homing pigeons have been
out of work recently, with the rise of the internet, cellphones and reliable GPS. But
some people apparently still employ them occasionally. They usually aren't using them to send messages
like you might expect though. In August of 2015, a homing pigeon was caught smuggling
drugs to a Costa Rican prison! As it turns out, pigeons can be trained to
carry up to two and a half ounces on its back, so a little pigeon could conceivably carry
a decent amount of drugs back to where it came from.
Earlier in 2017 a homing pigeon was caught smuggling more than a HUNDRED AND SEVENTY
ecstasy pills in a homemade 'backpack'! This lil guy was putting in that work!!! Anyways,
somehow police tracked the progress of this pigeon across the border of two countries.
Somehow, someway, the police were able to stop the bird and make an arrest as it soared
between Iraq and Kuwait. Apparently, homing pigeons are increasingly being used in the
region as a drug smuggling technique.
The bird was caught above a building conveniently near Kuwait's customs department in Kuwait
City. I'm still trying to figure out how the police got the pigeon to land. I guess
these drug dealers need to teach these pigeons to only stop for bathroom breaks!!!
1 - Call ducks Call ducks are domesticated ducks that are
often kept as pets, but they have a history of betrayal to their own kind, although I
doubt that they did it intentionally. The first recorded mentions of call ducks are
from the Netherlands. The high-pitched distinctive call of the call duck was used to lure other
ducks into funnel traps. Later, before artificial duck calls were around,
call ducks were a modern hunters best bait. Hunters would find a duck, and they'd tie
the duck to one spot, where they'd let it call out for a while. This would draw other
ducks into range for the hunters to shoot. It's believed this practice originally came
from the Far East, although no records of its introduction to the Netherlands exist.
In fact, call ducks were pretty much too good at baiting other ducks to come around. The
use of a call duck would draw so many ducks that its use for hunting was permanently banned
in every US state in 1935. The number of ducks being shot down by hunters was threatening
the US conservation efforts of ducks at the time.
Because call ducks aren't in use anymore, and humans have gotten so good at duck calling,
there are even duck calling championships held. Seriously, how much are tickets to these
events?! Here's what's next!
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