Palm Beach County OKs animal control rules

Palm Beach County Commissioners on Tuesday passed a range of animal control rules, key among them a tougher dog leash law and a spay-
                                                     

and-release plan for cats that some wildlife groups will lead to even more deaths of birds and small animals.

The vote was 6-0; County Mayor Shelley Vana was absent.

At its May 19 meeting, the commission tentatively adopted several new rules for animal control as part of “Countdown 2 Zero,” an ambitious program to reduce euthanasia of adoptable animals by 2024.

Wildlife groups then wrote to say house and feral cats kill 8 billion to 26 billion birds and small mammals and “we should not respond to one tragedy by creating another.”

In the proposed rule, any roaming cat collected by county Animal Care and Control that appears to be cared for would be sterilized, microchipped, and vaccinated for rabies, and its left ear clipped for identification. And it would be set free back in its neighborhood.

Dianne Sauve, director of Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control, has told commissioners the alternate would be for thousands of acts in shelters to be euthanized.

Why This Strange-Looking Animal Has A Nose Like A Penguin's Foot

This weird-looking thing is a Sichuan takin. It’s what happens when you let a bunch of sheep loose on the mountain ranges of Tibet for a few thousand years. It has a huge schnoz for the same reason the penguin has a unique set of

                                               

feet. Find out what these unique animals have in common.

A takin weighs over six hundred pounds and has horns like butcher’s hooks. It would probably be a lot scarier if its nose didn’t look like it was wearing a bigger, plusher version of itself as a nose-cozy. These animals have giant schnozes, and when scientists looked into the matter they found that the noses have something in common with an animal as unlike the takin as it is possible to be.

Penguins spend their days placing their bare feet directly on ice, without those feet freezing off. Although there are fish that manufacture a kind of “anti-freeze” in their blood to keep from freezing solid, penguins don’t have the same internal chemistry. Instead both penguins and takins have internal plumbing. By constantly circulating blood through their feet, penguins can keep their feet a couple of degrees above freezing. The real problem is what happens when that blood comes back into the body. Heating it up again will drain the penguin of energy, and fast. So before the penguin’s blood rushes from their feet back into their body, it passes very close by the network of other blood vessels going out into the feet. These outgoing vessels are full of warm blood which cools down, and transfers its heat to the incoming blood. The cooled blood keeps the feet just-barely-warm-enough, while the incoming blood is warmed enough to not slowly drain the penguin of both heat and energy.

The takin, meanwhile, is insulated with hooves and hair. It doesn’t really have to circulate much of its blood in an area that’s exposed to the cold. However, it is vulnerable to the cold in a different area – its lungs. Taking in huge lungfuls of oxygen-poor, freezing-cold air could drain the takin of its energy or its body heat, or both. When scientists looked inside the takin’s giant nose, guess what they found? Again, there was a network of blood vessels. The blood in these vessels kept the takin’s nose at a tolerably warm temperature. More importantly, it heated the incoming lungfuls of air, keeping the takin as warm as possible.