A recent case study of crash test simulations in China has shown that some researchers are involved in extremely inhumane animal testing. Images released with the case study show live pigs being used as crash test dummies.

The study highlighted the case of one test that involved 15 young pigs, who were strapped into car seats and used as dummies for high-speed simulations. Many of these pigs were still very young, having only been alive for 70 or 80 days before they were used in the tests. In the tests, the animals were strapped into various different seatbelts for impact testing.


Half of the animals died in the tests, and the others were badly injured and likely traumatized from the experience.

The researchers said that it was necessary to use the young pigs because their bodies are very similar to that of a human child, and they were hoping to actually see what these crashes would do to a living creature’s organs.

The scientists responsible for these experiments say that they were compliant with US guidelines and claimed that their study was approved by an ethics committee. However, it seems that they may not be very familiar with what the laws in the US are, because it has been illegal to use pigs and other animals in these types of experiments in the states since the 1990s.


Zachary Toliver of PETA sais that these experiments were senseless and cruel.

“Despite the existence of sophisticated animal-free models, experimenters continue to fasten abused, frightened animals into car seats and crash them into walls until their bodies are bloody, bruised, and mangled. Live pigs are pulverised in these tests, leaving them with broken bones and severe internal injuries before they’re killed and dissected,” he said.

“Pigs don’t naturally sit up in car seats. Their anatomy is also very different from that of humans, so the data obtained from these horrific animal experiments aren’t applicable to human car-crash victims. Car companies figured out years ago that these kind of experiments are worthless and tell us nothing about a human experience in a car crash,” he added.

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A product many have not even heard of is causing an apocalypse of sorts for the world’s orangutans.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, rainforests are being slashed and burned at an alarming rate to make way for a third world cash crop: palm oil.

Palm oil has become almost ubiquitous in household products; it is used in instant ramen dishes, shampoo and conditioner, makeup and skin care products, chocolate-hazelnut spreads and nearly half of all packaged goods at any given supermarket. Many manufacturers have turned to palm oil because it is so cheap—until one factors in the cost to both human health (it is horrible for your heart), and the irreplaceable rainforests both our global ecosystem and the native orangutans depend upon.


To date, over 90 percent of orangutan habitat has already been destroyed. Additionally, smoke and debris from the fires are causing further damage to our primate relatives.


“The problem with fire and smoke is absolutely dire,” said Lis Key, International Animal Rescue’s communications manager in a Takepart interview. “Wild orangutans and orangutans in centers like ours are badly affected by the smoke. Some suffer upper respiratory tract infections, which can even prove fatal. Some of the babies we’ve taken in recently have been suffering not only from dehydration and malnourishment through lack of food but also breathing problems from the polluted air.”


One must wonder if a lower price point is worth the suffering and even possible extinction of living beings.

Luckily, it is not game over for orangutans yet, and there are steps we can all take, right now: boycott products or companies that use non-sustainable palm oil, write to companies that make products you use with this ingredient and tell them you won’t support unsustainable palm oil, educate friends and family and click here. A different ending to this story may yet be possible.

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Humans have become so greedy that rampant deforestation of amazon, destruction of rainforests around the world, plummeting wildlife population, and plight of animals doesn’t deter the most intelligent species from assaulting the nature and driving humanity to the brink of extinction.

In the latest heartless and cruel display of indifference, animal rescuers caught a weak, frightened, heavily pregnant, and starving orangutan clinging to the final tree as massive bulldozers destroyed her once pristine rainforest home.

Boon-Mee was so weakened and traumatized that she couldn’t leave the tree trunk where she had sought sanctuary as heavy machines ripped apart her home in Borneo. As a result, she could not forage for food to feed herself or her unborn baby, meaning she had nothing to look forward to besides death by starvation.


Luckily, the plantation owners told UK-based charity International Animal Rescue (IAR) about her. Soon, an IAR team backed by local forestry officials was dispatched; when they finally arrived at the scene, they found not just Boon-Mee but three other orangutans.

While Boon-Mee was barely surviving on bark, Charanya had a baby and was desperately searching for food. Kalaya was semi-conscious and lactating; she may have delivered a baby which had either died or had been taken as a pet.

Since Boon-Mee was too weak to climb down the tree, rescuers were forced to shoot her with a tranquilizer before catching her in a net. IAR official Lis Key said:

“It’s heart-breaking to see the appalling state of these animals as their habitat is razed for the palm oil industry – they were weak from hunger. It’s a small comfort that this time rather than chase them off or kill them, the ­company did the right thing and ­contacted us.”




The three adults and one infant were taken to a refuge, where Boon-Mee successfully had her baby. According to the Mirror, all the apes were nursed back to health and later released into the wild deep in another part of the forest. Lis added:

“Despite the condition they were in, they really are the lucky ones. The worst thing is there are hundreds of orangutans who won’t be so lucky because of the awful conditions they are forced to try to survive in.”

Deforestation for palm oil is the leading reason why only 41,000 orangutans are left in Borneo and only 7,500 in Sumatra—the only two places where they can be found. A century ago there were over 230,000 orangutans in Southeast Asia.

Palm oil, a vegetable oil that is extracted from the fruits and seeds of the oil palm, is used in up to half of all processed foods like instant noodles, is increasingly being used as bio-fuel, and is a key ingredient in items like shampoos, detergents, and cosmetics. Roughly 66 million tons of palm oil are produced each year, driving a trend that has seen forests burned and land robbed to make room for plantations.

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A strange trend in China has caught on, and many people in other areas of the world are horrified. Animal rights activists are especially upset that people in China are keeping live fish, turtles and other amphibians as keepsakes on their keychains.

These charms are simply little plastic bags that contain just enough water to allow the animal to survive.

The bag also contains a small amount of crystallized oxygen and other nutrients to keep the animals barely alive. However, the creature is trapped in a tiny prison for the amusement of its owner.


The animals only actually survive for a short amount of time in their tiny prison, so if the owner wants their pet to survive, they must cut it out of the plastic.

Unfortunately, not everyone takes this measure. Some people simply let the animals die and then throw them away.

These strange keepsakes are often sold outside of train and subway stations for as little as $1.50.

Photo Credit: Captain Planet (All Photos)
Qin Xiaona, director of the NGO Capital Animal Welfare Association said that these keychains were still legal because only wild animals are protected in China, and these animals do not fall under that classification.
“China only has a Wild Animal Protection Law. If the animals are not wild animals they fall outside the law’s scope,” Qin explained.

A petition to end the sale of these disturbing keepsakes has already reached over 1 million supporters.


According to Snopes, these strange keychains started hitting the market a few years ago, around 2012.

However, some sources, such as PETA, insist that these products were seen as early as 2008, when the trinkets were sold to tourists who came to watch the Olympic games.

The fact checking website also pointed out that it is difficult to tell exactly how widespread these keychains are in the country, just by reading a collection of news reports.

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A video of student bullfighters, some who are under 18, torturing young bulls to death has surfaced on the internet, and it is horrifying.

By now, animal rights campaigners have condemned the video in absolute rage. One of the clips shows the bull’s ears being cut off and being given to children while the other one received a tail.


One of the matadors has blood on his face as if the bull gave a fight while trying to survive.

According to activists from Animal Guardians and La Tortura No Es Cultura (Torture Is Not Culture), this was done on the behalf of an annual tradition in Cordoba. This tradition pays homage to Cordovan women.

However, Animal Guardians’ Marta Esteban said, “Every year they do this calf-fighting and they say they do it as a homage to Cordovan women,
Very few people attend, about 2,000 in a 17,000-capacity bullring. They also do it to promote the students learning bullfighting at different bullfighting schools in Andalusia.”

She added:

“The ear and/or tail of the animals are offered to the bullfighters if they perform well and then these are given to the public as a ‘present’.

One of the animals is still alive when the ear is cut off. The other ear is moving while they do that.
We cannot know the exact age of the bullfighting students involved. Some look under 18. They can kill animals from 14 years on. So those would be the ones actually torturing and performing in the bullfight.

Then there are spectators of any age and those who are invited into the bullring in their typical Cordovan costumes to pick up the ears.”


According to many campaigners, these claves already go through a lot during the events since the inexperienced matadors don’t know how to handle them properly.

Right now, they’re encouraging women to fight against this by sending complaints to council chiefs in Cordoba.

Aside from this, the hashtag #NoQuieroTuHomenaje, which translates as ‘I do not want your homage’, is making its way around Twitter and other social media.

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The bald eagle is our nation’s symbol as it represents freedom and independence. However, ironically, bald eagles are disappearing all over the country and no one seems to care about the matter.

The species is almost facing extinction as their food source is being poisoned. Extremely dangerous chemicals are released in their habitats causing them a painful death. When a bald eagle was brought to a wildlife rehabilitation centre, he wasn’t even able to hold his head up.

“His head was upside down when we got him. Lead affects the nerves, so that’s your brain, your use of muscles, all parts of the body. The birds often cannot stand … They usually have difficulty breathing. They cannot even open their beaks,” Lynn Tompkins, executive director of Blue Mountain Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Oregon, told the Dodo.


And what’s even more sad it’s that many other bird species are being affected by the manufactures negligence. As Tompkins declared: “We’re finding it in more and more species,. We started off with eagles but now we’re also testing hawks, owls and other birds. ”

As about those birds who were affected but managed to survive, it takes few months until they are fully rehabilitated.


“We had one eagle whose lead level was relatively low, but she was paralyzed, she couldn’t stand, she couldn’t unclench her feet,” Tomkins said. “It took several treatments to get the lead level down. It took several months for her to fly normally again. It took six months. That was a long time.”

Unfortunately, the latest eagle who was brought into the centre will never have the chance to fly again. Even after days of treatment. “This particular bird, every once in a while, he’d get startled and flap his wing out of fear, and then he’d stop. The treatment cannot reach the lead that’s already gotten into other tissues,” Tompkins explained.




“So far this year we’ve had three bald eagles come into the center – all of them had toxic levels of lead.It [the lead] is toxic. There’s no argument about that,” she added.


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Ron Thomson from Zimbabwe was identified as a prolific wildlife hunter in a new report from the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting organization, the Independent reports.

The hunter, who reportedly hunt and put down 5,000 African elephants and hippos has revealed why he has no regrets regarding his actions. The organization also revealed hat the amount of ivory taken from animals has increased 12 times over the past 30 years, according to VT.

Eduardo Gonçalves, founder of Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting said that hunting elephants is “unacceptable”. “The trophy hunting industry is slaughtering elephants left, right and centre,” he added.


Thomson, a father of two who spent most of his life as a game ranger in national parks located around Africa, is now 80 years old. On his website, Thomson is said to have hunted as many as 800 buffalo, 60 lions and 40 leopards.

“[Thomson] is credited with having hunted more than 5000 elephants; 800 buffalo, 50/60 lions (including six man-eaters), 30/40 leopards, about 50 hippos – and many more. All… using conventional hunting methods. They were also hunted during the last 25 years of the colonial era – when Africa was truly wild and the animals could escape to the horizon and beyond.”


“I didn’t have any sentiment. I’m totally unrepentant, a hundred – ten thousand – times over for any of the hunting I’ve done because that’s not the problem. The problem is we’ve got a bunch of so-called experts from the West telling us what to do. I’m a trained university ecologist – I must surely know something about this,” Ron Thomson told the Independent.

“The African elephant is nowhere near extinct. People who say this are animal-right-ist NGOs who ask for money and tell lies to get it. When you have a healthy population you must ensure they don’t increase beyond the capacity of their habitat,” the hunter also said.




While African elephant populations were in the tens of millions as recently as 1930, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) say that the population has plummeted, thanks to “decades of poaching and conflict”.

The video bellow reveals how dramatically poaching has changed the face of African elephants!


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Along just one stretch of coastline in Peru, more than 3,000 dead dolphins have washed ashore in just the last 3 months, and the disturbing trend may only be escalating. With the latest discovery of 481 lifeless dolphins there in recent days, residents have begun to demand an explanation for the mysterious mass deaths — and as far as enlisted experts can tell, offshore oil exploration in the region is the most likely culprit.

According to a report from Peru 21, local fishermen in Lambayeque, north Peru, were first to notice the inexplicable rise in dead dolphin appearing on shore — averaging roughly 30 per day. While such mass orca strandings are not entirely uncommon, or fully understood, Peruvian biologist Carlos Yaipen of the Scientific Organization for Conservation of Aquatic Animals says activity from petroleum companies in the nearby waters is to blame in this instance.


Yaipen believes that a controversial technique for detecting oil beneath the seabed, using sonar or acoustic sensing, is leading the death of marine life en masse.

“The oil companies use different frequencies of acoustic waves and the effects produced by these bubbles are not plainly visible, but they generate effects later in the animals. That can cause death by acoustic impact, not only in dolphins, but also in marine seals and whales.”




Scientists from the Zoological Society of London discovered that underwater sonar can lead to the formation of microscopic bubbles of nitrogen in the bloodstream and vital organs of aquatic mammals, afflicting the animals with a lethal condition commonly known as the Bends. Additionally, low-range acoustic sensors are suspected to cause disorientation and internal bleeding to exposed wildlife.

As of this writing, Peruvian authorities have yet to identify the company whose activities may be leading to this grim toll on native marine life. According to Offshore Magazine, a trade publication of petroleum news, at least one entity, Houston-based oil company BPZ Energy, has been actively surveying the seabed along the coast of Peru since the beginning of the year.


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According to experts, the second largest emperor penguin colony in Antarctica has disappeared, due to a catastrophic event.

Back in 2016, thousands of penguin chicks from the Halley Bay colony disappeared following extreme weather conditions. During a storm, the sea ice where they where raised was destroyed. Therefore, the whole chicks drowned in the Weddell Sea.

Credit: Peter Fretwell/British Antarctic Survey via AP
Ever since the colony has struggled to repopulate as the they failed to produce any more chicks, BBC reports. A team from the British Antarctic Survey has noticed the extinction of the huge colony using satellite pictures.

For the second year in a row NO emperor penguin chicks have survived in the artic, scientists believe this is due to declining ice. This planet is dying.

— abbie (@AbbieDavy) April 25, 2019

“The sea ice that’s formed since 2016 hasn’t been as strong. Storm events that occur in October and November will now blow it out early. So there’s been some sort of regime change. Sea ice that was previously stable and reliable is now just untenable,” Dr Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey told BBC News.

While between 14,000 and 25,000 breeding emperor penguin pairs, were heading Halley Bay yearly, since the catastrophic event only a few were spotted.

Credit:Xinhua/Liu Shiping


“What’s interesting for me is not that colonies move or that we can have major breeding failures – we know that. It’s that we are talking here about the deep embayment of the Weddell Sea, which is potentially one of the climate change refugia for those cold-adapted species like emperor penguins.

And so if we see major disturbances in these refugia – where we haven’t previously seen changes in 60 years – that’s an important signal, ” Dr. Phil Trathan told BBC News.

That means even most of the pairs avoided to breed in the last two years, or they headed to new breeding sites. However the question remains. Can the penguins survive the climate change?


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In many areas, there are so many stray dogs that they will sometimes form packs, think of the Disney movie “Oliver and Company.” Since these dogs roam the streets together, as well as seek out food and shelter together, they can be very loyal to one another.

Just over a year ago, a YouTube video captured an amazing example of such loyalty.

The video shows a dog laying in the middle of the road in Lanzhou, central China. The poor pooch was hit and killed by a car. However, the dog’s pack would not leave their friend’s side.


His friends tried to nudge him back up and revive him but to no avail. Nevertheless, the dogs seemed to be keeping vigil over their friend’s body and would not budge. These dogs literally stopped traffic and forced many cares to go around them.

According to Mirror, an eyewitness said the dogs didn’t seem to understand that their friend had died. It seemed as though the fully expected him to get up and start walking again.

“YOU MAY NOT REALIZE IT, BUT DOGS DO GRIEVE THE LOSS OF A COMPANION,” The Spruce States.


There are many dogs who can actually become severely depressed when they lose another dog, animal, or person close to them.

They can experience physical symptoms such as loss of appetite, lethargy, and illness. They can also undergo personality changes, such as becoming more dominant and possessive.

However, it seems that dogs are not the only animals who share this tremendous sense of empathy and pain. Other animals also mourn the loss of those of their kind. Sarah Simmons posted a heartbreaking photo of a group of ponies stand vigil by another pony’s body after it was hit by a car.

The video of the dogs standing guard over their friend’s body quickly went viral:


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According to Argentina’s Wildlife Foundation, a Franciscan baby dolphin died last week at a beach resort in Bueno Aires.The reason of its passing is unbelievable: a group of tourists grabbed him out of the water for selfies. After they used it as a trophy, the poor creature was left in to die in the sand, Metro reports.

“The Franciscan, like other dolphins, cannot remain above water for long,” Fundacion Vida Silvestre wrote on their website. “It has a very thick and greasy skin that provides warmth, so the weather quickly causes dehydration and death.”


With less than 30,000 individuals left in the wild, the Franciscan dolphins are an endangered species with animal rights groups and activists making hard efforts to its conversation and only for a bunch of people to do this? It’s really heartbreaking!


“In their efforts to get a novelty “selfie”, these holidaymakers showed a naïve – and ultimately fatal – disregard for life by hauling this baby dolphin out of the sea, where he or she belonged. One can only imagine the trauma suffered not only by this baby, who was passed around like a toy by marauding tourists, but also his or her grieving mother,” a spokesperson for Peta declared.


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Image: Ben Wallace Photography

Three rhino poachers have been sentenced to 25 years in jail each by a South African court, probably the toughest punishments ever given in a country hard hit by killings of the threatened species, officials said on Wednesday.

The three poachers from Mozambique were arrested in South Africa's Kruger National Park in July 2010 with two freshly chopped horns, rifles and an axe, South Africa National Parks said in a statement.

"The sentencing of these poachers is an indication that as a country we are taking more stringent measures in the fight against rhino poaching," said David Mabunda, chief executive of the park service.

Until now, poachers were typically given up to a few years in jail or fined. The maximum sentence for illegal rhino hunting is 10 years in jail, and for possession of a prohibited firearm 15 years jail, the park service said.

The three poachers received the maximum sentence for each offence, to run consecutively - a longer jail term than those many courts hand down to convicted murderers.

A record 448 rhinos were poached last year in South Africa, home to the greatest number of the animals, as rising demand in Asia for their horns led to an increase in illegal hunting.


The street value of rhinoceros horn has soared to about $65,000 a kilogram, making it more expensive than gold and platinum, as a belief - with no basis in science - has taken hold in recent years in parts of Asia that eating it can cure or prevent cancer.

A decade ago South Africa, home to more than 20,000 rhinos, was losing about 15 animals a year to poachers. But poaching has increased dramatically since about 2007 as the spread of wealth in places like Vietnam and Thailand has enabled more people to buy rhino horn for use in traditional medicine.

The number of rhinoceroses dying unnatural deaths in South Africa, through illegal poaching or legal hunts, has reached a level that will reduce the population if not checked, according to a study by Richard Emslie, an expert in the field.

About half the poaching takes place in Kruger, the country's flagship park bordering Mozambique, where soldiers and surveillance aircraft have been deployed in recent months to slow the carnage.

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