I hope you and your four-legged friends have a very Merry Christmas!

Today is World Health Day.

So I thought I'd share a little something with you:

Funny, right?! And it's enough to make someone want to Pledge to be Veg, isn't it! Which would be a great way to help yourself this World Health Day -- not to mention improving the health of animals and the planet we live on!

"Just saying is all." ;)

Have you ever wondered what your dog or your cat would say if they could talk back to you? I'm certain my dog, Kia would tell me she doesn't care if she has her own chair, she'd rather sit in mine! I also have no doubt that as I type this, she is trying to say "Hurry up, let's go outside for a tug of war!"

And what would animals say to each other? I really hope this video is close to the truth ;)

A biologist from the Bahamas might be on her way to discovering what animals really have to say. Denise Herzing has been working with dolphins for years and has devised an amazing way for humans and dolphins to communicate. Using symbols, and a keyboard synthesizer that creates sounds similar to those naturally produced by dolphins, they can actually ask each other for particular objects, like a ball or a scarf. How incredible! And she thinks it's only a matter of time before more complex interactions get started.

So just what will dolphins tell us?

And what about less fortunate animals? What would foxes and rabbits raised for their fur say? Or chimps and rats in labs? Or pigs and chickens in factory farms?

(Alright Kia, I'm nearly finished!) But I'd love to know, what do you think animals would say to us?

It's silly hat season again, with the Melbourne Cup set to take place tomorrow. I still find it hard to believe that the whole nation stops to watch horses being whipped so that they'll run as fast as they can in circles!

To show that not everyone thinks horse racing is something to celebrate (because it sure isn't if you're a horse), this is what I'll be posting to facebook tomorrow (Feel free to do the same!):

If people really want to lose their money and wake up with a hangover the least they could do is leave the horses out of it! I could rant all day about how cruel (and dull) horse racing is, but the satirical news site The Onion has already done a hilarious job of highlighting one of the many problems with the industry:

While I'm on the topic of funny videos and problems with horse racing, I've got one more thing to say. The sooner the horse racing industry gets rid of jumps racing and replaces it with this the better!

Right, you've heard what I think of Melbourne Cup. Now, what about you? Leave a comment.

Hello Ladies!

The 'man your man could smell like' is now also the man your man could eat like. No idea what I'm talking about? This should help get you almost up to speed:

Former NFL footballer and star of the hilarious Old Spice ads, Isaiah Mustafa announced on Twitter last week that he has embarked on a vegan diet. Just when you thought he couldn't get any more manly...! Isaiah now joins the ranks of other vegetarian beefcakes such as Carl Lewis, Mac Danzig, Bill Pearl and Dennis Rodman, who have all done the animals (and themselves) a favour and ditched meat.

And the story gets all the more intriguing/amusing... in a flirty twitter/YouTube conversation between the Old Spice Man and Alyssa Milano (also a vegetarian), Alyssa has challenged the Old Spice Man to donate $100,000 to wildlife rescue in the Gulf of Mexico oil clean up. Fingers crossed he mans up to the challenge!

Here's hoping his new found fondness for animals also inspires him to urge Old Spice's parent company, Procter and Gamble to stop testing on animals. Meanwhile why don't you let them know that you think animal testing stinks.

And on that note, I'm off to eat like a man :)

I still remember being taken to the circus as a kid. One of the things I remember most about the circus were the elephants. I remember how they were dressed up with cloaks and head-dresses. I remember they even put glitter on them! I also remember how those gentle giants performed the cutest tricks (or at least I thought so at the time) with just a small tap on the side from their trainer.

Something I never realised at the time was that those elephants were performing such unnatural and awkward tricks because they had spent countless hours in 'training', being beaten with a hook if they refused to perform. I also never realised till years later, that the glitter that made the elephants all the more spectacular when I was a child was probably hiding 'training' wounds.

Is there any bigger facade than animal circuses? Children watch in innocent amazement as wild animals are dressed up and tormented for their entertainment. I wish I'd known the truth then. I never would have gone along with it.

So yesterday, I was glad to read the headline "Children of All Ages Delighted by Enslavement of Topsy the Elephant" on the front page of the satirical news site, The Onion. This story is at the same time shocking, hilarious and spot on. It's well worth a read...

Here are a few of the best snippets from the article:

"He's such a funny happy elephant," said 8-year-old Madison Helms, referring to the abused creature that spends the majority of his time chained up in a cramped, feces-covered enclosure. "He loves being in the circus!"

"Look, they're dancing," said 5-year-old Jonah Meeks, mistaking the elephants' constant swaying for something that wasn't a maladaptive behavior caused by serious psychological trauma. "I can dance like an elephant, too. Look at me!"

Have you ever broken a bone? I have, I was 5 and I broke my collar bone at school - YEEEOUCH!! Lucky I'm not a horse, that's all I can say! Because if I was, I wouldn't be here to tell the tale...

We've all seen it far too often. Horse after horse breaking bones from falls in jumps races. These poor guys don't have the luxury of a loving family who'll nurse them back to health. But then, a loving family wouldn't force you to perform a death defying spectacle for their entertainment, now would they?

I wonder what was going through the mind of poor Sirrocean Storm (RIP), when he broke his hind leg in a jumps race at Warnambool, a few weeks ago. I wonder if he dreamt of doing something like this:

...you couldn't blame him if he did!

If you want to help stop horses from being needlessly injured and 'humanely euthanised' please write to the VIC and SA Racing Ministers and tell them to put an end to this unfair abuse of gentle animals.

I don't know about you but I've always steered clear of 'shoot em up' computer games. Especially ones that glorify killing innocent animals like in Big Buck Hunter. There's one of them at my local pizza place. Nothing turns me off more than seeing someone order a meatlovers pizza before putting a dollar in that gory hunting game to simulate slaughtering deer while they wait for their factory farmed ham to cook on a doughy base. It doesn't make you look tough, boys.

So you can imagine my sheer delight when I met Tofu Hunter!!

You can only progress through this game by meeting your tofu quota, that's a lesson for life I say! Nabbing the soy milk buys you extra time and you get bonuses for seeking out tofu dogs and seitan birds. Who needs a dietician with messages like this from tofu hunters?

Via AdultSwim

It's definitely a 'shoot em up' game, but to me it does represent something more. Because each time someone hunts out the tofu or veggie dogs in the supermarket and buys that over meat, it's a little step closer to ending the misery of animals who are confined for life on factory farms.

And as for my local pizza place, imagine someone ordering a vegie pizza then shooting tofu while they wait  - let me hear you ladies, now that's manly!! Give me a Tofu Hunter any day!

Let's see who can get the highest score!

Today the Onion brings us the touching story of Shawn, a champion gymnast who tragically fell while practicing on the uneven bars and had to be euthanised after breaking her knee.

Fortunately, in reality we don't actually shoot gymnasts in the back of the head if they happen to take a wrong step (you can imagine how many budding athletes would volunteer for the sport if we did..?). But not all professional athletes are so lucky.

Today at Moonee Valley, Whatsourgo became the sixth horse to be killed in jumps racing in Victoria this year after he fell and broke his leg on the last hurdle. Now, the jumps racing industry would like us to believe that 'owners love their horses' *cough* *bull$#!t* *cough*. Whether or not you believe them I think we need to hold them to their word and demand that they to do the only humane thing possible: put an end to jumps racing. Stat.

Here's something different for a bit of fun. This is a good laugh:

So this video got me thinking. I wonder what other animals might show me up ... for example, did you know that pigeons are better at visuo-spacial problems than humans (you know, like those problems where you have to rotate a 3D object in your mind)?

Or what about the fact that gorillas can lead their families over hundreds of kilometers back to the best feeding spots at just the right time of year for the food to be there. I know people who get lost on the way to the local shops!

And did you know that pigs perform better on memory games than many primates. I don't know how many times I've forgotten the pin for my bank card, and it's only 4 digits. Actually the studies that proved this were pretty cool. They used joystick controlled computer games to conduct the research. Apparently the pigs really dug playing computer games. Who knows pigs might not just have a better memory than me, they might beat me at guitar hero ... everyone else can!

Leave me a comment let me know what other animals you think are better than me. But be nice, I'm a gentle soul :-)

This is the coolest thing I've seen all week! If you're like me and think it's pretty cool to have a planet to live on (and want to keep it), and you dig animation, then check out Animal Planet's new tips to protect animals (and the planet)...

And while you're at it, send them a thank you email to let them know how fantastic they are for encouraging people to eat less meat. There's no better way to save the planet, so kudos to them for speaking up!

p.s. If anyone out there has animation skills to offer up, drop me a line. We can always put you to work to kick ass for animals.

Here’s a bit of a laugh. Many of you will remember Sam Neil making a brain-dead buffoon of himself when he starred (or rather dimmed) in Meat and Livestock Australia’s ads where he suggested humans needed meat to be smart. Perhaps Sam didn’t check out our list of brainiac vegetarians before he signed up to make a fool of himself. If he had, we would have realised that Einstein, Pythagoras, Da Vinci, Plato, Socrates, Newton (and the list goes on) were all vegetarians.

Anyway, this video posted on YouTube by VeggieVidz and starring a younger, and perhaps wiser Sam Neil, who sets the record straight.