faramir denethor
Posted : 11/12/2006 9:32:14 AM
here's an article:
WOOF-PUSS
It has been known for randy unneutered tomcats to mount small dogs. Animal behaviourist Peter Neville recorded a case where a tomcat repeatedly mounted a dachshund bitch. The dachshund was producing aberrant pheromones which triggered mating behaviour in the cat.
At one time, the hyaena was thought to be some sort of dog/lion hybrid since the front end walks like a dog and the back end is low to the ground like a lion. In early menageries, large dogs once kept captive-bred panthers company.
On 1st April 2003, news agencies reported that witchcraft had been blamed after a dog in South Africa gave birth to kittens. Vodi the dog was believed to have given birth to three kittens in South Africa after being found nursing the kittens at Winterveld, near Pretoria. Residents believe she gave birth to the kittens. Elijah Mhlanga, Vodi's owner, said her behaviour changed after she had disappeared earlier.
"I was worried when she disappeared. When she came back last Sunday, she was different. She hid from us and stopped barking. She also refused to eat," he told the Daily Sun, "On Monday my grandchildren called me and said Vodi had given birth to kittens. I did not believe them. I thought the puppies just looked like kittens to them."
Mr Mhlanga went to investigate and apparently found Vodi nursing three kittens which she tried to hide under her belly when people came to look. Animal welfare officer Meshack Matlou said he had never seen anything like it: "We will do some tests and the results will tell us what happened," he said.
It could simply be an April Fool joke; many newspapers and websites were running hoax stories that day. That an animal welfare officer apparently spoke of doing tests (dogs and cats cannot crossbreed) suggests either a hoax or human gullibility! The only way for a dog to give birth to kittens is through embryo transfer as used in zoos and laboratories where surrogate mothers bear the offspring of related, but rare or endangered, species.
Dogs with strong maternal instincts might adopt abandoned kittens or drive off the mother and kidnap the kittens. That Vodi was apparently suckling the kittens suggests that she had either recently lost her own puppies or had had a phantom pregnancy. A few bitches start to produce milk in response to being suckled, but this takes a few days and the foster kittens/puppies have to be hand-fed until sufficient milk is produced.
The question is: Will the kittens grow up into cogs?
Then in July 2003, The Weekly World News (similar to the UK's Sunday Sport tabloid) warned Americans to beware of "Docats". This terrifying new species of mutant predator was apparently roaming US streets, preying on the homeless in America's cities. "Concerned researchers" claimed the Docat to be a strange canine/feline hybrid which could have killed and eaten more than 100 homeless persons in the previous 12 months. Presumably they meant a big cat hybrid.