Blogs / Discoblog

•Plants can twitter, but it seems celebrities can’t—not on their own, anyway.

• Toxic sofas, after being shipped from China with packets of a harmful mold-inhibitor, caused extreme skin rashes and burns on at least 1,600—and possibly tens of thousands not yet identified—people in England.

• Science education is under assault in Texas.

• In another move of, weirdly, putting animals on birth control, China is putting gerbils on the pill.

• Daddy long-legs are threatened by climate change, a gorilla suffered a seizure and was given an MRI, and a campaign helps endangered species by enlisting clothing brands to save their namesakes: Lacoste to the crocodiles’ rescue!

• Also, we’re doomed.

After almost hunting them to extinction back in the 1970s, not to mention the effects wrought by DDT, now we humans are putting geese on birth control. And pigeons. And white-tailed deer, if the EPA approves the application currently in its hands.

OvoControl is an oral contraceptive now available for geese and pigeons that was developed by a former pharmaceutical employee and the National Wildlife Research Center in Colorado. The formula for the pill sprouted from a drug that was developed years ago to prevent a fatal illness in chickens, but had the unintended side effect of preventing eggs from hatching. It has now been developed by Innolytics, a California-based company, into a chewy, wheat-based pill for Canadian geese and pigeons. It is currently available for purchase by licensed pest control operators and government agencies.

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