On 2011-09-30 10:58, panlives wrote:
...another part of me says, "Anything that helps our Troops come home alive is a good thing."

On 2011-09-30 11:25, stoneunhinged wrote:

I wonder if anyone has ever calculated how many horses were lost in the Civil War?

Probably the most famous of all the carrier pigeons was one named Cher Ami, two French words meaning "Dear Friend". Cher Ami several months on the front lines during the Fall of 1918. He flew 12 important missions to deliver messages. Perhaps the most important was the message he carried on October 4, 1918.

Mr. Charles Whittlesey was a lawyer in New York, but when the United States called for soldiers to help France regain its freedom, Whittlesey joined the Army and went to Europe to help. He was made the commander of a battalion of soldiers in the 77th Infantry Division, known as "The Liberty Division" because most of the men came from New York and wore a bright blue patch on their shoulders that had on it the STATUE OF LIBERTY.

On October 3, 1918 Major Whittlesey and more than 500 men were trapped in a small depression on the side of the hill. Surrounded by enemy soldiers, many were killed and wounded in the first day. By the second day only a little more than 200 men were still alive or unwounded.

Major Whittlesey sent out several pigeons to tell his commanders where he was, and how bad the trap was. The next afternoon he had only one pigeon left, Cher Ami.

During the afternoon the American Artillery tried to send some protection by firing hundreds of big artillery rounds into the ravine where the Germans surrounded Major Whittlesey and his men. Unfortunately, the American commanders didn't know exactly where the American soldiers were, and started dropping the big shells right on top of them. It was a horrible situation that might have resulted in Major Whittlesey and all his men getting killed--by their own army.

Major Whittlesey called for his last pigeon, Cher Ami. He wrote a quick and simple note, telling the men who directed the artillery guns where the Americans were located and asking them to stop. The note that was put in the canister on Cher Ami's left leg simply said:

"We are along the road parallel to 276.4.
"Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us.
"For heaven's sake, stop it."

As Cher Ami tried to fly back home, the Germans saw him rising out of the brush and opened fire. For several minutes, bullets zipped through the air all around him. For a minute it looked like the little pigeon was going to fall, that he wasn't going to make it. The doomed American infantrymen were crushed, their last home was plummeting to earth against a very heavy attack from German bullets.

Somehow Cher Ami managed to spread his wings and start climbing again, higher and higher beyond the range of the enemy guns. The little bird flew 25 miles in only 25 minutes to deliver his message. The shelling stopped, and more than 200 American lives were saved...all because the little bird would never quit trying.

On his last mission, Cher Ami was badly wounded. When he finally reached his coop, he could fly no longer, and the soldier that answered the sound of the bell found the little bird laying on his back, covered in blood. He had been blinded in one eye, and a bullet had hit his breastbone, making a hole the size of a quarter. From that awful hole, hanging by just a few tendons, was the almost severed leg of the brave little bird. Attached to that leg was a silver canister, with the all-important message. Once again, Cher Ami wouldn't quit until he had finished his job.

Cher Ami became the hero of the 77th Infantry Division, and the medics worked long and hard to patch him up. When the French soldiers that the Americans were fighting to help learned they story of Cher Ami's bravery and determination, they gave him one of their own country's great honors. Cher Ami, the brave carrier pigeon was presented a medal called the French Croix de guerre with a palm leaf.

On 2011-09-30 12:12, Woland wrote:
When packs of canine and hominid hunters joined forces to cooperate across species lines, rather than compete against each other for the large prey of the paleolithic period, hominids became humans and wolves became dogs. It is only natural that those who hunted together would join together to defend their territories, their families, and their way of life.

Out of the first group of 30 dogs, only four managed to detonate their bombs near the German tanks, inflicting an unknown amount of damage. Six exploded upon returning to the Soviet trenches, killing and injuring soldiers.[3] Three dogs were shot by German troops and taken away, despite furious attempts by the Soviets to prevent this, which provided examples of the detonation mechanism to the Germans. A captured German officer later reported that they learned of the anti-tank dog design from the killed animals, and considered the program desperate and inefficient. A German propaganda campaign sought to discredit the Soviet Army, saying that Soviet soldiers refuse to fight and send dogs instead.

Another serious training mistake was later revealed; the Soviets used their own diesel-engine tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks which had gasoline engines. As the dogs relied on their acute sense of smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead of strange-smelling German tanks.

The German forces knew about the Soviet dogs from 1941 onwards, and so took measures to defend against them. An armored vehicle's top-mounted machine gun proved ineffective due to the relatively small size of the attackers as the dogs were too low to the ground and because of the dog's speed and the difficulty in spotting them. Consequently, every German soldier received orders to shoot any dog in combat areas.

The hostility of German soldiers and officers to the dogs is mentioned in the semi-fictional novel Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte. As an Italian correspondent on the Eastern front during 1941–42, Malaparte recounted how one of the German soldiers' first tasks upon entering and occupying villages in Ukraine was to seek out and kill any dog on sight.

On 2011-09-30 10:58, panlives wrote:
I am so torn on this one...part of me is fired up because we drag other species into our own internecine global madness; and another part of me says, "Anything that helps our Troops come home alive is a good thing."

Thoughts?

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/gadgets-el......eal-dogs

The worst argument against the death penalty, of course, is that it’s somehow awful for the state to kill people. Nation-states are all about killing people. They exist solely because they’re better at that, on a large scale, than any other form of human organization. Everything else is superstructure, and if they lose that edge it will fade away.

Generally, the canine teeth (the four longest and most noticeable teeth) are the most commonly replaced teeth because they allow the animal to grip and tear through material (including body armor) without injury to itself. However, as one canine training specialist pointed out to Wired, titanium fangs are not as stable as regular teeth and are "much more likely to come out during a biting."

Recent molecular evidence suggests that pinnipeds evolved from a bearlike ancestor about 23 million years ago during the late Oligocene or early Miocene epochs, a transitional period between the warmer Paleogene and cooler Neogene period. The earliest fossil pinniped that has been found is Puijila darwini, of about 23 million years ago. Pujilla had heavy limbs, indicative of upright movement on land, and flattened phalanges, indicating they were probably webbed, but not yet flippers. The discovery of Pujilla in northern Canada strongly suggests pinnipeds originated in the Arctic.