Hamsters probably enjoy running on a wheel

The proof is in. Researchers wanted to find out if wild animals would, on their own, hop on a running wheel and run on it. Lo and behold, they love it.

In all the team recorded over 200,000 animals using one or the other of the wheels over a three year period. The main runners were mice, some of which jumped on, ran for a while, jumped off, then jumped back on and ran some more. One mouse ran for an incredible 18 minutes.

So it's settled: they loves them some wheels. This puts the issue to bed forever, I assume. One thing pissed me off, though. The writer apparently felt compelled to include this statement:

The researchers claim the animals ran on the wheels because they enjoyed it, which could be a little bit of anthropomorphizing, as no one has been able to prove that animals other than humans experience emotions.

Duh. Whenever I see a statement like this, I wonder if the writer has actually met a real, living animal. Of course they have emotions. People who think otherwise are privileged gits with a huge blind spot.

I guess we're having a winter this year

After last year's mild winter in New York, I wondered if it would ever get cold again. But lo and behold, the wintry weather has arrived. It even snowed right after Xmas.

Right now it's 14 degrees outside -- and I'm not talking about the wind-chill factor. It's 14 for real. And it's going to be 1 degree tonight. So yeah, I guess we're going to have a real winter in New York this year. Thank goodness. Warm weather is nice but I treasure winter. There's just something so clean and pure about cold air.

When it gets this cold, I always think about how the wild animals are dealing with it. I've been feeding our local birds and squirrels for many years. The photo up top is this morning's plate of peanuts and seeds for the squirrels. I feed the birds elsewhere, though of course there's overlap. My sister says the squirrels are getting so fat from my peanuts, they can hardly walk. Success!

One last thing. I love to look outside in the morning, to see the animal tracks. It's like Grand Central station out there. Look at all those marks in the snow. Deer, mostly. But who knows what passes by in the night? I sometimes hear a deer trotting around the house, looking for peanuts. It sounds like a horse is circling my house. At times, antlers hit my windows.

I love animals (and insects and fish and anything else that moves). Just love 'em.