Pets are popular. They’re good listeners, they encourage us to exercise, and they’re always on our side when we argue with others. They can bring people comfort and pleasure.

But it is important to keep in mind that pets can carry diseases that can make you sick. Washing your hands often — especially after you touch, feed, or clean up a pet — is the best way to keep yourself healthy and prevent the spread of disease. Be sure to clean your fingernails (指甲) carefully every time you wash.

You also can protect your health by wearing gloves while cleaning animal cages or cat litter boxes. Avoid washing your pet in the bathtub (浴缸), but if you do, always disinfect (消毒) the tub immediately afterward.

Be sure to bring your pet to the hospital for examinations every two weeks or month and whenever your pet is sick or injured.

You can do a few other things to keep yourself and your pet healthy. Only give your pet food that has been planned ahead for them. It’s not a good idea to share your food with your pet. Human food (like chocolate) can make animals sick. Never feed your pet raw (生的) meat because it can carry germs (细菌) that cause serious illness.

And funny as it can be to see your dog or cat drinking from the toilet, don’t let pets do this. It’s bad for your pet’s health! Give them clean, fresh water to drink at all times.

Never give milk to cats. The only milk an animal should drink is from its mother. Cow’s milk is not for pets, especially for cats, as it makes them sick.

Finally, some animals aren’t pets. Don’t take in a wild or abandoned (被抛弃的) animal as a pet because it may have diseases that could make you or your family sick. Instead, turn to an animal rescue group that is trained in helping sick or abandoned animals.

A recent study, led by Professor Andrew Barron, Dr. HaDi MaBouDi, and Professor James Marshall, illustrates how evolution has fine-tuned honey bees to make quick judgments while minimizing danger.

“Animal lives are full of decisions,” says Professor Barron. “A honey bee has a brain smaller than a sesame (芝麻) seed. And yet it can make decisions faster and more accurately than’ we can. A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the backup of a supercomputer.”

Bees need to work quickly and efficiently. They need to make decisions. Which flower will have a sweet liquid? While they’re flying, they face threats from the air. While landing, they’re vulnerable to potential hunter, some of which pretend to look like flowers.

Researchers trained 20 bees to associate each of the five different colored “flower disks” with their visit history of reward and punishment. Blue flowers always had sugar juice. Green flowers always had a type of liquid with a bitter taste for bees. Other colors sometimes had glucose (葡萄糖). “Then we introduced each bee to a ‘garden’ with artificial ‘flowers’. We filmed each bee and timed their decision-making process,” says Dr. MaBouDi. “If the bees were confident that a flower would have food, they quickly decided to land on it, taking an average of 0.6 seconds. If they were confident that a flower wouldn’t have food, they made a decision just as quickly. If unsure, they took on average 1.4 seconds, and the time reflected the probability that a flower had food.”

The team then built a computer model mirroring the bees’ decision-making process. They found the structure of the model looked very similar to the physical layout of a bee brain. “AI researchers can learn much from bees and other ‘simple’ animals. Millions of years of evolution has led to incredibly efficient brains with very low power requirements,” says Professor Marshall who co-founded a company that uses insect brain patterns to enable machines to move autonomously, like nature.

The number of giraffes is becoming smaller across Africa, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. The total population has dropped by 40 percent in the last 15 years. Surprisingly, even scientists haven’t given much attention to giraffes. We are learning more about their ecology, but what we know is still way behind what we know about other species. “It’s a silent extinction,” said Dr. Julian Hennessy, a wildlife scientist.

“The main reason for the smaller number of giraffes is their loss of living places,” said Hennessy, “as an increasing part of land is used for farming. But hunting also has a big influence.” You might wonder why hunters would focus on giraffes. First of all, once a giraffe is brought down, there is lots of meat with a small amount of effort. Besides, there is another thing encouraging the hunting. In Tanzania, Hennessy says, the latest word on the street is that eating giraffe meat could cure AIDS. Fresh giraffe heads and bones can be sold at prices of up to $140 per piece.

Another widespread misconception about giraffes is that they are everywhere. Look at kids’ books which are full of giraffes. They are always in zoo collections. They can be seen easily, so you don’t think we have to worry about them. But the truth is that they are in danger of extinction. There is a lack of right and true data.

Hennessy and other researchers are now pulling together the data needed to improve the situation of the entire giraffe species and all nine subspecies (亚种). The information will be used to change the giraffe’s listing on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, which now lists the species as of “least concern” but two subspecies as “endangered”. “It’s a lot of work to gather the necessary information,” Hennessy says. “And several other giraffe subspecies will be recommended for endangered listings next year or the year after.” He hopes that the world will finally start to take notice of how endangered these beloved animals have become.