The African grey parrot’s ability to talk and mimic sounds makes it a charming companion. African grey owners often report that their greys oftentimes talk in context and can understand their people’s emotions (情感). The African grey parrot is not just a top talker - this bird is also known for its extreme intelligence, which gives them the name “The Einsteins of the Bird World”.

The bird is medium-sized, dusty-looking and almost pigeon-like. It has a bright red tail, intelligent orange eyes, and a stunning scalloped (扇形的) pattern to its feathers. Their diet in the wild consists mostly of nuts, seeds, fruits, and leafy matter.

At home, African greys need plenty of toys that challenge their intelligence, such as food searching and puzzle toys. Nutri-Berries by Lafeber Company are a perfect choice, which, with a balance of grains, seeds and other nutrients in the shape of a berry, encourages African greys to hold, bite off, and even play with, just as they do in the wild.

African greys seem especially affected by stress and disturbing noise in their environment and can be put more at ease by placing one corner of the cage against a wall as opposed to in the middle of a room.

African grey parrots are more likely to suffer from lack of Vitamin-A/beta-carotene, and therefore benefit from eating vegetables high in beta-carotene, such as cooked sweet potato and fresh kale. Lack of Vitamin-D is another concern, especially for greys on a poor diet. Offering a balanced, pill-shaped diet, such as Nutri-Berries, helps prevent vitamin and mineral shortage.

Search and rescue teams are often accompanied by man’s best friend. A dog’s greater sense of smell can be important to finding survivors buried under fallen buildings. But now a new animal is being trained to assist search and rescue teams after an earthquake hits, and it’s the rat.

These rescue rats are being trained by Dr. Donna Kean, a researcher from Glasgow, Scotland who has been working with rats for years. Kean explained why she and her colleagues at the nonprofit APOPO train rats instead of dogs. “The rats have a comparable sense of smell, and they’re just as trainable as dogs,” she said. “Their size is useful because they will be able to move through different environments that dogs just wouldn’t be able to.”

At the moment, the rats are wearing homemade prototype backpacks that contain microphones, video equipment, and location trackers, and then scientists are sending these rats into mock debris(模拟的废墟). Rats would be able to get into small spaces to get to victims buried in the ruins. “We have not been in a real situation yet, we have got a mock debris site. When we track the backpack, we will be able to hear from where the rat is inside the debris,” Kean said. “We have the potential to speak to victims through the rat.”

Researchers train them on a basic series of behaviour. Training starts off in a really basic environment: a small and empty room. Then they gradually increase the difficulty in order to make it like real life. They can start adding in debris and making the training area look more like an actual collapsed (坍塌的) building site.

The training just started, and researchers still have to run training trials outside the research environment. They are working with a search and rescue group called GEA, who are based in Turkey, a country with frequent earthquakes and hoping that by next year they’ll be able to take the rats to Turkey for trials.

A new study has found the amount of antibiotics (抗生素) given to farm animals is expected to increase by two-thirds over the next 15 years. Researchers are linking the growing dependence on the drugs to the increasing need for meat, milk and eggs. However, the drugs could quicken the development of antibiotic-resistant infections (感染). Such infections are already a major public health concern in the United States.

The World Health Organization notes that when people stop living in poverty (贫困), the first thing they want to do is eat better, rather than earn more money. For most people, that means their diet should contain more meat. With the rapid development of Asia, people there are eating nearly four times as much meat, milk and other milk products as they did 50 years ago.

To meet the need, farmers have put many animals into smaller spaces. As the animals are crowded together, the easiest way to deal with some of the problems of crowding is to give them antibiotics. It’s clear that antibiotics help animals stay healthy in a crowded environment and grow faster. But bacteria can develop resistance to the drugs gradually.

Nowadays, doctors find antibiotics that once worked against the infections no longer work. The bacteria have learned ways to fight against the drugs. The heavy use of antibiotics in animals is responsible for the growth of antibiotic resistance worldwide. In the United States, at least two million people get drug-resistant infections each year and at least 23,000 die from an infection.

Europe has banned the use of antibiotics to increase animal growth. And the United States is hoping to persuade farmers to stop using antibiotics for that purpose.