PHOTO OF THE DAY

Mooove away from leather, baby. Cows don't wear our babies, so why should we wear theirs?

Bananas? We don't need no stinkin' bananas. At least Kanzi the bonobo doesn't. He taught himself how to make fire and cook food.

Chimpanzees have their own emergency broadcast system. They use special sounds to warn their unaware friends about danger, but they don't send out a warning when the other chimpanzees already see it. This turns the belief that only humans recognize that others are not informed on its head.

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Clever pigeons are once again showing why "birdbrain" is a compliment. The birds are proving that they can count by putting groups of items in order by quantity.

We all read City Mouse, Country Mouse, but what about city bird, country bird? When flirting, urban birds adjust their voices to be heard over the din of the city, so they sing differently from their country cousins.

Deer and cows certainly aren't cousins, but they can become best friends. When a cow named Wanda escaped from a farm, she eluded capture for five months, living with a herd of deer who would stomp on the ground to let Wanda know that their acute senses detected people approaching. Wanda now has a home on a farm and is not in danger of being slaughtered.

Of course, for a best friend whose loyalty is unmatched, one need look no further than a dog. A Russian dog stood guard over the body of his deceased canine companion for two weeks in temperatures of negative-58 degrees Fahrenheit. Animal advocates caught him and took him to a local animal shelter, where he will stay while they search for a permanent home.

For more amazing animal stories, check out an article on the new book Animal Tool Behavior.

We've all seen the ribbons tied around trees on the side of the road, crosses stuck in the ground, and signs asking us to drive carefully—all reminders of lives that were lost in traffic accidents. Certainly, humans aren't the only casualties of reckless driving, so should they be the only ones honored? PETA doesn't think so.

We're applying to Illinois' Fatal Accident Memorial Sign Program to post two road signs as a tribute to cows who were severely injured and killed on the state's roadways.

PETA has chosen the sites of two horrific accidents as the locations for our signs. In May, a tractor trailer tipped over on an overpass, spilling cows onto the road below. Cows who didn't die on impact or from being struck by cars languished in agony until they were finally euthanized. Another truck overturned in October after the driver fell asleep at the wheel. Six cows were killed by oncoming vehicles—again, many were left to suffer for hours from their injuries.

If humans are going to continue to sentence these animals to die in slaughterhouses, isn't erecting a small remembrance of a few of the millions who lose their lives every year the least that we can do, given that they die for no better reason than because someone craves the fleeting taste of their flesh?

When PETA's herd of "cows" stampeded down the sidewalk in front of the Vancouver Convention Center, where the British Columbia Dairy Conference was taking place, the cow abusers inside nervously looked out the windows.

They sent the convention center manager outside to ask their worried questions: What were the cows planning to do? Come inside the building? The conference-goers had seen the Facebook page for the demonstration, and they were terrified!

Even though the bovines didn't infiltrate the conference, the dairy farmers should have been scared of what they were doing outside. As throngs of passersby stopped to talk, they learned about how cows on dairy factory farms are repeatedly impregnated to keep producing milk, that calves are traumatically torn away from their mothers within days or even hours of birth, and that many male calves are imprisoned in tiny, filthy crates until they are slaughtered for veal.

When many of the passersby then expressed a preference for soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk, the cows were over the moon.

Maybe being able to see the Hollywood sign from my living room makes everything remind me of a bad horror movie, but seeing the headline "New Strain of 'Mad Cow' Disease" is enough to make anyone (especially meat-eaters) shriek like a celluloid scream queen. That's right—bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has struck again!

Mad cow disease first captured the world's attention when it appeared on the scene in the United Kingdom, and it has since been found in cows in Canada, the U.S., and now Japan—although the latest stricken animals are believed to have come from Australia. One cow who tested positive was only 23 months old, the youngest ever found with BSE, and officials believe that this may be a new strain of the disease that can't always be detected with Japan's current monitoring system.

Since the prions that cause BSE can be found in all parts of an affected animal's flesh, staying away from meat is really the only sure-fire way to avoid mad cow disease.

Downed cows—those who are too sick or injured to stand up—are of little use to callous cattle auctioneers. So when a cow collapsed at a Texas livestock auction company, what did the employees do? They simply wrapped a chain around her leg, attached the chain to a truck, dragged the cow into a dirt lot next to the auction area, and left her for dead. With no food or water, she would have eventually died from dehydration or succumbed to her illness or injury.

Someone saw the cow being dragged to the lot and left there, but when he saw that she was still in the same spot three days later, he called PETA. After making several phone calls to the auction company owner, we were able to convince him to euthanize the dying cow and spare her from one moment more of suffering.

Unfortunately, neither "downers" nor this kind of treatment of them is unusual on factory farms, at auctions, or at slaughterhouses. By simply swapping meat-based dishes for their scrumptious, meatless counterparts, we can avoid supporting facilities that treat living beings like broken-down farm equipment.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Alarming new findings from Britain's Health Protection Agency reveal that many people could still be infected with, and eventually die from, mad cow disease. In humans, it is referred to as "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," or vCJD. As leading vCJD expert Professor John Collinge notes, "The incubation period, where there are no symptoms, can last for decades."

But that's Great Britain, not the U.S., right? Well, we're potentially at an even higher risk because while Europe banned the macabre farming practice that is believed to have caused mad cow disease—feeding ground-up farmed animals to other farmed animals—it is still legal in the United States. And while England tests every cow slaughtered for the presence of the disease, the U.S. tests only a small percentage. 

The symptoms of vCJD are so similar to those of dementia or Alzheimer's that there is some indication that a large number of Americans may have been misdiagnosed.

Obviously we can't un-eat meat we ate in the past that may have contained the indestructible prions that cause mad cow disease, although British scientists are working on a blood test that can check for the disease. But what we can do is reduce our risk of future infection by quitting hamburgers and steaks, ahem, cold turkey.

But if you're thinking that eating cold turkey or another meat would be better, don't be fooled—you still run the risk of all those other diseases that any kind of meat consumption contributes to, including heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. 

Continuing to eat meat despite the mounting evidence that it will hurt us in one way or another seems pretty mad, right?

Written by Michelle Sherrow

No animals were arrested in the making of this protest, but yesterday in Zuccotti Park Liberty Square, a "pig," "cow," and "chicken" joined the Occupy Wall Street protesters to push for more corporate accountability. Our animals were at the center of a whirlwind of police, photographers, protesters, and intrigued passersby who stopped to read the animals' posters and pick up copies of PETA's vegetarian/vegan starter kit.

Bearing delicious vegan pizzas, the animals—representing 100 percent of the animals raised for food in the U.S.—brought attention to the fact that corporate greed is responsible for billions of animals' being treated like cogs in a meat machine rather than the intelligent, sensitive individuals they are.

On factory farms, pigs have their tails and testicles cut off without being given any painkillers; cows are fattened for slaughter on barren, filthy feed lots; and chickens are crammed by the tens of thousands into airless sheds, where their accumulated waste results in ammonia-laden air that burns their eyes and throats.

To opt out of the corporate abuse of animals, order your own free vegetarian/vegan starter kit and get busy breaking down the barricades to protecting animals, your health, and the planet.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

After reading these cheese facts, you won't smile when someone says, "Say cheese!" In fact, the thought of cheese might make your stomach turn. Speaking of stomachs, let's jump right into why eating cheese could make you heave:

theCSSdiv | cc by 2.0

• Many cheeses are made with rennet, an enzyme that comes from calves' stomach lining. That's right—the pre-cheese gloop must pass through a simulated calf stomach to start things off. Kinda hard to stomach, isn't it?
• Cheese is crawling with bacteria—some of it harmless, some of it pretty icky. For example, the same family of bacteria that makes Limburger cheese smell so bad, brevibacterium linens, is what makes your feet smell so bad.
• Two words—spray mold. Cheesemakers spray the outside of soft, slimy cheeses like brie with mold to create a white rind. The next time someone tries to shove a brie-slathered cracker at you, you might want to say, "Hold the mold!"
• If you have to wonder what the pus content of something is, should you really be eating it? Cheese—like all dairy products—contains pus from cows whose udders get bacterial infections when the cows are treated like milk machines by the dairy industry.
• Cheese is loaded with artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol. Most varieties derive 70 to 80 percent of their calories from fat, while cream cheese is a whopping 90 percent fat. The good news is that yummy vegan cheeses like Daiya and Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese contain no cholesterol and slash the fat without sacrificing flavor.

And if all those reasons aren't enough to make your stomach turn, just think about the cows forced to stand knee-deep in their own feces and mud on factory farms, having their babies ripped away from them within days of birth so that humans can drink the milk nature intended for them.

So, if you're still eating cheese, what are you waiting for? Spare cows and your health by tossing that moldy piece of pus-laced stomach lining, and try some tempting vegan cheese options today.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan

With a terse dismissal, the State Fair of Texas denied PETA's application to display our own version of a 4-H booth at the upcoming event. Fair officials must not want visitors to know that the cows, sheep, goats, and chickens 4-H participants have spent countless hours bonding with will ultimately make their way to a blood-soaked killing floor, just as most animals raised for food do.

Our four "H's" stand for "hellish for animals," "hazardous to the environment," "heart attack–inducing," and "hypocritical for teaching kids to care about only certain animals and to disregard others." We planned to screen Glass Walls and hand out free copies of our vegetarian/vegan starter kits.

I suppose that, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, the State Fair of Texas can't handle the truth. But we think their patrons can—or at least their hearts can.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor