Update: After the Australian RSPCA was at last permitted to board the disabled ship, they discovered that at least 200 sheep had already died. The surviving sheep are being unloaded and sent to a feedlot, a process that is expected to take several days. Australia's agriculture minister acknowledged that hundreds of sheep had died but shrugged off the deaths as being "expected."

The following was first published on August 16th.

For the past week, 67,000 sheep have struggled to survive inside a crowded, filthy multitier ship in Australia. We're betting that not all of them have made it. The sheep―either discarded by the wool industry or bred for meat―were bound for slaughter in the Middle East, a grueling journey, but when the ship experienced mechanical problems, the captain turned the ship around and returned to Australia.

Now the ship is sitting at  the dock, and the sheep have been left on board to suffer in cramped quarters, mired in their own waste. Eventually, one supposes, it will be back out to sea again for these unfortunate animals.

The voyage from Australia to the Middle East can take weeks, during which time many sheep commonly starve to death, are trampled, or become ill and die, their bodies tossed overboard. Upon arrival, the survivors are dragged from the ship, thrown into the backs of trucks, and driven to slaughter, where they have their throats cut while fully conscious.

Please urge Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard to put a stop to the immense suffering endured by millions of sheep and other animals every year by banning live export. 

Written by Michelle Sherrow

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Apparently, people have lost sleep trying to answer this philosophical question. The answer seems obvious to me: Animals live in forests and animals have ears, so they would hear the sound of a falling tree.

Next …?

How about the one asked by the adorable (and offensive) T-shirt below from our friends at Portland's Food Fight! Grocery?

foodfightgrocery / CC

I know, the answer to this one is a no-brainer too. So go ahead and ante up your answer—in just one sentence. (And keep it clean, guys: no uncensored swear words.) The three people who submit the cleverest, snappiest responses will each score a shirt.

The contest ends on March 10, 2010, and we'll choose three winners on March 12, 2010. Be sure to read our privacy policy and terms and conditions, as you're agreeing to both by commenting. Good luck!

Written by Karin Bennett

A little drama unfolding in the UK this week: Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who is a good friend of Victoria Beckham (a.k.a. Posh Spice) has found himself in a bit of a pickle after asking Victoria to let his lambs graze on the land at her home in Hertfordshire because his own London garden was too small. Victoria was perfectly happy to oblige … until she found out what Ramsay intended to do with the lambs that she had grown to love (fricassee them, to be precise). As her spokeswoman put it:

And now PETA Europe has joined the fray, with the following quote from PETA Europe Director Poorva Joshipura making the rounds of the British press:

Maybe there's hope for these lambs yet. Thank you Victoria, for bringing their plight to the public's attention! You can read the full story here.

Well, it wasn't exactly with the Flaming Lips—more like at a Flaming Lips show, but it was a pretty swell evening nonetheless. If you're not familiar with the band, you can check them out here, but as rad as their music is, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle until you see them live. By the end of last night’s show, the entire floor was so covered in confetti that all the people in animal costumes were slipping on it. Amazing. Truth be told, I just kind of wanted to rave about the show because I had such a good time, but there is an animal connection here, since Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips interviewed with those authority-questioning scene queens over at peta2 last time the band played in Norfolk, and even allowed a bunch of PETA folks in animal costumes to do a little backup dancing during their set. If you want to find out what Wayne had to say about the whole animal costumes business, you can read the full interview here.

I've posted a couple of pictures in the past with some of the lovely ladies of PETA getting nekkid to help animals, so I figured it was high time I published a few pics of the dudes. This photo’s from a Tax Day demonstration conducted by PETA Campaigner Mike Brazell in Philadelphia to let people know that donating fur coats to PETA is tax-deductible. Mike quickly recognized that, while this is an important and useful piece of information, it doesn't exactly grab the attention like some of PETA's campaigns—so he did what any resourceful campaigner is trained to do in a difficult situation and removed his clothing. Nice work, Mike! Here are the results:

These particular photos reminded me of one of my favorite stories about my friend Matt Rice. PETA had sent out a press release about a demonstration that was going to take place in Corpus Christi, which went something like this:

The press release did the trick, and a ton of media promised to come out and report on the event, which was all well and good until Matt got a call from the "Tiger Lady" at the last minute to say she couldn't make it. Fortunately, nothing fazes Matt Rice. Here's how he handled the crisis:

Rawr! Matt, you're a hero.

If for some reason you're still starving for pics of scantily clad PETA dudes, you can check out our old Broccoli Boys website here. That'll cure you for sure.

Pamela Anderson is truly amazing. Seriously, could the woman do any more for animals? This time, she got wind of KFC’s plans to expand in Russia, and jumped at the chance to write the president of KFC’s partner company there, urging him to use his influence to convince the company to protect the 850,000 chickens it kills from the worst abuses they suffer.

And of course, the Russian press was all over the story.

Here’s a copy of Pam’s letter, and I’ll let you know if we get a response.