ANIMALS

Starving Kitten Looks for Food in Family’s Yard and Gets a New Chance at Life

Not long ago, Ariel Heath saw four small kittens hanging out near her place, drinking water as if they belonged there. She looked around, but couldn’t find their mom, so she asked her neighbors about them. Unfortunately, nobody knew where these little buddies came from.

Image source: Ariel Heath

“They heard us and ran back off the property behind our fence and into some brush,” Ariel shared.

Afterwards, Ariel began putting out food, wishing those small furry creatures would come back. And they did! The food vanished quickly, but the kittens remained hard to catch.

“I never saw them eat but the food was always gone within half an hour.” said Ariel.

Image source: Ariel Heath

Then, one day, the smallest kitten of the group showed up at Ariel’s backdoor, looking for food, very nervous. “She was still quite skittish and ran back if you moved too quickly.”

Then Ariel got an idea. She decided to put food near the fence and make cat noises to try to bring the kitten closer. “I would meow and she would come slowly, sneaking under the fence to eat. She was alone now, and her siblings were nowhere to be seen.”

Image source: Ariel Heath

And it worked! The once scared kitty began to calm down, even peeking through the window to say, “Hey, I’m here!”

“Eventually, she trusted me enough to eat right from my hand and let me pet her,” said Ariel.

Image source: Ariel Heath

Ariel’s family soon chose to take care of the kitten and called her Billy, not knowing she was a girl. To make sure Billy was healthy, they took her to the vet for a check-up and vaccinations. With love and care, Billy changed from an adventurous outdoor cat to a pampered indoor one.

Image source: Ariel Heath

“We named our kitten Billy not knowing she was a young lady. I took her to the vet. She was a very healthy girl for being outdoors her whole life. We got her spayed, vaccinated and dewormed so she wouldn’t be repeating the cycle around the neighborhood.”

Image source: Ariel Heath

But Billy didn’t only find a place to live; she also found a great family. She quickly became friends with Ariel’s son, had fun with their adopted dog, and now, she has a routine of waiting for him at the door when he returns from school every day.

“Despite their differences, they wait together for their human to walk home from school.”

ANIMALS

Amazing Video of Unseen Ocean Creatures in the Ningaloo Canyons

The Schmidt Ocean Institute recently explored the Ningaloo Canyons on the western coast of Australia using a robotic underwater vehicle called the ROV Sebastian. Check out the amazing video of what they discovered in the deep parts of the Indian Ocean.

More info: Youtube

ANIMALS

These Pics Are Art and the Artists Are Insects

Flying insects move so quickly that they are hard to follow, but new technology and some smart ideas have helped Spanish photographer Xavi Bou do just that. After spending 10 years focusing on birds in flight for his Ornithographies project, he turned his attention to insects.

For Entomographies, he uses high-speed video footage taken by Adrian Smith, an insect expert at North Carolina State University, to study and record how insects move. Bou then picks multiple frames and combines them into single images that show the fast movements of one or more insects through space and time.

With Smith’s help, Bou has captured the aerial tricks of wasps, the jumps of leafhoppers, and the fluttering of butterflies in amazing detail. He hopes that by doing this, he can make people more aware of the decline in important insect populations around the world.

1. Zebra longwing

This butterfly, which is common in many areas of the Americas, really fits its name. It can fly very high with just a few flaps of its large wings.