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Meet Ruppy.  That’s short for Ruby Puppy, not exactly the best name for a little itty bitty beagle, especially when Ruby would have sufficed.  The scientists who named Ruppy probably didn’t want to be self-conscious at such a young age.  Didn’t want to be obvious.

Yuppers, Ruppy is the world’s first transgenic dog, created by scientists at the Seoul National University by cloning fibroblast cells that express a red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones. 

Ruppy glows a faint red color when exposed to ultra-violet light. 

Why would scienctists want to do this?  Apparantly it has something to do with human disease models. 

Greg Barsh, a geneticist at Stanford University who studies dogs as models of human disease, says creating a transgenic dog is “an important accomplishment”, showing that cloning and transgenesis can be applied to a wide range of mammals.

“I do not know of specific situations where the ability to produce transgenic dogs represents an immediate experimental opportunity,” Barsh adds. But transgenic dogs will give researchers another potential tool to understand disease.

And this is Ruppy under ultra-violet light.  Is anyone else sorta bothered by this?  I know she’s just a clone and I probably wouldn’t feel so disgusting if this were a glow in the dark monkey, but I really just want to take Ruppy home we me and let her sit on my lap. 

Ashes is a 13-year-old chimp living in India’s Mysore Zoo. 

“Ashes was born with fur like any other chimpanzee. But by just a year old, he had lost all of it! While he is somewhat frightening, it is a wonderful opportunity to be able to see a chimp’s musculature.

“Ashes is not the only one of his rare kind. Another hairless chimp called Cinder was born at the Saint Louis Zoo in Missouri. Also born with full hair, she soon lost it but was still readily accepted by the other chimps.”

Well, at least Ashes has that going for him.  [via Weekly World News]

The Obamas welcome into their lives, a 6-month-old Portuguese water dog which Sasha and Malia have named Bo.  Could that dog be any more adorable with the lei?

All other cat videos can show themselves the door. [via]

Ever wonder what a million snow geese looked or sounded like?  Curiously enough, a lot like the Alfred Hitchcock movie.

My first year of college I fell pretty hard, or hard a severe crush, on this girl Joanne.  One year for her birthday, someone bought her these National Geographic animal videos.  They were an hour or two long and I think like 14 videos in all.

Our favorite one was a scene where two male turtles fight for the right to have sex with the female.  But the funny thing about it was that the defeated turtle ended upside down on his shell and had to watch the victor just give it to the female for a good five minutes.  The turtle sex noises took it to an entirely different level. Seriously, if YouTube existed back then, that would be a prime clip.

So you can imagine how giddy I was to find this video at BoingBoing.  So Joanne, you probably don’t read the site, but this is for you.

This just about made my day. 

An albino dolphin has been spotted cruises the waves of  Lake Calcasieu, a saltwater estuary in Louisianna. 

Capt Erik Rue, 42, originally saw the dolphin, which also has reddish eyes, swimming with a pod of four other dolphins, with one appearing to be its mother which never left its side.

“I just happened to see a little pod of dolphins, and I noticed one that was a little lighter,” he said.  “It was absolutely stunningly pink.  I had never seen anything like it. It’s the same color throughout the whole body and it looks like it just came out of a paint booth.” 

Regina Asmutis-Silvia, senior biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said, “I have never seen a dolphin coloured in this way in all my career.  It is a truly beautiful dolphin but people should be careful, as with any dolphins, to respect it – observe from a distance, limit their time watching, don’t chase or harass it.”

Probably not.  But that’s a world I want to live in. 

[via The Daily What]

The Oregon Zoo posted this irresistibly sweet video clip of a 5-month old baby Asian elephant named Samudra playing with a ball.

A cute-animal video has emerged from Australia’s devastating bush fires this week. When a firefighter stumbles upon an injured wild koala, she sticks around and lets him give her three bottles of water.  Say it with me now, “awwwwwwwww.”

Also?  Everyone sounds cooler with an Australian accent.  I was fully expecting Steve Irwin to jump out from behind a tree and scare the fire fighter.  Too soon?

Not even Disney could come up with something this warm and snuggly.

[via - reddit]