Help The Pit Bulls Live

This is about California legislation being passed to exterminate pit bulls. If it passes in California, it could be on it's way to anywhere. Someone has to try to make a difference...what if it were your pet?

Please pass the word along and post this...so as many people can see this as possible.




























































































































This has to be stopped.

Animalz Rule(even Pit Bulls)

Bobby Sharpe "Dragon, Book Of Shang": Dragon, Book Of Shang Is Coming Soon! reggae8@aol.com

Beetles & Dinosaurs

Modern Beetles Predate Dinosaurs

Wait, don't squash that beetle! Its lineage predates dinosaurs.

New research hints that modern-day versions of the insects are far older than any tyrannosaur that trod the Earth.

Today's plethora of beetle species were thought to have blossomed 140 million years ago, during the rise of flowering plants. But the new study of beetle DNA and fossils, published in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Science, pushes their appearance back to 300 million years ago.

That beats the arrival of dinosaurs by about 70 million years.

"Unlike the dinosaurs which dwindled to extinction, beetles survived because of their ecological diversity and adaptability," said the study's lead scientist Alfried Vogler, an entomologist at Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum in London.

Today, 350,000 species of beetles dot collections around the world, and millions more are estimated to exist but haven't been discovered — which means they make up more than one-fourth of all known species of life forms. The reason for this tremendous diversity has been debated by scientists for many years but never resolved.

Vogler thinks beetles' head start on our planet with its ever-changing environments was the secret to their success.

"The large number of beetle species existing today could very well be a direct result of this early evolution," Vogler said, "and the fact that there has been a very high rate of survival and continuous diversification of many lineages since then."

To reach this conclusion, Vogler and his team teased out evolutionary data from the DNA of 1,880 modern beetle species, then compared it to fossil records dating back 265 million years to build detailed evolutionary trees. The new genetic maps suggest that a common ancestor to beetles crept up well before its descendants showed up in the fossil record.

"With beetles forming such a large proportion of all known species, learning about their relationships and evolution gives us important new insights into the origin of biodiversity and how beetles have triumphed over the course of nearly 300 million years," Vogler said.

See, the bugs/insects got it going on. Size doesn't really matter now does it?

Animalz & insects Rule,

Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

Japan And Their Barbaric Whaling Industry

Japan Suspends Humpback Whale Hunt

TOKYO (Dec. 21) - Japan has suspended its first humpback whale hunt in seas off Antarctica since the 1960s, the government said Friday, backing down in an escalating international battle over the expansion of its hunt.

Japan dropped the planned taking of 50 humpbacks - which have been off-limits to commercial hunting since 1966 - at the behest of the United States, the chair of the International Whaling Commission, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura.

"The government has decided to suspend hunts of humpback whales while talks to normalize IWC is taking place," Machimura said, adding the suspension would last a year or two. "But there will be no changes to our stance on our research whaling itself."

Japan dispatched its whaling fleet last month to the southern Pacific in the first major hunt of humpback whales since the 1960s, generating widespread criticism. Japanese whaling officials said Friday they had not harpooned any humpbacks yet.

The move defuses for now a high-profile row with Australia, though Japanese officials deny they were influenced by Canberra's anti-whaling position. Australia announced Wednesday it would dispatch surveillance planes and a ship to gather evidence for a possible international legal challenge to the hunt.

It was unlikely, however, to quell the increasingly bold high-seas protests against Japan's scientific whaling research program, under which it kills a total of 1,000 whales - mostly minkes - a year in the Pacific.

Japan has wrestled with the IWC for years to overturn its 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, and recently has called for a "normalization" of the group to return to its original mission of managing sea resources, rather than banning whaling.

The decision followed talks between Japan and the U.S. over state of the IWC, said Hideki Moronuki, chief of the Fisheries Agency's whaling division. The State Department had warned Japan that some anti-whaling nations could boycott IWC meetings, he said.

"That goes against the intentions of Japan, which have sought a normalized IWC," said Moronuki, who has been an energetic and outspoken proponent of Japan's whaling program.

Commercial hunts of humpbacks - which were nearly harpooned to extinction in the 20th century - were banned in the Southern Pacific in 1963, and that ban was extended worldwide in 1966.

The American Cetacean Society estimates the humpback population has recovered to about 30,000-40,000 - about a third of the number before modern whaling. The species is listed as "vulnerable" by the World Conservation Union.

The decision was cheered by anti-whaling nations - with reservations.

"While this is a welcome move, the Australian government strongly believes that there is no credible justification for the hunting of any whales," Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said, adding it would continue with its surveillance plans.

Smith also conveyed a similar message to his Japanese counterpart, Masahiko Komura, during their telephone talks later Friday, Japan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Smith said the problem is not just humpback hunts, while Komura justified Japan's research whaling.

Karli Thomas, who is leading a Greenpeace expedition heading to the southern Pacific, also lauded the development.

"This is good news indeed, but it must be the first step towards ending all whaling in the Southern Ocean, not just one species for one season," Thomas said in a statement from on board the group's ship, Esperanza.

Coastal communities in Japan have hunted whales for centuries, but whale meat was not eaten widely here until the U.S. occupation officials encouraged it in the poverty stricken years after World War II.

Despite the commercial hunting ban, Japan is permitted under the IWC rules to kill whales for scientific research. The meat is sold under the program and often ends up as pricey items in specialty restaurants, though its popularity as a staple has plummeted with the availability of beef and other meats.

Despite the suspension of the humpback hunt, Japan still plans to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in the Antarctic in what the Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt.

Japan also takes more minkes in the northern Pacific later in the year.

Critics, however, say the scientific program is a ruse for Japan to keep its whaling industry alive until it can overturn the commercial ban. Protesters in boats earlier this year dogged the Japanese fleet, which eventually had to cut the hunt short when a fire damaged one of its ships.

It seems to me that, in this day and age, Japan should be able to find something a little more constructive, productive and animal friendly than going out and hunting these magnificent creatures. Hell, they made everything else, "make some artificial whale meat"! If this kind of behavior keeps up, we may have to try to summon Godzilla, or, as they call him, Gojira, to put something on their cities as Toho Studios did in their movies.

Oh, in closing, "don't give me that crap about killing cows and chickens and goats and turkeys etc for food". TWO wrongs do not make a right!

Whales and Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe Dragon, Book of Shang

Another NEW Dinosaur Discovered

New Dinosaur Discovered in Antarctica

(Dec. 11) - A hefty, long-necked dinosaur that lumbered across the Antarctic before meeting its demise 190 million years ago has been identified and named, more than a decade after intrepid paleontologists sawed and chiseled the remains of the primitive plant-eater from its icy grave.

A team led by William Hammer of Augustana College had unearthed the dino fossils in the early 1990s. They found a partial foot, leg and ankle bones on Mt. Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica at an elevation of more than 13,000 feet (nearly 4,000 meters). It wasn't until recently, though, that researchers examined the fossils.

"The fossils were painstakingly removed from the ice and rock using jackhammers, rock saws and chisels under extremely difficult conditions over the course of two field seasons," said Nathan Smith, a graduate student at The Field Museum in Chicago, who along with a colleague describes the dinosaur in the Dec. 5 issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Extreme Dinos

The Antarctic dinosaur was about 20 to 25 feet long (six to about 8 meters) and weighed in at 4 to 6 tons. Smith and co-author Diego Pol, a paleontologist at the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio in Argentina, determined the remains belong to a new genus and species of dinosaur from the early Jurassic Period.

Dubbed Glacialisaurus hammeri, the beast was a type of sauropodomorph, a dino group that includes the largest animals ever to walk the earth. Their sister group is the theropods, which include Tyrannosaurus rex, Velociraptor and primitive birds. The sauropodomorphs were long-necked herbivores and included the "true sauropods" Diplodocus and Apatosaurus (sauropods are a subset of sauropodomorphs).

While researchers don't know how G. hammeri used its tail, some of its relatives are thought to have wielded their tails as weapons, cracking the tail at supersonic speeds to produce a ground-shaking boom.

Dinosaur Sprawl

The new results suggest sauropodomorphs were widely distributed in the Early Jurassic—not only in China, South Africa, South America and North America, but also in Antarctica.

"This was probably due to the fact that major connections between the continents still existed at that time, and because climates were more equitable across latitudes than they are today," Smith said.

Back then, most of the landmasses in today's southern hemisphere (including Antarctica, South America, Africa and Australia) formed the supercontinent Gondwana. The landmass started to break up in the mid-Jurassic, about 167 million years ago.

The Glacialisaurus discovery, along with that of a possible sauropod at roughly the same location in Antarctica, lends additional support to a theory that the earliest sauropods coexisted with their more primitive sauropodomorph cousins for an extended period, the researchers conclude.

"They are important because they help to establish that primitive sauropodomorph dinosaurs were more broadly distributed than previously thought, and that they coexisted with their cousins, the true sauropods," Smith said.

Other animal remains that have been collected in the neighborhood of G. hammeri include a nearly complete skeleton of a theropod dinosaur called Cryolophosaurus ellioti; pelvic bones from a possible sauropod dinosaur; a pterosaur humerus bone; and the tooth of a large tritylodont (a type of extinct mammal relatives).

I am not exactly sure what is going on these days, but, it seems like for the last couple of years now, a new species of animal or new dinosaur is being discovered almost every few weeks or so. I have my theories, but, can't prove a thing and they are only speculation as of now.

As I have told many of YOU before, "it is just a matter of time before they find Godzilla or, at least a once alive close relative". Yes, and they will eventually prove that dragons are not just some "fantasy" creature.

Animalz Rule(Dinosaurs),

Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

9 Foot Spitting Cobra, Excuse Me?

Record-Size Spitting Cobra Discovered

NAIROBI (Dec. 7) - A giant spitting cobra, measuring nearly nine feet and carrying enough venom to kill at least 15 people, has been discovered in Kenya, a conservation group said on Friday.

WildlifeDirect said the snake it described as the world's largest had been recognized as a new species and named the Naja Ashei after James Ashe, who founded a snake farm on Kenya's coast where the massive serpents are found.

"A new species of giant spitting cobra is exciting and reinforces the obvious -- that there have to be many other unreported species but hundreds are being lost as their habitats disappear under the continued mismanagement of our planet," said the group's chairman, Kenyan environmentalist Richard Leakey.

Spitting cobras, able to launch poison over a distance of several meters, are common to Kenya's lowland climates.

WildlifeDirect said the discovery would help find an anti-venom for the bite. "Lives can be saved," it added.

Ashe, now deceased, was the first to catch a larger-than-normal spitting cobra in the 1960s, and suggest it belonged to a different species.

The animal kingdom is unbelievable. New and different species are being discovered all the time. However, I don't need to see one of these bad boys in person. I do wish them no harm and hope they continue to thrive. If YOU would like to see more pictures, go to the story on aol at http://news.aol.com/story/_a/record-size-spitting-cobra-discovered/20071207161

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

Willie Nelson, Dog Fighting Legislation & Georgia

Dog's Best Friend: Willie Nelson

ATLANTA (AP) - Willie Nelson is looking to become dog's best friend. The country music star has filmed a television spot supporting an anti-dogfighting bill that is moving through the Georgia Legislature.

In the ad, Nelson looks into the camera while "Georgia on My Mind" plays in the background.

"Dogfighting is against the law in Georgia, but the laws are so weak, the beautiful state of Georgia has become a haven for dogfighters from around the country," he says.

The bill would make it a felony for anyone to sell, trade or transport dogs for the purpose of dogfighting.

Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society, a national animal welfare organization, produced the piece and asked Nelson to participate.

State Sen. Chip Rogers, the bill's author, hopes to get the spot on TV and radio around the time of the Dec. 10 sentencing for suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who pleaded guilty to a federal dogfighting conspiracy charge.

The bill has passed the state Senate and will go before a House committee in January.

Hopefully, the House will follow suit. Three cheers for Willie Nelson for being on the bandwagon with this. People that are participating in this despicable form of whatever they want to call it, are lucky. If I were calling the shots, anyone caught doing this would be executed immediately.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe www.myspace.com/akuasharpe Dragon, Book of Shang

Gator Kills Burglar

'Aggressive' Gator Kills Burglary Suspect

MICCOSUKEE TRIBE INDIAN RESERVATION, Fla. (Nov. 13) - A man who jumped into a lake to flee police was killed by an alligator more than 9-feet long, officials said Tuesday.

The man, whose name has not been released, was allegedly burglarizing a vehicle in the parking lot of the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center on Thursday. He ran when police arrived at the scene, said Dexter Lehtinen, one of the tribe's police legal advisors.

Tribal police divers searched for the man that night, then again Friday morning and afternoon. During the third dive, the body was recovered. It bore alligator teeth marks on the upper torso.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department said the cause of death was an alligator attack.

An accomplice in the alleged burglary has been arrested. The Miccosukee tribe, which is not obligated to follow Florida's open records laws, declined to release his name. Without a name, the Miami-Dade state attorney's office was unable to comment on whether the man has been charged.

The alligator believed to be responsible for the death has been killed. A coroner was scheduled to examine the 9-foot-3 reptile Wednesday for human hair or skin, said Brian Wood, owner of All American Gator Products, which is storing the gator in a cooler for now. It will then be incinerated or buried, he said.

A sign at the lake warns people: "Danger Live Alligators." Wood said in other alligator habitats, signs also warn people not to feed the creatures.

"They become too comfortable being around humans and they equate humans to food," Wood said. "Generally if a gator sees a person, he goes the other way, he goes down, he hides. This gator was aggressive, not afraid of people."

I have said it before and I will say it again, "why did they euthanize(kill) the gator"? The gator lives in the pond/lake. It's his home! Doesn't he have the right to protect that as we have the right to protect our home? Plus, he got rid of a "dirtbag" for us.

One of these days, when everything in the universe is properly lined up and in synch, the animals will have their day. The ego and ignorance of mankind is ruining this planet.

Peace and Dragons and Animalz,

Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang Bobby Sharpe's "Indigo Spiritz"

Another Animal Needs Our Help

World's Smallest Bear Faces Extinction

GENEVA (Nov. 13) - The world's smallest bear species faces extinction because of deforestation and poaching in its Southeast Asian home, a conservation group said Monday.

The sun bear, whose habitat stretches from India to Indonesia, has been classified as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union.

"We estimate that sun bears have declined by at least 30 percent over the past 30 years and continue to decline at this rate," said Rob Steinmetz, a bear expert with the Geneva-based group, known under its acronym IUCN.

The group estimates there are little more than 10,000 sun bears left, said Dave Garshelis, co-chair of the IUCN bear specialist group.

The bear, which weighs between 90 and 130 pounds, is hunted for its bitter, green bile, which has long been used by Chinese traditional medicine practitioners to treat eye, liver and other ailments. Bear paws are also consumed as a delicacy.

Another threat comes from loggers, who are destroying the sun bear's habitat, Steinmetz said.

Thailand is the only country to have effectively banned logging and enforced laws against poaching, allowing the sun bear population to remain stable there, Garshelis said.

IUCN said six of the eight bear species in the world are now threatened with extinction.

Other vulnerable bear species are the Asiatic black bear, the sloth bear on the Indian subcontinent, the Andean bear in South America and the polar bear. The brown bear and the American black bear are in a lesser category of threat, IUCN said.

"The American black bear is actually doing quite well," said Garshelis, adding that its population is increasing in most parts of Canada, the United States and Mexico.

There are an estimated 900,000 American black bears in the three countries, more than double the number of all the other bear species combined, according to IUCN.

The brown bear is well protected in North America and Europe and therefore able to expand in certain areas, he said. But in some countries of South Asia, including Pakistan, India and Nepal, there are only tiny numbers of brown bears left, he added.

The giant panda, of which fewer than 3,000 are estimated to survive, remains in the category of endangered species despite huge Chinese efforts to conserve it, Garshelis said.

"It would be unwise to assume that in less than 10 years under the new habitat improvement policies in China (the) panda population could have dramatically increased," he said.

Australia's koala bear, which despite its name is not a bear but a marsupial, is considered "near threatened.

"The reassessment of the sun bear's situation will be reflected in IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species, a comprehensive inventory of some 41,000 species and subspecies compiled by a network of experts around the globe.

Another one of those "break your heart" stories about what is going on with our fellow Earth inhabitants. Just wanted to make YOU aware of the Sun Bears plight. Please, do whatever YOU can to help our animal souls.

Thanks, Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

"Heroes" Star Panettiere Protests Dolphin Hunt

Panettiere Protests Japan Dolphin Hunt

TOKYO (AP) - Hayden Panettiere and some fellow animal rights activists drew angry shouts and some shoving from fishermen in Japan when they tried to interfere with a dolphin hunt, according to video footage shot by the protesters.

The six activists from the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd paddled out on surfboards to a cove in the town of Taiji in southwestern Japan on Tuesday to interfere with the annual hunt.

Fishermen on a boat approached the activists and ordered them to leave, shoving some of them with a long pole. An angry fisherman later shouted in the face of one of the protesters on the road above the cove. There did not appear to be any injuries.

"This baby stuck its head out and kind of looked as us, and the thought that the baby is no longer with us is very difficult," Panettiere, who stars in the NBC show "Heroes," said after coming ashore.

The local fishermen and their supporters say hunting dolphins - in this case, pilot whales - is a Japanese custom that outsiders have no business interfering with.

"Whales and dolphins are traditionally being used (as resources) in Japan," said Hideki Moronuki, chief of the whaling section at the Japanese Fisheries Agency. "In this light, we cannot accept an argument simply based on emotional causes."

About 14,000 dolphins are killed for food in Japan every year.

Coastal dolphin hunts usually involve herding groups of the animals into a cove using sonar equipment, or by banging metal rods in the water, creating a sort of acoustic barrier. The mammals are then trapped using nets and divers are sent in to kill them.

You know, I really think this sucks. Being the animal lover I am. However, in all respect to intelligent thinking, how can I come down on the Japanese when we, as Americans, do the same thing pretty much, to 4 legged and 2 legged animals. Anyway, that's my take on this disturbing story.

Animalz Rule,

Bobby Sharpe reggae8@aol.com www.myspace.com/akuasharpe

Iragi Sharks 160 Miles Inland

Iraqi fisherman nets shark 160 miles from sea

NASSIRIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - A two-meter shark has been caught in a river in southern Iraq more than 200 km (160 miles) from the sea.

Karim Hasan Thamir said he was fishing with his sons last week when they spotted a large fish thrashing about in his net. "I recognized the fish as a shark because I have seen one on a television program," he told Reuters.

The shark was pulled from the mouth of an irrigation canal that joins the Euphrates River. The Euphrates joins the Tigris River further east to form the Shatt al-Arab waterway which flows south past Basra into the Gulf.

Dr. Mohamed Ajah, assistant dean of the college of science at Thi Qar University in Nassiriya, said barriers in river estuaries usually prevented sharks swimming upstream.

"In this case, I think this animal was there for a long time but no one had managed to see it," he said.

Locals blamed the U.S. military for the shark's presence.

Tahseen Ali, a teacher, said there was a "75 percent chance" Americans had put the shark in the water.

"This is very frightening for us. Our children always swim in the river and I believe that there are more sharks. I believe that America is behind this matter," said fisherman Hatim Karim.

See, this is why YOU don't need to go to war in another country. YOU get blamed for crap like this. This is also why certain people in certain cultures on this planet will NEVER get it right. And, if, by some chance, Americans did put the shark there, that is totally whacked. I mean, what military person would call that shot?

"Hey man, I got a great idea dude". "Let's go down to the ocean, 160 miles away, catch a big badass shark, and bring it back and put it in the river up here", said the Sarge.

"Sounds like a really cool idea, let's do it", the grunt said.

I'm sure that's how that went. Give me a break!!!!!!!!!!!

"What YOU think about and thank about,

Is what YOU bring about"

Bobby Sharpe Orlando Sentinel - Community Winter Park Blog -www.myspace.com/akuasharpe