🦉 Superb owl edition

Plus: Bee vaccines and amazing animals

February 12, 2023

Hello 👋 This is Weekend Rounds.

On this special superb owl Sunday we want you to be armed at halftime with some of the best owl facts for your superb owl parties. 1. Owls can rotate their necks 270 degrees2. Owls can rotate a toe from front facing to back facing3. Not all owls hoot. Some screech. Some neigh. That hoot you think of belongs to the great horned owl.

If that doesn't get your feathers in a ruffle, we have an issue jam packed with great animal facts and news.

Here's what's going down tonight:🐝 Bee vaccines🐠 Remarkable animals🚀 Quick hits

🐝 Bee vaccines

Many of you are likely familiar with the plight of the bee. Bees are incredibly important to ecosystems around the world. However their colonies are declining in part due to American Fouldbrood, AKA Paenibacillus larvae. This infection affects bee larvae with spore forming bacteria and can decimate colonies. Importantly it costs bee keepers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.But now, hope is on the horizon. Bee keepers are armed with a new weapon in the first ever approved vaccine against this devastating disease.

If you want to learn more, Cleo Abrams has you covered.

🐠 Remarkable animals

If you've ever seen a bulldog... just be alive for more than 30 seconds... you likely know that animals are incredibly remarkable and resilient beings. But there are some which stand out above all others. Take the planarian, axolotl, zebra fish and hydra who can all regenerate by different methods. While the planarian uses stem cells, the axolotl uses differentiation. Hydras on the other had blow our minds with a process known as Morphallaxis, which sounds more like a great name for a Marvel villain but is actually the reshuffling of their healthy remaining cells. Makes you wonder if any of these methods can be used to make humans regenerate. Imagine a veterinarian who can regenerate after a cat bite!In North America we are no strangers to the cold. But how do the animals in our environment fare without furnaces and cozy homes? This article from How Stuff Works explores the unique methods. Our favorite is the antifreeze protein of some fish. COOOOOL.

🚀 Quick hits

Here are some stories around the veterinary and animal world which caught our eye this week.

Scientists are trying to resurrect the dodo

More than one-third of animals, plants at risk of extinction in US

How Scientists Are Using AI to Talk to Animals

Purina Proplan EL Recalled due to high vitamin D

Why title protection of ‘veterinary nurse’ matters