Singaporean 'ant-repreneur' sells tiny six-legged pets

SINGAPORE - Ants scurry around in transparent boxes stacked outside a Singaporean store that is tapping into an unlikely but growing local trend of keeping the six-legged creatures as pets.

John Ye says he became fascinated with the "altruistic, compassionate" creepy-crawlies after receiving some as a gift from his brother-in-law.

The 41-year-old eventually ditched a job in electronics distribution to open "Just Ants" in January and cater to fellow enthusiasts.

"I wish to have a place where people can gather and share insights, and share their ant-keeping journey," Ye told AFP. 

The shop sells ant farms along with specialist equipment, including mini handheld vacuums for catching the insects, tiny feeding dishes and mealworms used as feed.

It was forced to close for a period due to a coronavirus lockdown earlier this year but has reopened since restrictions were eased, and business is picking up.

It stocks 30 to 40 species, sourced from ant-keeper friends or collected by Ye and his team around Singapore. 

Catching the creatures is no easy task. It is usually only possible during so-called "nuptial flights" -- when new queens and winged male ants take to the air in the hope of finding a mate.

PETS OR PESTS?

The queen ants are then placed in test tubes or small tanks, where they give birth to a colony of worker ants if they have mated.

Ye's personal collection includes tens of thousands of marauder ants, a species of the creature commonly found across Asia, housed in a large box. 

The number of ant aficionados in Singapore is small but growing, according to Ye -- a Facebook group where keepers exchange advice and information has nearly 4,000 members.

But Ye knows he has his work cut out to convince people in Singapore, where ant-keeping is rare, that the creatures are pets and not pests.

Most Singaporeans believe "you should actually not keep ants because ants... are poisonous, they are dirty, disgusting, they carry diseases", he conceded.

"We always fear something that we don't understand."

Beginner ant-keeper Wei Sern Lim visited the shop to buy a box of food and a new home for his colony.

"It's nicer to see the products and a lot more convenient just to have a physical shop," the 30-year-old told AFP. 

Others simply turned up to see whether such a shop really existed. 

"I'm very tickled, they are actually selling ants as pets -- it's totally unheard of," said visitor Michelle Serio.

Agence France-Presse

Human coronavirus transmissible between domestic cats: study

TOKYO - The novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic can be transmitted between domestic cats even though infected cats may not show any symptoms, according to a research team working in the Japanese capital and Wisconsin.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo and University of Wisconsin-Madison published the findings online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a veterinarian and professor in the research team, recommends cat owners keep their pets indoors as they may contract the virus without the owner ever being aware.

The study said that while there is no evidence of the virus being transmitted from cats to humans, it is necessary to get a better understanding of the potential role of pets in the pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Veterinary Services Laboratories confirmed in April that two pet cats were infected with the virus causing respiratory disease, and infections among cats have been reported in Belgium and Hong Kong as well.

The CDC said at that time there was no evidence that pets play a role in spreading the virus in the United States.

The research team took the virus from a human and infected three cats with it by putting large doses into the eyes, nostrils, mouth and trachea of the test subjects in a laboratory in the United States.

The infected cats were then each housed with an uninfected cat and within five days, the uninfected cats tested positive for the virus via nasal swabs.

Following the positive tests, all six cats continued testing positive for about five days, according to the team.

Blood tests showed that they produced antibodies for 24 days after the first positive test.

All six cats maintained normal body temperature, weight and behavior throughout the experiment and none showed any symptoms of the virus, according to the research team.

Pointing to evidence that humans can transmit the virus to cats and that cats can spread it to other cats, pet owners "should keep a distance from their cats" if they are found to have been infected, Kawaoka said.

The team also noted the importance of employing simple hygiene precautions, such as washing hands, and avoiding obviously ill animals, in protecting the health of both humans and animals.

Lions and tigers at the Bronx Zoo in New York exhibited symptoms of respiratory illness and tested positive for the coronavirus in April after a zookeeper was infected with the virus, according to U.S. media reports.

It is more likely that humans are giving the virus to their pets, rather than pets causing humans to become ill, according to the researchers.

==Kyodo

Why dogs can’t help falling in love with you

TEMPE, Arizona — Xephos is not the author of “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You,” one of the latest books to plumb the nature of dogs, but she helped inspire it. And as I scratched behind her ears, it was easy to see why.

First, she fixed on me with imploring doggy eyes, asking for my attention. Then, every time I stopped scratching she nudged her nose under my hand and flipped it up. I speak a little dog, but the message would have been clear even if I didn’t: Don’t stop.

We were in the home office of Clive Wynne, a psychologist at Arizona State University who specializes in dog behavior. He belongs to Xephos, a mixed breed that the Wynne family found in a shelter in 2012.

Wynne’s book is an extended argument about what makes dogs special — not how smart they are, but how friendly they are. Xephos’ shameless and undiscriminating affection affected both his heart and his thinking.

As Xephos nose-nudged me again, Wynne was describing genetic changes that occurred at some point in dog evolution that he says explain why dogs are so sociable with members of other species.

“Hey,” Wynne said to her as she tilted her head to get the maximum payoff from my efforts, “how long have you had these genes?”

No one disputes the sociability of dogs. But Wynne doesn’t agree with the scientific point of view that dogs have a unique ability to understand and communicate with humans. He thinks they have a unique capacity for interspecies love, a word that he has decided to use, throwing aside decades of immersion in scientific jargon.

“Dog Is Love” is one of several new books on dogs out this year, and one of a flood of such books over the last decade or so. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist and researcher of dog behavior at Duke University, who founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center, recently wrote that there are 70,000 dog books listed on Amazon.

Since 2000, around the time dog research had a resurgence, a small but significant number of those books are written by scientists for a general audience. Like Hare’s “The Genius of Dogs,” published in 2013, the books address what is going on in a dog’s heart and mind. Most emphasize the mind.

Wynne’s book runs counter to Hare’s when it comes to the importance of dog’s thinking ability, which Hare sees as central to their bond with humans. By using the L word, Wynne may well appeal to the many besotted dog owners. But he may also disappoint. The reason dogs are such “an amazing success story” is because of their ability to bond with other species, he said. Not just humans.

Raise a dog with sheep and it will love sheep. Raise a dog with goats and it will love goats. Raise a dog with people ... you know the rest.

Some now extinct wolves attached themselves to humans 15,000 years ago or longer because we had good leftovers, or so the dominant theory goes, although what actually happened is lost to time. Apparently, humans liked the renegade wolves quite a bit and eventually started controlling their breeding and letting them sleep on down coverlets.

Now, as Wynne said in a talk at the International Canine Science conference in Phoenix in October, dogs are an astonishing evolutionary success. Wolves, not so much. “For every one surviving wolf on this planet, there are at least 3,000 dogs.” On the other hand, nobody puts a silly Halloween costume on a wolf.

In the early 2000s, when Wynne began research on dogs, one of his experiments was a follow-up on the work of Hare who had concluded that dogs were better than wolves or other animals at following human directions. In particular, dogs followed human pointing better than other animals. Wynne and Monique Udell, an animal behaviorist at Oregon State University, expected to confirm Hare’s findings.

The wolves they chose to work with were hand-raised and socialized at Wolf Park, in Lafayette, Indiana. Wynne said he found the wolves were as good at following human pointing as the best pet dogs.

Hare and his colleagues responded by questioning whether the experiments were really comparable, maintaining that dogs have an innate ability to follow human pointing without the special attention the wolves were given. The debate continues.

The second part of Wynne’s argument has to do with how social dogs are. There is no question that they bond with people in a way that other canines do not. Wynne recounted an experiment showing that as long as puppies spend 90 minutes a day, for one week, with a human any time before they are 14 weeks old, they will become socialized and comfortable with humans.

Interestingly, the experiment found no genetic absolutism about the connection between dogs and humans. Without contact with humans when they are young, dogs can become as wary of humans as wild animals. Wolves are not so easily socialized. They require 24-hour-a-day involvement with humans for many weeks when they are puppies to become more tolerant of human beings. They never turn into Xephos.

Admittedly, Xephos is at the tail-wagging, face-licking, cozy-cuddling end of dog friendliness. Anyone who knows dogs can call to mind some that are not friendly at all, or are friendly to only one person. But in general there is no comparison in friendliness between dogs and wolves.

“OK, she’s not every dog, but she’s not radically atypical,” Wynne said of Xephos as she snuggled up to me. “Are you sweetie — you’re not completely untypical of your kind?”

The evidence of dog affection for humans goes beyond the observable actions of Xephos and those like her. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, who himself was drawn into animal study by wanting to understand what his own dog, Callie, was thinking, used MRI machines to watch what was going on in their brains.

Among his findings is that the part of dogs’ brains that light up when they hear their owners’ voices is the same part of the human brain that lights up when we are fond of someone or something. His first book was “How Dogs Love Us.”

By looking at the lemon-sized dog brain, he has shown, for instance, that, based on how the reward center lights up, a dog likes praise as much as it likes hot dogs. In testing outside of the MRI, Berns has also found that, given a choice, some dogs prefer their owners to food.

He agreed that the hypersociality of dogs is what makes them special rather than particular cognitive abilities. “It’s hard to demonstrate any cognitive task that dogs are superior in,” he said. But he pointed out that “ultimately the difficulty is in saying what is a cognitive function and an emotional function.”

Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York, and a prolific writer on dogs, also addressed the question of love briefly in her new book, “Our Dogs, Ourselves.”

Without doubt, dogs have feelings, she wrote, but she cautioned that just as certainly, those feelings were not the same as human feelings. Nor, she argued, should we assume that dogs are in between robot and homo sapiens on an emotional spectrum. She wrote in her book, “For all we know, dogs’ emotional experience is far more elaborate than ours.”

Central to that experience, although unknown in its complexity, is the pleasure a dog experiences in the presence of humans. The intensity of that pleasure and the ease of triggering it, Wynne said, is built into the dog genome.

He found this in his research with Bridgett vonHoldt, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. She and a team of researchers identified genes in dogs that in humans are associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. One of the many symptoms of the syndrome is indiscriminate friendliness. Wynne and Udell worked with vonHoldt on a subsequent study of wolves and dogs that tied behavior and genetics together. They concluded that the genes associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans underlie the friendless of dogs compared to wolves.

Humans, they suggested, may have selected friendly dogs over thousands of years of domestication and the Williams-Beuren genes may be one of the results. Other scientists have been cautious about the results, seeing the work as presenting an intriguing hypothesis that requires more research.

Whether these are the genes involved, humans appear to have molded dogs to be friendly to other species beyond humans. Apparently, puppies introduced to any other species when they are young enough, form a strong bond with that species.

This hasn’t been tested with all species, of course. But consider the sheep and goats. Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, who died in 2017, had documented that puppies of certain breeds kept with sheep bond to the sheep. They stay with the flock and guard it. The same thing happens when puppies are kept with goats and other less likely creatures, like penguins.

Dogs have “an abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path,” Wynne said. “And they maintain this throughout life. Above and beyond that they have a willingness and an interest to interact with strangers.”

How and when this free love, or hypersociality, evolved in dogs is up for debate. Wynne is betting that after some ancient wolves began to associate with humans 15,000 or more years ago and became dogs, and humans began to live in settlements and farming took off about 8,000 years ago, humans began to breed dogs for friendliness, causing the genetic differences that vonHoldt found. With luck, future research on modern and ancient dog DNA will show if he is right.

For now, we humans can at least enjoy the amiability of dogs. Looking at Xephos as we wrapped up our conversation, he said, “It’s not strange that she wants to interact with me. What’s strange is that she wants to be friends with you. Right?”

Well, I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good ear scratcher. “Right, Xephos?”


2019 The New York Times Company

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Who's a Good Boy? Wolves, not dogs, apparently

WASHINGTON, United States - If you're looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, "selfish" might not top the list.

But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido's reputation for being caring is all a ruse -- at least if you're a fellow dog.

A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.

The study's authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.

Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a "giving" symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.

Over multiple trials, wolves opted to deliver food to members of their own pack, knowing they would not get anything in return -- but lost interest if they were shown an unfamiliar wolf.

Dogs, on the other hand, showed no particular inclination to feed other dogs when no personal payoff was involved, regardless of whether they knew them or not.

"This study shows that domestication did not necessarily make dogs more prosocial," said lead author Rachel Dale.

"Rather, it seems that tolerance and generosity towards group members help to produce high levels of cooperation, as seen in wolves."

But don't write off your pooch just yet. The authors cautioned against applying the results of an experiment carried out on pack dogs to pet dogs, who have been found to have prosocial tendencies in past studies. 

The researchers believe those behaviors could be the result of training or encouragement, and say more research is needed to determine what accounts for the differences.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Wire fox terrier wins top prize at Westminster dog show in New York

NEW YORK -- A wire fox terrier won "Best in Show" at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York on Tuesday, emerging as the top dog among nearly 3,000 barking, tail-wagging competitors.

The animal, named King, captured the most coveted prize at the two-day event at Madison Square Garden, besting challengers from all 50 U.S. states and 14 countries. The competition drew 2,800 dogs from 203 breeds and varieties.

"Tonight is ... I can't even describe it," said an emotional Gabriel Rangel, King's handler, on the floor of Madison Square Garden.

"After you win this magnificent show there's really nothing else to win. He should be running around in a field of grass," Rangel said moments after King won the terrier group and claimed the top trophy over finalists from five other groups.

King became the 15th wire fox terrier to win the prestigious title with his handler, Gabriel Rangel of California, scoring his third win for Best in Show.

There were six finalist pedigree dogs competing instead of the usual seven because the winner of the non-sporting canine group, a schipperke, was ruled ineligible before the "Best in Show" competition began.

Colton, a six-year-old member of the Belgian breed, was "excused" because of ownership eligibility requirements set by the American Kennel Club, competition officials said.

"These types of things happen at dog shows and the rules are such to maintain the integrity of the sport," they said in a statement.

That left six winners of the hounds, toys, herding, working, sporting and terrier categories to compete for "Best in Show."

Besides Colton, the four selected on Monday were a longhaired dachshund named Burns who won the hound group; a Havanese named Bono who topped the toy group and a bouvier des Flandres named Baby Lars who led the herding group.

Judges picked the remaining three finalists on Tuesday before the main event. A Sussex spaniel named Bean won the sporting group, a boxer called Wilma clinched the working group and a wire named King won the terrier group.

The Westminster Kennel Club's show, in its 143rd year, is the second oldest U.S. sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby horse race.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Wearable tech latest must-have for China's proud pet owners

HONG KONG - Electronic device makers such as Hong Kong-listed SUGA and other start-ups are looking to cash-in on a boom in China in so-called pet wearables, like smart collars, leashes and feeders.

Pet ownership, denounced as a decadent and bourgeois habit after the Communist Party took power in China more than 60 years ago, has become popular again among the country's growing middle class.

Lia Yang Liu, 39, a lecturer in Chinese literature at a Beijing university, bought a GPS tracker that attaches to her dog's collar.

"The device really helped me once, when I loosened the collar and he just ran out of the park," said Liu. She is skeptical of other products though.

"I think the commercials just exaggerate the effects. I don't believe devices can translate a pet's language for us."

The electronic pet device market in China is still quite small but by some estimates is growing by a fifth or even a quarter every year, drawing developers and producers such as PetPace LLC, Mars Petcare's Whistle Labs Inc, i4C Innovations, Fitbark and DeLaval.

Alfred Ng, chief technology officer at Suga, estimates China is now 5 percent of a global market that US-based market intelligence firm Transparency Market Research estimates was worth $1 billion at the end of 2016.

Ng forecasts that China's share of the market will jump to more than 20 percent by 2024, by which time Transparency Market Research estimates the global market will be worth at least $2.5 billion.

SUGA produces wearable tech that monitors pets' health and food intake. It is also eyeing a device to check pet emotions.

Chen Xufeng, marketing manager of Guangzhou-based software developer Guangdong Lekong IOT Technology Co Ltd, expects the China market in pet electronic devices to grow 20 percent to 25 percent in the next two to three years.

"There are more than 10 million pieces of wearable products for pets sold in the Chinese market every year," Chen said.

IDTechEx, an independent market research firm, said there are 300 manufacturers of wearable pet gadgets globally and almost half are based in China. It predicted the number will rise to 500 as the market expands.

Ava Lui, 33, an IT professional in Hong Kong, has three cats and a dog and has fitted her pets with collars that can monitor their activity and food intake.

"I just wish that they will never get sick, they won't get hurt. The less I take them to see vets the more time I can spend playing with them. That would be ideal," she said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Australia's surfing dogs chase waves, not cats

SYDNEY - An Australian dog trainer and former surfing champion is using the discipline of surfing as a way of teaching owners to build healthy relationships with man's best friend.

On sunny morning on the outskirts of Sydney, Chris de Aboitiz heads out on the surf on his stand-up paddle board, joined by Rama and Millie, two rescue dogs who perform tricks, jumping on their owners shoulders and back as he rides the waves.

The Sunshine Coast dog trainer, who is a former world tandem surfing champion, has been hitting the waves with his dogs for around ten years and has since taken to using it as a way to teach people to understand their dogs.

"Surfing is not just about training dogs, it is about understanding them and their behavior," said Aboitiz.

"When you are surfing with the dogs they are allowed to look around but they have to sit on the board and not move, or we fall off and get wet," he said. "Training dogs for everyday life is the same."

Aboitiz travels up and down the Australian east coast with his four dogs, all rescued from shelters, using this unique method to teach owners and encourage them to take a more disciplined approach with their pets.

"So many dogs are given away because people don't have control, their dog turns from an asset to a liability. The ultimate result is to have less dogs euthanised," said Aboitiz.

Aboitiz said he has had a positive response from dog owners, some of whom had taken to the waves with him, while others have embraced his training but stuck to land.

"People make a lot of mistakes in training their dogs, who end up being dominant over them. Training the dog is the easy part, you also need to train the owner," he added.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Do Pets Reduce Your Home’s Value?

For years, Americans’ love of pets has turned many a renter into homeowner. “No pets allowed” was a standard clause in rental contracts until recently, when many landlords realized they could attract and keep tenants happy if they were willing to put up with cats and small pooches.

A recent survey by website Apartments.com found that 72 percent of renters surveyed said they are pet owners, a big jump from 43 percent in 2012.

Ultimately, though, there’s no place like a fireplace, a back yard, a nearby dog park, and a friendly suburban street for man’s best friend. But while a house can mean big things for your furry family members, in recent years the evidence has been mounting that pets—and specifically their by-products—can cost their owners big time when the time comes to sell or refinance.

Cats vs. condos

A cat owner’s condo reportedly sold for up to $30,000 less than it should have because of damage caused by the pets, a real estate agent told a national magazine two years ago. A Boston-based real estate agent was recently quoted to effect that pet hair and pet stink can do major damage to a home’s resale value. The agent specifically mentioned another condo that sold for $20,000 or $30,000 less than it should have because of cats.

Appraisal Institute, a professional association of real estate appraisers, weighed in with a news release two years ago, suggesting that bad neighbors including homeowners with annoying pets can significantly reduce nearby property values.

Get on your knees and pray

Said one blogger on a real estate site: “Basically, if you are ever faced with trying to sell a home and own a pet or two, you should ship off Fido to a kennel, fumigate your house and then get on your knees and pray potential buyers can’t detect any stray pet scents.”

Appraisers also say that the mere fact a pet is resident is no reason to penalize the homeowner.  It’s understandable, however, that permanent scents, deep scratch marks on the floor or doors, lawns pitted with brown pee spot and buried bones, or other lasting signs of animal damage would be a bummer to buyers and thereby a reason to chop a few hundred or even a thousand off a home’s value.

Pet haters forget that 47 percent of households own at least one dog and 46 percent own at least one cat, according to the American Human Society. This means for every potential buyer turned off by Fido’s claw marks on the door, there’s another who will opt for the home with a pet door in the kitchen and a fenced backyard.

Custom-built dog runs

Just as landlords are accommodating pet owners for purely financial reasons, there’s a silver lining awaiting homeowners who have made their properties pet-friendly. A survey conducted four years ago by Move Inc., operator of Realtor.com, found that many homeowners are rewarding their dogs with custom-built doghouses, deluxe dog runs, custom “doggy-doors,” pet-friendly landscaping, private patios with personal fire hydrants, and other features that add value to their master’s property with many buyers.

At the time, Realtor.com listed a Victorian dog house that matched a $10,995,000 California home, a heated doghouse with a deluxe dog run adjoining a $520,000 listing in Idaho, and a secluded cottage built just for dogs with a $524,000 house in Illinois.

“Pets have become important members of the family, and their needs are often high on the list of must-haves for many buyers, sometimes even higher than priorities of the two-legged members of the family,” says, Eileen Healy at Prudential Rocky Mountain Realtors in Colorado. “Calling out features or local pet-friendly amenities can make or break a buyer’s interest in a particular property.”

source: totalmortgage.com

Cats rule this Japanese island

AOSHIMA, JAPAN - An army of feral cats rules a remote island in southern Japan, curling up in abandoned houses or strutting about in a fishing village that is overrun with felines outnumbering humans six to one.

Originally introduced to the mile-long island of Aoshima to deal with mice that plagued fishermen's boats, the cats stayed on - and multiplied.

More than 120 cats swarm the island with only a handful of humans for company, mostly pensioners who didn't join the waves of migrants seeking work in the cities after World War Two.

Aoshima, a 30-minute ferry ride off the coast of Ehime prefecture, had been home to 900 people in 1945. The only sign of human activity now is the boatload of day-trippers from the mainland, visiting what is locally known as Cat Island.

With no restaurants, cars, shops or kiosks selling snacks, Aoshima is no tourist haven. But cat lovers are not complaining.

"There is a ton of cats here, then there was this sort of cat witch who came out to feed the cats which was quite fun," said 27-year-old Makiko Yamasaki. "So I'd want to come again."

The allure of cats is not surprising in a country that gave the world Hello Kitty, a cartoon character considered the epitome of cuteness. Cat cafes have long been popular in Tokyo, catering to fans who can't keep the animals at home because of strict housing regulations that often forbid pets.

The cats of Aoshima are not too picky, surviving on the rice balls, energy bars or potatoes they cadge off tourists. In the absence of natural predators, they roam the island without fear.

Not all the residents are admirers, though. One elderly woman shooed the animals away with a stick when they dug up her back garden. Locals are trying to keep the feline population in check - at least 10 cats have been neutered.

Residents haven't taken too kindly to the tourists either. They don't mind them coming, but want to be left in peace.

"If people coming to the island find the cats healing, then I think it's a good thing," said 65-year-old Hidenori Kamimoto, who ekes out a living as a fisherman.

"I just hope that it's done in a way that doesn't become a burden on the people who live here."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Dogs bred for meat start new life in US

WASHINGTON - A dozen dogs originally destined for dinner tables in South Korea arrived in the Washington area Monday to be adopted as pets.

They were the first of a total of 23 dogs being imported into the United States this week as part of a campaign to combat the eating of dog meat in East Asia.

Washington-based Humane Society International (HSI) located the dogs at a farm in Ilsan, northwest of Seoul, where they were being bred specifically for human consumption.

The farmer -- who acknowledged a personal fondness for dogs -- agreed to give up the animals, accept an offer of compensation and grow blueberries instead, HSI director of companion animals Kelly O'Meara told AFP, as the mongrels settled into kennels at the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, Virginia after a long flight from Seoul.

HSI has been working with local groups in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to raise public awareness of the dog meat trade.

"But South Korea is unusual because it actually farms dogs to supply demand," O'Meara said, while other countries target feral dogs as food.

Every year, between 1.2 million and two million dogs are consumed in South Korea, she said, supplied by farms that number "at least in the hundreds."

O'Meara said it was the first time that dogs from South Korea intended for human consumption had been rescued and brought into the United States, where a brisk demand for adopted dogs and cats is met by a thriving network of animal rescue groups and shelters.

All 23 South Korean dogs -- the second batch is due to arrive Tuesday -- will undergo veterinarian checks in Alexandria, before being distributed among five other shelters in the Mid-Atlantic states for adoption.

"By helping these 23 dogs, we'll be helping a lot of other dogs in South Korea" by raising public awareness of the dog meat trade, said Megan Webb, executive director of the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria, which finds homes for about 1,000 dogs a year.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com