Cats can recognise their own names

Cats can recognise their own names but just chose not to listen to their owners, researchers claim.

The study by Sophia University in Japan showed felines responded by moving their heads or twitching an ear when their names were read out among three other words of a similar length.

And no reaction was spotted after the other words were spoken.

“Many cat owners know that cats understand their own names. Cats understand human cues better than many people think,” Dr Atsuko Saito, first author of the study said.

The experiment involved 78 cats in homes and “cat cafés” in Japan.

However, Dr John Bradshaw, an expert on dog and cat behaviour at the University of Bristol, said: “In my view, the study doesn’t tell us much about the cat-human relationship, merely that cats are capable of learning the significance of particular sounds, something that most cat owners will know already.”

Sheep running festival

A New Zealand town celebrated its annual festival with a Running of the Sheep event, featuring hundreds of sheep running through the streets.

The Te Kuiti Volunteer Fire Brigade shared video on Facebook showing the sheep running through the streets of the city, which is known as the shearing capital of the world.

The run was part of the Great New Zealand Muster, an annual event that also includes the New Zealand Shearing Championships.

Blue-green meteor spotted in Florida

An unusual bright meteor created a blue-green streak in the night sky over Florida, where it was caught on video from multiple locations.

The National Weather Service in Tallahassee confirmed that the fireball spotted over Florida recently was a meteor that had been recorded by its satellite system just before midnight.

The meteor was recorded by multiple dashcams and doorbell cameras, appearing as a bright blue-green streak.

The National Weather Service said it could not confirm whether the meteor had survived entering the atmosphere and crashed to earth, but its data suggests that if it did land, it landed in Florida.

Largest decorated Easter egg

A nearly 50-foot-tall decoration erected in a Brazilian town has been dubbed the world’s largest decorated Easter egg by Guinness World Records.

Guinness said Pomerode’s welded steel egg, covered in foam and resin-impregnated canvas, measures 49 feet, 3 inches tall and 26 feet, 7 inches in diameter.

The local tourism body, Accociacao Visite Pomerode, said the egg was created over the course of about 48 hours for the town’s annual Osterfest event, which coincides with Easter.

“Pomerode is a town colonised by German immigrants, who brought the tradition of painting eggshells for Easter,” board member Ivan Blumenschein said. “Originally, this was done by cooking eggs with dyeing herbs in the water.

“The artist Silvana Pujol, born in Pomerode, developed her very own style of painting eggshells (from hummingbirds to ostriches), and her work became iconic of eggshell painting — not only in Pomerode, but in the entire country and even abroad,” he added. The egg is to remain on display until May.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 13th, 2019