VISITORS to the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, would be forgiven for fearing that their breakfast had been spiked. They may well be treated to the sight of a black-caped figure wearing a horror-movie mask running round the campus after a large flightless bird, while a colleague manoeuvres a stuffed jaguar on a wheelbarrow.
These earnest researchers are trying, reader Lauro Venancio Zier assures us, to teach captive-born rheas to run away from their natural predators. An admirable aim when the birds are about to be released into the wild, and if you don't believe us there are pictures at
The perils of trying to manipulate rhea psychology are illustrated, however, by the observation that the birds subjected to this treatment have in fact developed a healthy fear of wheelbarrows.
A most curious lack of the usual raving-mad postings from right-wing Americans on, for example, the BBC website "Have your say", about the head of the British army, Lieutenant General Sir Richard Dannatt KCB CBE MC (below) stating that we should get out of Iraq, and that our presence "exacerbates" the violence. Which everyone except the criminal Bush and his rabid apologists knew anyway. Is there a national holiday in the States? Has Al Jazeera taken over Fox News? I think we should be told.
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