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http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2011/06/24/local-furry-talks-about-anthrocon-2011/

Photo coverage of Athrocon by WPXI. The annual “Furry convention” otherwise known as Anthrocon is taking over down town Pittsburgh this weekend!

They may be cute, but they also spend a lot of dough

The tails and ears are held on with straps, and the fur is usually fake — but the money that Anthrocon furry convention visitors spend Downtown is very real.

More than 4,500 furries — fans of art, literature and games featuring anthropomorphic, or human-like, animals — are flooding the city for Pittsburgh’s sixth annual Anthrocon, held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. During their four-day meeting, which started Thursday night, the furries will attend lectures and workshops as well as nightly raves at the convention center.

They’ll also spend an estimated $5.3 million at Downtown businesses, said Sam “Uncle Kage” Conway, chairman of Anthrocon’s board of directors.

Even though Anthrocon 2011 broke past registration records, Mr. Conway said he believed the event would have pulled in even more attendees if the city had followed through on a languishing initiative to build more hotels Downtown.

“This year saw much slower growth than the growth from [2009 to] last year,” Mr. Conway said Thursday afternoon in the lobby of the Westin Convention Center hotel, where most furries try to secure a room.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11175/1155879-53.stm#ixzz1QDCI5VLA

Via Treehugger

Despite people knowing for years that carbofuran, a pesticide also known as furadan, has been devastating the lion population in Kenya, and despite continued calls to ban the pesticide, it continues to be used—or more accurately, misused, to intentionally poison lions.

Paula Kahumbu is executive director of WildlifeDirect, a conservation organization based in Kenya and founded by Richard Leakey. Kahumbu, who has a PhD from Princeton University in ecology and evolutionary biology, wrote about the misuse of the chemical on a WildlifeDirect blog:

WildlifeDirect scientists have been consistently reporting that Furadan has been used to poison lions.The pesticide is sprinkled onto livestock carcases to kill lions, which cannot detect its presence as it has no smell or taste. Any animal that scavenges on a laced carcass will die within minutes, and that includes jackals, hyenas and vultures.

Read more at Treehugger

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The city of Pittsburgh will be taking another walk on the wild side this weekend with the furries’ annual convention.

Video courtesy WTAE

submitted by HappyWulf
[link] [1 comment]

"A white tiger in a field in Hedge End near Southampton caused police
emergency measures until identified as a life-size toy."
[link]
"Police are trying to trace the owner of a life-sized tiger toy which
sparked a major police alert in Hampshire over fears a real animal was

Sure, tasting sessions with Beaver Brewing or WYEP’s Summer Music Festival are excellent options for fun this weekend. But the furries returning to Pittsburgh for their annual Anthrocon? That’s definitely more fun than the NRA.

Story and Video from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
"Return of the Furries - They may be cute, but they also spend a lot of dough!"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11175/1155879-53.stm
Image Gallery: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11175/1155904-491.stm

WTAE 4: Two reports
"Furries Are Back In Pittsburgh"
http://www.wtae.com/video/28338005/detail.html
"The Furries Are Back In Town!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DgTVh-3cIM
& http://www.wtae.com/video/28341432/detail.html
Slideshow: http://www.wtae.com/slideshow/r/9385031/detail.html

And a quick mentioning of AC in this story:
"Out-of-town baseball fans create a problem good to have"
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11158/1151837-155-0.stm

WPXI 11
"Furries Return to Pittsburgh for 2011 Anthrocon Convention"
Raw video of interviews with Uncle Kage and several fursuiters.
http://www.wpxi.com/video/28347000/index.html
PS: click on the IMAGES link for photos.
http://www.wpxi.com/entertainment/28337840/detail.html

From the Beaver County Times
"Furries Flood Pittsburgh"
Photo gallery: http://www.timesonline.com/news/local_news/furries-flood-pittsburgh/article_c456455c-2e0b-51ee-9bfd-e3160eb47122.html?mode=image&photo=0

From KISS 106, Photos of fursuiters with their (ugly) DJ's.
http://www.961kiss.com/cc-common/gallery/photos.html?album_id=186111&p=17189524#/0/17189504

Word is just starting to get out about the band The Studio Killers and their song “Ode to the Bouncer”. If you haven’t seen it, the video is up on YouTube, along with several re-mixes. Yes, the thought of a cartoon band making dance music does bring Gorillaz to mind. But that band doesn’t feature a fox and a mink performing the music, like the Studio Killers do! Several other “interview” and “behind the scenes” videos are up on YouTube as well, where we get to meet the mink and fox as well as the band’s human singer, Cherry. And of course, the Studio Killers have their own web site too. While we were researching that, we came across this interesting video by Swedish House Mafia called “Save the World”. We’ll let you see it for yourself, but suffice it to say: If you’re a “dog person”, you’ll love it.

submitted by alymonster
[link] [30 comments]

Just in from @FSMikey, Mikey and Big Bob present the Furry Freestyle Rap dedicated to all the furries hangin at Anthrocon!

 

 

Awesome guys!

I feel SOOO wrong for liking this picture.

When Jan Van Dusen appeared before a U.S. Tax Court judge and a team of Internal Revenue Service lawyers more than a year ago, there was more at stake than her tax deduction for taking care of 70 stray cats.

Hanging in the balance were millions of dollars in annual tax deductions by animal-rescue volunteers across the nation—and some needed clarity on the treatment of volunteers' unreimbursed expenses for 1.55 million other IRS-recognized charities.

Piercing kittens to give them a “goth” appearance is cruel, a panel of Pennsylvania judges has ruled.

Three judges of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Monday affirmed a lower court conviction for animal cruelty of a dog groomer who had offered “gothic” kittens on eBay.

The groomer, Holly Crawford of Sweet Valley, Pa., offered the kittens for $100; Judge Kate Ford Elliott wrote in a 19-page opinion that “metal protruded from the kittens’ small bodies, pierced through their ears and necks, and at least one of these kittens also had an elastic band tied around its tail, an attempt at docking, which is a procedure to stem the blood flow so that the tail eventually falls off.”

An investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posed as a customer and met with Ms. Crawford in 2008 and reported her to the authorities. The kittens were seized, and a jury found Ms. Crawford guilty of animal cruelty; in April of last year she was sentenced to six months of home detention and electronic monitoring, followed by probation.

Ms. Crawford, who was described in the opinion as having “several facial piercings” and being “enthusiastic about piercing,” had admitted to piercing the kittens herself without anesthetic, though she did treat them with antiseptic after the procedure.

In her appeal, Ms. Crawford had argued that Pennsylvania’s cruelty statutes were too vague, and said many accepted veterinary procedures like declawing cats and cutting a dog’s vocal cords could fall under the same category of “acts that maim, mutilate, torture or disfigure the animal” that she had been convicted of.

Judge Elliott wrote, “Appellant’s claims center on her premise that a person of normal intelligence would not know whether piercing a kitten’s ears or banding its tail is maiming, mutilating, torturing or disfiguring an animal.”

The judge added, “We disagree.”

France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters.

The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe. If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million.

The Great Hamster, which can grow up to 10 inches long, has a brown-and-white face, white paws and a black belly. There are thought to be about 800 left in France, with burrows in Alsace along the Rhine. That is an improvement: the number had dropped to fewer than 200 four years ago, according to figures from the European Commission, which brought the lawsuit in 2009.

Dressed in a surrogate mom costume, Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center volunteer Colleen Grzan encourages a bobcat named Crystal Spring to eat mice.

Here's the trailer for the "Shrek" spin-off, "Puss in Boots."

It's that time of year, so here's an article about Anthrocon on wtae.com:
"Furries Are Back In Pittsburgh".

It includes a link to a photo gallery.

http://rumbunter.com/2011/06/22/pittsburgh-prepares-for-red-sox-invasion-release-the-inner-animal/