Children reading books to homeless cats might be the cutest thing ever

Is there anything cuter than schoolchildren reading books to homeless cats? Almost definitely not, as these photos prove.

A Pennsylvania rescue centre encourages kids to read to the cats as part of their ‘Book Buddies’ scheme – and as you can see from the pictures, the felines are definitely paying attention.

Children aged six to 13 who are able to read at any level are invited into the shelter to read to the cats in the adoption room at Berks County Rescue League.

The shelter claims that it offers kids a chance to practise their reading skills, whilst the ‘cats find the rhythmic sound of a voice very comforting and soothing’.

read on

Crocodile 'spotted in the Thames'

A retired university lecturer says he got the shock of his life when he spotted a 4ft crocodile in the River Thames.

Cyclist Richard Smith, 64, claims he saw the reptile swimming along the river at Reading, Berkshire, reports the Daily Telegraph.

He said: "I was cycling on my own and I saw what I thought was a bough of a tree with four stubby branches on it close in to the bank.

"As I got closer I saw it was a crocodile. It was about 4ft long. It had a 2ft tail and 2ft body.

"I got off my bike and ran back to where it was, but it had gone. I ran along the river for about 50 yards, but it wasn't there any more."

He came forward with his sighting, from June last year, after a tackle shop worker claimed to have also seen the beast.

Mr Smith added: "The man in the shop said he was on the bank of the Thames near Tilehurst station and he saw a fully grown swan pulled down into the water and it totally disappeared."

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Crocodile_spotted_in_the_Thames

Rural Reading: Rare orchids enjoy wet summers

Being an optimist is pretty tough right now. When we should be enjoying summer we are faced with this never-ending rain, with grey skies and cool (for the time of year anyway) temperatures.

It seems to have become a bit of a pattern, the last few summers have been similar, perhaps not quite as bad, but still the summer of blue sunny skies and warm weather seems a myth now.

There has been a devastating impact on a lot of our wildlife, and along with the endless grey skies this can make the wildlife enthusiast, or indeed anyone who enjoys a bustling and vibrant countryside, quite depressed.

Some things benefit. The number of common spotted orchids (which are not common, although they are spotted!) has increased tremendously.

I found 60 in one place last week, although I won’t let on where that is because I have noticed some others at a more popular site have been picked.

Now that is what I find really depressing. People picking wildflowers, especially rare ones.

There was a time when every orchid that flowered in Reading was picked. Someone who knows where to look and how to identify these flowers also has enough knowledge to know that picking them will ultimately destroy them.

Continued:http://www.getreading.co.uk/lifestyle/home_and_garden/s/2117046_rural_reading_rare_orchids_enjoy_wet_summers

6 Brainy Baboons Pick Words from Gibberish

Baboons can master one of the basic elements of reading even though they have no linguistic skills, a new study suggests.

Baboons in the study were able to differentiate between words and nonsense sequences of letters, even sometimes when they had never seen the words before, researchers reported.

"We wanted to know whether they could actually master this task, which is quite complex," study researcher Jonathan Grainger, of Aix-Marseille University in France, told LiveScience. "Our baboon specialist thought this was going to be impossible."

The monkey life

The six baboons in the study are part of an outdoor research colony and have been trained to do tasks on a computerlike display. They are free to walk up to this computer and play with it at will. The baboons, which are well fed, spend about an hour a day on average on the computer, playing for extra food rewards.

"What's really nice about it, there's no stress associated with testing an animal and putting it into the testing area," Grainger said. "These baboons are motivated. They are doing this because they want to. … They do it just for fun."

In this study, the baboons were shown four-letter words and four-letter non-words. All the non-words had similar properties to actual words — they contained a vowel, for instance. Some examples were dran, lons, telk and virt.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/19648-baboons-recognize-words.html