Nine cats were killed in a Volusia County house fire, which was caused by a colony of ants Tuesday morning, fire officials said.

Tabby swears revenge for fallen brothers, will destroy all ants when free.

Rhonda Spivey, the homeowner, said she had about 80 cats in her home on Vine Street in Daytona Beach.

Daytona Beach fire said it recovered 36 cats from the home, nine of which were dead.

Spivey said she and her husband live in the home with the animals. She said people gave them cats and promised to come back to get them but never did.

Lt. Fred Godawa of the fire department said a colony of ants formed a nest around an electrical outlet on the living room wall, which sparked the fire. The investigator said it was first time he had seen a fire caused in this manner, according to Godawa.

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Authorities say a Houston-area woman who was burned up at her former common-law husband fried their pet goldfish and ate some of them.

Food for dummies.

Pasadena police say it’s a civil matter and no charges will be filed. The seven goldfish were purchased together by the couple during happier times.

Police spokesman Vance Mitchell says the man reported on Saturday that the woman took the goldfish from his apartment.

Mitchell says the two argued earlier about some jewelry the man had given her but took back. She wanted the jewelry returned.

Officers who were dispatched to the woman’s home arrived to find four fried goldfish on a plate. The woman said she already ate the other three.

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No donkeys were harmed in the making.

ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. — A St. Johnsbury woman faces multiple sex charges after allegedly sending pornographic material involving animals to a teenage family member’s phone.

Police Say Woman Sent Pornographic Images Of Animals To Teen

Brenda Simard-Reid, 40, is accused of sending multiple pornographic images involving donkeys to the 13-year-old relative last May, according to court documents.

The victim’s guardian reported the alleged incident to the Department of Children and Families after seeing the images on the victim’s phone, according to court documents.

Simard-Reid pleaded not guilty to six counts of disseminating indecent material to a minor and appeared in court Monday morning to answer to the charges.

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“Sticky” still doesn’t have a home, but she’s closer to getting justice for being body-wrapped in duct-tape and abandoned last week.

One loves duct tape the other hates it.

Saturday evening, following a tip, Pennsylvania SPCA law enforcement officers arrested James Davis, 19, of the 2100 block of 22d Street in North Philadelphia, according to the Pennsylvania SPCA.

If convicted, Davis faces up to two years in prison and a fine of at least $1,000, the PSPCA said.

Contrary to other reports, Davis did not turn himself in, said George Bengal, the nonprofit’s director of law enforcement.

Davis admitted to impulsively taping up the cat after seeing it in the yard of the home where he lives with his parents, Bengal said.

Davis left the cat in his yard for a couple of hours, then, because the animal kept screaming, tossed it into a neighbor’s yard, where at least 12 hours passed before she was noticed and authorities were contacted, Bengal said.

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AN African village is reportedly shell shocked after the birth of a bizarre faun-like creature said to have the combined features of a man and a goat.

They killed goat boy!

Bild reports the creature, which died just a few hours after birth in Lower Gweru, Zimbabwe, had a huge head and face which resembled a human, as well as goat legs and a tail.

Villagers said the end product was so scary even dogs were afraid to go close to it. They burned the corpse fearing it was an evil sign.

“This is indeed a miracle that has never been witnessed anywhere,” elder Themba Moyo said. The goat’s owner called police after the birth.

“It’s the first time that my goat did this. I have 15 goats and it’s this goat that gave me birth to most of them. My goats often give birth to sets of twins,” he said.

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In an ultimate case of crossed wires, a tiny tree frog’s bug-catching antics left it with a bellyful of bulb.

Red is my favorite color.

The Cuban tree frog took on an unnatural glow when it swallowed an entire fairy light in a botched bid to catch an insect.

The unlucky amphibian had been hunting in the back garden of wildlife photographer James Snyder when it made a bid for the snack.

James, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, had decorated his back yard with colourful lights after noticing that frogs had worked out lights attracted bugs.

But one night he discovered that one of the little beasts had bitten off far more than it could chew. James, 29, said: ‘A bug landed on the bulb and when the frog went for it he got a little bit extra.

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The China House ran out of chicken/beef

Traffic cops are quizzing a motorist after finding an amazing menagerie of more than 1,700 animals crammed into the boot of his car. The patrol pulled over the zoo on wheels in Bari, Italy, for a routine check and police were astonished when driver Francesco Lombardo opened the hatchback.

Inside were 216 budgies, 300 white mice, 150 hamsters, 30 Japanese squirrels, six chameleons and more than 1,000 terrapins.

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Scientists recently used treadmill exercise, drugs, and electrical stimulation to train paralyzed rats to walk once again, demonstrating a way to possibly treat spinal injuries in humans, which at present are basically untreatable.

In a spinal injury, the neural circuits connecting the brain to the muscles that control walking become damaged or severed, leaving an individual paralyzed. In able-bodied people, these “walking circuits” spring into action when they receive a signal from the brain, but if the spinal cord is damaged, the message from the brain never arrives. When contact with the brain is lost, the circuits shut down [The Guardian]. In the study, published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers manipulated these circuits and produced movement that was “almost indistinguishable” from normal walking. See for yourself in the embedded video.

Scientists already knew that if an electrical current is applied to a nerve just below the injury, the muscle will contract, meaning that messages from neurons in the brain aren’t necessarily required to move a muscle. But the act of walking isn’t the result of a single stimulation; it relies on a sequence of precise contractions to move a person (or rat) forward. The researchers mimicked this sequence using a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and training on a treadmill. The rats, despite having no connection between their brains and their legs, were able to carry their own weight at walking, and even running pace, on a treadmill, with virtually no differences between their gait and the running style of a healthy rat [BBC News]. Well, except for the fact that they are running on their hind legs.

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Got Fingers?

among 163 new species discovered last year in the Mekong River region of Southeast Asia, an environmental group said Friday.

WWF International said that scientists in 2008 discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region. That works out to be about three species a week and is in addition to the 1,000 new species catalogued there from 1997 to 2007, the group said.

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