Many animal advocates were outraged last week when a Hawaiian House committee advanced a resolution that, if passed, would have recognized cockfighting for its cultural significance in the state. Although the resolution wouldn't have legalized cockfighting, which is illegal in all 50 states, many animal-rights and animal-welfare groups viewed it with disgust.

One of the most vocal opponents of the proposal was Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. Pacelle took to his blog last week to protest the action of Hawaii's House Committee on Tourism, Culture and International Affairs.

"A wide array of animal abusers use the smokescreen of culture as a defense for their depravity, whether they are bullfighters, dogfighters, or seal clubbers," Pacelle wrote. "It is just amazing that a group of elected officials ... would provide a defense for a group of known, professional lawbreakers who enjoy the sight of animals trying to hack each other to death and like to gamble on the outcome."

Apparently in a direct response to the flap over the proposal, Hawaii lawmakers have quietly decided to shelve the idea to recognize cockfighting on cultural merits by sending it back to committee, according to the Associated Press.

Coats, wraps and other clothes that are made with animal fur would need to have special labels in California under legislation adopted Monday by the state Assembly.

Lawmakers voted 46-7 to close a loophole in federal law that allows many fur products to go unlabeled. Current law requires labels only for garments that have $150 or more worth of animal fur.

The bill now goes to the state Senate for consideration. If it's signed into law, California would become the sixth state to impose the labeling requirement, joining Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

"I think there is an expectation that if clothing isn't labeled as real fur it must be fake, but this isn't always the case," bill author Fiona Ma said in a statement after the vote. "People have a right to know if they are buying raccoon dog or a polyester blend."

A raccoon dog is a canine species from Asia.

The bill by the San Francisco Democrat would require that all garments containing fur are labeled with the type of animal and the country of origin. Currently, manufacturers avoid labeling requirements by using cheap fur from raccoon dogs and other animals raised in foreign factories, Ma said.

We couldn't believe our eyes when we first saw the amazing moment between Miller the boxer and 7-month-old baby Peyton shown in YouTube user defrostyman's video. (Hat tip to "The Bonnie Hunt Show" for airing defrostyman's video in a televised segment, which initially brought it to our attention.)

We'll be the first to admit it: We are suckers for animals that are great "big brothers" or "big sisters" to the human children in their families, and for animals that help children in other ways, like so-called "reading dogs" whose calming presence can encourage young children to read aloud to them.

If your own animal friend is great with kids, we'd love to see it! Share your photos or videos in the Best Babysitters album at The Times' photo-sharing site, Your Scene. Be sure to include a caption that tells us a bit about your pet!

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: defrostyman via YouTube

A Virginia man is suing PetSmart for $1 million after he slipped in a pile of you-know-what at a Newport News store location during a trip to purchase dog food and bird seed in early 2009.

The man, Robert Holloway, says he badly injured his back, requiring surgery, and lost four false teeth in the incident. (His attorney, Michael Goodove, acknowledged in an interview with the Virginian-Pilot that Holloway had an existing back problem at the time of the accident but says that his client's condition worsened as a result of the slip.)

The suit alleges that PetSmart staff "negligently allowed animals to enter the premises and deposit feces in such a manner as to create a dangerous and hazardous condition," according to documents acquired by the Virginian-Pilot. Goodove says Holloway didn't see the feces because they blended in with the color of the store's floor.

The Virginian-Pilot reports that the suit was initially filed in Norfolk Circuit Court, but PetSmart succeeded in getting it moved to U.S. District Court, where a similar suit against the company was dismissed in 2008.

In court documents, PetSmart denied the allegation of negligence, according to the Associated Press.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

NEW YORK — If anyone knows why the bunnies have disappeared from Central Park, wildlife officials are all ears.

Though abandoned pet rabbits perennially turn up after each Easter in what's affectionately called New York's backyard, a wild cottontail hasn't been spotted in the park for about four years.

"I've been here for 17 years, and there were not many when I got here," Regina Alvarez, director of horticulture for the Central Park Conservancy, a nonprofit that manages the huge Manhattan park for the city, said in an e-mail. "But I would see them once in a while."

No other New York park has seen a decline in wild rabbits, said Sarah Aucoin, director of Urban Park Rangers for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Cottontails seek habitats with lots of food sources and thick brush for protection, so it's possible there are still some hiding out. No one introduced the rabbits, which have been living there since well before the park was established 161 years ago.

Whether you want to have your pet (be it a garden-variety dog or an exotic reptile) blessed by a priest or just pet a bunny, the coming days and weeks are full of events for Southern California animal lovers. We've got the details on a number of upcoming events; if you think we're missing something, let us know by leaving a comment or tweeting the details to us @LATunleashed.

This Weekend:

Friday-Sunday, April 2-4, the L.A. Zoo hosts Big Bunny's Spring Fling, an event at which zoo visitors can celebrate the humble-but-adorable rabbit. Guests can pet rabbits, learn about them and explore their world at the Bunny Discovery Zone, have their faces painted to resemble rabbits, make their own bunny ears, plant carrot seeds and enjoy a puppet show. (We certainly hope it's a rabbit-themed puppet show.) The zoo's "Big Bunny" character will also take photos with visitors for a small fee. The event is free with paid zoo admission and to Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. (GLAZA) members. More information at LAZoo.org.

Saturday, April 3, the American Humane Assn. asks pet owners to remember the importance of tagging and microchipping companion animals. The organization is hosting "Every Day Is Tag Day" to increase awareness about this issue. Only 15% of dogs and 2% of cats that enter U.S. animal shelters and humane societies without an identification tag or microchip are reunited with their owners, according to American Humane. Not only is that statistic scary, it's also completely preventable. Learn more about pet identification and what to do if your pet gets lost at AmericanHumane.org.

TOKYO — Prosecutors Friday indicted an anti-whaling activist from New Zealand on charges that could lead to a years-long prison term after he boarded a Japanese harpoon boat to protest the ship's whale-hunting expedition in Antarctic seas.

Peter Bethune had jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 in February during the annual face-off between whalers and their opponents, with the stated goal of making a citizen's arrest of the captain while handing over a $3-million bill for the destruction of a Sea Shepherd protest ship a month earlier.

The 44-year-old was held on board and arrested March 12 immediately after the ship returned to Japan. He has since been in custody in Tokyo.

On Friday, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office charged Bethune, a member of the U.S.-based group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, with five criminal counts: assault, illegal possession of a knife, destruction of property, obstruction of business and trespassing.

The prosecutors' move comes a day after Japan's coast guard added a set of new allegations against Bethune, which were reflected in the indictment, said coast guard spokesman Tatsuya Fujino.

Former Los Angeles County Assistant Fire Chief Glynn Johnson, who was found guilty earlier this year of felony animal cruelty and using a deadly weapon in the November 2008 beating of his neighbor's puppy, received his sentence Friday.

Although Johnson could have been sentenced to up to four years in prison for beating Karley, a 6-month-old German shepherd mix, he received instead a 90-day sentence and three years' probation. He'll serve the sentence on weekends and is also required to complete anger management training, 400 hours of community service working with dogs and repay Karley's owners for the money they spent on veterinary care in the wake of the beating.

Johnson's beating of the puppy -- whose injuries were so severe that she had to be euthanized -- reportedly followed a longstanding feud with the Toole family, the neighbors who owned Karley. During the trial in Riverside County Superior Court, defense attorneys argued that Johnson beat Karley in self-defense after she attacked him so severely that he feared for his life.

Johnson himself testified that he "was in a combat situation with this dog ... I was doing everything I could to kind of hold the animal at bay so it wouldn't get close to my eyes and face."

MONKTON, Vt. — Future generations of salamanders in one Vermont town are going to be getting some help crossing the road.

The Monkton Conservation Commission says it has won a $150,000 state grant to install one or two culverts under a stretch of road to protect salamanders, other amphibians, reptiles and small mammals crossing between a swampy area and the uplands.

The Burlington Free Press says the project will be the first wildlife-crossing retrofit of a Vermont highway.

Reptile expert Jim Andrews says the crossing is "one of the most important of the known amphibian crossings in the state."

For the last nine years a group of Monkton residents has monitored the swamp-side road crossing, in some cases helping the creatures cross the road.

-- Associated Press

Stay up-to-date on animal news: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: A spotted salamander in New Haven, Vt., in 2009. Credit: Alden Pellett / Associated Press

We can't help it -- it delights us to no end when animals make it known how much they enjoy being petted or scratched.

As evidence of our deep and abiding love of animals who appreciate the human touch, may we present the ticklish kitten, the ticklish anteater, the baby beaver who loves to get his neck scratched and the baby squirrel (squirrelet?) who demonstrates its enjoyment by kicking its rear leg like a dog? (Ticklish slow loris may be too adorable for even we seasoned cute-watchers to bear.)

To that list, we now have the distinct pleasure of adding Eye-Rolling Owl -- so named, of course, because its sheer enjoyment of having its head scratched causes its eyes to roll back in its head. Naturalist and Discovery News blogger David Mizejewski says he thinks this unusual-looking creature resembles a puppet -- but we're inclined to agree with YouTube uploader cutebreak, who compares its appearance to onetime-toy-of-the-moment the Furby.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Don't miss a single adorable animal: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Video: cutebreak via YouTube

Long Beach City College's Liberal Arts campus has long been a breeding ground -- quite literally -- for rabbits, many of which were abandoned by their owners, who decided they didn't want, or couldn't care for, the rabbits anymore.

At last count, more than 300 rabbits roamed the campus -- and that was several months ago. (The phrase "multiplying like rabbits" became a cliché for a reason, after all, so it's safe to guess that new babies have been born since the tally was completed.) So college staff are cracking down -- in a humane way, we hasten to add.

Their approach to dealing with the burgeoning bunny population is twofold: Trap and neuter the existing rabbits while warning would-be rabbit abandoners against the idea, and punishing anyone who drops off a rabbit despite the warnings.

The rabbits' arrival on campus, back in the 1980s, was innocent enough. A few jackrabbits are believed to have wandered onto the premises from the Long Beach Airport, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. From there, things took a turn for the worse when owners started dropping their unwanted pets on campus.

Okay, so it's not quite as cute as Shiba Inu Puppycam -- after all, Shiba Inu puppies are far less likely to be caught on video eating a rat -- but the Live Barn Owl Cam produced at the National Audubon Society's Starr Ranch preserve in Orange County is still pretty compelling viewing.

The live cam project was started a few years ago by Pete DeSimone, the ranch's manager, and Sandy DeSimone, its director of research and education, who worked with techie folks to bring barn owl viewing opportunities to the masses.

The live cam documents the lives of a nesting pair of adult barn owls and their offspring, and the DeSimones told the Orange County Register that viewership nearly doubled between last breeding season and the current one. Virtual bird-watchers from five continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, if you're keeping score) have tuned in to watch the owl family.

Broadcasting the owls' activity online isn't just about entertaining viewers, Pete DeSimone told the Register; the online community of bird-watchers can also help him study the birds and document their activities. (That's not just a nice idea -- it's one that has some precedent to back it up. Keepers at a wildlife park in Scotland were alerted to the impending birth of a southern white rhinoceros by a webcam viewer who noticed that its mother's water had broken last year.)

It may be the Show-Me state but Missouri representatives apparently saw too much email from activist Brenda Shoss and the group Kinship Circle.

The animal activists were responsible for hundreds of emails, the Associated Press reports, that urged the lawmakers to vote against a bill that would pave the way for horse slaughterhouses to open in the state.

"The bill would seek to bypass the ban on using federal funds for horse meat inspection by allowing state officials to collect fees and pass them on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote. "There are no horse slaughter plants in the U.S., but the meat is considered a delicacy in some countries." Supporters of the bill claim that the meat would come from horses that were abused or neglected.

Because the activist emails were so plentiful and from all around the world it was hard for the representatives from either side of the aisle to determine how many were actually constituents. There was also the issue of weeding through the email, a process that took some reps hours, and made them feel vengeful toward the activists.

Scientists at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. have detected rising hormone levels in the zoo's female giant panda, indicating that she could be pregnant.

The rising levels mean Mei Xiang (may-SHONG) could either give birth in 40 to 50 days or come to the end of a false pregnancy. She was artificially inseminated in January.

Reproductive biologist Janine Brown says zookeepers remain "hopeful, but cautious" that Mei Xiang is pregnant. Brown says the panda's hormone levels and behavior sometimes indicate she is pregnant when she's not.

Veterinarians are conducting weekly ultrasounds to look for a fetus. So far they haven't seen any indication of one, but it's still too early. Panda fetuses don't start developing until the last weeks of a gestation period.

-- Associated Press

Animal news on the go: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: Mei Xiang eats bamboo leaves at the National Zoo in 2002. Credit: Hyungwon Kang / Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO — Tony the Siberian tiger is back on display at the San Francisco Zoo after being shot with tranquilizers and hauled out of a moat where he'd spent four nights.

Zoo officials say it's not clear why Tony stayed in the moat. He's in good health, although he's 18 and a recent medical evaluation showed signs of senility.

Zoo officials decided on Monday that Tony could no longer stay in the dry moat he climbed into Thursday. The excrement was piling up and officials worried about a potential health hazard.

So with the help of firefighters, they hit the 360-pound tiger with tranquilizer darts, strapped him to a board and hauled him out with a pulley.

Siberian tigers have a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years in the wild and 14 to 20 years in captivity.

-- Associated Press

Stay up-to-date on animal news: Follow Unleashed on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo: San Francisco Fire Department personnel and San Francisco Zoo staff members prepare to lift Tony from the moat after sedating him Monday. Credit: Associated Press

We don't pretend to know why Bea the lamb is inside the home in which she can be seen clomping about in the video above.

But really, do we need to know?

We tend to think the mysterious nature of the situation lends it a bit of cachet -- rather like the viral video "Scarface School Play" before we found out that it was actually created by a veteran music video director and a team of professional child actors. The mystery is better than the real story, you know?

Regardless of her back story -- whatever it might be -- we find Bea pretty darn adorable, and that's enough for us.

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-- Lindsay Barnett

PHILADELPHIA — When humane officers responded to a North Philadelphia row home in February, they found pit bulls chained to spikes driven into the ground in the backyard. They seized treadmills, steroids and "break sticks" used to separate fighting dogs at the jaws.

They also arrested a man who had long been on their radar as a suspected dogfighter. This time, officers were able to get enough information to nab him thanks to an increase in tips.

One major reason? Since the Philadelphia Eagles brought convicted dogfighter Michael Vick to town, more people are aware that the illegal sport is also a crime.

"It has really brought this to light," said George Bengal, director of law enforcement for the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "People are definitely more aware or attuned to this type of activity."

The number of dogfighting investigations in Philadelphia has jumped over the last year, a surge attributed to increased public awareness since Vick joined the Eagles, a new SPCA hot line to report dogfighting, stepped-up enforcement and -- some activists say -- new animal abusers drawn to the illegal sport.

LONDON — When it comes to predicting earthquakes, toads -- warts and all -- may be an asset.

British researchers said Wednesday that they observed a mass exodus of toads from a breeding site in Italy five days before a major tremor struck, suggesting the amphibians may be able to sense environmental changes, imperceptible to humans, that foretell a coming quake.

Since ancient times, anecdotes and folklore have linked unusual animal behavior to cataclysmic events like earthquakes, but hard evidence has been scarce. A new study by researchers from the Open University is one of the first to document animal behavior before, during and after an earthquake.

The scientists were studying the common toad -- bufo bufo -- at a breeding colony in central Italy when they noticed a sharp decline in the number of animals at the site. Days later, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit, killing hundreds of people and badly damaging the town of L'Aquila.

Researcher Rachel Grant said the findings suggested "that toads are able to detect pre-seismic cues such as the release of gases and charged particles, and use these as a form of earthquake early warning system."

At the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Germany, a 4-day-old zebra foal named Kanisha frolicked in her enclosure for the first time Wednesday morning.

In addition to its adorable new zebra, the Hellabrunn Zoo is also home to another famous animal baby: Jamuna Toni, the Asian elephant calf born there in December. Jamuna Toni's birth was big news in Munich because her mother, Panang, had experienced difficultly with previous pregnancies. To ensure Jamuna Toni's birth went off without a hitch, zoo staff taught Panang to do maternity exercises that looked remarkably like elephant yoga.

Another well-known zoo animal, Gianna the polar bear, also calls the Hellabrunn Zoo home -- but while her enclosure in Munich is being renovated, she's bunking at the Berlin Zoo with Knut, the polar bear who shot to stardom when his keeper decided to raise him after his mother rejected him as a cub.

Newborn zebras are able to walk 20 minutes after birth and can run within an hour. See another photo of Kanisha with her mother after the jump!

In the 30 years since People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was founded (by its current president, Ingrid Newkirk, and Alex Pacheco, who is no longer affiliated with the group), it has become the largest organization of its kind and its name has become virtually synonymous with the animal-rights movement.

That level of ubiquity and the controversial nature of many of PETA's programs and strategies have made the group a lightning rod for many who oppose its stances.

The group has claimed at least part of the credit for a number of changes in the way animals are treated over the last 30 years; perhaps it's most famous for its anti-fur campaign. Without a doubt, PETA has been instrumental in increasing many people's awareness of the unpleasantness of the fur industry, with particular emphasis on so-called "fur farms" where animals like minks, chinchillas, raccoons and foxes are raised solely to be killed for their pelts.

Its advertising campaigns, specifically the celebrity-centric "I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur" variety, are certainly eye-grabbing. But are they, and are other PETA strategies like the production of its sometimes-graphic FurIsDead.com website, really responsible for turning the tide against fur?