Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
 

 
Via Arbroath

 
Even though the above photo of Kabang the hero dog from the Phillipines is grotesque, this is actually a moving and heartwarming story of what our canine friends are willing to sacrifice for us when faced with danger. From Inquirer News:

Cousins Dina Bunggal, 11, and Princess Diansing, 3, were walking across Nuñez Extension on Dec. 14 not knowing that a speeding motorcycle was bearing down on them. At the crucial moment, Kabang, the Bunggal family’s dog, emerged from nowhere and jumped into the motorcycle’s path.

The cousins stumbled but were otherwise unharmed. The motorcycle driver, likewise unharmed, took them to hospital for treatment of their bruises.

Eyewitness Jovito Urpiano said Kabang (a Visayan term that means “spotty”) shielded the two girls from certain harm.

Urpiano was in an eatery on his noontime break from driving a tricycle and saw how Kabang stopped the motorcycle from hitting the girls. The dog’s head landed directly on the motorcycle’s front wheel, and as it rolled, her snout got stuck in it.

“I thought somebody threw the dog on the motorcycle, but I could not see anyone who might have done that,” Urpiano told the Inquirer. He said it later came to him that Kabang had intentionally blocked the motorcycle’s path to save the girls.

According to the article Kabang showed up at the family’s home two-weeks after the incident with a mutilated face. The Bunggal family say:

It does not matter if she’s ugly now. What is important to us is she saved our children and we cannot thank her enough for that.

Kabang is being treated with antibiotics, eats with her paws and is apparently back to her fun-loving old self. She is also expecting puppies. 

Via Arbroath

 
Redditor livejamie posted the above pic of his friend’s dog and noted how creepy its shadow looked. What followed was other Redditors posting photos of their dogs’ shadows and noticing the same freaky phenomenon.

There really needs to be a coffee table book dedicated to scary-ass dog shadows.
 

Photo by Redditor morriscode.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Photos of Dogs Underwater

 
Lifestyle pet photographer, Seth Casteel, captured these amazing images of dogs fetching their toys underwater. I can’t get over how the water transforms, what is probably a sweet pooch’s face, into something so ferocious and shark-like.

Seth should photograph our dog, Tong Tong in a parody of the Nirvana album cover…

Prints are available for purchase at Little Friends Lifestyle Pet Photography website. 
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Badly shot footage supposedly showing a mammoth lumbering across a river in Siberia, has been posted on that renowned comic The Sun, which reports:

A BEAST lurches through icy waters in a sighting a paranormal investigator thinks could prove woolly mammoths are not extinct after all.

The animal—thought to have mostly died out roughly 4,000 years ago—was apparently filmed wading through a river in the freezing wilds of Siberia.

The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed.

He filmed the elephant-sized creature as it struggled against the racing water.

Its hair matches samples recovered from mammoth remains regularly dug up from the permafrost in frozen Russia.

The official was reportedly in the area surveying for a planned road.

Paranormal writer Michael Cohen said: “Rumours of a handful of mammoths still kicking around in the vast wilderness of Siberia have been circulating for decades and occasionally sightings by locals have occurred.

“Siberia is an enormous territory and much of it remains completely unexplored and untouched by humans.”

Woolly mammoths roamed the Earth 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.

A small pocket remained on and around Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, and these did not die out until 3,500 years ago.

Mr Cohen, 41, added: “It is highly possible that a number of species, extinct elsewhere, survive in the area.

“If surviving woolly mammoths were found in Siberia, it could run against Russia’s plans to further develop and exploit the area’s considerable resources.

“It would be potentially one of the greatest discoveries ever.”

Question: Who are these “paranormal investigators, and what are their scientific qualifications for identifying living animals?

Question: Why are these videos always so fucking crap? A drunk jakey with a cell phone could take better footage than these muppets.

Question: Why didn’t the “government-employed engineer” get any closer? Why didn’t he approach the lumbering beast to ensure he had indeed photographed a mammoth?

Question: Is Siberian Mammoth versus “Russia’s plans to further develop and exploit the area’s considerable resources” a possible Steven Seagal movie?

Question: Mammoth or elephant or Steven Seagal or, who gives a fuck?
 

 
The footage examined by someone or other, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

40,000-year-old Mammoth

 
Chris Marker‘s Bestiaire, three short video haiku:

Bestiaire 1. Chat écoutant la musique
Bestiaire 2. An owl is An owl is an owl
Bestiaire 3. Zoo Piece

Simple meditations that reveal a more intimate side to the enigmatic director, best known for La jetée (1962) (which later inspired Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys) and Sans Soleil (1983). Marker has said of his work:

‘The process of making films in communion with oneself, the way a painter works or a writer, need not now be solely experimental. Contrary to what people say, using the first-person in films tends to be a sign of humility: All I have to offer is myself.’

Now in his nineties, Marker the “mercurial international man of semiotic mystery” continues to work, details of which can be found here.
 

 
More animal haiku, plus bonus documentary, after the jump…
 

 
An accidental Google search (don’t ask) led me to a rather odd subculture/phenomena in Google images: cats and mushrooms. There’re cats pictured with Cremini mushrooms, Porcini, wild mushrooms and even the psychedelic kind. (I’m in no way endorsing ‘shrooming your cat, btw.)

According to an article on NPR’s website titled Mystery Solved: Why Cats Crave Mushrooms, cats are attracted to the glutamate chemical in mushrooms. Vets warn though, cats probably shouldn’t be eating the fungi. Some could poison them.
 

 

 
More photos of cats and mushrooms after the jump…

 
There must be some kind of new drug in the water system of Boise, Idaho based on the ultra-bizarre output of American Films (aka Collapse). This Boise-based collective of film makers and actors create wildly twisted short films that are as well-crafted as they are demented, deranged and diabolically funny. Some are transgressive for transgression’s sake, while others dissect the political and social cancers growing through the collective body of the good ol’ U.S.A. with the surgical precision of a pickaxe.

In Squirrel Mommy , the American Films group take on baby envy and the environment. They describe the film as playing on…

[...] the hypocrisy in so many who think they are making huge environmental strides by putting bottles in recycling bins, yet don’t question for a moment the impacts of bringing a child into the mix , which actually negates other efforts while in the bigger picture painfully questions their “I’m so green” status.

Conveniently we forget, and certainly don’t want to admit, that it’s overpopulation that’s the real culprit behind planetary destruction. Global warming and peak oil would both be much less non-factors if it weren’t for overpopulation which in part is encouraged by the child bearing attitude and addiction which poor jealous Neena portrays as she reveals the lengths she will go to fill this ingrained desire.

Whether you buy their highfalutin’ rap or not, there’s no denying that Squirrel Mommy is weird in the extreme, beautifully shot with nifty special effects and a dark sense of humor that echoes the absurdist sensibilities of John Waters and David Lynch. And I found it actually kind of heartwarming.

Starring Kelly Broich as a woman named Neena who becomes overwhelmed with a fit of jealousy over her best friends news, delivered in stereotypical fashion by actor Casey Broich, “I’m pregnant!”

American Films has been booted from Youtube once already and their new channel has gotten some warnings, so watch this while you can.
 

 
Comedian David Cross makes light of the Internet’s obsession with… cats. NSFW.
 

 
(via BuzzFeed)

 
And before the inevitable comments of folks crying “foul” with this being animal abuse because Buddy the Rhinoceros Iguana is eating cereal, here’s what mom has to say:

“Buddy’s normal diet is vegetables. I made an exception for the video.”

 
(via The Daily What)