truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Good News for the Rodent Community: (1) Japanese scientists (Yokohama City University) said in September that they had created tumor-suppressing nerve stem cells that reverse the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats. (2) Wake Forest University researchers said in April that they had created a 700-mouse colony that could survive any number of direct cancer-cell injections. (3) University of Pittsburgh researchers said in April that they had developed a gene therapy in rats to restore surgery-damaged nerves needed for erections. None of the therapies has yet been successful with humans.

Explaining Cat Ladies: Renewing a debate, Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr reported in September that human infection by Taxoplasma gondii (to which cat owners are vulnerable as they clean litter boxes) tends to make women "reckless" and "friendly" and men "jealous" and "morose." Though any mammal could pass the toxins, cats that handle dead birds, bugs, or mice rather easily pass it in their stools, though only for a few days after their first infection. (A 2001 report by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland had suggested that such infections might even cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.)

Dale Doell's preaching parrot (vocabulary: 2,600 words, many of which form Christian evangelical messages) flew away while at Doell's father-in-law's home in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, in August and is still missing. Doell told a reporter in September that he'd just have to see "what the Lord is going to do" about the parrot, named Solomon.

Least Competent Animals: In August, the Shanghai (China) Zoo shipped two dwindling-population Chinese tiger cubs to a preserve in South Africa so that experts can teach them how to survive; the zoo-bred tigers instinctively chase prey but do not know how to kill it.

Science on the Edge: In August, scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division, traveling by boat on a research mission to attach satellite-tracking devices to whales to study their habitats, managed to capture what they believe is an historic first photo: the water pattern that results from the bubble when a huge whale releases flatulence. Said researcher Nick Gales, "We got away from the bow of the ship very quickly. [I]t does stink."

Animal Rights Blues: The city of Bartow, Fla., amid complaints about stray chickens, repealed a 1922 ordinance that made it illegal to kill, capture, or "annoy" birds (August). And the 10th annual cockroach races (and "tractor"-pull) were held at the Indiana State Fair in August, with separate events for American roaches (on an oval track) and the stronger Madagascar hissing cockroaches (on a straightaway).