Animals

In an odd yet understandable marketing strategy, the folks behind E!'s new reality show "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" have spent a lot of pre-premiere publicity time explaining what the show isn't. Which is to say, Clint Eastwood. The legendary actor and director will appear in but a few episodes and then only briefly. He will not, for instance, be slamming doors or engaging in filmed therapy sessions with his wife, Dina, around whom the show revolves (see title.) That doesn't mean the show is not about Clint Eastwood; it is. If the principal characters -- Dina, her 15-year-old daughter Morgan and 19-year old stepdaughter Francesca -- were not related to him, there would be Absolutely No Reason to watch this, which, by reality show standards, promises to be tame to the point of sedation.

Nothing seems to stop "Jungle" Jack Hanna. Facing down dangerous animals and persnickety late-night hosts, the congenial wildlife expert and dedicated conservationist in the trademark khaki suit has been TV fixture for the last 30 years. Now, despite having just undergone a double knee replacement, Hanna is doing a national theater tour that comes to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach on Saturday. "As long as I don't have to run around too much after any animals I will be fine," he laughed by phone from his home in Montana, where he is recuperating.

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Build-a-Bear Workshop was introducing a line of stuffed animals called smallfrys and wanted to reach moms through Facebook. One video used in the online promotion showed a woman pulling up to a fast-food window. Her young daughter requests "a smallfry. " When her mom suggests a fruit cup or celery sticks, the daughter says, "Mom, order me a curly-haired bunny in a purple sequined bathing suit. " The 45-second smallfrys spot came not from a traditional advertising agency but from Poptent Inc., a "crowdsourced" video production studio that has built a global community of 50,000 writers, directors, cinematographers and animators to create commercials for Build-a-Bear, American Airlines, Dell, Intel, Jaguar, General Mills and others.

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Birds do it, bees do it, even wildebeests and zebus do it. And during the "Valentine's Day Sex Tour" at Santa Ana Zoo today, visitors will learn exactly how animals court and mate in a captive setting. Wild stuff? Well, the event is for adults only, but zoo curator Connie Sweet said she wouldn't go so far as to slap an R-rating on the tour. Call it PG-13.

A tangy, sour, fermented milk drink may not sound like a likely candidate to move from health food stores to mainstream supermarkets, but that's exactly what kefir has done. The beverage is steadily gaining fans convinced of the health benefits -- proponents tout its purported ability to help cure cancer, reduce high cholesterol and treat high blood pressure -- yet the scientific studies to support the claims are still few. Kefir's closest cousin is yogurt, also made by fermenting milk with bacteria.

Betty the gibbon and her mate, U Maung U Maung, were making the most of the space they had. A few awed visitors looked on Sunday as the active and agile apes swung rapidly from the branches in their enclosure and the chain-link fence that surrounded them. The two small singing apes are among the 39 animals housed according to family in enclosures about the size of a two-story living room at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita. When the center's founder, Alan Mootnick, moved to the 10-acre piece of rural land in 1980, he planned to stay only two years.

They've given up eating burgers. And bacon. And anything else that used to have a pulse or came from something with a pulse. But just because they're vegan doesn't mean they're unfashionable -- only more selective. If an animal was harmed to make a material that goes into clothing, that material is off limits. So wearing leather isn't an option. Neither is wool from little lambs eating ivy -- cruelty to the animals in factory farm conditions is a concern. Silk, which destroys the worm to harvest the thread, is a no-no.

Question: My son has severe allergies, including an allergy to cat fur. To keep him safe, I moved my family to a community that was advertised as pet free. Then, six months after moving here, I noticed a cat on my next door neighbor's balcony. When I asked the manager if the cat lived in the next unit, she said the community management had no choice because the cat was a companion animal necessary to mitigate that resident's disability. That may be great for my neighbor, but what about my son, who is in danger of needing emergency medical care if he has an allergy attack?

DreamWorks Animation, the Glendale studio behind the "Shrek" and"Kung Fu Panda" movies, saw its revenue jump 26% to $136.1 million in the first quarter. The company said it earned a profit of $9.1 million, or 11 cents a share, in the three months ended March 31, a 3% increase over the year-earlier period. The growth reflected home video and international ticket sales from the "Shrek" spinoff,"Puss in Boots,"which grossed $554 million worldwide since its release in October. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had estimated earnings of 9 cents a share and revenue of $134 million in the quarter.

On Friday, human spectators scared a confused dolphin into staying in the shallow waters of Orange County's Bolsa Chica Wetlands, wildlife officials said. On Saturday, it was a group of dolphins that frightened the stranded marine animal back into the wetlands nature preserve as rescuers attempted to guide it back to the open sea. "It's been an interesting day so far," said Peter Wallerstein, a marine biologist with the Marine Animal Rescue service. Wallerstein and five state Department of Fish and Game officers took to paddle boards Saturday morning to encourage the 7-foot dolphin to continue swimming to freedom after they noticed that it had swum several hundred yards closer to Huntington Harbour, which spills into the ocean.

It hasn't always been smooth sailing for Alex the lion and Marty the zebra, the pals at the center of the "Madagascar" animated films, but for two Central Park Zoo animals, they've certainly had their share of adventures. After washing ashore on the titular island in the first film and crash-landing in the wilds of the African mainland in the second, Alex and Marty, voiced by Ben Stiller and Chris Rock, respectively, find themselves back among civilization in"Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted," which opens June 8. In taking up with a European traveling circus hoping to make it big in the U.S., Alex, Marty and their compatriots may have found their best, though riskiest, chance yet to return to the zoo. "A lot of it is about going home," Stiller said in a joint phone call with Rock from New York.

HILLSBORO, Ore. - The small New England town of Blithe Hollow is more than a little odd; it's a wonderfully wonky world of Gremlin-like cars, wavy plaid shirts and irregular picket fences. It has also been cursed with "eternal damnation" after a witch trial 300 years ago, making it a prime target for a zombie attack. Such is life for Norman, a misunderstood boy called upon to help fight the invasion of walking dead because he has the ability to talk with them in "ParaNorman," a 3-D stop-motion animation feature opening Aug. 17 from the team behind 2009's "Coraline.

Helicopters circled, crowds gathered to gawk and worry, and traffic snarled along Pacific Coast Highway as a disoriented dolphin circled in the shallow, murky waters of the Bolsa Chica wetlands Friday. The 7-foot dolphin - nicknamed Fred by some of the spectators - apparently swam mistakenly into the wetlands with five companions earlier in the week. While the dolphin's pod mates returned to sea, the one called Fred stayed behind. "They were probably chasing fish through the Huntington Harbour and lost their way," said Dean Gomersall, animal care supervisor with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach.

Nothing seems to stop "Jungle" Jack Hanna. Facing down dangerous animals and persnickety late-night hosts, the congenial wildlife expert and dedicated conservationist in the trademark khaki suit has been TV fixture for the last 30 years. Now, despite having just undergone a double knee replacement, Hanna is doing a national theater tour that comes to the Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach on Saturday. "As long as I don't have to run around too much after any animals I will be fine," he laughed by phone from his home in Montana, where he is recuperating.

The cowboys rose well before dawn, stars still high in the West Texas sky. They strapped on spurs and leather chaps and climbed into their saddles for one last roundup. They didn't have to do much to rustle the cattle from the dusty flats about 220 miles west of Dallas. Hundreds of hungry black Angus and Herefords, tired of foraging for scarce, drought-dry grass, came running — drawn by the hope of feed. The cowboys herded the youngest, thinnest and weakest animals into a separate pen, some with ribs and hipbones jutting after weeks without a decent meal.

It's not often noted in the history books, but Queen Victoria simply couldn't stand pirates. In fact, the words "I Hate Pirates" are prominently carved on the royal crest. You could look it up. Well, actually, you can't, because the wacky folks at Aardman Animations made it up as a key plot point of their delightful"The Pirates! Band of Misfits,"a clever piece of business that is a complete pleasure to experience. Based on a novel by Gideon Defoe, who also wrote the screenplay, "Pirates" follows the exploits, such as they are, of Pirate Captain (wonderfully voiced by Hugh Grant)

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters to at least four major Hollywood studios, including Walt Disney Studios and DreamWorks Animation, over dealings in China, a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed Tuesday. The letters center on the studios' dealings with China Film Group, a state-run company whose responsibilities include determining which foreign movies get access to a limited number of slots each year for revenue-sharing deals in the red-hot Chinese movie market, which is now the second-largest in the world behind the United States.