Chilean officials are asking fishermen to help save birds caught in nets after thousands of dead fowl appeared along coastal Chile this week.

At least 2,300 dead birds were found along beaches between Cartagena and Playa de Santo Domingo, Chile, said Jose Luis Britos, and environment professor and director of the Museum of Natural History of San Antonio, Chile.

Many of the birds, which come from several species, had broken wings and bruising on the outside of their bodies — injuries consistent with getting trapped in fishing nets, Britos said.

He said bird deaths from fishing nets occur every year, but never at this level. In a typical year, about 15 to 20 dead birds are found, Britos said.

One hypothesis for the increase this year involves climate. As Chilean weather gets colder this time of year, migrating birds that would normally travel north for warmth are instead lingering to feast on an influx of anchovies and sardines that had fled the coast of Peru in search of cooler waters.

Earlier this week, Peruvian authorities say warm waters off that country’s coast are to blame for the deaths of more than 5,000 marine birds.

The Peruvian National Center for the Study of El Nino said that since February, the Peruvian coast has had an abundance of warm water as a result of marine currents throughout the world’s oceans. The warm water has altered the marine ecosystem, it said.

The warm water has led fish such as anchovies and other species that live in surface waters to migrate to deeper water toward the south. As a result, pelicans and other birds that feed from the surface of the water died of starvation.

“If these oceanographic conditions persist, it is likely that its impact will spread to other areas of the (Peruvian) coast even during the fall, which could make the numbers increase and affect other marine species,” the report stated.

The Peruvian ministry of environment said seafood is still safe to eat, and encouraged everyone to continue to support local fishermen, according to state-run Andina news agency.

Officials in Peru continue to search for the cause of death of almost 900 dolphins since the beginning of the year. The health ministry is awaiting final results from molecular analysis looking for the morbillivirus, which previously has been linked to dolphin deaths.

The Chilean agriculture and livestock ministry and staff from Britos’ center have called for a meeting with fishermen for Monday. They are asking fishermen to try to save trapped birds before closing their nets.

Britos said he worries that until Monday, the number of dead birds could rise significantly.

Two dolphins who were rescued from a filthy pool at a Turkish tourism resort were released back into the wild this week after years in captivity.

So far, the male dolphins have exceeded their trainers’ expectations: Within 48 hours, satellite transmitters showed that Tom and Misha had traveled more than 100 miles, and they were observed hunting fish as a team and interacting with other wild dolphins.

“It’s unbelievable to see them travel this hard and fast,” said Jeff Foster, a Seattle-based sea mammal expert who oversaw the dolphins’ rehabilitation and preparation for release into the wild.

“The assumption is they’re going back to the area that they were a pod in. They’re definitely on a mission,” Foster said.

Foster spoke to CNN by telephone from a sailboat in the Aegean Sea, where he and his team have been tracking the animals’ progress with the help of transmitters attached to the dolphins’ dorsal fins. Because of bad weather, the team hasn’t been able to keep direct contact with the dolphins since their release Wednesday, although they are still able to track them via satellite.

Foster suspects the dolphins are racing back to the waters around the Turkish city of Izmir where they were initially believed to be captured years ago.

Tom and Misha are part of an expensive, ambitious and risky program sponsored by the UK-based Born Free Foundation, which is aiming to prove that captive dolphins can be reintroduced to the wild.

For more than a year, Foster and his team worked in a quiet cove on the Aegean, teaching the two dolphins how to catch their own food. He said the intensive training was necessary to get the dolphins ready to fend for themselves.

“It would be like taking your dog and releasing it into the woods,” Foster said. “If you don’t prepare your dog for that, it would never happen.”

When Foster first met these dolphins more than a year ago, he said they would eat only if humans placed dead fish directly in their mouths.

“We had literally thousands of fish in the pen, and they just wouldn’t look at them,” Foster said. “They had just been so used to being hand-fed in a captive situation that they did not recognize fish as a food source.”

Foster has prior experience with another high-profile release program that ultimately ended in failure. He worked in Iceland more than 10 years ago as part of a multimillion-dollar effort to prepare the killer whale Keiko from the movie “Free Willy” for release back into the wild.

Less than a year after his release, Keiko died off the coast of Norway. But Foster said he believes Tom and Misha stand a much better chance of survival.

“These animals haven’t been in captivity as long as Keiko. Keiko was held in captivity for more than 20 years. He was held as a solitary animal for many of those years,” Foster said.

Tom and Misha are each estimated to be around 12 years old, after initially being caught in the Aegean Sea five or six years ago.

“They’ve probably spent the majority of their life out in the wild,” Foster said. “Because we’re dealing with two males, you can develop competition feeding with them … they’re ideal candidates for reintroduction back into the wild.”

Tom and Misha first attracted the attention of wildlife conservation activists in 2010. At the time, they were being kept at a Turkish resort where tourists paid to swim with the dolphins in a shallow, filthy swimming pool.

“The pool in Hisaronu, Turkey, where Tom and Misha had spent the summer months of 2010 had such a high bacterial count … that it was a significant health hazard to the dolphins and for the unsuspecting tourists who paid to swim with them,” wrote Shirley Galligan, a representative of the Born Free Foundation, in an e-mail to CNN. “The water was filthy with feces and dead fish and a layer of ‘sludge’ at the bottom.”

According to Born Free, a nonprofit conservation group based in the United Kingdom, the dolphins were underweight and listless and would not have survived much longer in the pool, which “having been hastily constructed, was in danger of collapse from subsidence.”

A coalition of environmental groups successfully campaigned to rescue the animals and transport them in the back of a truck to a sea pen in the Aegean.

In the final days before their release, Foster and his team attached specially designed transmitters to Tom and Misha. The tags, which are about the size of a cell phone, broadcast the dolphins’ location via satellite and VHF radio.

The sponsors of the program admit there is no guarantee of success.

“There have only been a handful of reintroduction programmes with mixed results,” Galligan wrote. “Returning any captive wild animal to the wild is never without risk.”

One of the few successful cetacean reintroductions on record involved an orphaned female orca named Springer. Foster was a member of the team that helped rehabilitate the emaciated animal and eventually reintroduce her to a pod of related killer whales off of Canada’s Pacific Coast a decade ago. She has reportedly survived and thrived in those waters ever since.

Michael Moore, a marine mammal expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, predicted major challenges for Tom and Misha.

“Can they break the bond with humans, and can they create a bond with other [wild] dolphins?” he asked, in a phone interview with CNN. “The irony is that if these animals do get released into the wild, it’s a big, bad world out there and they will have to learn how not to get entangled in fishing gear.”

According to Moore, Tom and Misha’s release will have virtually no impact on the world’s wild dolphin population, which faces an onslaught from industrial fishing nets, decimated fish stocks and polluted seas.

But he and other dolphin experts say successful reintroduction could increase biodiversity awareness in Turkey and set an important example for the multibillion-dollar captive marine mammal entertainment industry.

There has been a rapid increase in the number of “dolphinariums” and “swim-with-dolphin” programs cropping up across Turkey over the last decade.

“Turkey, being a very popular and beautiful holiday destination, is sadly responding to the public demand for that ‘dolphin experience’ by providing more captive dolphin facilities than anywhere else in Europe,” wrote Born Free’s Galligan. “Conditions in general are very poor.”

Born Free did not publicly announce the day of Tom and Misha’s release in order to protect them from curious onlookers. On Wednesday, after divers peeled away the last barrier separating the dolphins from freedom, the pair initially hesitated.

“They sat in the pen for 15 to 20 minutes after we opened the gate. These guys are cautious animals,” Foster said. Eventually, trainers gave them a hand cue to leave.

Underwater video filmed by scuba divers shows Tom slowly turning and leaving the sea pen. Misha then sped off after him.

Within hours, the Born Free team photographed Misha flipping large local fish called mullet out of the water. And then, they witnessed strange behavior from a dolphin rolling on the surface. It took some time to identify the animal by its dorsal fin.

“It was totally completely different dolphin!” Foster said. “A single dolphin that was interacting with Misha. Within the first four or five hours after we let them out, they were pursuing fish and interacting with wild dolphins. It was everything and more than we expected.”

Despite initial encouraging behavior, Born Free is not yet celebrating.

“We must remain cautious,” the organization announced on its website. “There is still a way to go before we know 100 per cent that Tom and Misha have readapted fully to life back in the wild.”

Authorities in Peru are investigating the death of over 538 pelicans, along with other birds, on the northern coast of the country, the Peruvian ministry of production said Sunday.

The new environmental investigation comes on the heels of an incident earlier in April when 877 dolphins washed up dead on the same stretch of coast.

It was not immediately clear if the deaths were connected.

The birds appear to have died on the beach, and more tests are needed to determine the cause of death, the ministry of production said.

The Peruvian Sea Institute surveyed about 43 miles (70km) of beach coastline on Sunday and estimated that 592 birds were dead along the shore.

State-run TV Peru estimated that up to 1,200 birds had been found dead on the 100 miles (160km) of northern shoreline extending from Punta Negra in Piura to San José in the state of Lambayeque.

The deaths began less than two weeks ago, local fishermen say.

The investigation into the mystery surrounding the dolphins is still ongoing. Peruvian Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria told CNN the dolphins may have died from an outbreak of Morbillivirus or Brucella bacteria.

The Peruvian government has put together a panel from different ministries to analyze a report by the Peruvian Sea Institute (IMARPE). Officials have been able to conclude that the dolphins’ deaths were not due to lack of food, interaction with fisheries, poisoning with pesticides, biotoxin poisoning or contamination by heavy metals.

“When you have something this large, my gut would tell me that there’s something traumatic that happened,” Sue Rocca, a marine biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, told CNN. She raised a number of possibilities as to what could have killed the animals, including acoustic trauma.

Preliminary reports ruled out that seismic sound waves created by oil exploration in that stretch of sea could have killed the birds, the environment ministry said.

They also expressed concern for the fishermen in the area and restated their commitment to protecting the country’s marine ecosystem.

Here is the article on the dolphins that died weeks before:

Environmental authorities are investigating the deaths of more than 800 dolphins that have washed up on the northern coast of Peru this year.

The dolphins may have died from an outbreak of Morbillivirus or Brucella bacteria, said Peruvian Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria, according to Peru’s state-run Andina news agency. Speaking to CNN, he said he expects test results to be ready within the week.

“Right now, the most probable hypothesis is that it’s a virus outbreak,” he said.

Quijandria said Thursday that 877 dolphins have washed up in a 220-kilometer (137-mile) area from Punta Aguja to Lambayeque, in the north of the country.

More than 80% of those dolphins were found in an advanced state of decomposition, making it difficult to study their deaths, according to Andina.

Earlier last week, the Peruvian government put together a panel from different ministries to analyze a report by the Peruvian Sea Institute (IMARPE). Officials have been able to conclude that the dolphins’ deaths were not due to lack of food, interaction with fisheries, poisoning with pesticides, biotoxin poisoning or contamination by heavy metals.

“When you have something this large, my gut would tell me that there’s something traumatic that happened,” Sue Rocca, a marine biologist with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, told CNN. She floated a number of number of possibilities as to what could have killed the animals, including acoustic trauma, but concluded that investigators just don’t know yet.

“More investigation needs to be done,” she said.

The dolphin deaths in Peru are mark the third set of high-profile strandings in about two months.

In February, 179 dolphins –108 of which were dead — washed ashore in Cape Cod, in eastern United States, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Marine biologists are still trying to determine the cause of those deaths.

In early March, amateur video taken from a beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, showed more than 30 dolphins on shore. In that instance, all dolphins were safely returned to the sea.

A week ago, Loews Hotels at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, sparked the outrage of cat lovers everywhere by announcing (more like burying a comment in a two-month-old Facebook post) that they had decided to trap and remove their managed feral cat colonies.

The day the news broke, my fellow Catster writer, Dorian Wagner, formed a Facebook page called Save Loews Cats, a central location for updates to the situation and for information about how people could take action to inspire Loews to reverse their decision.

That afternoon, Alley Cat Allies issued a press release condemning Loews’ decision as hypocritical and heartless. “Loews markets itself as a ‘pet-friendly’ company, but the truth is more sinister,” said Becky Robinson, president and co-founder of Alley Cat Allies. “Loews refused to consider humane options for the cats despite our and others’ repeated invitations to work with the company to address their concerns.”

Some good news emerged from Orange County Animal Services on March 30. The Save Loews Cats crowd contacted the organization through its Facebook page, with a request for information and an offer to help take care of any feral felines brought to the shelter by Critter Control, the wildlife pest removal company Loews hired to get rid of the cats.

“Yes they are having the cats trapped and bringing them here,” OCAS responded. “We are working hand-in-hand with CARE Feline TNR, Inc. to ensure the cats are relocated safely and as quickly as possible. CARE could certainly use any help in finding suitable colony locations to relocate the kitties, so thank you for reaching out to them. We are committed to ensuring nothing happens to these cats except to live out their lives as healthy, happy community cats!”

So far, OCAS has been living up to its word. The organization has alerted CARE every time a Loews cat has come to its shelter. A big thumbs-up to Orange County Animal Services for recognizing the value of well-managed feral cat colonies and for their willingness to work with CARE to get these cats safely relocated.

But outrage increased once again after photos of the trapped cats were released. One cat was trapped Friday and four others were captured and delivered to the local county shelter on Monday. Nonprofit group CARE Feline TNR has stepped up to bail them to avoid euthanasia. CARE volunteers have been deeply saddened by the state of these once-healthy cats after being trapped, sharing photos of the cats with bloody noses, covered in urine — signs that trapping is not being done humanely.

“I’m beyond shocked Loews would do this,” says one employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their job. “Loews allows other indoor ‘domesticated’ pets inside the hotel in close proximity to children and other guests. No one knows the temperament of a dog or any pet. As staff, we know of the persistent problems of fleas and dog urine in the guest rooms.”

But those cats are safe now, recovering from their injuries and shock in the care of a feral-savvy foster home.

Yesterday, nationally syndicated pet columnist Steve Dale, wrote an article on Cat Channel to share the news of Loews’ callousness toward its community cats with his readers, too.

The trapping continues, and the rescue efforts continue. CARE is an all-volunteer organization, and they need all the help we can give them so they can continue to bail out the Loews cats and find homes for them — and continue to care for the other colonies they’re managing.

How else can you help? You can contact Loews management and voice your concerns (in a polite way, please). If you’re on Twitter, use the hashtag #saveloewscats and tag @Loew_Hotels when you share news about the Loews cats.

And if you’re planning to vacation in Orlando, remember that you have many choices in hotels … and that there are only three that have decided to kick feral cats to the curb.

Meet Harry the hippo, a baby pygmy so small the average person could carry him around with ease.

Harry, named after Britain’s Prince Harry, was born last week at the Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, the Star reports. His handlers are being forced to hand-rear Harry after his mother Hilda refused to feed him. Keeping Harry healthy is a priority, as there are only an estimated 3,000 pygmy hippos left in the wild.

“Pygmy hippo mothers are either great moms or silly moms. She unfortunately has lost a few of her babies after she squashed them,” Rob Hall, operations director at the ranch, told the Star.

Harry’s handlers are certainly earning their pay, feeding him a mixture of milk and water every three hours, then bathing him after each feeding. “You need to keep his skin moist,” Hall said.

Their numbers have been in decline due to deforestation and hunting. Unlike other hippos, the pygmies are not social animals, only seen together in the wild when they are mating.

Some of the photos of Harry that have been released to the public show Harry licking the face of one of his handlers. “These animals are such great characters, and we can see this with Harry,” Hall said.

Good morning,

Free the Animals is the riveting, true account of how a group of quite “ordinary” people in America started doing some rather extraordinary things, namely, breaking the law to get chimpanzees and dogs out of laboratories and to rescue pigs from factory farms. Since it was first published in 1992, this electrifying book about the often hair-raising raids carried out by everyday members of the animal liberation underground has inspired tens of thousands of people to see animals in a different light and to take action to help them—from shunning cosmetics that are tested on animals to picketing fur stores to going vegan. The identities of the real-life characters—many of whom are still wanted by law-enforcement authorities—have been changed to protect them from prosecution, but their willingness to defy convention is real and makes compelling reading, the kind of inspirational message that has helped launch a movement of animal lovers into a powerful force. Packed with action and suspense, the new edition, out this month, has been praised by filmmaker Oliver Stone as a “moving story about extreme cruelty and extreme courage and an inspirational and practical guide for anyone bent on challenging the system.” The book includes an introduction by The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, who has herself been arrested for her activism for animals. I thought you might be interested in sharing the details with your readers.

Free the Animals tells the story of Valerie, a 23-year-old Maryland police officer whose department was involved in the seizure of the Silver Spring monkeys, an event that was featured on the front pages of The Washington Post and resulted in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, pulling back a curtain on how animals are treated in laboratories, changing the law, and even changing the National Institutes of Health’s policies along the way. Seeing the plight of the seized monkeys, who are slated to be returned to their abuser, Valerie is moved to take direct action and soon finds herself on the other side of the law, leading daring animal rescues across the country.

Free the Animals is available at Amazon.com and PETACatalog.com.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if there’s any further information about Free the Animals that I can provide. Many thanks.

Best regards,

Shakira

DON’T BE FOOLED by the slick propaganda of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The organization may claim to champion the welfare of animals, as the many photos of cute puppies and kittens on its Web site suggest. But last week, two PETA employees were charged with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty each, after authorities found them dumping the dead bodies of 18 animals they had just picked up from a North Carolina animal shelter into a Dumpster. According to the Associated Press, 13 more dead animals were found in a van registered to PETA.

The arrest followed a rash of unwelcome discoveries of dead animals dumped in the area. According to veterinarian Patrick Proctor, the PETA people told North Carolina shelters they would try to find the dogs and cats homes. He handed over two adoptable kittens and their mother, only to learn later that they had died, without a chance to find a home, in the PETA van. “This is ethical?” Proctor railed over the phone. “I don’t really think so.”

This is not the first report that PETA killed animals it claimed to protect. In 1991, PETA killed 18 rabbits and 14 roosters it had previously “rescued” from a research facility. “We just don’t have the money” to care for them, then PETA-Chairman Alex Pacheco told the Washington Times. The PETA animal shelter had run out of room.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, which represents the food industry, a frequent target of PETA campaigns, released data filed by PETA with the state of Virginia that shows PETA has killed more than 10,000 animals from 1998 to 2003. “In 2003, PETA euthanized over 85 percent of the animals it took in,” said a press release from the lobby, “finding adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By comparison, the Norfolk (Va.) SPCA found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals and Virginia Beach SPCA adopted out 66 percent.”

The Center’s David Martosko considered PETA’s hefty budget — reportedly, $20 million — and many contributions from well-heeled Hollywood celebrities, then figured, “PETA has enough money in the bank to care for every unwanted animal in Virginia (where it has its headquarters) and North Carolina.”

PETA prefers to spend donations, apparently, not caring for flesh-and- blood animals entrusted to it but on campaigns attacking medical researchers, meat-eaters or women wearing furs. It is as if PETA prefers the idea of animals to animals themselves.

Why does PETA kill animals that might otherwise find a home?

I repeatedly phoned PETA, but never reached an official who would answer my questions. PETA’s Web site spun the story under the banner, “PETA helping animals in North Carolina” with an emphasis on its efforts to “solve the animal overpopulation in North Carolina.” Here’s more: “PETA has provided euthanasia services to various counties in that state to prevent animals from being shot with a .22 behind a shed or gassed in windowless metal boxes — both practices that were carried out until PETA volunteered to provide painless death for the animals.” Make that painless deaths for animals that could have found love.

Besides, PETA always has been about killing animals. A 2003 New Yorker profile included PETA top dog Ingrid Newkirk’s story of how she became involved in animal rights after a shelter put down stray kittens she brought there. So she went to work for an animal shelter in the 1970s, where, she explained, “I would go to work early, before anyone got there, and I would just kill the animals myself. Because I couldn’t stand to let them go through (other workers abusing the animals.) I must have killed a thousand of them, sometimes dozens every day.”

That’s right. PETA assails other parties for killing animals for food or research. Then it kills animals — but for really important reasons, such as running out of room.

Martosko hopes animal lovers will learn that their donations will do more good at a local animal shelter than at PETA. “For years,” he added, “we thought that PETA just cared for animals more than they cared for humans. But now it seems they don’t care much for either.”

No lie about not caring for people. In 2003, Newkirk hectored late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat because a terrorist blew up a donkey in an attempt to blow up people. Newkirk also told the New Yorker the world would be a better place without people. She explained why she had herself sterilized: “I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human baby is like having a purebred dog; it’s nothing but vanity, human vanity.”

Now you know. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals doesn’t really like people. PETA has no use for ethics. And PETA kills animals.

About 100 miles north of Los Angeles, 19 wolf dogs from Alaska are learning how to walk and run, without being tethered to a post.

“They all have a little bit of a limp, walking up and down the hillside,” said Dr. Lorin Lindner, who runs the Lockwood Valley Animal Rescue Center. “They are walking on different terrains, walking on rocks. Their (paw) pads will stiffen up pretty quick though.”

The wolf dogs had been on display at an Anchorage-area roadside attraction, spinning in circles on their 10-foot-long chains.

Rumors swirled like snow drifts that the wolf dogs might have to be destroyed because of a criminal investigation into Wolf Park U.S.A., which charged $5 for visitors to walk alongside the animals and take pictures.

Alaska has severe restrictions on owning wolves, and the 19 captive wolf dogs’ fate was up in the air.

Wolf Park U.S.A. told CNN the wolf dogs were well treated and no laws were broken.

“Once we learned that there were 29 wolves in jeopardy, we knew we had to take action,’ said Lindner, who runs the animal sanctuary with her husband, Matt Simmons.

The couple raised money, including a generous donation from animal activist celebrity Bob Barker, and arranged for the wolf dogs to be transported to their sprawling Lockwood Valley complex a little more than two weeks ago.

Now the animals are finding their footing at the sanctuary, a system of wire holding pens accessible by dirt road in the Los Padres National Forest.

The dogs’ new home stands at 6,000 feet above sea level. It snows in winter.

“This truly is a great place for wolves to live, and it is where they used to live,” Lindner explains. “They inhabited these areas, this national forest, places that were far from humans.”

But Lindner says the wolves were hunted out of existence in these mountains.

The Alaskan wolf dogs live with other rescued hybrid wolves, and are cared for by several war veterans employed by the Lockwood Valley Animal Rescue Center.

Gregg Hill, who fired weapons at Iraqi targets from U.S. Navy vessels, stoops down between the pine trees and drab green brush and offers raw meat to one of the wolf dogs.

“It gives you inner peace,” Hill says. “You feel really good about what you are doing, knowing the situation these guys came from, and knowing that you are working with rescued animals and making their lives better. In turn it makes you feel better about your life and what you are doing.”

Lindner, a clinical psychologist, explains the rescued wolf dogs and the war veterans are both survivors. Working with animals is great therapy for warriors.

“We are finding veterans who, after working with animals, are reuniting with families,” Lindner said. “They are reintegrating into society. They are able to maintain and sustain employment.”

Though they are too wild to become pets, many have been spayed or neutered recently.

Lindner and Simmons sat and rubbed the winter-thick coat of Danny, a shy canine who walked with his tail between his legs.

“You have to get used to all these other wolves and you’re only a year and a half old,” Lindner tells Danny in a soft voice.

“Danny will probably never be a leader of the pack, an alpha male,” says Linder. “But he will be important, an omega wolf, one that watches over others. He will be a good uncle.”

Once the sun slid behind the low-slung mountains, one of the wolf dogs cocked his head back and howled.

“Here it comes,” said Simmons. “They will all join in. It’s sort of like a roll call.”

Within seconds, more than a dozen of the wolves could be heard serenading the remote valley with their howls.

And for their new caretakers, it was sort of an unchained melody, a song of celebration for the wolf dogs and their voyage from possible destruction in Alaska.

In maybe the most blatant animal abuse industry that still exist today; Shark Fin soup has taken it’s first major blow as both Oregon and California will prohibit the sale of shark fins in the new year (2012).

As you may know this Asian delicacy is just the fin of the shark. To keep up with the demand, the fishers for this product cut off the fins and throw the shark back into water. Sometimes they do this with hundreds or even thousands of sharks at a time.

Hats off for CA and OR for stepping up on this ridiculous Asian ritual.

Concern was growing Saturday for the welfare of a much-loved male squirrel monkey stolen from an enclosure at San Francisco Zoo in California.

Zoo workers discovered the theft Friday morning, when they found a back perimeter gate had been breached and two holes cut in the mesh fence of the squirrel monkey exhibit.

The missing monkey, known as Banana-Sam to his keepers, is 17 years old, over 12 inches tall and weighs about 2 lbs.

But his keepers warn that while he looks very cute, he is not a pet — and can deliver a nasty nip.

“He has extremely sharp teeth and will definitely bite if provoked, which can cause infections right away,” the zoo said.

Primate curator Corinne MacDonald told CNN affiliate KTVU she was very worried about Banana-Sam’s well-being.

“Stress can actually kill a monkey that small,” she said. “They are highly social animals and should not be alone, and he’s got cage-mates here that he’s lived with almost all his life that are his friends, so to speak, that he needs to be with.”

The monkey needs a specialized diet to stay healthy and is fairly elderly for his species, making him more vulnerable, the zoo says.

Police are investigating the theft, but surveillance cameras at the zoo did not capture it on film.

What motivated the thieves to swipe the monkey is not clear. While common squirrel monkeys are not endangered, they can be found at pet trade markets — which is illegal in California, the zoo says — or medical research institutions.

“I just want the animal back. I don’t really care why they did it,” MacDonald said.

An unknown person was quick to set up a fake Twitter account in Banana-Sam’s name, following in the path of a cobra that escaped at New York’s Bronx Zoo in March. The snake’s mock Twitter account, with humorous tweets on its supposed whereabouts in New York City, swiftly attracted a large online following.

Under the handle @SF_BananaSam, the “monkey” is now tweeting his way round San Francisco.

“Went to monkey bars in Golden Gate Park playground, left disappointed. #nobananadaiquiri” one post reads.

Another says: “I’m a funny-looking vegan who ran away from home and who people follow on Twitter. IN other words, A NORMAL SAN FRANCISCAN.”

Anyone with information on Banana-Sam’s whereabouts is urged to call San Francisco police.