Simon Cowell: Big old softie? The 'American Idol' judge makes a hefty donation to dogs in need

The rescue-dog residents of Linda Blair's Acton-based WorldHeart Foundation recently got a big boost in the form of a $30,000 donation from none other than "American Idol" judge Simon Cowell.  According to ContactMusic, Cowell learned from a mutual friend that Blair's shelter was having financial problems and quickly pitched in to aid the nonprofit, which rescues and re-homes needy dogs including many often considered hard to place, like pit bulls and pit mixes.

"I think what Linda is doing is incredible," Cowell was quoted as saying in the ContactMusic story. "Seeing pictures of the dogs makes you [realize] what a fantastic job she's doing. When we spoke, I was really impressed by her passion and commitment, and offered to help her out financially."

It's not the first time Cowell has defied his mean-guy image by helping animals; last month, he spoke at a gala fundraising event for the U.K.'s Battersea Dogs' & Cats' Home (pictured above), and earlier this year he recorded a public service announcement on the dangers of leaving dogs in hot cars for PETA.  Let's review what we've learned: Simon's no friend to would-be singing stars he deems unworthy or untalented, but a friend indeed to homeless and endangered pets.  We suppose we can live with that. 

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Cowell speaks at a September fundraiser for the Battersea Dogs' & Cats' Home at London's Royal Opera House.  Credit: Chris Jackson / Getty Images

Your morning adorable: Talented beagle plays the piano

We've seen dogs try their hand at the piano before (one childhood pet, a standard poodle named Skip, even attempted the trick himself, with rather unimpressive results).  But we've never seen a doggie pianist quite as talented as Beamin the beagle, who sells his song with show-stopping performance abilities we haven't seen the likes of since 1970s-era Elton John.

According to Beamin's owner, the little guy does 35 separate tricks -- and if they're all as well-executed as his piano playing, we're very impressed indeed.  Can his own concerto be far behind?  Now that's something we'd pay money to see.

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: lightningjc via YouTube

A different kind of birdsong: Photo of birds on electrical wires inspires music

When Jarbas Agnelli of Brazil saw photographer Paulo Pinto's shot of birds sitting on electrical wires in a newspaper, he was struck by the image and the resemblance of the wires to a musical staff. He "cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes," he writes, noting that no Photoshop was used on the image.

He credits the birds as the "composers" of the resulting song, "Birds on the Wires." And the story gets more interesting -- after finishing its orchestration, Agnelli sent the completed work to Pinto, whose contact information he found online using a plain old Google search. 

From there, Agnelli says, Pinto told an editor about the song, who passed along the information to a reporter, who wound up writing about the birds' music in the same newspaper in which their photo had originally appeared.  From there, it caught the attention of the fine folks at LaughingSquid.com, after which it was picked up as far as Washington, D.C., and now, Los Angeles. That's a long way from São Paulo!

-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: Jarbas Agnelli via Vimeo

Hairy, yellow spider is named for David Bowie

A German scientist specializing in the discovery of rare species of arachnid has named his latest find after David Bowie, he who introduced the world to "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" in 1972. 

Unlike the album for which it was named, though, the Heteropoda davidbowie is no alien -- it was discovered in Malaysia by Peter Jäger, who has found about 200 new spider species over the past 10 years. And H. davidbowie, despite its name, bears no resemblance to either the Thin White Duke or his long-discarded Ziggy Stardust persona. It's large, yellow and hairy -- but its very strangeness, in a way, does seem to fit in with the theatricality of "Ziggy."

His penchant for naming his discoveries after celebrities isn't just for fun, either, Jäger says. Instead, he hopes that the names (another species was named after German musician Nina Hagen) will grab the attention of the public, whose help is needed to save these species, many of which are endangered. "It is working against time," Jäger told the Observer. "Along with the species, we are also quickly losing genetic resources that have evolved over more than 300 million years." 

Environmental authorities, the Telegraph notes, have often shied away from including spiders on their lists of endangered species, although the same dangers that affect other animals -- habitat loss, deforestation -- can affect them too. The International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species features only 27 species of spider, although more than 40,000 species are thought to exist.

No word as of yet from Bowie himself about what he thinks of the dubious honor of having a spider named for him.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Bowie as Ziggy Stardust in the film "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars."  Credit: Cowboy Pictures

Metallica: Not just for metalheads anymore, monkeys are fans too, a new study says

Animals prefer silence or sounds of their own species to human-made music, according to a new study published in the Royal Society Biology Letters and reported by the Discovery Channel. For some reason, that incites images of gorillas shaking their fists, screaming, "Will you kids turn down that goshdarn racket!"

What's even more interesting is that researchers found monkeys reacted calmly to Metallica's music, an apparently surprising discovery.

There appeared to be little explanation as to why the primates enjoyed the heavy-metal music. We're tempted to offer some guesses pertaining to the comparative intelligence of metalheads, but we don't want to insult any of our valued readers (or, for that matter, monkeys).

The research still doesn't explain why members of two different species can appreciate Metallica and why we cringe every time someone plays "One" on "Guitar Hero."

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-- Mark Milian

Photo: Metallica performing at the Forum on Dec. 17, 2008. Credit: Lawrence Ho / Los Angeles Times

John Mayer donates $25,000 to L.A. pet rescue groups after challenging TMZ

Thanks to celebrity-centric news source TMZ, two L.A.-based pet rescue groups are significantly richer today.

Pop star John Mayer challenged TMZ's founder, Harvey Levin, to come up with a mug shot from his 2001 arrest for driving with a suspended license.  Mayer made a bet with him: Find the mug shot, and Mayer would donate $25,000 to the charity of Levin's choice.  As it happens, Levin is an animal lover and specified pet rescue as his preferred cause.

In short order, TMZ had posted an appeal to readers, noting that, if the challenge turned out to be a hoax and no mug shot in fact existed, it would say that "John Mayer Hates Puppies."

Turns out Mayer -- as reproach-worthy as some of his other acts (like awful songwriting) might be -- doesn't hate puppies after all. (Perhaps the rumor that his ex Jennifer Aniston's beloved corgi mix, Norman, hated him still stings.)  TMZ produced the mug shot Thursday, noting that the star's suspended-license charge was dismissed within a month of the arrest, and urged him to "fork over the dough, pal."

Today, Mayer apparently lived up to his end of the bargain, posting images of two $12,500 checks made out to animal rescue groups Pet Orphans of Southern California and Ace of Hearts to his Twitter account.  (The latter group promptly posted a response, "THANK YOU JOHN MAYER AND HARVEY LEVIN!," on its website.)  So, though we'll never approve of abysmal lyrics like "One pair of candy lips and/Your bubblegum tongue," we have to give Mayer credit for doing something good -- just this once.

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo credit: Peter Kramer / Getty Images

YouTube star Nora the Piano Cat inspires a concerto

A piano-playing cat named Nora took YouTube by storm a few years ago when her owners, married Philadelphia-based artists Burnell Yow! (yes, the exclamation mark is part of his name) and Betsy Alexander, uploaded a video of her performances to the site.

Yow! and Alexander meant simply to share the video with Alexander's students (she teaches piano in addition to her work in music composition and studio art) and with their niece, who lived across the country.  But word spread quickly among the Internet cat meme community; since the original video was uploaded in early 2007, it's received more than 14 million views.  (A second video, dubbed "The Sequel - Better than the original!" was added a few months later and has garnered another 4 million views.)  Nora, a gray tabby, became a star virtually overnight, and her musical stylings were described by the Times of London as "something halfway between Philip Glass and free jazz." 

Earlier this year, Lithuanian conductor Mindaugas Piecaitis caught wind of the phenomenon and decided to compose an orchestral piece to frame Nora's piano playing.  The resulting composition, "Catcerto" (Piecaitis' overly precious title, not ours), premiered at the Klaipeda Concert Hall on June 5.  Video of Nora, the "featured soloist," played on a giant screen behind the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra during the performance.

Yow! and Alexander insist that Nora's piano playing is not a behavior they've taught her; instead, according to the cat's extensive bio, she simply leapt onto one of Alexander's pianos one day when she was about a year old and never looked back.  Nora appears to prefer one piano (a Yamaha) in particular and high-pitched notes to low-pitched ones.  She particularly enjoys "dueting" with Alexander's students, according to the couple. 

'Backstreet Boys' cockatoo shows researchers that dancing parrots really have rhythm

Snowball the sulphur-crested cockatoo not only propelled himself to YouTube stardom with the now-famous video of him dancing to the Backstreet Boys' late-'90s hit "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," he also paved the way for a research study that shows birds (at least some of them) really do have rhythm. 

Among the video's thousands of viewers (it's received about 2 million views to date) was Aniruddh Patel of San Diego's Neurosciences Institute; he'd been emailed a link by a colleague.  Patel, a neurobiologist who studies the interplay of the brain and music, was suitably impressed.  "I said, you know, this is much more than just a cute pet trick. This is potentially scientifically very important," he told NPR's "All Things Considered."

As Patel began to investigate the Snowball phenomenon, he got in contact with the bird's owner, Irena Schulz.  Schulz, who lives in Indiana, runs a rescue group called Bird Lovers Only.  Snowball was brought to her by a previous owner when, as the rescue group's website notes, he'd "gotten to be a handful."  When the owner dropped Snowball off, he noted to Schulz that the cockatoo loved music -- and even brought along a copy of his favorite record.  (Yup, the Backstreet Boys.)  In the NPR interview, Schulz recalls her amazement when Snowball lifted his legs in the air in time with the music, "like a cancan girl."

Naturally, in the Internet age, Snowball was destined to become a celebrity.  But was he really in step with the tempo of his favorite boy-band hit?  Patel wanted to find out.  His group manipulated the track and sent Schulz the revised versions, both sped-up and slowed-down. 

Pet Shop Boys (politely) declines PETA's request for a name change

Big surprise: the British band Pet Shop Boys says that, while the suggestion "raises an issue worth thinking about," it will be unable to comply with PETA Europe's request that it change its name to the Rescue Shelter Boys.

"Most dogs and cats sold in pet shops are sourced from profit-hungry breeders who may have bred them in cramped, filthy conditions...Many animals end up with abnormalities that result in both heartbreak and high veterinary bills for the unsuspecting people who buy them," the group's special projects manager Yvonne Taylor wrote to the band's two members, Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant. 

There are no hard feelings, apparently, at the refusal -- PETA Europe seems happy just to receive the shout-out the Boys posted on their website.  "As if you needed another reason to love the Pet Shop Boys besides 'West End Girls'," writes PETA blogger Shawna Flavell, referring to Lowe and Tennant's biggest hit.

But now PETA says it has bigger fish -- er, sea kittens -- to fry.  In a recent post, PETA blogger Amanda Schinke notes some other bands and musicians she thinks "could use an animal-friendly makeover."

Among them?  Meat Loaf (suggestion: Lentil Loaf), Deerhunter (suggestion: Deerhugger), and the Stray Cats (suggestion: the Spayed Cats).

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--Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Lee Jenkins / EMI Records UK