Top ten animal geeks

Laika, the Russian dog was the first animal, EVER, to go into space. Yet not even a mention? She should have been number one. For shame.

The most remarkable thing about this list, by a long, long way is what it leaves out. As someone else has noticed, Laika should be at number 1, but isn't even in the top 10! I can't imagine that anyone who researched Ham the chimp wouldn't know about Laika, and so this has to be a case of someone choosing to deliberately ignore history. Sad and shameful, even if it is petty in a situation like this.

What about Einstein's No Cat" (see http://nocat.net) Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

What about the case-modded cows running windows (exposing the workings of their stomach)? http://spike-washburn.vpscenter.com/research/FistulatedCows/

You forgot Dubya, the retarded but lovable chimp who crashed a Segway and then amazed the world by being the first certifiable moron to lead the nation into a craphole.

Why there is not Laika dog, Laika should have obviously be listed on top.

They missed 'Tux' the Penguin, the GNU/Linux Mascot...

Hey, this list is flawed; the first animal travelling into space was Layka, not that chimp... I never heard of this chimp before, but I have heard about Layka since I was a child - and no, I was not born and raised in the USSR but in Western Europe.

The omission of Laika the dog was something of an oversight, we confess. Laika was a true space pioneer, leading the way for manned space missions. Reportedly found wandering the streets of Moscow, Laika was plucked from obscurity and flung into the far reaches of space (well, Earth's orbit). Sadly she died of a combination of stress and overheating due to a malfunction onboard. She deserves to be on the list, perhaps next year she will make it. Here's to Laika, the stardog! And damn those Soviets for not checking the thermostat properly. -- Chris Stevens, CNET.co.uk

Chris, the Soviets DID check the thermostat - after they learned that it wouldn't work properly. So, thanks to poor Laika, it was not Yury Gagarin who died due to the malfunction. And thanks to Pavlov's numerous dogs, many human patients lived. Not all experiments with animals were as senceless as in the brilliant "Mad Dogs" by Adams.

You left off Mabel the swimming monkey! FOr something as computer-heavy as CNET, that's an error I can't understand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch_monkey Can you swim?

The issue with Schrödinger's Cat is that you can't tell, from outside the box, whether the cat is alive or dead. In order to tell, you have to open the box, which in itself could cause it's death. IE: Observation can change the results.

The comparison of the Schrodinger's Cat illustration and Berekely's "tree in a forest" could not be more wrong. The main point of Schrodinger's Cat illustration is that there is indeterminacy in the quantum world, where probabilities are the rule: there is a probability that the cat will be either dead or alive at any given point, but it is not determinate until one opens the box (i.e., makes a measurement). Berekely's tree in a forest is making a point about philosophical idealism, i.e., the notion that something like "sound" is relative to the perceiver. He did not mean that it is indeterminate. He meant that there IS no "sound".

It seems like the author of this list hasn't a clue about Schrodinger's cat or space exploration either for that matter. My guess is that Hans the Chimp probably understands science a damm sight better and would do a much better job of putting such a list together.

Anonymous, in a remarkable twist we can now reveal that a chimp did in fact write this list. I know because I supervised him and allowed the little fellow to use my name.