Johannes Eisele / AFP - Getty Images

A man sprays water onto the beak of his rooster during a break in between rounds at a weekly cockfight gathering in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 20, 2012.

Agence France Presse reports — Cockfighting, known as Murgh Jangi in the Dari language, is a popular winter game among Afghans. Like a number of other sports and pastimes, it was banned by the Taliban.

The heels and bills of the birds are sharpened before fights, which run for 4 to 6 rounds with each round lasting between 10 and 20 minutes. Some 100,000 to 200,000 Afghanis ($2,000 to $4,000) can change hands among spectators placing bets during these fights.

Johannes Eisele / AFP - Getty Images

A man holds his rooster.

Related content:

• PhotoBlog: A quail fight in Kabul
• World Blog: In Afghanistan, it's dog-fight-dog world
• Gunmen open fire on Texas cockfight, killing 3
• Video: Boxing chickens

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Cyndi Condit / Toledo Area Humane Society via Reuters

English Bulldog puppies play around their mother at the Toledo Area Humane Society in Maumee, Ohio on April 11, 2012.

Reuters reports — An Ohio man has been charged with animal abandonment after a litter of six English bulldog puppies was found in a suitcase with a tag bearing his name, according to Humane Society authorities.

Cyndi Condit / Toledo Area Humane Society via Reuters

The puppies, three male and three female, are estimated to be four weeks old, too young to be separated from their mother, so they will spend at least another four weeks in foster care before they are eligible for adoption.

The mother of the puppies was found pacing around the suitcase, which attracted the attention of a passerby.

Related story: Founder of dog rescue group arrested after 128 dogs found in U-Haul truck

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Arno Balzarini / EPA

Huntsman shouldering fox furs are on their way to the traditional fur market in Thusis, Swiss canton of Grisons, March 24.

According to the Swiss Broadcasting corporation, fox hunting is legal in Switzerland during the winter months. Prices for pelts were higher decades ago, but animal rights protests against fur decreased demand significantly in the 1980s, which lowered prices. Recently, demand appears to be rebounding, let by Eastern European and Chinese markets.

A look at the Belarus fur industry

AP

A bear lays inside a cage at the bear farm of Guizhentang pharmaceutical company, which makes bile tonics during a media tour in Hui'an county in southeast China's Fujian province, on Feb. 22. Last week, Chinese voiced outrage when the pharmaceutical company that sells tonics made with bear bile announced plans for a public listing. Dozens of Chinese entertainers, writers and other celebrities signed a petition to the China Securities Regulatory Commission urging it to withhold approval for the initial public offering by Guizhentang, a Chinese medicines maker.

AP

A bear lays inside a cage at the bear farm of Guizhentang pharmaceutical company, which makes bile tonics during a media tour in Hui'an county in southeast China's Fujian province.

AP

A bear looks out from a cage at the bear farm of Guizhentang pharmaceutical company, which makes bear bile tonics during a media tour in Hui'an county in southeast China's Fujian province, on Feb. 22. Last week, Chinese voiced outrage when the pharmaceutical company that sells tonics made with bear bile announced plans for a public listing. Dozens of Chinese entertainers, writers and other celebrities signed a petition to the China Securities Regulatory Commission urging it to withhold approval for the initial public offering by Guizhentang, a Chinese medicines maker.

AFP - Getty Images

Chinese workers collect bear bile, at one of the traditional Chinese medicine company Guizhentang's controversial bear bile farms in Hui'an, southeast China's Fujian province on February 22, 2012. Bear bile has long been used in China to treat various health problems, despite skepticism over its effectiveness and outrage over the bile extraction process, which animal rights group say is excruciatingly painful for bears.

AP

Bears wait to be feed at the bear farm of Guizhentang pharmaceutical company during a media tour in Hui'an county in southeast China's Fujian province on Feb. 22. Last week, Chinese voiced outrage when the pharmaceutical company that sells tonics made with bear bile announced plans for a public listing. Dozens of Chinese entertainers, writers and other celebrities signed a petition to the China Securities Regulatory Commission urging it to withhold approval for the initial public offering by Guizhentang, a Chinese medicines maker.

AFP - Getty Images

Bears are seen at one of the traditional Chinese medicine company Guizhentang's controversial bear bile farms in Hui'an, southeast China's Fujian province on Feb. 22. Bear bile has long been used in China to treat various health problems, despite skepticism over its effectiveness and outrage over the bile extraction process, which animal rights group say is excruciatingly painful for bears.

 These images were taken on a media tour of one of the Guizhentang company's farms after an uproar over their plans to expand erupted online in China, so please take into account that these are the images of a cleaned-up facility that the company allowed to get their side of the story out.

From AP:

SHANGHAI — A share listing plan by a company that sells tonics made with bear bile is provoking a storm of online criticism in China from animal rights groups, celebrities and ordinary Chinese.

Reports Friday said dozens of well-known entertainers, writers and other celebrities signed a petition to the China Securities Regulatory Commission urging it to withhold approval for the initial public offering by Guizhentang, a Chinese medicines maker. The company is awaiting approval for a share listing in Shenzhen.

Hundreds of thousands of comments on "weibo," the Chinese version of Twitter, blasted the company for extracting bile from the bears.

Animal rights groups contend the practice of bear bile farming is cruel because the animals are confined to small cages and milked of bile through catheters inserted into fistulas, or permanent wounds, in their gall bladders.

Read the full story about the initial public offering by Guizhentang and the ensuing outrage here.

Kyle Kurlick / The Commercial Appeal via AP

Members of the Fayette Co. Animal Control, Animal Rescue and the West Tenn. Drug Task Force round up 128 dogs found in a U-Haul trailer that was pulled over on to investigate for drugs on I-40 East of Memphis, Tenn. on Jan. 17, 2012. Instead, the dogs and one cat were found, all of which were locked in cages with tie-fasteners and no ventilation.

Authorities in West Tennessee arrested two women when they discovered 128 live dogs, one dead dog and a live cat inside a U-Haul truck and a minivan during a traffic stop on Interstate 40, WSMV-TV reports.

The Commercial-Appeal in Memphis reports that the dogs were hungry, thirsty and living in squalor, without ventilation. The newspaper reported that the arrested women were associated with Hearts for Hounds, a dog rescue organization:

By Tuesday afternoon, the women -- Bonnie Sheehan, 55, and a passenger, Pamela A. King-McCracken, 59, both of the Long Beach, Calif., area -- each faced 128 counts of aggravated animal cruelty, a Class E felony, and were jailed on $100,000 bond each in Fayette County.

Officials at the scene said the women were driving from California to Virginia. A check of the website for Hearts for Hounds showed they were relocating from Long Beach to Virginia. Sheehan is shown as the organization's founder. Read the full story.

There's a market in Asia for the digestive fluids of bears for use in traditional medicine. To feed the demand, thousands of black bears in Vietnam and China are held in small cages and drained of their bile via catheter or a hole in the abdomen.  

Animals Asia via Reuters

Veterinarians conduct a health check on a moon bear at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province in this handout photo taken November 29 and released on Monday. According to Animals Asia, 14 bears had been rescued from the bear bile trade in a farm in southern Vietnam and transported to a bear rescue centre in Tam Dao, near Hanoi. The bears show significant health problems including missing and maimed limbs, indicating that they may have been captured with bear traps in the wild. One of the four owners, Mr Nguyen Ngoc Tien, decided to give up his share of the farm to Animals Asia. This is the first time in Vietnam that a bear farm has given up a significant number of bears without any demand for compensation. Across Asia, an estimated 14,000 moon bears are being held in captivity on farms and milked for their bile because it's believed to be effective in the practice of traditional Asian medicine despite the availability of inexpensive and effective herbal and synthetic alternatives.

AP reports: Nineteen bears were recently rescued from such an operation in Vietnam.

In the 1980s, China began promoting bear farms as a way to discourage poaching.

The bears were housed in small cages, and the green bitter fluid was sucked from their gall bladders using crude catheters, sometimes creating pus-filled abscesses or internal bile leakage. Many bears die slowly from infections or liver ailments, including cancer.

The idea caught on in Vietnam and elsewhere as demand grew alongside the region's increasing wealth. Bear bile products are also illegally smuggled into Chinatowns worldwide. An informal survey by the World Society for the Protection of Animals found 75 percent of stores visited in Japan selling bear bile products, followed by 42 percent in South Korea. In the U.S. and Canada, it was about 15 percent.

Animals Asia via Reuters

A moon bear is seen inside a cage at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province.

Animals Asia via Reuters

A moon bear is seen inside a cage at a bear bile farm before it was transported to a rescue center in Vietnam's southern Binh Duong province.

Last year, a farm in northern Vietnam was raided for selling bile to busloads of South Koreans, who watched it being extracted as part of their sightseeing tours. Some of the farms in Vietnam are owned by South Koreans and Taiwanese.

"They're more organized and bigger. They're run like a business now," said Bendixsen. "It's part of a package tour."

More information:

• Wikipedia article about the practice of harvesting bile from bears.
• Animals Asia, an organization that rescues bears.

Reuters reports from SAN ANTONIO:

The yearlong Texas drought is taking a heartbreaking toll on horses and donkeys, thousands of which have been abandoned by owners who can no longer afford the skyrocketing price of the hay needed to feed them.

Debbie Fincher / Safe Haven Equine Rescue via Reuters

An abandoned, malnourished horse is seen at the Safe Haven Equine Rescue in Gilmer, Texas, in this undated handout image obtained by Reuters on Dec. 3, 2011.

"We get 20 to 40 calls a week that horses are alongside the road and left; nobody's claimed them," Richard Fincher of Safe Haven Equine Rescue in Gilmer, in east Texas, told Reuters. "Sheriffs are calling us all the time."

Before this year, he would get more like three or four calls a week, he said.

The problem, according to Dennis Sigler, a horse specialist at Texas A&M University, is that the drought has dried up the hay fields, leaving horse owners having to pay double or triple the prices they are used to paying for hay, if they can find hay at all.

Horse abandonment is a crime, and state law requires abandoned horses to be held by the local sheriff's department for 18 days, Fincher said. After that, most are sold at a sale barn for whatever prices they can bring.

"People just can't afford to feed horses anymore," Fincher said. "They're too busy trying to feed themselves." Read the full story.

Related content:

• Texas drought could threaten endangered species
• Parched Texas landscape shrivels and burns in record drought
• Drought dries up corn lovers' fields of dreams
• Texas wildfire puts the heat on cattle

GRAPHIC WARNING: This post contains graphic images which some viewers may find disturbing.

David R Arnott writes:

Dozens of boats herded a group of pilot whales into a bay for slaughter in the Faroe Islands on Tuesday as local residents took part in a traditional 'Grindadrap' whale hunt.

Andrija Ilic / Reuters

Inhabitants of the Faroe Islands round up pilot whales (Globicephala melaena) during the traditional 'Grindadrap' ('whale hunting' in Faroese) near the capital Torshavn on November 22.

Andrija Ilic / Reuters

The meat and blubber of pilot whales have long been a part of the islanders' national diet, according to Reuters, which reports that the whaling is not done for commercial purposes.

Nevertheless, The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a pressure group, says that the techniques used to kill the whales are "intensely stressful and cruel."

In a statement posted on a government-run website, the Faroe Islands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that they were committed to "internationally adopted principles for the conservation and sustainable use of living marine resources."

There were 5 whale drives between January and September this year, with a total catch of 406 pilot whales, according to the Faroese government statement.

The American Cetacean Society says that pilot whales are not considered to be endangered, but that there has been a noticeable decrease in their numbers around the Faroe Islands.

Andrija Ilic / Reuters

The blood of slaughtered pilot whales turns the sea red near Torshavn on November 22.

Alejandro Garcia / EPA

Animal activists, left, confront pro-bullfighting, right, activists prior to the last bullfight at 'La Monumental Bullring' in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, on Sept. 25. In July 2010, the parliament of Catalonia ratified the decision to ban bullfighting in the region.

Emilio Morenatti / AP

Spain's bullfighter Jose Tomas performs at the Monumental bullring in Barcelona, Spain, Sunday, Sept. 25. Spain's powerful northeastern region of Catalonia bids farewell Sunday to the country's emblematic tradition of bullfighting with a final bash at the Barcelona bullring.

Lluis Gene / AFP-Getty Images

Spanish bullfighter Jose Tomas performs a pass on a bull on September 25, in Barcelona's Monumental arena for the last time today before a ban against the centuries-old blood sport comes into effect in Spain's northeastern Catalonia region.

For more on this story click here.