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A day for animal lovers worldwide.

# Celebrate

World Animal Day exists to raise the status of animals and improve welfare standards around the globe.

It’s a day of celebration for animal lovers like you and me everywhere.

On October 4, it’s our chance to mobilise into a global force, to take action against animal cruelty, neglect and unfair treatment and make the world a better place for all animals.

Why October 4?

Well, it’s the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, so what could be more fitting?

Our Mission

The first step towards change is awareness. Through greater awareness, we know we can:

Improve standards of animal wellbeing throughout the world – and what an achievement that will be!

Who is World Animal Day for?

It’s a day for all animal lovers near and far. Through organised events, big and small, we raise awareness of how animals are treated globally. We rally together organisations, children’s groups, schools, clubs, companies, communities and individuals to show we care deeply about animals.

So whether you’re a grandparent, parent, teenager or toddler, a bird watcher, dog-lover or equestrian, World Animal Day is for all animals and those who love them.

With your help , participation in World Animal Day will continue to grow until it connects animal advocates in all corners of the world.

Will you join us this year?  

World Animal Day – Through the years

The idea for World Animal Day was originated by Heinrich Zimmermann, a writer and publisher of the German magazine Mensch und Hund (Man and Dog). He organised the first World Animal Day celebration on 24 March 1925 and over 5,000 people attended the event!

Since then, thousands of passionate animal advocates have taken part in a World Animal Day celebration. Today, there are over 90 Ambassadors who help to raise awareness in over 70 countries around the globe.

Read more about Heinrich Zimmermann and the beginnings of World Animal Day.

In 2003, the UK-based animal welfare charity, Naturewatch Foundation, launched the World Animal Day website to help the event reach many more people. In 2007, they launched the Ambassador Programme to carry the message far and wide.

Every year, participation in World Animal Day grows, with a huge variety of inspiring events being held in an increasing number of countries.

This year, you could be a part of it. Will you join us?

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World Animal Day: Compassion, Freedom, and Justice for All

On this special day for nonhuman animals, let's do much more on their behalf..

Posted October 3, 2018

Coexistence in the Anthropocene and Beyond: Compassion and Justice for All

October 4 is World Animal Day (October 2 is World Day for Farmed Animals ). This post is dedicated to all nonhuman animals who are trying to survive in an increasingly human-dominated world.

"We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." (Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod )

This 90-year old quotation from Henry Beston is one of my all-time favorites. It needs to be read in full and I always wish it could be made into a poster that would go viral globally. It could form the basis for an entire course in animal-human relationships. I go to it constantly because it says so much about who other animals are and about our relationships with them. First, we do indeed view others through our own senses and they don’t sense the world how we do. So our views are, indeed, distorted. We also patronize them for not being like us, for what we perceive as their incompleteness, as if we are complete. This misrepresentation allows some people to place dogs and other animals below us on some mythical evolutionary scale. They’re referred to as “lower” beings, a move that results in rampant mistreatment and egregious abuse. As Beston asserts, “And therein we err,” for we should not be the template against which we measure other animals. I also like how he views other animals as “other nations,” since this asks us to view them as the beings they are, not as what we want them to be. And surely, numerous other animals are caught up in the “travail of the earth,” captive to whatever we want them to do and whoever we want them to be. As we’ve seen, this makes for a good deal of stress in their lives as they try to adapt to a human-dominated world.

Power is not a license for domination or abuse

Humans engage in intimate and necessary relations with other animals and in most of these interactions we hold the power. But power is not a license for domination or abuse. Trying to imagine a world without human-animal interaction is both absurd and sad, especially since we evolved together. But can we imagine and perhaps create a world in which our interactions with animals are more respectful of their own needs and interests? We think the answer to this is a resounding yes! However, working toward such a world will require that we stop using science and human-centered arrogance as tools of violence against other animals. We need to move beyond welfarism.

Animal-welfare science is going strong and has firmly developed into an internationally recognized field of research. But where exactly is it headed? On the one hand, there have been some positive changes on behalf of animals. In March 2016, China released its first set of guidelines for the more humane treatment of laboratory animals, and the United States Congress passed reforms to the Toxic Substances Control Act, one of which requires that the Environmental Protection Agency reduce and replace animal testing for chemical safety where scientifically reliable alternatives are available. The editorial board of the The New York Times called for the Pentagon to put an end to the use of live animals in combat medic training. The Buenos Aires Zoo is closing after 140 years, citing as its reason that keeping wild animals in captivity is degrading, Iran banned the use of wild animals in circuses, and at the time of this writing, 42 airline companies have adopted bans on trophy animal shipments on their carriers. [i] We recognize that these are positive moves; however, the science of animal well-being will require more thoroughgoing changes.

And as time goes on, we are accumulating more precise data about the wants and needs of animals. Donald Broom and Andrew Fraser, two of the world’s leading welfare researchers, write, “Our knowledge of . . . welfare indicators has improved rapidly over the years as people with backgrounds in zoology, physiology, animal production and veterinary medicine have investigated the effects of difficult conditions on animals.” [ii] Welfare concepts have been refined and methods of assessment have been developed, expanded, condensed. We have a good list of things that “challenge” animals: exposure to pathogens, tissue damage, attack or threat of attack, social competition , excessive stimulation, lack of stimulation, absence of key stimuli (e.g., “a teat for a young mammal”), and inability to control one’s environment. [iii]

In addition to the data, the Five Freedoms seem to be evolving conceptually. For example, David Mellor, of the Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre at Massey University in New Zealand, has suggested a shift in terminology to the “Five Domains.” The domains model addresses certain weaknesses of the Five Freedoms and offers, according to Mellor, a more scientifically up-to-date method for assessing harms to animals. One of the key problems with the Five Freedoms is that the language “freedom from” in four of the five statements implies that the elimination of certain experiences (hunger, fear , pain) is possible. In fact, as we all know, these affective experiences are part and parcel of life and serve, biologically, to motivate an animal to engage in behaviors essential to survival. Mellor claims that the goal of welfare science should not be to eliminate these experiences, but rather to balance them against positive affective experiences. [iv]

None of this amounts to a substantial evolution in the fundamental moral or scientific tenets and tenor of welfare science. Mellor acknowledges that the welfarist paradigm allows for negative welfare states, but he encourages a kind of reweighting of the scales so that the suffering we impose is tempered by tossing animals a few extra “positive welfare state” crumbs. He admits that animals will still experience pain and suffering but wants to give them as much comfort, pleasure, and control as possible and reduce the intensity of negative states to “tolerable” levels, within the context of using them as we wish. We are still caught in the “welfarist vortex,” and are simply accumulating bigger and bigger piles of data about how exactly we are harming animals and what they are experiencing within the various “challenging” situations we impose upon them.

While some may argue we are being too critical or not paying attention to the number of changes that have been made to improve the lives of other animals, welfare science continues to favor our interests over those of other animals and to patronize animals by acknowledging only their most superficial needs. There are new welfarist data—lots of new data—and this information is filling in what we know about how best to “humanely” slaughter, trap, confine, and constrain. But the value commitments of the welfarist enterprise are so strongly biased in favor of human self-interest that our treatment of animals under this regime will never move beyond exploitation and violence. We may try hard to give animals a better life but a better life is not necessarily a good life.

The moral commitments (or in our minds, the immoral commitments) of welfarism have remained constant: we are still the purveyors of pain and suffering. In what kind of world do we live when an entire research program is focused on how best to harm animals, and how to salve the conscience of those who might have reservations about the violence?

Why Good Welfare Is Not and Cannot Ever Be Good Enough

Hebrew University’s Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the landmark book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , wrote an opinion essay for the Guardian in 2015 calling industrial farming the greatest crime in history. “The scientific study of animals,” he writes, “has played a dismal role in this tragedy. The scientific community has used its growing knowledge of animals mainly to manipulate their lives more efficiently in the service of human industry.” [v] Harari has captured the essence of why welfare can never be good enough. Animal-welfare science operates in the service of a variety of industries, and while in this role it can and will never do more than reinforce the status quo. It will never challenge the brutal exploitation of animals in farming or in laboratory research, zoos, pet stores, or conservation-research programs. Indeed, as Harari suggests, science hasn’t just been silent about our violent treatment of animals; it has lent its support and expertise to the endeavor.

Worst of all, welfare science has woven a cloak of objectivity around abusive practices. Broom and Fraser write, for example, that, “the assessment of welfare can be carried out in an objective way that is independent of any moral considerations.” [vi] Like Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility, the objectivity of welfare science is meant to shield those wearing it from moral examination. But the status quo that welfare science perpetuates is a set of value assumptions, including the assumption that the feelings of animals don’t really matter all that much, and even if they do matter a little, their interests can be trumped when doing so serves our interests.

Science has been put to work to make our manipulations of animals more efficient, more productive, and more profitable. It has been a partner in crime with industries that use and abuse animals, and has been employed to substantiate and scientize and ethically neutralize crimes against animals. But this is not an inevitable role for science. Science has the potential to help animals and to heal our fractured relationship with them. Indeed, as the science of animal cognition and emotion continues to advance, it may well be that the weaknesses of welfarism will become more apparent and the basic inconsistencies will be laid bare. The more we know about the inner lives of animals, the more incongruous animal-welfare science in the service of industry becomes.

Science, Ethics, and Advocacy

The basic insights of animal-welfare science are profoundly important. The first of these is that animals have subjective experiences. The second is that animals not only experience negative feelings like pain and fear and frustration, but also experience pleasure, happiness , excitement, and other positive feelings. Following on these, the final insight is that behavior offers a clear window into animal feelings.

Behavior is, indeed, a good window through which to see and know animals. But it can be a very tiny welfarist window, in a house we design, build, and manage for our own ends. Or, it can be a much bigger window, one through which we can peer but didn’t build, the dimensions of which are unknown. If we looked inside an abattoir or peered into an orca tank at SeaWorld, we would see a vast collection of “welfare” concerns. But the abattoir and the orca tank need to be seen from a much larger vantage point. We shouldn’t be looking in the abattoir and the orca tank and tinkering with the conditions we find, but looking at them, taking full measure of what these places mean for animals. The essence of the ethology of freedom is that behavior is a window onto what animals really want and need—to be free to live their own lives, to be free from the suffering and exploitation to which we subject them—but only if we are looking the right way: straight into the eyes of the animals themselves.

In contrast to welfare science, the science of well-being uses what we are learning about cognition and emotion to benefit individual animals, continually seeking to enhance their freedom to live their own lives in peace and safety. To the three basic scientific insights of welfare science, the science of well-being adds the essential ethical corollary that the feelings of individual animals matter. In contrast to welfarism, a science of well-being acknowledges up front that science and values are intertwined and that our assessments of what individual animals need are scientific and ethical. Indeed, values come first and inform the kinds of scientific questions we are open to asking and the kinds of answers we are willing to discover. Welfarism is a cage that traps human perception, one that also confines our sense of empathy for other beings. We need to open the doors of the cage.

There will always be trade-offs in what humans need and what animals need. Humans inevitably interact with and use other animals, and we are not advocating a hands-off approach to animals and nature, although that might not be a bad idea in a human-dominated world. But a great number of things that we currently do to animals are simply wrong and need to stop: the unnecessary slaughter of animals for food and fur, the use of animals in invasive research, the confinement of animals for human entertainment, and our excessive encroachments on wildlife. The threshold for taking away an animal’s freedom or denying any or all of the Five Freedoms is, at present, extraordinarily and offensively low. The bar must be raised .

As we’ve emphasized throughout this book, the central question motivating animal-welfare science is “What do animals want and need?” This question has remained the focus of welfarism over the past five decades. Do we know enough to answer this question? Absolutely. We know enough, right now, to know that animals want to be free from human exploitation, free from captivity, and free from the sufferings we impose on them. This is not to say that further scientific research into animals’ hearts and minds isn’t important, for it is. The more we know, the more mindfully we can interact with other animals, as long as we can break out of the welfarist cage and focus more objectively on what they want and need.

What we must do now is to close the knowledge translation gap. We must apply what we know about emotion and cognition, and follow through on the moral implications of the science we currently have at hand. Cognitive ethology, the study of animal minds, needs to take a “practical turn,” putting what we know about animals into the service of animals themselves. Scientists can be tools of industry, or they can be advocates for animals in ways that really serve the animals. We would like to see more scientists move away from being advocates for welfarism and become more positive advocates for the animals themselves. While some scientists claim that scientists should not be advocates, they forget that arguing for the use of animals is advocacy that works against animals. A few years ago, Marc gave a talk in Sydney, Australia, where he argued that it was wrong to kill kangaroos for sport, fun, and food. At the end of this talk, a scientist working for the kangaroo-meat industry criticized Marc for being an advocate. He said that science is supposed to be objective and scientists should not be advocates. Marc responded that he and his critic were both advocates. Marc advocated for the kangaroos, whereas his critic advocated against them. The room got very quiet.

The best hope for closing the knowledge translation gap lies with future scientists and with all of our children because they have not yet been inoculated against compassion for animals. One can do “good science” and still feel for animals, and indeed, we’ve already seen that compassion and concern for animals can produce better science. Once this knowledge becomes integrated, business as usual will look very different.

By encouraging schools and parents to include humane education we can hope to raise children who both understand that animals have feelings and, more importantly, translate this into their daily lives and choices. Marc has been writing a lot on the notion of “rewilding education,” retuning our relationship with earth, and getting youngsters off their butts and out into nature. [vii] A recent report has shown that prisoners in a maximum-security facility in the United States are guaranteed two hours of outdoor time every day, whereas 50 percent of youngsters worldwide spend less than an hour outside each day. [viii] Not only will our children benefit, but so too will future generations as we negotiate the challenging and frustrating path through the Anthropocene.

What research into animal cognition and emotion continues to demonstrate is just how intertwined we are, evolutionarily. Human exceptionalism, the idea that we are of a different sort altogether, and thus (in our own self-serving logic) have a right to do as we please, is scientifically unsupportable. Writing about the 2015 discovery of fossils from an early human relative called Homo naledi , renowned primatologist Frans de Waal wrote, “We are trying way too hard to deny that we are modified apes. The discovery of these fossils is a major paleontological breakthrough. Why not seize this moment to overcome our anthropocentrism and recognize the fuzziness of the distinctions within our extended family? We are one rich collection of mosaics, not only genetically and anatomically, but also mentally.” [ix]

Fostering Freedoms

As we were in the early stages of writing this book, Marc received an e-mail from his friend Jennifer Miller, who was working at a reintroduction center for previously captive parrots in Costa Rica. Jennifer told him the story of a great green macaw who had escaped from the center. The fate of the parrot became a source of argument among the center’s staff. Jennifer’s feeling was that they should not try to recapture the animal and should just let him be free. Others strongly disagreed, feeling that it was their obligation to find him and bring him back because he would likely perish on his own in the wild. This story is a wonderful example of how freedom for animals means different things for different people, and how freedom can conflict with other values.

We decided to ask some colleagues to share their thoughts about what freedom means for animals. Here are some of their responses:

Michael Tobias (award-winning author and filmmaker): “We have no idea what freedom means. But we can certainly appreciate what the lack of freedom means.”

Sarah Bexell (Institute for Human-Animal Connection, University of Denver): “Self-determination . . . including the choice of where to roam, fly, swim, choice of friends, choice of activities, choice of food, choice of mates, choice of home/nest, and even poor choices that end their lives, but at least death came in the midst of freedom.”

Jo-Anne McArthur (director of the video "The Ghosts in Our Machine" and author of We Animals ): “To be free from bodily and psychological exploitation by humans . . . to be respected by humans and not objectified.”

George Schaller (world-renowned conservation biologist): “An intriguing question. I just returned yesterday from eastern Tibet in search of nonhuman animals. An animal in the wild is free to spend much of its time in search of food or starve, competing for status and mates, and remaining alert to avoid becoming prey. A captive animal is fed well, its social life , if any, confined to cellmates, and, secure from danger, its existence is blunted and banal, its evolutionary force spent, placing it among the living dead.”

Hope Ferdowsian (physician and bioethicist): “The same as for humans. Freedom to meet our basic physical needs, whatever those might be by species and individual—including freedom of movement (bodily liberty); safe and secure from harm from humans (bodily integrity—and this should include freedom from harm to the mind); freedom to love and bond with whom we wish; respect for our choices, and freedom from humiliation and intentional shaming .”

This is a sampling of what freedom means to people who have worked in diverse sectors of the human-animal interface. But the story of the macaw reminds us that we need also, and especially, to think about what freedom means to animals. What did freedom mean to the escaped bird? To be free to fly but possibly not survive long, or to delay freedom of flight until better equipped to survive longer? Maybe he gave us his answer by escaping.

Transitioning from Welfare to Well-Being: The Adjacent Possible

A recent issue of the Atlantic featured as its Big Question, “Which contemporary habits will be most unthinkable 100 years from now?” One of the responses was, “Eating animals for their protein.” [x] It is indeed possible to imagine a future in which people will look back at how animals were treated in the early twenty-first century and shudder with horror. “They were barbarians,” they may well say about us. “How could they possibly ignore animal sentience and suffering?” They might say this about all of the venues of animal use about which we have written.

Steven Johnson, who has studied and written about the history of innovation , explores the notion of what he calls the adjacent possible. [xi] The adjacent possible, writes Johnson, “is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.” The past and present prepare us for any number of futures. Depending on what groundwork has been laid and what ideas are floating around, certain new thoughts become thinkable. As Johnson suggests, “The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations.”[xii]

The pieces are here right now for a major paradigm shift in how we think about and interact with other animals. Indeed, they have been here for quite a while, but few are bold enough to say “enough is enough.” A future is possible in which humans and other animals coexist peacefully, where nonviolence is the norm rather than the exception, and where exploiting animals will be viewed as morally offensive. Welfarism raises the ante by acknowledging that animals have feelings and that these feelings matter. But in continuing to favor human interests above the interests of individual animals, it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Enhancing the freedoms and well-being of individual animals, and championing the peaceful coexistence and harmony of animals and people, opens the door to a new “adjacent possible.” The Anthropocene—the Age of Humanity—may well evolve into the Compassionocene. Building on the momentum of increased global concern for the well-being of individual animals, we must work toward a future of greater compassion, freedom, and justice for all. This is the right thing to do.

[i] Kathleen McLaughlin, “ China Finally Setting Guidelines for Treating Lab Animals ," Science, March 21, 2016; Richard Denison, “ Historic deal on TSCA reform reached, setting stage for a new law after 40 years of waiting, ” EDF Health, May 23, 2016; " Ban Animal Use in Military Medical Training, " Editorial Board, The New York Times, June 27, 2016; Uke Goñi, “ Buenos Aires zoo to close after 140 years: 'Captivity is degrading' ” The Guardian June 23, 2016; Amanda Lindner, “ Oh Yeah! Iran Bans Use of Wild Animals in Circuses! ,” One Green Planet, March 30, 2016; Humane Society International, “ More than 42 Airlines Adopt Wildlife Trophy Bans after Cecil the Lion’s Death ,” August 27, 2015,

[ii] Broom and Fraser, Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare , p. 6, our italics.

[iii] Ibid., 14.

[iv] David Mellor, “ Updating Animal Welfare Thinking: Moving beyond the 'Five Freedoms' towards 'A Life Worth Living' ”

[v] Yuval Noah Harari, “ Industrial Farming Is One of the Worst Crimes in History ,” Guardian, September 25, 2015.

[vi] Broom and Fraser, Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare , 6.

[vii] Marc Bekoff, Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence

[viii] Katherine Martinko, “ Children Spend Less Time Outside Than Prison Inmates ,” TreeHugger, March 25, 2016,

[ix] Frans de Waal, “ Who Apes Whom? ” New York Times, September 15, 2015.

[x] Atlantic, June 2015, " Which Contemporary Habits Will Be Most Unthinkable 100 Years From Now? "

[xi] The theory of the adjacent possible was first proposed by biophysicist Stuart Kauffman in 2002, but Johnson is the first to apply the concept to creative thought.

[xii] Steven Johnson, “ The Genius of the Tinkerer ,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2010. See also Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation .

Excerpted and updated from The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age, written with Psychology Today writer Dr. Jessica Pierce .

Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. , is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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World Animal Day: a Global Movement for Animal Rights and Welfare

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World Animal Day 2021: Theme, History, Objective and significance of celebrating animal day

Animal day: the  world animal day theme 2021 is “forests and livelihoods: sustaining people and plant”. the day is celebrated in various countries around the world by organizing campaigns, contests, events, workshops, etc..

World Animal Day 2021: World Animal Welfare Day is observed all over the world every year on October 4. Animal Day is a global initiative for the welfare of animals and aims at raising awareness about their significant role in nature and for maintaining the ecological balance. For animal lovers, this day is much more prominent and gives them an opportunity to contribute towards the welfare of the animals in every way possible.

There is no future for factory farming, and we will work to end it. Together, we are changing the way the world works to end animal cruelty and suffering. Forever. On #WorldFarmAnimalsDay , join us and help end animal cruelty: https://t.co/qAn5EuTeoo pic.twitter.com/CHZatjgyK7 — World Animal Protection (@MoveTheWorld) October 2, 2021

World Animal Day Theme 2021

World animal day: history.

Animal Day is observed every year on October 4. This particular date was chosen in honour of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. This international day of action for the welfare of animals falls on the feast day of Francis of Assisi.

The very first World Animal Day was commemorated on March 24, 1925, by Heinrich Zimmermann, at the Sports Palace in Berlin, Germany. He was a cynologist and animal protection activist. There were around 5,000 people who attended the celebration to lend support to the great cause.

Heinrich’s proposal of World Animal Day was unanimously accepted at the Congress of the International Animal Protection Congress in Florence, Italy in May 1931.

World Animal Day 2021 Significance

There is no denying the fact that animals are an integral part of our ecosystem and play as much of a significant role as humans and animals. From maintaining the ecological balance (furnishing, decomposition, carbon, nutrients, environmental protection) to bringing wellness to humans, animals are undoubtedly crucial.

World Animal Day 2021 Objective

As per the website of World Animal Day, the main objective behind celebrating World Animal Day is to raise the status of the animals and help in the improvement of their welfare standards across the world.

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World Animal Welfare Day

World Animal Day is celebrated every year on October 4 to raise awareness about improving the welfare standards of animals across the globe. World Animal Day celebration is an animal welfare movement that pushes global countries to make the world a better place for all animals . This day is very prominent for animal lovers as it gives an opportunity to contribute towards the welfare of the animals in every way possible. You will find everything you need to know about the history and significance of the day in this article.

As UPSC surprises aspirants with questions linked with what usually is assumed to be trivia; it is advisable that one must scroll through the facts about World Animal Welfare Day to get the basic information. It can be asked in UPSC Prelims from the section of current affairs, if at all asked.

Facts about World Animal Welfare Day for UPSC Exam

Read the below-mentioned facts and aid your IAS Exam preparation along with other competitive exams preparation.

The topic can be asked as a Current Affairs Question in IAS Prelims. Visit the attached link to attempt practice quizzes on current affairs .

To read more about the other Important International and National days click on the link. Such days and events become very important for UPSC Prelims.

About World Animal Welfare Day, 2023

• World Animal Welfare Day is a global initiative for the welfare of animals that educates people about the significant role of animals in nature and their importance for maintaining the ecological balance. 
• The day is a reminder that the essential work must be done to address the plight of animals- both in the domestic and wild world.
• The Day is observed in different countries around the world by organizing various campaigns, contests, events,  and workshops 
• World Animal Day theme for 2023 is “ Great or Small, Love Them All “.
• The theme for World Animal Day 2021 was ‘Forest and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet.’ The significance of the theme is to promote the peaceful co-existence of People and Animals and make this world a safer place for everyone. 
• Every year the themes are modified, keeping in mind the climatic developments around the world. Theme in 2020 was ‘Man and Dog.’
• The day is also known as ‘Animal Lovers Day’ as it promotes affection, care and protection of animals with the support of individuals and organisations who work for the rights of animals.

Background of World Animal Welfare Day

• The day was first observed on March 24, 1925 by the animal protection activist Heinrich Zimmermann .
• Presently the celebration of the day is spearheaded by UK-based animal welfare charity, Naturewatch Foundation. 
• Naturewatch Foundation launched the first World Animal Day website in 2003 which contains the lists of global World Animal Day events that take place on and around World Animal Day. It also asks the supporters to add their own events to the directory. 
• World Animal Welfare Day is celebrated in commemoration of Francis of Assisi’s birthday, the patron saint of ecology.

Significance of World Animal Welfare Day

• The day focuses on creating awareness about the effects of people and their behaviours on these speechless living creatures.
• The objective of World Animal Day is ensuring rescue shelters for the animals, raising funds, launching animal welfare programs and conducting activities that would help in raising standards and provide better conditions of animal living.
• The day also spreads awareness about cruelty to animals which include everything from pelting stones to beating and caning, using them for wrong things.

About Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI)

• AWBI is a statutory body and advisory body for the Government of India. The purpose of the body is to advise on animal welfare laws and promote animal welfare in the country of India.
• The Board was established in 1962 under Section 4 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act,1960 .
• The Board consists of 28 members, who serve for a period of 3 years.
• AWBI works to ensure that animal welfare laws in the country are obliged and also provides grants to Animal Welfare Organisations.
• Headquarters- Faridabad District of Haryana.

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Explained: What Is World Animal Day? Here's Its 90-Year-Old History

World Animal Day, celebrated on October 4 every year, is a social movement charged with the betterment of the status of animals in order to improve their welfare standards around the globe. To achieve this, various animal welfare organisations, community groups, youth and children’s clubs, businesses and individuals  come together to organise events in celebration of World Animal Day to draw international attention to animal issues. This year's theme is “Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet.”

Where and when did it begin? 

World Animal Day isn’t a recent addition to the calendar. Nine decades ago, the idea was first mooted by Heinrich Zimmermann, a German writer and publisher of the magazine Mensch und Hund /Man and Dog. He organised the first World Animal Day event on March 24, 1925, in the Sport Palace in Berlin, Germany which was attended by more than 5,000 people. Initially, he found a following only in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia. 

However, Zimmermann continued working on promoting World Animal Day. Finally, in May 1931 at a congress of the world’s animal protection organisations in Florence, Italy, his proposal to make October 4 World Animal Day universal, was accepted. This particular date was chosen in honour of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. This international day of action also falls on the feast day of Francis of Assisi. 

What is its significance? 

Also popular as ‘Animal Lovers Day’, its aim is to encourage love, care, affection and protection of animals through the involvement of individuals and organisations who work for the rights of animals.

Ecosystems are extremely fragile and when any species becomes extinct, it has serious repercussions. Therefore, it becomes essential to maintain the balance in ecosystems and protect them. Over the years, World Animal Day has seen great success in improving the lives of animals.

Amina Abaza, who hails from Egypt and heads the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt (SPARE), has used World Animal Day to successfully lobby for the addition of a clause about animal welfare in the new Egyptian Constitution. Similarly, the parliament of Sudan has introduced new legislation meant to protect animals. 

Today, there are 89 ambassadors raising awareness, and encouraging participation in 76 countries around the globe. 

What are animal rights? 

Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice. In the similar fashion of how human rights work, animal rights also aim to protect animals from cruelty and provide freedom.

Animal rights are in direct conflict with animal exploitation, which includes animals used by humans for a variety of reasons, be it food, experimental objects or even pets. Animal rights can also be violated when it comes to the destruction of animal habitats by humans. This too has a negative impact on the animals' ability to live full lives of their own choosing. 

How are animal rights different from animal welfare? 

Animal rights are distinguishable from animal welfare. In general, the term "animal rights" is the belief that humans do not have a right to use animals for their own purposes. "Animal welfare" is the belief that humans do have a right to use animals as long as the animals are treated humanely. 

"Animal welfare" encompasses a wide range of viewpoints, whereas animal rights are more absolute. Some animal welfare supporters may urge for a fur ban, while others may consider that fur is morally acceptable if the animals are killed "humanely" and do not suffer excessively in a trap. The term "animal welfare" can also refer to the speciesist belief that some animals (such as dogs, cats, and horses) are more deserving of protection than others (e.g. fish, chickens, cows). 

Other important days

There are also other days linked to animals such as World Farmed Animals Day (October 2), World Day for Laboratory Animals (April 24), World Wildlife Day (March 3) and many more. However, World Animal Day is the one day of the year that embraces all animals and the unique concerns of each, in every country. It unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force for change.

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World Animal Day: The importance of animal rights and welfare

Updated Oct 4, 2022, 00:24 IST

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World Animal Welfare Day 2023: Date, theme, history and significance

World animal welfare day 2023: check out the date, theme, history and significance..

Listen to Story

World Animal Day, also known as World Animal Welfare Day or World Animal Protection Day, is an annual event with the primary objective of commemorating the rights and well-being of animals worldwide. This occasion serves as a unifying platform that galvanizes the global animal protection movement, striving to create a more humane world for all living creatures.

WORLD ANIMAL WELFARE DAY 2023: DATE

World animal welfare day 2023: theme, world animal welfare day 2023: history.

The concept for World Animal Day was conceived by Heinrich Zimmermann, a writer and editor of the German publication Man and Dog. On March 24, 1925, Zimmermann orchestrated the inaugural World Animal Day event at the Sports Palace in Berlin, Germany. Historical records indicate that more than 5,000 individuals attended this remarkable occasion. Zimmermann devoted countless hours to advancing the cause of World Animal Day.

Drive safely on the road. Because these special creatures have a family too. #WorldAnimalDay pic.twitter.com/VXnywo7E8q — Punjab Police India (@PunjabPoliceInd) October 4, 2023

WORLD ANIMAL WELFARE DAY 2023: SIGNIFICANCE

World Animal Day serves as a rallying point for passionate animal advocates from across the globe who come together to celebrate and contribute to the cause of animal protection and conservation in their unique ways. Each year, there is a noticeable surge in participation in World Animal Day, with a multitude of inspirational events taking place in numerous nations. Animal enthusiasts from every corner of the world come together to commemorate this day.

Collectively, we can make a promise to safeguard and preserve animals for future generations, and each individual can play a pivotal role in having a positive impact. Published By: Apoorva Anand Published On: Oct 4, 2023 READ | Boost your gut health with these 6 superfoods

Animal Essay

500 Words Essay on Animal

Animals carry a lot of importance in our lives. They offer humans with food and many other things. For instance, we consume meat, eggs, dairy products. Further, we use animals as a pet too. They are of great help to handicaps. Thus, through the animal essay, we will take a look at these creatures and their importance.

Types of Animals

First of all, all kinds of living organisms which are eukaryotes and compose of numerous cells and can sexually reproduce are known as animals. All animals have a unique role to play in maintaining the balance of nature.

A lot of animal species exist in both, land and water. As a result, each of them has a purpose for their existence. The animals divide into specific groups in biology. Amphibians are those which can live on both, land and water.

Reptiles are cold-blooded animals which have scales on their body. Further, mammals are ones which give birth to their offspring in the womb and have mammary glands. Birds are animals whose forelimbs evolve into wings and their body is covered with feather.

They lay eggs to give birth. Fishes have fins and not limbs. They breathe through gills in water. Further, insects are mostly six-legged or more. Thus, these are the kinds of animals present on earth.

Importance of Animals

Animals play an essential role in human life and planet earth. Ever since an early time, humans have been using animals for their benefit. Earlier, they came in use for transportation purposes.

Further, they also come in use for food, hunting and protection. Humans use oxen for farming. Animals also come in use as companions to humans. For instance, dogs come in use to guide the physically challenged people as well as old people.

In research laboratories, animals come in use for drug testing. Rats and rabbits are mostly tested upon. These researches are useful in predicting any future diseases outbreaks. Thus, we can protect us from possible harm.

Astronomers also use animals to do their research. They also come in use for other purposes. Animals have use in various sports like racing, polo and more. In addition, they also have use in other fields.

They also come in use in recreational activities. For instance, there are circuses and then people also come door to door to display the tricks by animals to entertain children. Further, they also come in use for police forces like detection dogs.

Similarly, we also ride on them for a joyride. Horses, elephants, camels and more come in use for this purpose. Thus, they have a lot of importance in our lives.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of Animal Essay

Thus, animals play an important role on our planet earth and in human lives. Therefore, it is our duty as humans to protect animals for a better future. Otherwise, the human race will not be able to survive without the help of the other animals.

FAQ on Animal Essay

Question 1: Why are animals are important?

Answer 1: All animals play an important role in the ecosystem. Some of them help to bring out the nutrients from the cycle whereas the others help in decomposition, carbon, and nitrogen cycle. In other words, all kinds of animals, insects, and even microorganisms play a role in the ecosystem.

Question 2: How can we protect animals?

Answer 2: We can protect animals by adopting them. Further, one can also volunteer if one does not have the means to help. Moreover, donating to wildlife reserves can help. Most importantly, we must start buying responsibly to avoid companies which harm animals to make their products.

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Speech essay on World Animal Welfare Day 4 October

Are you searching for Speech Essay on World Animal Welfare Day celebrated on 4 October. If Yes, Then you are at Right Place.

This Speech Essay is under Essay Writing topic.

Good morning to the principal, respected teachers, and fellow students of the school. Today we have gathered to celebrate World Animal Welfare Day.

The celebration of the World Animal Welfare Day is marked on 4 th October every year. The main aim of celebrating the day is to share awareness about animal rights that must be followed to secure wellbeing of animals across the globe. The first initiative of the international event was taken from 1925 in order to control the dreadful suffering of wild, farm and endangered animals. Active involvement of international communities has helped to spread knowledge about necessary treatment and welfare services that must be provided to animals. The participation of modern researcher has also assisted in recognizing animals as individual personalities. Rapid civilization has created an in-depth existential crisis for animals all around the globe. Inclusion of Welfare Protection Policies have helped to deal with the complex lives of living animals.

Different awareness programs and educational conferences are done to make people aware of the welfare and treatment opportunities that are provided to wild and domestic animals across the nations. Pet adoption events are also done to secure shelter for stray dogs. Educational events are arranged at schools by showing animal-related documents or films to make young generation concerned about the wellbeing of animals. The suggestion of experts helps to find out advancement of treatment that must be adopted in veterinary hospitals. Social media promotion is done to raise awareness about the core mission of celebrating World Animal Day. Peaceful protest marches or marathons are conducted in order to raise voice against the maltreatment faced by the animals. Fundraising events are also organised to collect money that are provided to secure welfare and treatment service for wild and farmed animals across the globe.

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Protect the World’s Most Endangered Animals This Endangered Species Day

We are witnessing a profound loss of species across the globe largely due to human-caused activities. More than 460 species have been declared extinct in just the last decade and hundreds more are on their way.

The third Friday of May is reserved as a day to learn about endangered species and how we can take action to protect them from extinction. Join Defenders of Wildlife as we celebrate Endangered Species Day and share the stories of some of the world’s most endangered animals.  

What are the most endangered animals in the world?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies over 44,000 global species as threatened with extinction. Tigers, gorillas, red pandas, black-footed ferrets and golden-cheeked warblers are among the thousands of species classified as “endangered.” Among the animals listed as “critically endangered,” or those facing the most extreme risk of extinction in the wild, are African forest elephants, black rhinos, North Atlantic right whales, Red Wolves, Chinese alligators and several frog species. In fact, 41% of all amphibians like frogs and salamanders are threatened with extinction and may be one of the most endangered classes of animals.

Why are tigers, rhinos, elephants, pandas and whales endangered?

Animals become endangered for a variety of reasons, but most are vulnerable because of human-caused threats. Tigers, lions, elephants and rhinos were historically overhunted and still face poaching threats today. Some of these animals’ parts were used in traditional medicine or could be sold for their luxurious coats. Whales were also historically hunted, but for meat or oil. The latter was extracted from baleen whales’ blubber and used as an early fuel source. Today, whales are at most risk of deadly vessel strikes and lack of food in their historic habitats.

Like many wildlife, giant pandas – sometimes referred to as panda bears – and unrelated red pandas face threats to their habitats. As humans continue to expand their developments, wildlife ecosystems are destroyed, fragmenting or disconnecting corridors, creating additional problems for animals who need to move between areas of larger habitat.  

What are some of the most endangered species in the U.S.?

Red Wolves, North Atlantic right whales, California condors, sea otters, black-footed ferrets and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles are among some of the most endangered animals in the U.S. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. has effective tools and sound science to provide protections for imperiled wildlife, but the ESA is chronically underfunded and consistently under threat from politicians and special interests prioritizing profit over nature.  

How is Defenders of Wildlife helping some of the world’s most endangered species?

Defenders is fighting for imperiled animals in the field across the U.S., on Capitol Hill and in the courts. We are committed to protecting and advocating for the ESA. In the 118th Congress alone, our nation’s most effective conservation law faced more than 70 attacks so far, and the Congress is not over yet. The ESA also remains severely underfunded. Defenders’ latest analysis shows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service receives only about 40% of the funding needed to fully implement the ESA.  

North Atlantic right whales

One of Defenders’ most urgent and ongoing legal and legislative fights is to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. There are fewer than 360 right whales remaining on Earth, and every day they face the threat of deadly vessel strikes and fishing gear entanglement. Every single calf is vital to this species’ survival and should serve as hope for the species’ future. Instead, these calves face a 1 in 14 chance of dying from a vessel strike before their first birthday. The administration must issue a final revised vessel speed rule – replacing an out-of-date and ineffective rule unchanged since 2008 – if right whales are to have a future on this planet.  

The Red Wolf, endemic to the U.S., lost 99.7% of its historical territory due to poaching and misinformation. There are only an estimated 20-25 remaining in the wild in North Carolina today. Defenders is and has worked on Red Wolf recovery since the mid-1980s through a combination of advocacy, public education and litigation. In August 2023, Defenders reached a landmark settlement that guarantees continued federal recovery efforts, requiring annual plans to release Red Wolves into the wild.

What can people do today to help protect endangered species?

• Learn and Share – Discover more about the endangered species around you and share factual information to raise awareness about endangered animals! Check out our wildlife pages and read our blog to learn about the animals you care most about.
• Clean up – Picking up trash can keep it from clogging up our landscapes and prevent animals from eating items they mistake for food. Secure your trashcans from critters looking for their next snack and never throw food out of your car window as it may draw wildlife dangerously close to the road. Go a step further and reduce your use of single-use plastics to minimize impact at the source!
• No Invasives - Reduce the impact of invasive species. Learn about native plants and keep your yard as natural as possible. What you plant could help protect wildlife, right in your backyard!  
• Slow Down – Whether you are driving a car or a boat, obey speed limits and watch for animals in your path. Safely stopping and allowing an animal to cross will not only save their life, but can also protect you, your passengers and your vehicle.  
• Support – Volunteer and donate to organizations, like Defenders, who are working to save endangered species and their habitats!  
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Walt Disney World celebrates Mother's Day with birth of rare antelope

Disney's animal kingdom celebrates birth of rare baby addax.

Disney's Animal Kingdom is celebrating the birth of a rare animal -- an addax -- just in time for Mother's Day. A baby addax named Julien is vital for this distinct species of antelope with a large head and long spiraling horns.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Walt Disney World is celebrating Mother’s Day with the birth of a rare antelope that you could see when visiting.

The 2-month-old addax named Julien and his mom Juniper are doing well and will soon join the rest of the herd of antelope on the savannah at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.

"Juniper and Julian are doing amazing. They're living behind the scenes right now. Still trying to figure out as a first-time mom exactly what she's supposed to be doing," said Lindsay Cooper, an Animal Keeper at Disney. "Julian is, of course, exploring and trying to figure out the addax life."

The addax is a species of antelope known for its curly horns. They are a critically endangered species with less than 100 left in the wild. The animal care team at Walt Disney World is working to help increase the population with births like Julien. He’s the first male calf born at the resort.

"For Julian to be a representative of his species here, where guests are going to be able to come and see him and Juniper out on the savannah. It's really a great opportunity to be able to connect guests with these animals that they may not necessarily ever get a chance to see in their lifetime," said Cooper.

Walt Disney World is celebrating Mother’s Day with the birth of a rare antelope that you could see when visiting. (Credit: Walt Disney World Resort)

Juniper is a new mother. She was born at the park in 2021 and her life hasn’t been easy. Her mother sadly died from natural complications during childbirth. "She was born and was not able to nurse from her mother. She suffered from a condition called failure, passive transfer, where she didn't get that important first mother's milk, and needed to have a plasma transfusion," said Dr. Deidre Karen Fontenot, a veterinarian with Walt Disney World.

"We have a lot of mothers and fathers on our health team and our veterinarians, so it's hard to not have that personal connection and have it really pull the heartstrings when you see Juniper, who’s had such a great journey and her health to really be able to come full circle," said Dr. Fontenot.

Juniper is a fighter and now a mother too, raising, protecting, and neutering her little baby.

"Thinking about how Juniper started out in life without a mother, and now she is a mother. In fact, on Mother's Day, it's a really exciting time for all of us," said Cooper. "Just celebrating Juniper and where she started and now where she's at, like, our team just couldn't be more proud of her. Oh, my gosh, that's amazing." 

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Francine Frazier , Senior digital producer

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Today is World Lupus Day, also known as Put on Purple Day. It’s an effort to raise awareness about an autoimmune disease that attacks the body.

Five million people are living with lupus worldwide, and 1.5 million Americans are living with the disease, including News4JAX Anchor Amanda DeVoe.

She spoke Friday with a lupus ambassador about her journey of finding a cure.

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One Alberta local recently managed to catch a special moose spotting on camera - a rare one, even for Canada.

Video captured by Theresa Tanner on Monday April 29 shows an elusive all-white moose crossing the street in rural Alberta around dusk. The moose, accompanied by one with the typical darker brown color, can be seen in the clip prancing down an embankment, out of a wooded area and down towards the otherwise empty road.

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In this photo essay on Mother's day 2024, meet Nelda Gaitan, who changed the trajectory of her father’s farm, to secure a brighter future for her daughters.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day this time of year, we are inspired by the women around the world who are making a better life for their families. In Nicaragua, Nelda Gaitan is one such mother who has changed the trajectory of her father’s farm, turning it into a sustainable livelihood and securing a hopeful future for her two daughters. 

A Mother’s Day Essay: Meet Nelda Gaitan

Meet Nelda Gaitan, a 37-year-old mother of two who lives in the community of Temuá, Nicaragua. She and her two daughters are in charge of a 0.5-hectare plot of land that Nelda’s father left as her inheritance. Being one of the few women working in the sector has been difficult, but the challenges she has encountered as a farmer and a businesswoman have motivated her to push each day for new solutions for her family. 

Nelda started planting pitahaya five years ago. Pitahaya is a cactus native to southern Mexico and Central America, where it is grown in dry, tropical zones for use in juices and pulps. 

In the first three years, Nelda had low yields. She considered growing other varieties or even eliminating the crop. But in 2019, Nelda heard of TechnoServe’s Smallholder Market Access Program , an agricultural and marketing program in Guatemala and Nicaragua. The program aims to improve the livelihoods of 5,000 farmers by training them to improve the quality and quantity of their yields and to connect their improved production to formal, high-value market systems. 

Nelda changed her operations after learning new techniques from a TechnoServe farmer trainer. Rather than investing in a new crop, she now has the skills to reduce her operating costs while maintaining and improving her hard-won pitahaya crop. Even as extreme drought and storm events increase in frequency across Central America , low-cost strategies such as capturing rainwater within her plot can help to conserve water and reduce erosion. Improved farm planning approaches have also allowed her to better identify the most important activities for her operation and to plan how she invests her resources in each one. 

Thanks to her hard work, Nelda has not needed loans to maintain her farm and household. She can continue pursuing her business goals.

Beyond her personal success, Nelda is a mother who is motivated to lift up her fellow women farmers. She explains, “Women in the community are [usually] housewives, and even though they perform agricultural activities on the farm, they don’t participate in decision-making on its income…I see myself as an example and am proud because I am the highest-producing farmer in the community and can educate my daughters. One is in elementary school, and the other is in her second year at university.”

Despite the challenging conditions, Nelda continues selling her product to a local exporter and fruit pulp processor. The income has allowed her to sustain her household and make new investments. 

Above all, Nelda’s motivation to build a successful business comes from building a bright future for her daughters. 

She says, “I have hope for a better future for myself and my family. I want to expand my pitahaya production and even start a store.”

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Elektrostal

Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Area, Altitude, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna .

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Xbox Game Pass Confirms New Day One Game for May 23

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Rumor: Another Xbox Game Pass Price Hike and More Bad News May Be Coming

New report is grim for ps plus and xbox game pass, xbox game pass adds day-one open-world game.

• Galacticare joins Xbox Game Pass on May 23, offering subscribers a day one game experience.
• Galacticare is a sci-fi hospital management game.
• May 2024 lineup includes titles like Hauntii and Hellblade 2.

A release date trailer has confirmed that day one game Galacticare is coming to Xbox Game Pass on May 23. While multiple games have already been added to the Xbox Game Pass lineup in May, only one of them was a day one release.

The new Xbox Game Pass games for May 2024 were kicked off with the addition of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition on May 2, followed by Kona 2: Brume on May 7. And then, day one game Little Kitty, Big City was added to Xbox Game Pass on May 9. Little Kitty, Big City is a well-reviewed open world adventure game that has earned praise for its sense of humor and amusing concept.

A new report suggests that Microsoft is considering another Xbox Game Pass price hike, along with other potential bad news for its subscribers.

Now Xbox Game Pass subscribers have yet another day one game to look forward to in May 2024. It's been confirmed that day one game Galacticare is coming to Xbox Game Pass on May 23, available on PC and Xbox Series X. Anyone not subscribed to Xbox Game Pass should note that Galacticare will also be available on PS5 and through the Epic Games Store and Steam on PC. For those unfamiliar with the game, Galacticare is a sci-fi management sim where players run alien hospitals in space.

New Xbox Game Pass Games for May 2024

• Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition - May 2
• Kona 2: Brume - May 7
• Little Kitty, Big City - May 9
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - May 14
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 - May 21
• Galacticare - May 23
• Hauntii - May 23

Galacticare isn't the only day one game coming to Xbox Game Pass on May 23. Xbox Game Pass subscribers can also look forward to the addition of adventure game Hauntii on that very same day . Hauntii has players exploring the afterlife, which they can do using special paranormal powers. The game's striking art style has helped it stand out among the other new Game Pass additions in May 2024. Xbox Game Pass subscribers will be spoiled for choice with both Hauntii and Galacticare dropping on the same day.

Two other games have been confirmed for the Xbox Game Pass May 2024 lineup: Brothers and Hellblade 2 . First up is the Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons remake , which is joining the service on May 14. This enhanced version of the critically-acclaimed adventure game features improved visuals and co-op support.

The headlining new Xbox Game Pass game for May 2024 is Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 . Hellblade 2 is joining the Xbox Game Pass lineup on May 21, providing subscribers with the long-awaited follow-up to Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice . There are high expectations for Hellblade 2 , and it will be interesting to see if it lives up to the high bar set by the original game.

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40 Facts About Elektrostal

Written by Lanette Mayes

Modified & Updated: 10 May 2024

Reviewed by Jessica Corbett

Elektrostal is a vibrant city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia. With a rich history, stunning architecture, and a thriving community, Elektrostal is a city that has much to offer. Whether you are a history buff, nature enthusiast, or simply curious about different cultures, Elektrostal is sure to captivate you.

This article will provide you with 40 fascinating facts about Elektrostal, giving you a better understanding of why this city is worth exploring. From its origins as an industrial hub to its modern-day charm, we will delve into the various aspects that make Elektrostal a unique and must-visit destination.

So, join us as we uncover the hidden treasures of Elektrostal and discover what makes this city a true gem in the heart of Russia.

Key Takeaways:

• Elektrostal, known as the “Motor City of Russia,” is a vibrant and growing city with a rich industrial history, offering diverse cultural experiences and a strong commitment to environmental sustainability.
• With its convenient location near Moscow, Elektrostal provides a picturesque landscape, vibrant nightlife, and a range of recreational activities, making it an ideal destination for residents and visitors alike.

Known as the “Motor City of Russia.”

Elektrostal, a city located in the Moscow Oblast region of Russia, earned the nickname “Motor City” due to its significant involvement in the automotive industry.

Home to the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Elektrostal is renowned for its metallurgical plant, which has been producing high-quality steel and alloys since its establishment in 1916.

Boasts a rich industrial heritage.

Elektrostal has a long history of industrial development, contributing to the growth and progress of the region.

Founded in 1916.

The city of Elektrostal was founded in 1916 as a result of the construction of the Elektrostal Metallurgical Plant.

Located approximately 50 kilometers east of Moscow.

Elektrostal is situated in close proximity to the Russian capital, making it easily accessible for both residents and visitors.

Known for its vibrant cultural scene.

Elektrostal is home to several cultural institutions, including museums, theaters, and art galleries that showcase the city’s rich artistic heritage.

A popular destination for nature lovers.

Surrounded by picturesque landscapes and forests, Elektrostal offers ample opportunities for outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and birdwatching.

Hosts the annual Elektrostal City Day celebrations.

Every year, Elektrostal organizes festive events and activities to celebrate its founding, bringing together residents and visitors in a spirit of unity and joy.

Has a population of approximately 160,000 people.

Elektrostal is home to a diverse and vibrant community of around 160,000 residents, contributing to its dynamic atmosphere.

Boasts excellent education facilities.

The city is known for its well-established educational institutions, providing quality education to students of all ages.

A center for scientific research and innovation.

Elektrostal serves as an important hub for scientific research, particularly in the fields of metallurgy, materials science, and engineering.

Surrounded by picturesque lakes.

The city is blessed with numerous beautiful lakes, offering scenic views and recreational opportunities for locals and visitors alike.

Well-connected transportation system.

Elektrostal benefits from an efficient transportation network, including highways, railways, and public transportation options, ensuring convenient travel within and beyond the city.

Famous for its traditional Russian cuisine.

Food enthusiasts can indulge in authentic Russian dishes at numerous restaurants and cafes scattered throughout Elektrostal.

Home to notable architectural landmarks.

Elektrostal boasts impressive architecture, including the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and the Elektrostal Palace of Culture.

Offers a wide range of recreational facilities.

Residents and visitors can enjoy various recreational activities, such as sports complexes, swimming pools, and fitness centers, enhancing the overall quality of life.

Provides a high standard of healthcare.

Elektrostal is equipped with modern medical facilities, ensuring residents have access to quality healthcare services.

Home to the Elektrostal History Museum.

The Elektrostal History Museum showcases the city’s fascinating past through exhibitions and displays.

A hub for sports enthusiasts.

Elektrostal is passionate about sports, with numerous stadiums, arenas, and sports clubs offering opportunities for athletes and spectators.

Celebrates diverse cultural festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal hosts a variety of cultural festivals, celebrating different ethnicities, traditions, and art forms.

Electric power played a significant role in its early development.

Elektrostal owes its name and initial growth to the establishment of electric power stations and the utilization of electricity in the industrial sector.

Boasts a thriving economy.

The city’s strong industrial base, coupled with its strategic location near Moscow, has contributed to Elektrostal’s prosperous economic status.

Houses the Elektrostal Drama Theater.

The Elektrostal Drama Theater is a cultural centerpiece, attracting theater enthusiasts from far and wide.

Popular destination for winter sports.

Elektrostal’s proximity to ski resorts and winter sport facilities makes it a favorite destination for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter activities.

Promotes environmental sustainability.

Elektrostal prioritizes environmental protection and sustainability, implementing initiatives to reduce pollution and preserve natural resources.

Home to renowned educational institutions.

Elektrostal is known for its prestigious schools and universities, offering a wide range of academic programs to students.

Committed to cultural preservation.

The city values its cultural heritage and takes active steps to preserve and promote traditional customs, crafts, and arts.

Hosts an annual International Film Festival.

The Elektrostal International Film Festival attracts filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts from around the world, showcasing a diverse range of films.

Encourages entrepreneurship and innovation.

Elektrostal supports aspiring entrepreneurs and fosters a culture of innovation, providing opportunities for startups and business development.

Offers a range of housing options.

Elektrostal provides diverse housing options, including apartments, houses, and residential complexes, catering to different lifestyles and budgets.

Home to notable sports teams.

Elektrostal is proud of its sports legacy, with several successful sports teams competing at regional and national levels.

Boasts a vibrant nightlife scene.

Residents and visitors can enjoy a lively nightlife in Elektrostal, with numerous bars, clubs, and entertainment venues.

Promotes cultural exchange and international relations.

Elektrostal actively engages in international partnerships, cultural exchanges, and diplomatic collaborations to foster global connections.

Surrounded by beautiful nature reserves.

Nearby nature reserves, such as the Barybino Forest and Luchinskoye Lake, offer opportunities for nature enthusiasts to explore and appreciate the region’s biodiversity.

Commemorates historical events.

The city pays tribute to significant historical events through memorials, monuments, and exhibitions, ensuring the preservation of collective memory.

Promotes sports and youth development.

Elektrostal invests in sports infrastructure and programs to encourage youth participation, health, and physical fitness.

Hosts annual cultural and artistic festivals.

Throughout the year, Elektrostal celebrates its cultural diversity through festivals dedicated to music, dance, art, and theater.

Provides a picturesque landscape for photography enthusiasts.

The city’s scenic beauty, architectural landmarks, and natural surroundings make it a paradise for photographers.

Connects to Moscow via a direct train line.

The convenient train connection between Elektrostal and Moscow makes commuting between the two cities effortless.

A city with a bright future.

Elektrostal continues to grow and develop, aiming to become a model city in terms of infrastructure, sustainability, and quality of life for its residents.

In conclusion, Elektrostal is a fascinating city with a rich history and a vibrant present. From its origins as a center of steel production to its modern-day status as a hub for education and industry, Elektrostal has plenty to offer both residents and visitors. With its beautiful parks, cultural attractions, and proximity to Moscow, there is no shortage of things to see and do in this dynamic city. Whether you’re interested in exploring its historical landmarks, enjoying outdoor activities, or immersing yourself in the local culture, Elektrostal has something for everyone. So, next time you find yourself in the Moscow region, don’t miss the opportunity to discover the hidden gems of Elektrostal.

Q: What is the population of Elektrostal?

A: As of the latest data, the population of Elektrostal is approximately XXXX.

Q: How far is Elektrostal from Moscow?

A: Elektrostal is located approximately XX kilometers away from Moscow.

Q: Are there any famous landmarks in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to several notable landmarks, including XXXX and XXXX.

Q: What industries are prominent in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal is known for its steel production industry and is also a center for engineering and manufacturing.

Q: Are there any universities or educational institutions in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal is home to XXXX University and several other educational institutions.

Q: What are some popular outdoor activities in Elektrostal?

A: Elektrostal offers several outdoor activities, such as hiking, cycling, and picnicking in its beautiful parks.

Q: Is Elektrostal well-connected in terms of transportation?

A: Yes, Elektrostal has good transportation links, including trains and buses, making it easily accessible from nearby cities.

Q: Are there any annual events or festivals in Elektrostal?

A: Yes, Elektrostal hosts various events and festivals throughout the year, including XXXX and XXXX.

Elektrostal's fascinating history, vibrant culture, and promising future make it a city worth exploring. For more captivating facts about cities around the world, discover the unique characteristics that define each city . Uncover the hidden gems of Moscow Oblast through our in-depth look at Kolomna. Lastly, dive into the rich industrial heritage of Teesside, a thriving industrial center with its own story to tell.

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Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio

Xbox studios leader described wanting small and prestigious games in a town hall with employees today..

By Ash Parrish , a reporter who covers the business, culture, and communities of video games, with a focus on marginalized gamers and writing about the intersection of video games and sex.

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Today, one day after Microsoft announced that it would shut down four of its games studios , Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, held a town hall to discuss the division’s future goals. “We need smaller games that give us prestige and awards,” Booty told employees, according to internal remarks shared with The Verge.

For some listeners on the call, it was a surprising goal: Microsoft had just shut down the Japanese developer Tango Gameworks, which was coming off the small, prestigious hit title Hi-Fi Rush .

Hi-Fi Rush , which was a surprise release last year , was praised for its innovation and charm. The rhythm action game featured music by The Black Keys and Nine Inch Nails, with an art style that evoked the hyper-stylized games of the PS2 era. Just four months after its release, Hi-Fi Rush hit 3 million players . During the 2023–2024 awards season, the game went on to win a Game Award, a Game Developers Choice award, and a BAFTA.

While Microsoft hasn’t shared sales data, it was apparently happy with the game. When rumors swirled that it wasn’t doing well commercially, Aaron Greenberg, vice president of Xbox games marketing, wrote on X that Hi-Fi Rush “was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations.”

By all accounts, including Microsoft’s own, Tango Gameworks made a hit and something wholly unlike anything it’s made before . Before Hi-Fi Rush , Tango Gameworks was known exclusively for its survival horror games, including The Evil Within series and Ghostwire: Tokyo . In an interview with Kinda Funny Games , Xbox head Phil Spencer spoke about how important it was for Xbox to allow studios to make games outside their comfort zones.

“I want to give the teams the creative platform to go and push their ability, push their aspirations,” Spencer said.

Hi-Fi Rush also represented Microsoft’s commitment to bringing Japanese exclusives to the console. In an interview with Game Watch , a Japanese video game media outlet, Spencer praised Hi-Fi Rush for its “high quality” and said that players could “expect” to see more AAA titles from Japan, evoking the days when Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon were both exclusives on the Xbox 360. “While there are titles we can’t announce yet,” Spencer said in the September 2023 interview, translated by VGC , “we are currently developing new games in collaboration with Japanese companies.” It’s worth wondering if that’s still the plan now that Tango is shut down.

Right now, small single-player games like Hi-Fi Rush are having a huge moment. Balatro , a poker roguelike made by a single developer, sold over 1 million copies in its first month . Manor Lords , another solo-dev project in early access on Steam, has also sold over 1 million copies . Hades 2 just released in early access and doubled its predecessor’s all-time peak player count on Steam in a single day. Even the original Hades is climbing back up the Steam charts, breaking its all-time peak player count record just today almost four years after its initial release.

While we don’t know exactly what sales goals Microsoft had for Hi-Fi Rush , clearly there is a demonstrated appetite for this kind of game, with Tango Gameworks positioned perfectly to deliver it. In fact, according to a report from Bloomberg , Tango Gameworks was in the process of pitching a sequel to Hi-Fi Rush before it got shut down.

With Hi-Fi Rush , Tango Gameworks gave Microsoft just what Booty says he wants: a small, creatively unique, highly praised, award-winning game. Booty’s comments, then, suggest that Xbox’s leaders couldn’t recognize what they had on their hands — or simply didn’t know how to take advantage of the success they were seeking out.

We reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Correction, May 8th:  An earlier version of this article misstated one of Hi-Fi Rush’s awards credits. It was nominated for a D.I.C.E. award, it did not win one.

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How Iran and Israel Are Unnatural Adversaries

By Karim Sadjadpour

Mr. Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“History is littered,” the British writer and politician Enoch Powell said, “with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.”

A full-blown conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel once seemed implausible. But last month, the long-running shadow war between the two nations burst into the open in a series of unprecedented drone and missile strikes, raising the specter of a fight that would contain enough advanced technology, paramilitary forces and mutual acrimony to incinerate large parts of the Middle East, collapse the global economy and entangle the United States and other major powers.

Now the two sides appear to have hit pause, but for how long? As long as Iran is ruled by an Islamist government that puts its revolutionary ideology before the national interest, the two countries will never know peace, and the Middle East will never know meaningful stability.

Iran and Israel are not natural adversaries. In contrast to other modern conflicts — between Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan — Iran and Israel have no bilateral land or resource disputes. Their national strengths — Iran is an energy titan and Israel is a tech innovator — are more complementary than competitive. The nations also have a historical affinity dating back over 2,500 years, when the Persian King Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity. Iran was the second Muslim nation, after Turkey, to recognize Israel after its founding in 1948.

Their modern animosity is best understood through the lens of ideology, not geopolitics. It began with the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dogmatic Shiite cleric who led the 1979 revolution that transformed Iran from a U.S.-allied monarchy into an anti-American theocracy. Khomeini’s 1970 treatise “ Islamic Government ,” which became the basis of the constitution that governs the Islamic Republic, is laced with tirades and threats against “wretched” and “satanic” Jews. Then, as now, antisemitism often lurked below the surface of anti-imperialism.

“We must protest and make the people aware that the Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world,” Khomeini wrote. “Since they are a cunning and resourceful group of people, I fear that — God forbid — they may one day achieve their goal and that the apathy shown by some of us may allow a Jew to rule over us one day.”

In the same manifesto, Khomeini casually advocates what in modern parlance is best understood as ethnic cleansing. “Islam,” he wrote, “has rooted out numerous groups that were a source of corruption and harm to human society.” He went on to cite the case of a “troublesome” Jewish tribe in Medina that he said was “eliminated” by the Prophet Muhammad.

Very few of the Iranian revolutionaries and Western progressives who backed Khomeini in 1979 — some of whom compared him with Mohandas K. Gandhi — had bothered to scrutinize his vision for Iran. Once in power, he built his newfound theocracy on three ideological pillars: death to America, death to Israel and the subjugation of women.

Over four decades later, the worldview of Iran’s current rulers has evolved little. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini’s 85-year-old successor and now one of the world’s longest-serving dictators, denounces Zionism in virtually every speech and was one of the few world leaders to publicly praise Hamas’s “epic” Oct. 7 attack on Israel. “We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in 2020, “who opposes and fights the Zionist regime.”

As Ayatollah Khamenei’s words make plain, the Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the few governments in the world more dedicated to abolishing another nation than advancing its own. “Death to Israel” is the regime’s rallying cry — not “Long live Iran.”

Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime has backed this language with action. Iran has spent tens of billions of dollars arming, training and financing proxy militias in five failing nations: Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq and Yemen. Together these groups constitute its so-called Axis of Resistance against America and Israel. These groups are elbow-deep in corruption and repression in their own societies, including illicit drug dealing and piracy , while pledging that they seek justice for Palestinians.

Hostility toward Israel is a useful tool for predominantly Shiite, Persian Iran to vie for leadership in the predominantly Sunni, Arab Middle East. But it should not be confused with concern for the well-being of Palestinians. In contrast to American, European and Arab governments that fund Palestinian human welfare initiatives, Iran has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into arming and financing Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran’s goal is not to build a Palestine but to demolish Israel.

And yet as much as the Islamic Republic is committed to its ideology, it is even more committed to staying in power. As the German American philosopher Hannah Arendt once put it, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.” As its careful response to Israel’s recent military strikes on Iran showed, when faced with the possibility of full-blown war or existential economic pressure, Tehran tactically retreats.

After decades of living under an economically failing, socially repressive police state, Iran’s people long ago recognized that the greatest obstacle between themselves and a normal life is their own leadership, not America or Israel. In a 2021 public opinion poll conducted from Europe, only around one-fifth of Iranians approved of their government’s support of Hamas and “Death to Israel” slogan. Few nations have Iran’s combination of natural resource wealth, human capital, geographic size and ancient history. This enormous gap between Iran’s potential and its citizens’ reality is one reason the country has experienced numerous mass uprisings over the past two decades.

Iran’s Axis of Resistance has empowered right-wing Israeli politicians far more than Palestinians over the past two decades. The threat of a Holocaust-denying Iranian regime with regional and nuclear ambitions has stoked Israeli anxieties, diverted attention from Palestinian suffering and facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab governments equally fearful of Iran. Indeed, Iran and its proxies were such a useful adversary that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu helped prop up Hamas’s rule in Gaza until the deadly attacks of Oct. 7.

“The dream of Israeli leaders,” a retired Israeli general, Amos Yadlin, told me recently, “is to one day restore normal relations with an Iranian government.”

The dream of Iran’s Islamist leaders, on the other hand, is to end Israel’s existence. Israel’s conflict with Iran has been a war of necessity, but Iran’s conflict with Israel has been a war of choice. It won’t be over until Iran has leaders who put Iranians’ interests over Israel’s destruction.

Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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