Susan notes: This story touching story of love and faith was emailed to me by my friend Diana in Ottawa, Canada. It’s told by Joy Scrivener, mother of three children. When the family’s dog Abbey dies, Scrivener’s daughter Meredith persuades her Mom to send a letter to God, asking him to take care of the deceased dog, which Scrivener describes (in comment posted about a year after I first published the story here on AWR), as "a little foundling; the best guess we have as to her heritage is part daschund, part fence-jumper."  The photograph which accompanies the story is NOT that of Meredith and Abbey.

With never-before-seen video, primatologist Isabel Behncke Izquierdo (a TED Fellow) shows how bonobo ape society learns from constantly playing -- solo, with friends, even as a prelude to sex.

Indeed, play appears to be the bonobos' key to problem-solving and avoiding conflict. If it works for our close cousins, why not for us?

TED Fellow Isabel Behncke Izquierdo studies the social behavior (and play behavior in particular) of wild bonobos in DR Congo.

TED Fellow Isabel Behncke Izquierdo writes: I was born and raised in Chile, and was educated in animal behaviour and evolutionary anthropology in Cambridge and Oxford.

For my PhD work, I study the social behaviour (and play behaviour in particular) of wild bonobos in DR Congo.

Beverly & Dereck Joubert live in the bush, filming and photographing lions and leopards in their natural habitat.

With stunning footage (some never before seen), they discuss their personal relationships with these majestic animals -- and their quest to save the big cats from human threats.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Think of penguins as ocean sentinels, says Dee Boersma -- they're on the frontlines of sea change. Sharing stories of penguin life and culture, she suggests that we start listening to what penguins are telling us.

Dee Boersma considers penguins ocean sentinels, helping us understand the effects of pollution, overfishing and climate change on the marine environment.

To Dee Boersma, penguins are more than charming birds in tuxes. Highly sensitive to variations in the ocean, penguins are sentinels, sounding the alarm on environmental threats to marine ecosystems. As director of the the Wildlife Conservation Society's Penguin Project, she has dedicated almost three decades to tracking them in the South Atlantic. Using "nametags" -- numbered metal bands -- Boersma and her team follow hundreds of individual penguins to learn where they go, what they eat and how they survive to the next breeding season.

1. Uh, find a baby