Sighs matter!

Such is the opinion of researchers at the University of West Terrier’s School of Medicine, after they analyzed data from three extensive surveys of Animal morbidity and mortality.

The team of investigators, whose medical specialties include cardiology, trichology, neurology, and gastroenterology, examined the health outcomes of twenty-eight species of Animals in The Park. The results of the retrospective study will appear in their entirety this Autumn in the prestigious journal, Sanitas.

“This study is the first of its kind to examine sighs as a marker for disease,” said Dr. Adelaide Antelope, who heads the group of researchers.

A total number of four hundred and twenty-five Animals participated in the surveys, which were conducted at UWT over a fifteen-year period. Although previous generations of physicians believed sighs to be of diagnostic and prognostic significance, that theory had fallen out of fashion by the year 8 AZ.

“Even though we continued to note sighs in the history-taking,” Dr. Antelope said, “the significance was more as an attendant behaviour rather than as a sign of more serious disease.”

According to Dr. Yazmina Yak, a senior member of the research team, sighs became an issue in the study when one particular investigator noted the frequency with which the term, “idiopathic exhalation” was used in the description of the mental state of patients who were found to suffer from serious illness.

Also among the group’s findings Dr. Antelope says, is a correlation between sighing and dying (see Figure 1 below).

“When we took a closer look at the outcomes of the sighers, we were astonished by what appeared to be an almost direct relationship,” he said.

Indeed, the study showed that Animals who presented with sighs and at least two other disease symptoms stood a seventy-two per cent greater chance of having an illness that could trigger death.

That statistic alone, says the research group, is enough to make any Animal sigh.

The Department of Well-Being and Safety is putting a positive spin on this year’s long, cold Winter.

The way the DWBS sees it, the longer the weather stays cold, the less likely it is that Park Animals will contract Small Ball Fever.

“It’s all a matter of numbers,” said Cornelius Kakapo, the DWBS Director of Public Relations, in an interview with The Mammalian Daily this morning.

“The later the arrival of Spring, the smaller the number of small balls that will enter The Park. Hence, the lower the number of cases of Small Ball Fever that we will have to treat,” he said.

Every year, the DWBS monitors the influx of small balls. This year, Kakapo says, the number has decreased significantly and the Department believes this is due to the late onset of warm weather.

The balls, which are known outside The Park as “golf” balls, harbour the deadly Small Ball Fever virus inside their dimpled surface. The SBF virus is spread when it leaks through cracks in the ball’s surface and makes contact with mucosa in the mouth or nose. Symptoms of the infection include extremely high fever, chills, aching muscles, and, eventually, pulmonary dysfunction. All Animals are at risk of developing Small Ball Fever but some groups of Animals, including Squirrels, Donkeys, the elderly, and the infirm, are at particular risk.

Despite repeated attempts and the use of a variety of methods, he DWBS has been unable to contain the number of balls that enter The Park each year.

“Small balls are the bane of our existence. We can contain them inside The Park, but there is nothing we can do to restrict their number outside our borders,” Kakapo says.

Tiger, Tiger: new study says that things are not so bright these days

A new study out of the University of West Terrier suggests that The Park’s striped and spotted Animals are at risk of psychological illness and the consequences thereof.

In a paper scheduled for publication in the May issue of the prestigious Journal of Experimental and Reactive Psychology (JERP), researchers say that striped and spotted Animals are at risk of developing a kind of “self-loathing” that, among other things, does not bode well for the survival of their species.

“Our findings were quite disturbing,” says the study’s lead researcher, psychology professor Dr. Luule Aednik.

“We looked at a number of different behavioural patterns and along with other physical evidence, they suggest that there is an increased incidence of certain types of difficulties in striped and spotted Park residents,” she says.

Those difficulties include depression and its manifestations, anger, low self-esteem, hopelessness, and various kinds of identity issues.

“In addition to these very serious conditions, what we are seeing more of in the [striped and spotted] population is a kind of psychological lethargy, brought on, we believe, by the stress of living among those who do not consider them to be equal.”

It has been well-documented that striped and spotted Animals have more problems securing decent employment than other Animals in The Park. Aednik says that facing that kind discrimination may be leading to an actual drop in the population.

“This psychological lethargy, we believe, is manifesting itself in the area of reproduction,” she says.

“Based on external statistics, we know that the number of striped and spotted Animals attending the annual Mating Dance, for instance, has dropped substantially over the past five years. And our interview subjects expressed a kind of hopelessness with regard to establishing a family. They openly admitted to feelings of unworthiness and lamented their economic insecurity. If this goes unchecked, we believe this could have a dire effect on The Park’s population.”