If it weren’t for her adoptive parents, Meena Kumar might have spent her entire childhood living in an orphanage. That couple’s adoption gave her a second chance of happiness, and it’s inspired the teenager to put forward that same kindness for her canine companions.

A Life-Changing Adoption

Meena was only nine-months-old when she was abandoned at a college campus in India. After being taken to an orphanage, she spent the next year of her life waiting to find a new family. Now that she has one, she wants to do what she can to help others in a similar position. Her focus isn’t on people, though, but rather dogs. She knows that animals are as deserving of happiness as humans, which is why she set up her own business.

Raising Money

For the last five years, Meena has been a regular at animal shelters. She loves visiting the dogs and giving them hope that things will get better for them soon. Unfortunately, due to her age, she isn’t old enough to volunteer at any of these places. That’s why she established Pet Fairy Services. Through this, she looks after other people’s pets so she can raise money for Muttville Senior Dog Rescue. This is a shelter that specializes in rehoming older dogs so they can enjoy their last few years in comfort.

$14,000 And Counting

Meena’s work with Pet Fairy Services has already raised $14,000 for the shelter. Half of that came from her own efforts, while the rest was from a donation program with Intel. Muttville Senior Dog Rescue appreciates any amount of money they receive, so to get this much because of Meena obviously meant the world to them. The teenager is just glad she can do her bit because she knows from experience that adoption changes everything.

Here’s hoping that Meena’s business continues to thrive so she can help these dogs for many years to come.

There is an unspoken assumption that only domesticated animals like dogs, goats, horses, and cats can communicate with humans. A new study, however, is challenging that notion claiming that undomesticated animals can also “talk” with us. Can you imagine talking to a kangaroo? Researchers at the University of Roehampton and the University of Sydney claim that’s more possible than you think.

“The Unsolvable Problem Task” with a Kangaroo

To find whether man and kangaroo can actually communicate, researchers did an experiment known as “the unsolvable problem task” where they tracked the behavior of 11 large marsupials after being presented with a closed box of food by a human. Instead of trying to open the box themselves, which is what undomesticated animals are expected to do, ten out of those 11 kangaroos used gazes to communicate with the human so they could open it for them. Gaze alterations between the person present and the box signal a heightened form of communication that closely resembles interactions between people and domesticated animals.

Kangaroos and Their Cognitive Abilities

This research is a continuation of a large body of work that tries to answer whether intentional communication in animals toward humans is the result of domestication or natural instinct. Lead researcher Dr. Alan McElligot from the University of Roehampton, (now based at City University of Hong Kong) has previously studied goats and how they can understand human cues. His conclusion, after both studies and other experiments, is that the kangaroo, much like dogs and goats, is a social animal that may be able to adapt its standard social behavior to include human interactions when they are present in their environment.

Dr. Alexandra Green, who was also part of the study, is hopeful that the results of this test will help the public understand kangaroos’ cognitive abilities and see them as fascinating animals rather than “as a pest.”