Animals
S


Heart - Black

Frightened mobs in Peru burn hundreds of bats with torches as coronavirus hysteria grows

Elias Marat
The Mind Unleashed
Thu, 26 Mar 2020 06:28 UTC
Scared Bat
As the coronavirus outbreak continues to grow, misinformation in the form of fake news, rumors, and gossip have continued to feed mass hysteria and panic over the deadly disease.

In Peru, this has resulted in locals attempting to fight CoViD-19 by attacking communities of bats despite the fact that the novel virus still hasn't been decisively proven to have originated from the winged creature.

On Wednesday, the Peruvian government issued a statement warning residents to stop killing bats after authorities were forced to intervene when roughly half a thousand of the flying mammals came under attack by gangs of peasants hoping to exterminate what they believed were carriers of the disease, reports Peruvian network América Noticias.

Roughly 300 of the creatures were killed in the arson attacks that took place in the small village of Culden, which lies in the Cajamarca region, after mobs attacked the caves where the bat communities dwelled, Peru's National Service of Wild Forests and Fauna (SERFOR) announced.
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Doberman

Cat and dog adoptions surge as shelters find creative ways to reach out amid pandemic

Elias Marat
The Mind Unleashed
Sat, 28 Mar 2020 10:44 UTC
Shelter puppy
The coronavirus pandemic has rippled through society, disrupting and transforming lives in myriad, unpredictable ways.

However, amid the crisis people have gone out on a limb not only to help each other but also to help homeless pets find temporary housing as animal shelters feel the impact of lockdown orders throughout the country.

Organizations like the Asheville Humane Society in North Carolina have had to suspend volunteer care jobs, forcing them to find alternatives to their traditional methods of finding foster parents for homeless cats and dogs.

However, after launching an online appeal to recruit temporary foster families, the humane organization found that their community was more than willing to step up and help take care of foster pets in need.
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Doberman

Elderly woman dies in attack by 3 dogs in New South Wales, Australia


The Sydney Morning Herald
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 11:31 UTC
One of the Bullmastiff crosses that attacked and killed an elderly woman at a Jervis Bay beach is pictured with young children
One of the Bullmastiff crosses that attacked and killed an elderly woman at a Jervis Bay beach is pictured with young children
The owner of three dogs who mauled a 91-year-old woman to death and injured four other people on the NSW South Coast has spoken of his shock, saying he "never thought in my wildest dreams" the animals would attack.

Adam Newbold sobbed as he told Nine News he had owned the dogs for seven years, referring to one of the animals as his "best mate". Mr Newbold said the dogs appeared to have "busted out the bottom of the fence" on Sunday.

The incident occurred at Collingwood Beach at Vincentia on Sunday morning, with the five people suffering cuts and bite marks.

The elderly woman died at the scene while the other four people were taken to hospital in a stable condition.

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Book 2

Swarms of bats dropping dead in Israel


Sputnik
Fri, 27 Mar 2020 13:28 UTC
Bat at night
© CC0
Some studies earlier suggested that the new coronavirus had been caused by bats, and although this theory has not been confirmed, Israeli media has suggested that that the recent mysterious deaths of the nocturnal creatures could have come as a punishment for the onset of global disease or as a sign of something even more dreadful.

Swarms of dead bats with no physical signs of trauma were spotted across Israel, raising questions and fears about the end-of-days omen.

The photos of the dead creatures lying in Gan Leumi Park in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan were first shared by Adi Moskowitz on Facebook, who asked for an explanation to the mysterious phenomenon. Similar photos and videos were published by some other users in neighbouring cities, according to Breaking Israel News, which was suspicious of the death plague among bats and even linked it to a biblical prophecy about the end of humanity as it is.
"I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the sky And the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble, And I will destroy mankind From the face of the earth — declares Hashem", says Zephaniah 1:3, which was used by Breaking Israel News website to explain the mysterious development.
Several social media users and experts have suggested that the reason for the happening could have either been unusually cold weekends, or recently installed 5G technologies nearby, but these theories have remained unconfirmed.

Comment: And in other recent bat-news:

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Info

Squids can edit their own genes


The University of Chicago
Mon, 23 Mar 2020 18:33 UTC
Giant Axon in Squid
© Vallecillo-Viejo et al, Nucl. Acids Res., 2020.Top, schematic of squid anatomy showing the location of the “giant axon,” an unusually large neural projection that partly controls the squid’s jet propulsion system, used for very fast movement, attacks and escapes. Below, schematic of a neuron, showing the location of the nucleus where all RNA editing was previously thought to occur, and the axon, where local RNA editing was identified in squid.
Woods Hole, Mass. - Revealing yet another super-power in the skillful squid, scientists have discovered that squid massively edit their own genetic instructions not only within the nucleus of their neurons, but also within the axon — the long, slender neural projections that transmit electrical impulses to other neurons. This is the first time that edits to genetic information have been observed outside of the nucleus of an animal cell.

The study, led by Isabel C. Vallecillo-Viejo and Joshua Rosenthal at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, is published this week in Nucleic Acids Research.

The discovery provides another jolt to the central dogma of molecular biology, which states that genetic information is passed faithfully from DNA to messenger RNA to the synthesis of proteins. In 2015, Rosenthal and colleagues discovered that squid "edit" their messenger RNA instructions to an extraordinary degree - orders of magnitude more than humans do — allowing them to fine-tune the type of proteins that will be produced in the nervous system.
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Doberman

Boy dies in hospital after being attacked by dogs at home in Dublin

Conor Feehan
Irish Independent
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 10:43 UTC
dog attack
The eight-year-old boy who was mauled by two Rottweilers at his Dublin home on Sunday has died.

The child has been named locally as Glen Murphy.

He had suffered devastating injuries to his head and body in the vicious mauling on Sunday afternoon and died in Crumlin Children's Hospital yesterday.

It is believed that the horrific attack, which lasted up to 10 minutes, was caught on CCTV.

The security footage is being examined by gardaí, and is believed to have recorded the horrific incident.
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Question

100 cattle egrets and 9 crows found dead in Uttar Pradesh, India

Anuja Jaiswal
Times of India
Fri, 20 Mar 2020 12:26 UTC
dead birds
Nearly 100 cattle egrets (birds) and nine crows were found dead under mysterious circumstances at two different sites in Aligarh's Sasnigate and AMU campus in UP on Thursday morning.

Following the reports, the university directed their provosts to stop serving chicken in dinning halls amid fears of bird flu.

Talking to TOI, district magistrate CB Singh said that after receiving information, forest officials rushed to the spot and sent one of the dead birds for post-mortem and buried the remaining. He said the exact cause of death will be known from the autopsy report.
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Eye 2

Signs and Portents: Snake gives birth to two-headed baby in Australia

Rebecca McDonald
bay939.com.au
Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:21 UTC
2 headed
© Direct Vet Services
A local man who caught a snake and took it to his local vet for a check over has made a creepy discovery after the reptile gave birth inside the bag in which it was being carried.

Steward Gatt, known to Wyndham locals as Stewy the Snake Catcher, captured the Tiger snake earlier this week.

However, when he opened the bag to release the animal he found it had given birth to a bunch of slithering babies.

But that was far from the end of it, with a closer inspection finding one of the baby snakes had been born with two heads.

Stewart says he took the mother snake and her offspring to a local vet.
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Fish

Parasites in raw fish have risen dramatically, study finds

Natalie Parletta
Cosmos Magazine
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 17:44 UTC
Anisakis Worms
© GONZALO JARA/SHUTTERSTOCKAnisakis worms in blue whiting fish.
The presence of parasitic worms in raw or undercooked seafood, popular in dishes such as sushi, sashimi, poke and carpaccio, has increased 283-fold since the 1970s, according to a study published in the journal Global Change Biology.

The parasite, called Anisakis or "herring worm" is found in several species of fish and squid. When people inadvertently eat the worm, it can attach to the intestinal wall and cause symptoms akin to food poisoning, such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

This disease, known as anisakiasis or anisakidosis, often goes under the radar because people understandably mistake it for a bad case of food poisoning, says senior author Chelsea Wood from the University of Washington, US.

Usually, the worm dies after a few days in humans and the symptoms disappear, although some cases can cause more severe reactions, including acute stomach pain, and persevere for months.

In marine animals, the parasite reproduces and is expelled in their faeces, from where it can infect crustaceans, such as bottom-dwelling shrimp or copepods, which are then eaten by small fish and from there on up the food chain.

Recent upsurges in the disease from several regions including Japan, the US and Europe has led to it being labelled an emerging zoonosis; whether this due to better detection, increased raw fish consumption or more parasites is unclear.

To investigate, Wood and colleagues collated data from thousands of papers that have investigated the proliferation of this worm over time.
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Bug

Dengue fever crisis grips Latin America - SIX times higher than 2019


Al Jazeera English
Tue, 17 Mar 2020 19:50 UTC
Dengue fever patients
© YouTube/Al Jazeera English (screen capture)
Dengue fever cases are soaring in Latin America, all the way from Mexico to Chile. The mosquito-borne illness has become one of the most common reasons for hospitalisation. More than three million cases - a figure six times higher than the previous year - were reported in Latin America last year and the upward trend is continuing. One Colombian city has seen a 500 percent increase in cases in a month.


Comment: Dengue fever cases surge 200% in Mexico in 2019

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