Animals
S


Doberman

14-month-old girl killed by family dog in Victoria, Australia


The Australian
Thu, 02 Aug 2018 13:44 UTC
canine attack
© Angela Antunes / CC by 2.0
The family of a 14-month-old girl fatally mauled by a dog in country Victoria had only been in the township for a few months before her death.

The toddler was set upon by the family's German Wirehaired Pointer at a rural property at Neerim Junction, in the Gippsland region, early on Thursday morning.

The little girl died at the scene despite treatment by paramedics.

Mayor of Baw Baw Shire Joe Gauci said the dog had been seized by the local council, and the family had consented for it to be destroyed. Counselling services for the community had been set up at the local hall, he said.

"When it's a young child, I think it's even harder for the community to take," he told reporters.
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Question

What's killing the dolphins in France? More than 700 wash up dead over the winter

Vincent Coste and Alice Tidey
Euronews
Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:34 UTC
dead dolphins
© Observatoire Pélagis
Some 700 dolphins washed up dead on French beaches over the winter, figures reveal, most of them victims of the fishing industry.

Between January and April 2018, some 700 small cetenea, most of them common dolphins and to a lesser extent harbour porpoise, were found dead on beaches on the French Atlantic coast.

"Seventy to eighty percent of them presented lesions compatible with an accidental death after being caught in fishing gear," Olivier Van Canneyt, biologist at the Observatoire Pelagis — a research centre dedicated to the conservation of marine mammals and birds — told Euronews.

Cuts from fishing nets, amputated fins, broken rostrums or asphyxiations were some of the signs that their deaths followed them being inadvertedly caught by fishing vessels.
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Snowflake Cold

Australia's record breaking cold, frost and drought force Kangeroo mobs into towns

Samantha Beech
CNN
Wed, 01 Aug 2018 08:05 UTC
austrlia cold kangeroo
Mobs of kangaroos have been raiding patches of grass in the Australian capital Canberra, driven to the city's sports fields, back yards and roadsides by food scarcity.

Canberra residents have taken to social media with images of the jumping marsupials exploring outside their usual habitats. But beyond the cute photo opportunities, the hungry kangaroos are at risk of dying on the roads as their feeding times coincide with rush hour.

Canberra has more than 30 nature reserves, with most hosting hundreds of Eastern Grey Kangaroos, and it is not unusual to see them in the reserves or in roads or yards nearby, Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Parks and Conservation Service Director Daniel Iglesias told CNN.But he said this winter the animals were far more visible.

"Canberra is experiencing a perfect storm of hardship for its kangaroos. New records have been set in Canberra for very cold, frosty nights this winter. This, coupled with very dry conditions with very little rain at all in June and July, means there is very little food for kangaroos, " Iglesias said, via email."Sports ovals, suburban yards, schoolyards and roadsides are the few places offering any green grass at all in Canberra at the moment and they act as magnets for kangaroos," he said.

Comment: Australia's record drought means there's no food for the 'Roo's or cattle. And these are the same kinds of weather patterns we're seeing all over the world; extreme drought, epic flooding, erratic seasons with earlier winters that drag on longer and are colder than ever before:

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Attention

World's largest colony of King penguins in the southern Indian Ocean has plummeted by 90%

Mark Prigg
Daily Mail
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 20:04 UTC
Researchers say numbers of the animals at Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, has been decimated.
Researchers say numbers of the animals at Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, has been decimated.
It was once the world's biggest colony of King penguins, with over two million birds and 500,000 breeding pairs.

Now, researchers say numbers of the animals at Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, have been decimated - and they aren't sure why.

A new analysis of photographs taken from a helicopter confirm that the colony's penguin population has plummeted.

Researchers found that the colony has shrunk, yielding its territory to encroaching vegetation.

Known since the 1960s, the colony of king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) on Île aux Cochons, in the southern Indian Ocean, had the distinction of being the world's biggest colony of king penguins and second biggest colony of all penguins.
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Biohazard

Worst red tide in more than a decade killing sea life along Florida coast


The Watchers
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 16:18 UTC
red tide turtle florida
© Matt @VisualPersistKemp's Ridley
Worst red tide since 2006 leaves 'unprecedented' number of dead sea turtles, Florida

Unprecedented numbers of sea turtles have been collected across Florida's Lee and Collier counties over the past week, and hundreds are thought to have died as the worst red tide algae bloom event since 2006 plagues southwest Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is monitoring the current bloom since November 2017.

The FWC has documented 287 sea turtle deaths in Gulf of Mexico waters along the southwest Florida coast since the toxic bloom started late last year.

According to Allen Foley of the FWC's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, that's about double the average number of turtle deaths in those waters every year.

Foley said turtles living in the area become sick and die when their food gets contaminated by the toxins.

Comment: Algae blooms and dead zones have quadrupled since 1950 with Oman and the Baltic sea as some other recent examples. But what's causing them? Surely industrial agriculture will have contributed to their rise, but when we factor in the discovery of thousands of underwater volcanoes, the increasingly unstable methane deposits and the slowdown in the Gulf Stream, which all appear to be linked to a slowdown in the Sun and Earth's rotation, clearly there are other more significant drivers to take into consideration.

See also: Worldwide ocean anoxia driven by global cooling was possible factor in previous mass extinctions

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House

A scene from a horror movie: Kangaroo crashes into family home window, collapses in a bloody heap beside toilet


RT
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 14:26 UTC
Kangaroo
© Five Freedoms Animal Rescue / Facebook
A family in Melbourne was given the late-night wake-up call of their lives when a panicked kangaroo smashed through the front window of their home and hopped around, bloodied from a series of flesh wounds.

The startled roo broke into the home of Mafi Ahokavo and his family on Saturday night, creating a significant stir by jumping around several rooms of the property.

According to Australia's 9 News, the animal was wounded when it crashed through the glass. After smearing blood on a wall, the roo then attempted to escape via a second window. The residents of the home eventually managed to lock it in a bathroom, where it collapsed beside a toilet from exhaustion.

Animal rescuer Manfred Zabinska was one of the first responders who called out to the property, which he described as looking like a scene from a horror movie. The rescuer has posted images online showing the aftermath of the incredible incident.

Comment: See also: 1,000 kangaroos stampede across 'destroyed' Australian farm

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Attention

Second dead sperm whale in a month found off Kaikōura, New Zealand


Stuff
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 10:32 UTC
A dead sperm whale at Marfells beach earlier this month.
© SCOTT HAMMOND/STUFFA dead sperm whale at Marfells beach earlier this month.
Two sperm whales in a month have been found dead off the Kaikōura coast.

The latest sperm whale, found last weekend, was a member of the Kaikōura canyon population, as was a whale found dead on Marfells Beach, in south Marlborough, in early July.

A series of buoys was attached to the animal, but it was not possible to tow it to shore due to sea conditions.

It had not been seen since the weekend, when it was moving north, but Department of Conservation staff and harbourmasters knew to be on the lookout.

DOC South Marlborough operations manager Phil Bradfield said the whales underpinned the Kaikōura economy, and the deaths would be felt by local iwi who had a "profound attachment to whales".
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Footprints

1,000 kangaroos stampede across 'destroyed' Australian farm


RT
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 09:10 UTC
Kangaroos
An Australian farm owner has posted footage of what happens when you try to take back an animal paddock from a hoard of jumping kangaroos, showing the incredibly nimble critters in a stampede.

Filmed on a farm in Nymagee, New South Wales by Marie Harley last February, she said her family unwittingly provoked the stampede when they drove through the area in a 4x4 vehicle.

Harley and her parents had driven to the paddock where they keep rams to investigate how many kangaroos were now living in the area. Footage of what happened next has now been posted to Facebook racking up views of more than 830,000.

"We knew there was a massive amount of kangaroos in the 100 acre paddock we use for the rams, so Dad and I decided to take mum up in the old land cruiser for a look and took the iPad along with me," Harley told ViralHog.
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Attention

Polar bear attacks man on island of Svalbard, Norway


Tampa Bay Times
Sat, 28 Jul 2018 16:59 UTC
Authorities search the coastline, Saturday, July 28, 2018, after a polar bear attacked and injured a polar bear guard who was leading tourists off a cruise ship on the Svalbard archipelago archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
Authorities search the coastline, Saturday, July 28, 2018, after a polar bear attacked and injured a polar bear guard who was leading tourists off a cruise ship on the Svalbard archipelago archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole.
Norwegian authorities said a polar bear on Saturday attacked and injured a polar bear guard who was leading tourists off a cruise ship on an Arctic archipelago. The polar bear was shot dead by another employee, the cruise company said.

The Joint Rescue Coordination for Northern Norway tweeted that the attack occurred when the tourists from the MS Bremen cruise ship landed on the most northern island of the Svalbard archipelago, a region between mainland Norway and the North Pole that is known for its remote terrain, glaciers, reindeer and polar bears.

The German Hapag Lloyd Cruises company, which operates the MS Bremen, told The Associated Press that two polar bear guards from their ship went on the island and one of them "was attacked by a polar bear and injured on his head."
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Fish

11 y.o. girl catches a fish with human-like teeth at Fort Cobb Lake, Oklahoma


RT
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 13:09 UTC
Pacu fish in Brazil.
© Global Look PressPacu fish in Brazil.
Oklahoma wildlife officials have warned fisher folk to be on the lookout for a relative of South America's meat eating piranha predator, after an 11-year-old girl reeled in the toothie catch from Fort Cobb Lake.

Kennedy Smith, 11, was having fun by the lake with her grandmother Sandra Whaley when a tug on their fishing line signalled a big catch. However, when they pulled in their lake bounty from out from the water something didn't feel quite right - the fish had massive jaws like a creature from a horror movie.

"I was confused because I knew that fish with teeth are not normal. It was weird. They were human-like and that made it even weirder," Smith told the Associated Press.
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