Agriculture officials in Nakuru County, Kenya are investigating an anthrax outbreak that has killed scores of animals at Lake Nakuru National Park.

According to local media, more than one hundred buffaloes and two rhinos have died in the past five days.

In addition, officials have killed animals suspected of having the lethal bacterial disease. Bacillus anthracis, the agent of anthrax, was confirmed by Kenya Wildlife Service veterinarians at the Lake Nakuru National Park.

Nakura County Executive for Agriculture Dr. Stanley Chepkwony said, "We are also warning people not to come into contact with these animals or their meat products."

Anthrax is a bacterial pathogen in livestock and wild animals. Some of the more common herbivores are cattle, sheep,goats, horses, camels and deers. Anthrax is a very serious disease of livestock because it can potentially cause the rapid loss of a large number of animals in a very short time. Affected animals are often found dead with no illness detected.

It infects humans primarily through occupational or incidental exposure with infected animals of their skins.

Lifeguards in southern France are on alert after spotting a shark just metres from the shoreline of a popular beach - the third such sighting in recent days.

There's something lurking beneath the surface in the waters of southern France.

Red flags were raised at the Plage du Bocal du Tech, near the town of Perpignan in southern France, on Saturday after a shark was spotted near the shoreline.

The sighting marked the third in ten days at the beach, which isn't far from the Spanish border.

"At first I thought it was a swimmer doing the backstroke, then I saw the churn in the water, and fish jumping out of the sea," one beach goer told the France Bleu Roussillon radio station.

Two persons were today trampled to death and another was injured by a wild elephant at separate places in Dumka district.

The elephant killed a 33-year old man, Suniram Baski, at Aamgachhi kurua village and a 25-year-old woman, Savati Tudu, at Silanda village in Jama block of the district, Divisional Forest Officer Abhishek Kumar said.

Another man suffered serious injuries in its attack at Kulapathar village and was admitted to a hospital in Dumka, he said.

The DFO said the elephant, which strayed from a herd and entered the villages late last night, also destroyed two houses.

A team has been sent to drive the animal into the forests, he added.

Source: Press Trust of India

It came from the deep with big eyes and sharp teeth, but the marine creature that washed up on Rabbit Island, near Nelson, was more novel than scary.

Natasha van der Kallen was enjoying a barbecue with her family on Sunday when her daughter Holly Ward noticed something moving in the shallow water.

"We saw the splashing and Holly screamed out, what is that? So we went to have a look."

When they got closer to the shoreline, van der Kallen said they were surprised to see a long, narrow, silver fish flipping about in the water.

"It was around a metre long with big eyes and big teeth," said van der Kallen.

The fish had a silvery coloured flesh which rubbed off when it was touched, she said.

Curious to know more, the family searched the internet while at the beach and identified it as a frostfish, a creature that usually lives in much deeper water.

The Gulf of St. Lawrence has seen three Right Whale carcasses floating in its waters in the last three weeks and according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada it is an alarming number considering the small population of this particular species of whale. The last reported sighting of a dead whale in the Gulf was back in 2001.

On June 24, the first dead whale was seen off the coast of Percé. The carcass was recuperated and will be studied to find the cause of death. On July 7th, another was spotted off the coast of the Magdalen Islands, and just last week on July 13 a third floating whale was seen off the coast of the town of Gaspé. The last one sighted has been given a number and has been identified as a six-year old female.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada together with the Quebec Network for marine mammals rescue want to bring the carcasses ashore to study the cause or causes of death. The North Atlantic Right Whale is on the endangered species list and there are only about 350 of that particular breed still left in the oceans along the east coast of North America.

Because the species is on the point of extinction, the researchers want to know why these particular whales perished in this particular area.

The most common causes of death to whales is either being caught-up in old fishing nets or being hit and wounded by the propellers of large ships.

For a long time jackals have been known to most Europeans only through documentaries on African wildlife. But one species - the golden jackal (canis aureus) - is now advancing northward and westward across Europe from its traditional range along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts as far as Switzerland and Estonia. This has resulted in considerable confusion - should jackals be protected as a native species everywhere in Europe? Yes, says legal scholar Arie Trouwborst of Tilburg University.

Trouwborst studied the expansion of jackals with biologists of the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (Trondheim). The results have recently been published in Biodiversity and Conservation (open access).

The golden jackal, also known as 'European coyote', has so far been spotted in thirty European countries including ones without historic records of the species (see distribution map below). The drivers of this expansion are not yet fully understood. Other large carnivores such as the wolf are also spreading, but they can be characterized as comebacks (recoveries).

Weird, "hybridized" animal skeletons, including a cow-horse and a six-legged sheep litter the bottom of storage pits in an Iron Age site in England, archaeologists have found. One pit even holds the bones of a woman with a slit throat laid on top of animal bones, the scientists said.

The unusual remains belong to an ancient people who lived in southern England from about 400 B.C. until just before the Roman invasion, in A.D. 43, said dig co-director Paul Cheetham, a senior lecturer in archaeology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.

It appears that the people dug the pits to store food such as grain near their dwellings. They had "no decent way of refrigerating stuff" back then, and the chalky earth would have provided a cool storage area, Cheetham told Live Science. [See Photos of "Hybridized" Animal Sacrifices from Ancient England]

The people would have used each pit for only a year or two before digging a new one. Just before they abandoned a pit, it appears, the people buried a hybridized animal in it, sometimes with the flesh still attached, possibly as a way to honor the gods, Cheetham and his colleagues said. (When skeletons are well connected, or articulated, it indicates that the individual had ligaments and flesh holding it together when it was buried, the researchers said.)

These "hybrids" would have been formed from the body parts of various other animals.

"[They were] creating combinations of prized animals as an offering to particular deities," said dig co-director Miles Russell, a senior lecturer of prehistoric and Roman archaeology at Bournemouth University. "What this meant precisely to the tribes we don't know, as nothing sadly was written down from the period and we have no record of the names or nature of the gods being invoked."

The archaeologists found all kinds of mix-and-matched animals in the pits. Many contained combinations of horse and cow body parts — such as a cow skull with a horse jaw and a horse skull with a cow horn sticking out, resulting in something that looked like a bizarre unicorn.

Some pits contained man-made items, such as combs made from bone and weaving needles. Others held sheep and cow combinations and the entire bodies of sacrificed dogs and pigs. In one pit, the archaeologists found a decapitated sheep's body with a cow skull on its rear.

Such animal sacrifices are not to be taken lightly, the archaeologists said. Cows, sheep and horses were likely the basis of the economy and also a food source, "so to dispose of an animal like a pig is quite a big thing to do," Cheetham said.

Australian professional surfer and triple world champion Mick Fanning was attacked by a shark during a competition in South Africa on Sunday. The dangerous incursion, said to be "the first in professional surfing history," was broadcast live on TV.

The shark - described as a "big tiger shark" by the event's live commentators, approached Fanning from behind as he was sitting on his board in the waters of Jeffreys Bay (also known as J-Bay) getting ready to compete.

In the broadcast, the shark could be seen launching itself at the surfer, known by the nickname "White Lightning," who then disappeared from his board. After that, only huge splashes of water were visible to viewers. Assisting jet skis rushed to the spot where the struggle was taking place.

"There were two sharks apparently... the horn blasted," World Surf League (WSL) Deputy Commissioner Renato Hickel said, adding that "this is the first time in professional surfing history, no one has experienced a situation like that."

"That's one of the dangers of professional surfing," the event's commentators could be heard saying, adding that they were happy to see the champion come out of the ordeal "in one piece."

A group of distraught circus elephants' recent rampage in Danish seaside town Karrebaeksminde was caught on video by a tourist and has sparked animal rights activists to petition Denmark to ban wild animals from circuses.

The elephants seen in the video were bathing in the ocean for a cooling dip as part of Cirkus Arena tradition when visiting the coastal city, according to Danish media.

But after workers started rounding up the colossal animals, they appeared to get spooked by the large crowd watching them, as seen in footage caught by tourist Oddmar Nygard last weekend.

The distressed elephants can be seen in Nygard's video getting antsy and aggressively approaching spectators, including an elderly man on a mobile scooter and a woman with a stroller.

A circus worker in a black jacket and brown hat then appears to hit one of the elephants with what looks like a cane, agitating the elephant, which then attacks a nearby unoccupied vehicle.

Even Australia's most iconic animals couldn't escape the Antarctic blast that blanketed parts of the country in snow on Friday morning.

Adorable pictures of wombats, emus, Tasmanian devils and kangaroos caught out in the snow were posted on social media throughout the day, with the animals seemingly as surprised by the wintry blast as the rest of us.

Most of the pictures were snapped in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, which received some of the heaviest snowfall.

One of the photos showed a snow-dusted recreation of Australia's coat of arms, with an emu and kangaroo locked in an intense stare down. Presumably, neither took a backwards step.