A pensioner from the town of Novo Biryuzyak, in the south of Russia, has killed a wolf that attacked her.

Aishat Maksudova was fixing a fence in a field and was armed only with an axe at the time.

Aziz Nuritoff reports.

Coyotes were attacking in Connecticut this week, with three reports of the animals hunting down dogs.

Luckily, all the dogs survived. But as CBS2's Jessica Schneider reported, animal control officials said there is a big reason some big dogs are becoming prey.

At least one coyote has been making the rounds in suburban Stamford - looming dangerously close to homes and setting its sights on several family dogs.

"There was something following (my dog); chasing her," said Stamford resident Karen Hart.

Hart snapped a photo of her 2-year-old shepherd mix, named Kylie, running for her life.

"She got into the house and I slammed the door just as the coyote was approaching the front door," Hart said.

There were four attacks in a period of one week.

A man died and nine others sustained injuries in a wild boar attack near Koodaranji here on Friday. The deceased has been identified as Keelath Abdul Salam, 50, alias Abdu, a farmer and a resident of Kalpur. The wild boar was later shot dead with the help of the local residents.

According to the police, the wild boar attacked Abdul Salam at his farm land, around 9 am. Though he was rushed to the Kozhikode Medical College Hospital, he succumbed to injuries, the officials said.

The injured - Haseena, Vasu, Lalitha, Kunjumon, Sabu, Abu, Najeed and Abdullah - have been admitted to the hospital and their condition has been reported to be not serious.

Eye-witnesses said the animal first attacked Haseena on a road and later went on the rampage, attacking Abdul Salam and others.

A dead humpback has whale washed ashore on a Monterey beach close to where a second whale was seen swimming near the shore.

The whale turned up Friday morning at Sunset State Beach after being seen floating offshore Thursday night.

A marine biologist said it was a young whale about 45 feet long. It had no apparent signs of trauma on the carcass and was in the beginning stages of decomposition.

Biologists say it's not uncommon to see a humpback wash ashore. "It kind of comes in waves. Last year we had one humpback whale. Few years before that we didn't have any, one year we had two or three," said Robin Duncan, UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab operations manager.

Thousands of fish were found washed up on shore at Lim Chu Kang jetty on Saturday in the latest in a series of mass deaths.

Breeds big and small, including catfish and mullets, were discovered on the beach near where several fish farms are situated in the Strait of Johor.

Both sea and farm fish were affected.

Farmer Ong Kim Pit, 65, told The Sunday Times that he first saw fish jumping out of the water on Friday night, adding that his baby mullets were worst hit.

"It happened within minutes," he said. "My fish were jumping and jumping in the water. I don't know why."

An unexplained epidemic ravaging band-tailed pigeons in California has resulted in more than 10,000 of the bird's deaths this winter.

Dead birds have been found in 21 counties in California, including in the Sacramento region, marking one of the largest die-offs recorded. It's particularly troubling because the species reproduces at a lower rate than similar birds.

Researchers are at a loss to explain the cause, but they suspect that the multiyear drought and changes in acorn supply may be to blame.

The band-tailed pigeon is a common, medium-size, gray-feathered bird known for a white crescent on its neck and a long tail that sports a pale band at its tip. The bird is a relative of the passenger pigeon - a species once as common as the band-tailed pigeon, but now extinct.

A mountain lion that wandered into the Promenade mall parking lot in Temecula was tranquilized for removal but died shortly after, an official said.

At least one witness called the Riverside County Sheriff's Department reporting the lion walking near the Macy's store early Friday morning, March 6. The sheriff's department called in a Fish and Wildlife warden who used an air-powered gun to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart, said Kyle Orr, a spokesman with Fish and Wildlife.

As officials were taking the adult male lion into the wilderness, it died, Orr said.

The cause of death is unknown and a necropsy is planned, but in general, when an animal dies after being shot with a tranquilizer dart, the two most common causes are damage done by the needle and a bad reaction to the drug, Orr said.

The animal was not acting aggressively but because the area is so densely populated by humans, removing it was a necessity, he said.

A luxury hotel in the Swedish capital was on lockdown early Friday due to "a crazy or stressed-out badger" refusing to let anyone near the door, police said.

Stockholm police said the badger was spotted near the entrance of the Radisson Blu hotel about 5 a.m. Friday and authorities were called when the animal acted aggressive toward anyone who attempted to get in or out of the building.

"A crazy or stressed-out badger is preventing the staff and clients at a major hotel from leaving their cars, and from picking up their bags," a report on the Stockholm Police website said.

Old female killer whales use their ecological wisdom to help their families through tough times, a new study has found.

The research by Dr Lauren Brent from the University of Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour and colleagues from both the United Kingdom and United States, also sheds new light on the role of menopause in human populations.

"Biologically-speaking, menopause is bizarre," Dr Brent explains, adding that most animals die around the same time they stop reproducing.

"Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are one of just three species - alongside humans and short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) - where females continue to live for many years after giving birth to their last baby. Female killer whales stop reproducing in their 30s-40s, but can survive into their 90s."

Males, however, rarely live beyond 50.

It was believed that the benefit of menopause to both human and killer whale mothers lies in spreading their genes, which they do by helping their relatives survive and reproduce. But just how older females help their relatives was a mystery.

"One idea is that wisdom accumulates with age and that old females store vital information about the environment, which they share with their relatives to help them during environmental hardships," Brent says.

The researchers analysed more than 750 hours of video footage of resident killer whale family groups, whose relatedness and family history have been studied since 1976 in the coastal waters of British Columbia and Washington. In resident killer whales, family groups don't disperse, although males leave temporarily to breed with females from other populations.

They found that females who are past the age of last reproduction are more likely to lead their families as they travel around foraging grounds, compared with adult males, especially in years when Chinook salmon, their main food resource, is in short supply.

Males in the population were more likely to follow the experienced females than females. This supports other research showing that sons in a family group have a higher probability of dying following the death of their post-reproductively aged mother - and therefore have more to gain from her wisdom.

"These findings suggest that menopausal females may boost the survival of their relatives through the transfer of ecological knowledge, which may help explain why female killer whales continue to live long after they have stopped reproducing," Brent says.

The study was published today in Current Biology.

An irregular visitor in winter from the far north, several flocks of Bohemian waxwings have been spotted in the Granite State this past week.

Slightly larger than a cedar waxwing, with a reddish brown under its tail, Bohemian waxwings only come as far south as states which border Canada.

Sightings during the past week included: a flock of 75 near the library in Strafford on Feb. 25 and again on March 1; a flock of over 80 behind Stan's Auto Service Center in Conway on the 26th; a flock of 12 in Hart's Location on the 27th; a flock of over 150 near the traffic circle in New London on the 27th and a flock of 209 in the same area on March 1.

Also, a flock of 40 was seen along Route 106 near Sam's Club in Concord on Feb. 28; a flock of 50 along Winona Road in New Hampton on March 1, and a flock of 45 in Hanover on March 2.

These flocks were seen mainly foraging on ornamental fruit tress, or resting nearby.