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Australia: Kangaroo Tries to Drown Man, Dog


Fox News
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
Image
© AP Photo
A startled kangaroo tried to drown an Australian man
An Australian man was almost drowned by a kangaroo after he dived into his farm dam to save his pet dog.

Chris Rickard, 49, of Arthurs Creek, is being assessed by Austin Hospital surgeons after being mauled by the nearly 5-foot roo at 9 a.m. AEDT. He only managed to end the attack when he elbowed the kangaroo in the throat as it tried to hold him under water, The Herald Sun reported.

By then he had already suffered a deep gash across his abdomen as the kangaroo tried to disembowel him with its hind legs, as well as a deep gash across his forehead and further cuts and scratches across his chest.

Speaking from the hospital's emergency department, Mr Rickard said he was walking his blue heeler dog Rocky at the back of his property about a quarter mile from his home when they woke the kangaroo which had been sleeping in long grass near the dam.
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Sun

Extreme drought forces thirsty kangaroos to invade Aussie town


New Tang Dynasty Television
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:29 UTC
Thargomindah, in the outback of Queensland, Australia, is a quiet small town with a population of 203. That is, until nightfall when the town's population doubles with the arrival of hundreds of other Australians...kangaroos and emus desperate to find food and water.

Some 700 miles west of Brisbane, Thargomindah is suffering its worst drought in 50 years. Both the wildlife and grazers are suffering. But as kangaroos reach plague proportion, farmers complain that the animals are eating any new growth available.

[Scott Fraser, Local Farmer]:
"It's possible to shoot seven-hundred a night, they're that thick. They're swarm proportions, you have no idea, it gives you a creepy feeling when you see them that thick."
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Cow Skull

6,000 Thirsty Camels Face Bullet After Terrorising Australian Town


The Guardian
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:03 UTC
Camel Oz
© Northern Territory government/EPA
Northern Territory officials plan mass cull after 6,000 wild camels run amok in Docker River in search of water

Australian authorities plan to round up about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and shoot them after they overran an outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan yesterday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving every day for weeks because of drought conditions.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," the local government minister, Rob Knight, said in Alice Springs, 310 miles (500km) north-east of Docker. "This is a very critical situation out there, it's very unusual and it needs urgent action."
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Fish

Dumbo of the deep: Discovered in the ocean abyss, the elephant-eared octopod


Mail Online
Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55 UTC
Dumbo Fish
© PA
The Grimpoteuthis has been nicknamed 'Dumbo' because of the large 'ears' it uses to swim with
What do you get if you cross an octopus with an elephant?

Well, in reality, probably nothing but a squashed octopus.

But with its elephant-like appearance, it's easy to see why this odd creature, found more than a mile beneath the ocean, has been nicknamed Dumbo by scientists.

Never before seen by man, it is a cirrate octopod, and the 'ears' that saw it named after Disney's cartoon elephant are actually fins that it uses to swim.

Marine biologists found the six-foot-long creature on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in their quest to record and name every living thing in the seas.
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Butterfly

Tree-Eating Bugs Threaten Monarch Butterfly in Mexico


PhysOrg
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:45 UTC
Image
© PhysOrg
Monarch butterflies in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
The mysterious Monarch butterfly, which migrates en masse annually between Canada and Mexico, is now facing a new peril: another insect thriving in Western Mexican forests.

Some 8,000 oyamel fir trees - the butterflies' unique mountain habitat each winter -- were cut down in July in a bid to remove beetles that threaten the Monarch's ages-old migration.

But now another small beetle has since taken to devouring the savory tree trunks, further endangering the butterflies' winter colonies.

"We are working to determine how many trees have been affected," said Homero Gomez, president of El Rosario Sanctuary, a premier migrating spot for the Monarch in the western Mexican state of Michoacan.
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Hourglass

US: Bats - The New Canary In The Coal Mine?

Kerry Trueman
The Huffington Post
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:55 UTC
Bat
© Unknown
You may think bats are scary, but what's truly terrifying is the mysterious fungus that's decimating the bat population, according to an article by Stacy Chase in last Sunday's Boston Globe:
At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed "white-nose syndrome" in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn't slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade.
This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, "We're at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe."
      Read More...
Attention

US: What's killing the bats?

Stacey Chase
Boston Globe
Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:55 UTC
At least 1 million have died in the past three years from a mysterious disease, posing serious questions for our environment. But one Boston University biologist is leading the hunt for answers.

Big brown bats
© Unknown
Thomas Kunz emerges from Aeolus cave in East Dorset, Vermont, with a half-dozen metal ID bands -- smaller than SpaghettiOs -- cupped in the palm of his latex-gloved hand. They're tiny emblems of death, having once been affixed to the forearms of little brown bats.

The renowned bat biologist from Boston University, who bears a passing resemblance to Harrison Ford, minutes earlier had recovered the bands while trudging, like a real-life Indiana Jones, through a slippery mud-like ooze of rotting bat carcasses, liquefied internal organs, toothpick-sized bones, piles of guano, and a strange white fungus on the cave floor.

If bats had come out of hell, it couldn't have been worse than this.

"What we saw was bat soup. There were a lot of bones of wings and skulls and emulsified bodies," Kunz says. "There were dead bats -- decomposing bats -- hanging from the walls of the cave.

"My heart sunk," he says, noting some of the bands bore his initials, THK. "It was as if I had lost family members."

It's late August, when bats are in their swarming phase, and the 71-year-old Kunz and two fellow biologists have trekked, at night, in hard rain, with heavy gear, 2,520 feet up the rugged Taconic Mountains to Aeolus -- the largest bat hibernaculum in the Northeast -- to bleed live bats and collect samples for researchers leading the hunt for clues into the cause of mysterious bat deaths like these.
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Fish

Jellyfish Swarm Northward in Warming World

Michael Casey
The Associated Press
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:58 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Junji Kurokawa
A giant jellyfish drifting off Kokonogi in western Japan.
A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men's livelihoods at risk.

The venom of the Nomura, the world's largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day's catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan's Wakasa Bay.

"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."
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Stop

Reindeer herd drowns in icy Lapland waters

Christine Demsteader
The Local
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:33 UTC
Image
© Patrick Tradgardh/Bank Sweden
More than 400 reindeer have drowned in a river in Jokkmokk in northern Sweden after thin surface ice cracked while the herd were moving to their winter pastures.

Reindeer herders in the region were taking around 3,000 animals across the river, a route that has been safely crossed on previous occasions.

"The ice suddenly gave way and hundreds of reindeer fell into the water," said Bertil Kielatis, chairman of the Sirges Sami village in Jokkmokk.

"Now we are working to recover the animals that have drowned," he added.
      Read More...
Fish

Last chance for Tuna - Tagging the tigers of the sea

Graham Lawton
New Scientist
Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:38 UTC
Pablo Cermeño balances at the back of the small boat, legs braced, harpoon at the ready. Beneath him in the crystal waters his target is clearly visible: a shimmer of metallic turquoise that tacks left, right, left again as it is hauled inexorably towards the surface. The fisherman grunts and sweats as he does battle with the giant fish, reeling, pulling and reeling again.

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