Jake Thomas thought there would be no risk of a bite from a red-bellied black snake 45 minutes after cutting it in half.

He was wrong.

The "dead" snake turned on the 66-year-old and bit him twice on the hand.

Mr Thomas, a volunteer who mows the local cemetery at Werris Creek where his daughter Kim is buried, came across the snake during his usual clean-up. It was in a vase on a headstone.

Fearful about other people's safety, Mr Thomas cut the snake in half. Like most people would, he had thought the strike had killed the snake, so he left to finish off the rest of the cemetery maintenance.

Specimens of several different species, including sea turtles and dolphins, have been found near Sechura, in Piura.

A mysterious and morbid phenomenon has overtaken a beach near Sechura, in the Peruvian region of Piura. A substantial number of semi-decomposed sea animals have washed up along the coast, and no one knows why or what killed them.

According to RPP Noticias, 22 dolphins, 17 sea lions, and 23 sea turtles have been found along a stretch of 20 kilometers.

RPP reports that specialists are awaiting results from tests performed on tissue samples collected from the deceased specimens. The samples were sent to the laboratories of the Ocean Institute of Peru (Imarpe) in Lambayeque for research and investigation.

Silvia Rumiche, environmental specialist in Piura, told RPP that the animals' "state of decomposition [indicates] that these species have been dead for two weeks. However, other remains in a skeletal state have been verified as well, and according to the biologists, this prevents them from being able to take samples in order to determine the causes of death."

RPP reports that no solid hypotheses about the animals' causes of death can be formed until laboratory results from tissue samples are available. At this time, it is not believed that the animals were killed by humans.

A large winter fish kill at Clinton Lake near DeWitt has been attributed to recent fluctuations in water temperatures.

A wide selection of species, including walleye, bass, crappie and channel catfish, was among more than 5,300 fish located Tuesday by a fisheries biologist from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The fish were found between the Illinois 48 and DeWitt bridges, near the hot water channel for the Clinton Power Station, said IDNR spokesman Tim Schweizer.

"Abrupt changes in water temperatures are not uncommon at a power plant lake" and likely caused the fish kill, said Schweizer.

Lake fishing should not be negatively impacted, said Schweizer.

Snake Fungal Disease could send some species spiraling into an "extinction vortex," said one expert.

Somewhere in the back of our minds, we all worry about the sort of nightmare pandemic envisioned in films like Contagion or The Hot Zone, with some horrific new disease sweeping across the continents and mowing down human victims like so much hay. But wildlife biologists worry more than most, because they've already seen emerging diseases devastate two major animal groups.

Now it seems to be happening yet again, while the two other wildlife pandemics are still raging unresolved: Over the past two decades, the chytrid fungus has contributed to the extinction of perhaps 100 amphibian species - including some of the most colorful, charismatic frogs in the world - with many more extinctions now being predicted. White nose syndrome, another fungal disease, first discovered in 2006, has already killed off 6 to 7 million North American bats and now threatens some species with extinction. No reliable remedy is known for either disease.

The victims of what seems to be a new epidemic are snakes, and they may prove even harder to save, because they are widely unpopular and because populations in many areas tend to be small and scattered. Wildlife biologists first noticed the new pathogen in 2006, among New Hampshire's only surviving population of the timber rattlesnake.

The first victim turned up dead in early June, from a severe fungal infection in the mouth. Other victims displayed skin lesions around the head and, in one case, a severely swollen eye. Within a year, half the population was dead.

Poachers killing animals at record rate, sparking fear of demise of entire population within 20 years

More than 1,000 rhinos were killed in South Africa last year at a record-breaking rate that could wipe out the country's entire population of white and black rhinos in a little over two decades.

The environment ministry said 1,004 animals were killed in 2013, mostly in poaching hotspot Kruger national park, as the poaching crisis escalated. The number is a big increase on the 668 killed in 2012, which was in itself a record year, up from just 13 in 2007.

Appetite for rhino horn from Asia, in particular Vietnam, has driven the killing in South Africa, which ministers have warned in turn threatens the country's tourism sector. Demand is so high that a kilogramme of rhino horn is now worth more than gold or cocaine.

The UK prime minister, David Cameron, is hosting a summit in London next month in a bid to tackle the trade which has also seen tens of thousands of elephants killed in Africa annually in recent years.

A day after 22 spotted deer died at the Kanan Pendari Zoo Park in Chhattisgarh, investigations have revealed that the deaths were caused due to Anthrax bacterial infection.

"Spotted deer died due Anthrax infection. Analysis of symptoms confirms that the animals were infected by bacteria called Bacillus anthracis", Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Ram Prakash told reporters at the zoo, located about 12 kilometres away from Bilaspur town.

"The dead herbivorous animals showed symptoms of Anthrax Bacteria as blood came out through mouth and anus. The stomach swelled like a balloon because of infection", he pointed out adding that there were 53 spotted deer, including 18 males and 35 females, in the cage.

He said Antharax is a communicable bacterium that spreads very fast through air. "Hence, we have buried all the dead animals instead of consigning them to flames. One of the apparent reasons for the outbreak of Anthrax bacteria is high moisture content in the air due to continuous rainfall in the region. "Even two days ago, it rained heavily in Bilaspur region and there is still moisture in the air", he added.

Asked how only female animals died due to infection, Ram Prakash explained that male deer have a better immune system than female deer. However, he said the state forest department was started a detailed investigation into all aspects of Anthrax infection in animals in the zoo.

Stating that a three member committee, comprising DFO Bilaspur Hemant Pandey, Achanakmar Tiger reserve Deputy Director C L Agrawal and veterinary surgeon P K Chandan, has been constituted to further probe the matter, the PCCF said a team of experts from Veterinary college at Anjora has also confirmed that the deaths were caused due to Anthrax infection.

With this incident, Kanan Pendari zoo will remain closed for general public for the next ten days as a team of doctors have begun vaccination of the animals in the zoo to prevent infection.

As the animals started dying under mysterious circumstances on Wednesday, initially wildlife officials suspected that the herbivorous animals were poisoned by someone.

Sparks - State wildlife officials are trying to figure out why all the fish have died in a northern Nevada marina where the stocked fishery has flourished since the man-made lake was created nearly 15 years ago.

An estimated 100,000 trout, bass and catfish have died over the past month in the Sparks Marina along U.S. Interstate 80 east of Reno, apparently the result of a dramatic, unexplained drop in dissolved oxygen levels, Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy said Wednesday.

Scientists say a bitter cold snap could have caused oxygen-poor waters to rise from the old rock quarry's bottom to the surface, but they don't understand what sparked the massive die-off.

Fish biologists confirmed low oxygen levels caused the death of an estimated 3,000 fish in one corner of the lake in mid-December, but Healy said they thought at the time that the event was localized and of limited impact. Since then, they've been unable to detect any live fish in the 77-acre lake. Numerous dead fish have been removed from the lake's shoreline, and Healy said it's likely the rest sank to the bottom.

"The 100,000 dead fish figure is something that is probably a pretty conservative guess," said Healy, who estimates they've stocked close to 1 million adult fish in the lake since they started in 1998.

"We don't know if any small fish have survived, but for all intents and purposes, the fishery doesn't exist anymore," he told The Associated Press.

Forty-eight reindeer have been killed in northern Sweden, struck by a speeding train they tried in vain to outrun, transport officials said Tuesday.

"It wasn't pretty to see," one reindeer rancher, Ingmar Blind, told state television network SVT.

The animals, which provide a livelihood for many in remote northern Sweden, met their fate on Saturday near the village of Kaitum in the country's Laponia region.

Near-misses by railways are common as herds migrate during winter in search of food.

But in this case it appeared the herd had wandered onto snow-covered tracks and were startled by the train, the regional transport official in charge of maintenance, Fredrik Rosendahl said.

The reindeer instinctively all ran along the tracks before the train, which crushed them.

"If you follow a reindeer in a car, for instance, it will tend to run in front of the car, it won't go to one side," Rosendahl explained. "So just imagine what happens with a train that needs more than a kilometre (1.2 miles) to come to a stop."

• Woman's body was found in a forest in Uttar Pradesh, India yesterday

• The tiger believed to have strayed from the Jim Corbett National Park

• Authorities trying to have it categorised as a 'man-eater' so it can be killed

Police in India are hunting a man-eating tiger that is believed to have killed seven villagers in two weeks after escaping from an animal reserve.

The tiger's latest victim was an unidentified woman who was found in a forest Tuesday in Uttar Pradesh, India yesterday.

The female tiger is believed to be prowling over an area covering around 80 miles and is considered to be far more dangerous than others in the area due to a lack of hunting experience that forces the desperate cat to move closer to human occupation.

A three-foot-long snake was found slithering through a cellphone store Monday evening in Richmond, leaving store staff surprised and slightly scared.

Employees at Lansdowne Mall's Wind Mobile were preparing to close just before 6 p.m. Monday when a staff member walked into the store's back room and spotted a snake near a microwave oven.

Val Lofvendahl of Richmond-based Reptile Rescue was called in to handle the situation.

"First thing we do is, because we don't know what we're dealing with, we grab a container and a pair of gloves and hope that it's nothing - but prepare for possibly something aggressive," she told the Province.

Lofvendahl and her daughter arrived shortly after being called and were escorted by security through the closed mall to Wind Mobile, where two frightened employees were waiting outside the store front.

Inside, Lofvendahl found the snake on top of a cardboard box.