Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 29 Sep 2021
The World for People who Think

Animals

Cloud Precipitation

Hailstorm kills over 1000 birds in Madhya Pradesh, India


Times of India
Mon, 04 Mar 2019 10:48 UTC
hail
Thousands of birds, including parrots and crows were killed in a hailstorm that hit villages surrounding buffer zone of Pench Tiger Reserve on Sunday morning.

Officials said they have counted around 1,102 birds which includes 590 egrets, 360 parakeets and 152 crows - and all of them were found dead in Khamarpani and Kanhar villages.

The dead birds were examined and cremated in compliance with the necessary guidelines.

      Read More...
Doberman

Man dies following dog attack in Sydney, Australia


abc.net.au
Fri, 01 Mar 2019 13:36 UTC
canine attack
© Angela Antunes / CC by 2.0

A man attacked by two dogs in Sydney's west five weeks ago has died in hospital, as figures reveal an increase in attack incidents across NSW.

The 40-year-old man was staying at a home in Tregear with two American Staffordshire Terriers when he was attacked.

He went into cardiac arrest and was taken to Westmead Hospital in a critical condition.

The man, who had injuries to his ears, face, abdomen and chest, was placed in an induced coma, but died on Friday.
      Read More...
Doberman

Elderly woman mauled to death by pack of 6 dogs in Pall Mall, Tennessee


wvlt.tv
Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:21 UTC
canine attack
© Angela Antunes / CC by 2.0
An 88-year-old Pall Mall woman was mauled to death outside her home by a pack of six German Shepherds belonging to a neighbor.

Jill Peterson left her home Tuesday night to clear a drainage ditch overflowing from recent heavy rain. That's when the dogs attacked.

"They dragged her down the yard and all of her clothes were off, her shoes, everything. They tore all of her hair out, the casket can't be open, it's like a nightmare. It's hard to believe," Nina Brown, Peterson's sister, told Nashville CBS affiliate WTVF.

      Read More...
Question

Dozens of dead birds found at Huntsville, Alabama road intersection


WHNT News
Wed, 27 Feb 2019 19:37 UTC
dead birds alabama 2019
© WHNT/Screenshot
Mass bird deaths in Huntsville, AL
It's a sight a person would never expect to see: dozens of dead birds littering the road.

But that's exactly what a Huntsville man found Tuesday. He counted more than 60 dead birds on Moores Mill Road near the Ware intersection. He is very concerned, since he believes they died in the same spot at the same time.

It seems like a plotline straight out of a Hitchcock movie ... dozens of birds falling from the sky.

"I noticed something that was standing out in the middle of the road when I was driving here yesterday," said Richard Ellis, a concerned Huntsville resident.

Comment: Why do incidences of this mysterious phenomenon seem to be increasing? Several mechanisms have been proposed, including methane gas releases, magnetic pole reversals, and concussive injury from micro-meteorite explosions high up in the atmosphere. All three possibilities are cause for worry.

      Read More...
Fish

'Strangest fish I've ever seen': Rare giant sunfish found in California


kqed.org
Fri, 01 Mar 2019 10:06 UTC
The animal, identified as a hoodwinker sunfish,
© Thomas Turner
The animal, identified as a hoodwinker sunfish, washed up on a shore last week at UC Santa Barbara's Coal Oil Point Reserve.
Stumbling upon a seven-foot-long sunfish while walking on a beach is already pretty surprising.

But what researchers initially thought was a common type of sunfish turned out to be much rarer - a newly discovered species thought to make its home almost entirely in the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. This was in Santa Barbara, California — much further north than anyone expected to find it.

"I literally, nearly fell off my chair," Marianne Nyegaard of Murdoch University in Australia said in a statement. Nyegaard, a sunfish expert, discovered and described the Mola tecta sunfish — commonly known as the hoodwinker sunfish — in 2017.

The more common Mola mola ocean sunfish is known to swim in the Santa Barbara Channel. The hoodwinker has only been found in the Southern Hemisphere, aside from just one known example that washed up in The Netherlands in 1889.
      Read More...
Attention

Shark attacks are on the rise in the US and Australia

Chase Purdy
Quartz
Wed, 27 Feb 2019 13:35 UTC
Shark attacks
The news headlines are what caught Stephen Midway's attention. It all seemed so unusual to him.

Researchers would later chalk it up to especially warm water off the coast of North Carolina during that summer in 2015, or, in some cases, to an unusual distribution of tasty fish, or to the fact that more people went to the beach that year. Whatever it was, one thing was clear: the sharks were out, and they seemed to be nipping people at a higher rate than usual.

Curious about it, Midway, an oceanography professor at Louisiana State University, decided to partner with scientists at the University of Florida to embark on a research project to figure out if the seemingly rising number of shark bites were statistically important. It started as a question local to the US but morphed into a project that is the first of its kind to look at shark attacks on a global level across a half-century.

Comment: Also pertinent is this recent January 2019 report which again points to an increasing trend in attacks: Fisherman killed by shark off Réunion Island - 23rd attack since 2011, with 10 fatalities

The above report is perhaps even more noteworthy because the large number of attacks that occurred were off a small island within a relatively short time frame.

      Read More...
Attention

Seven dolphins, whale wash up in a week on the coast of Cork, Ireland

Roisin Burke
Irish Examiner
Wed, 27 Feb 2019 12:11 UTC
Schull, West Cork, Ireland. A dead dolphin was found on Schull beach with fishing line around its beak. Helen Tilson of Schull Sea Safari measured the animal, which was a mature adult and 2 metres long.
© Andy Gibson
Schull, West Cork, Ireland. A dead dolphin was found on Schull beach with fishing line around its beak. Helen Tilson of Schull Sea Safari measured the animal, which was a mature adult and 2 metres long.
Seven dolphins and a sperm whale have been found dead in the past week along the Cork coastline.

Mick O'Connell, stranding officer with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG), said that is an unusually high number of strandings in a short space of time.

"We normally get the same thing every year. It is usually more in the southwest and west, but this year, I suppose we have had more southeast winds, which probably explains it."

The eight mammals that washed up on Cork beaches were a sperm whale on Long Strand in West Cork, a bottleneck dolphin, a striped dolphin, four common dolphins and another unknown species of dolphin.

Mr O'Connell said it was a lot of dolphins to be found dead in a week.
      Read More...
Attention

Experts on high alert after dead, sick dolphins wash ashore on coastline of California


losangeles.cbslocal.com
Mon, 25 Feb 2019 20:40 UTC
dolphins
From Laguna to Huntington Beach, an unprecedented number of dolphins are washing ashore dead or so sick that they have to be humanely euthanized.

"It's a shock and not happy about it whatsoever," said Newport Beach resident Eric Fritz. "They're our friends, are you kidding? I've rode waves with dolphins before."

In the last two weeks, the Pacific Marine Mammal Center says five common dolphins and one bottlenose dolphin have washed ashore. Compare that to just one dolphin last year.

Scientists are desperate to find a cause.

      Read More...
Cloud Precipitation

Hailstorm kills 'several thousand birds' in Narail, Bangladesh


UNB
Wed, 27 Feb 2019 19:28 UTC
The park authorities have gathered the dead birds and will bury those, said the Erfan Ahmed

The park authorities have gathered the dead birds and will bury those, said the Erfan Ahmed.
Several thousand birds, mostly migratory birds, were killed in 'Anurima Eco Park' at Panipara village of Kalia upazila in hailstorm accompanying rain that ripped through the country in last three days.

Erfan Ahmed, the managing director of the Ecopark, said that heavy rainfall accompanied by stormy wind and hailstorm lashed Narail like other parts of the country on February 25 and February 26.

After the storm, they found carcasses of several thousand birds lying scattered in the park, he said.
      Read More...
Fish

Millions of fish have been dying in Australia's major rivers

Ruby Prosser Scully
New Scientist
Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:50 UTC
Australian fish are dying in their millions
© Robert McBride
Australian fish are dying in their millions
Fish have been struggling to breathe and dying by the millions on the banks of Australia's largest river system. Experts say that without serious change, it will continue to happen.

Poor management, excess upstream irrigation and drought led to three mass deaths of endangered fish species during December and January in the Murray-Darling Basin. These deaths included Murray cod fish that were decades old, according to an investigation by the Australian Academy of Science that was published last week.

Craig Moritz at the Australian National University in Canberra, who chaired the investigation, says the sight of millions of dead fish should be a wake-up call. He described the mass fish deaths as a mainland equivalent of the coral bleaching events that have been hitting the Great Barrier Reef.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts