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Fri, 24 Sep 2021
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Attention

Deep water oarfish washed ashore in Gingoog, Philippines

Morexette Marie B. Erram
Cebu Daily News
Thu, 20 Aug 2020 10:09 UTC
Residents in Barangay 19 of Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental spotted on Thursday morning, August 20, a 3.2-meter oarfish that washed ashore in their coasts.
© LGU Brgy
Residents in Barangay 19 of Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental spotted on Thursday morning, August 20, a 3.2-meter oarfish that washed ashore in their coasts.
A dead oarfish washed ashore in a coastal village in Gingoog City, Misamis Oriental in Northern Mindanao on Thursday morning, August 20, local officials said.

In a post on their official Facebook page, the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Barangay 19 in Gingoog City said residents spotted the carcass of the deep-sea creature early Thursday morning.

Local officials said the oarfish spanned a length of 3.2 meters. Mature oarfish have an average length of 6 meters.

The fish got its name because its long pectoral fins resemble oars. It is also called the king of herrings because of their resemblance to the smaller herrings and fishes.
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Eye 2

Signs and Portents: Two-headed rattlesnake found near Arizona golf course - 'I lost my mind a little'

Mark Price
Miami Herald
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:55 UTC
A professional snake catcher searching for den of rattlesnakes stumbled on a two-headed western diamondback rattlesnake near Arizona golf course.
© Rattlesnake Solutions
A professional snake catcher searching for den of rattlesnakes stumbled on a two-headed western diamondback rattlesnake near Arizona golf course. The snake, which died, has shaken social media.
Greyson Getty says he was following a western diamondback rattlesnake through a bush when he found himself suddenly staring down 11 rattlesnakes.

But things got even stranger for the professional snake catcher when he noticed a peculiar snake coiled by itself in one corner of the den.

It was a very large "baby" with two heads. And it appeared to have just died, he said.

"Once I pull it out of the hole, honestly, I lost my mind a little," Getty told McClatchy News. "The body of the snake seemed to be quite large and disproportionate compared to its siblings. It was just over double the size of a normal baby rattlesnake."
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Attention

Man killed by polar bear on Norway's Arctic Svalbard islands


Evening Express (UK)
Fri, 28 Aug 2020 13:27 UTC
Polar bear in the Svalbard Islands. File pic

Polar bear in the Svalbard Islands. File pic
A polar bear has attacked a camping site and killed a foreign national in the remote Svalbard Islands on Friday.

The man was rushed to the hospital in Longyearbyen where he was declared dead by doctors, deputy governor Soelvi Elvedah said. Longyearbyen is the main settlement in Norway's Arctic Svalbard archipelago, which sits more than 500 miles north of the Norwegian mainland.

The attack occurred just before 4am and is being investigated, the governor's office said. The victim's identity and citizenship were not immediately given. No-one else was injured, but six people were admitted to hospital with shock.

A post-mortem will be conducted at the University Hospital of North Norway in Tromsoe, north of the Arctic Circle.
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Doberman

Attack by 2 pit bulls results in death of man in Belleville, Illinois

Hana Muslic
Belleville News-Democrat
Wed, 26 Aug 2020 12:54 UTC
PIT BULL ATTACK
A 61-year-old man is dead following an attack by his stepson's pet dogs.

Stephen F. Pemberton Sr. was killed Wednesday afternoon after the two pit bulls got out of the laundry room where they were held and attacked him, according to the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department. It is unknown if the dogs got out or were let out by Pemberton.

Sheriff's deputies were called to the scene at 309 Campus Drive in unincorporated Belleville at 1:40 p.m., the release stated. There, they found 45-year-old Kelly Knaup who told them his stepfather had been mauled by his dogs.

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Black Cat 2

Cat lobby endorses Trump in hopes Americans will go back to work and leave them alone


Babylon Bee
Wed, 26 Aug 2020 19:31 UTC
Cats Endorse Trump
© Babylon Bee
At the Republican National Convention this week, the nation's largest cat lobby endorsed Trump in hopes that the economy will be reopened and Americans will go back to work.

The cats condemned Biden's plan to keep everyone at home and endorsed Trump's plan to send Americans back to work.

"Biden wants to lock down the country," said one tabby cat, addressing the Republican Cat Caucus. "This would be disastrous for our plans to crush human -- err, our plans to lie around and do absolutely nothing all day."
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Horse

French horse owner surprises animal attackers in the night

Joanna York
The Connexion
Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:23 UTC
Horse owners are increasingly worried about how to protect their animals from the attacks.

Horse owners are increasingly worried about how to protect their animals from the attacks.
The horse owner scared away two individuals armed with knives on his property, after they had already stabbed a horse. This comes following at least 15 other macabre horse attacks in France this year.

The horse owner was alerted to the unexpected visitors on the night of August 24, after his dog's barking woke him.

He managed to scare away the armed attackers on his property in Montholon (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), but only after they had already stabbed a horse multiple times.

The wounds suffered by the horse were skin deep, and it will survive the attack.

Comment: French police urge vigilance as horse mutilations mount

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Attention

Dead fin whale and dead juvenile humpback wash ashore in Unalaska, Alaska

Hope McKenney
kucb.org
Wed, 26 Aug 2020 12:43 UTC
A juvenile humpback whale was spotted in Unalaska Bay on Sunday night. Alaska Sea Grant biologist Melissa Good took tissue samples, but was unable to perform a full necropsy.
© Hope McKenney
A juvenile humpback whale was spotted in Unalaska Bay on Sunday night. Alaska Sea Grant biologist Melissa Good took tissue samples, but was unable to perform a full necropsy.
Two dead whales have washed up on Unalaska's shores in the past week: an adult fin whale — which is the second largest mammal in the world — and a juvenile humpback.

And while local biologists hoped to determine the cause of deaths of both whales, because of COVID-19, they likely won't be able to.

That's because it takes a large team of individuals to do a whale necropsy — or animal autopsy — which, in order to protect public health and adhere to social distancing requirements in the wake of the pandemic, just isn't possible, according to Melissa Good, the local marine advisory agent with Alaska Sea Grant.

"Human safety is always the number one priority," Good said. "Other places have difficulties with doing necropsies, whether the animal floats into a remote area or there's bears in the area — you're always putting human safety first and then going, 'okay, can we get a sample after that?' Right now, it happens to be that COVID-19 is at the forefront of all of our minds. And it's something that we all need to be cognizant about, and continue to protect ourselves and the community. So we just can't take those risks."

Unalaska typically sees about one dead whale wash up on its shores every year, according to Good. And when that happens, a team of biologists often perform a necropsy to determine the cause of its death.

Comment: A dead minke whale was also discovered recently on the coast of Scarborough, Maine on Saturday, August 22:
A 4,000 pound minke whale was found dead off the coast of Maine Saturday. Researchers from Marine Mammals of Maine are still working to determine what killed it.
© Marine Mammals of Maine
A 4,000 pound minke whale was found dead off the coast of Maine Saturday. Researchers from Marine Mammals of Maine are still working to determine what killed it.
Researchers are hoping to find out what killed a dead minke whale that was found floating off Scarborough, Maine, Saturday.

The adult-sized male whale is 20 feet long and weighs 4,000 pounds, according to a Facebook post from Marine Mammals of Maine.

The whale was bloated and had already started to decay by the time it was first spotted floating north of Stratton Island by multiple fishermen and boaters Saturday. Lynda Doughty, executive director for Marine Mammals of Maine, said in an interview with the Globe that the whale had been dead for two or three days at that point.

Researchers from Marine Mammals of Maine found the whale stranded on a small island off Scarborough Sunday.

There were no obvious signs of what killed the whale, Doughty said, so researchers collected samples of its skin, blubber, and muscle that could be used to help determine the cause.


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Attention

18 melon-headed whales and 14 dolphins wash ashore on the same day in Mauritius

Shreyashi Chakraborty
International Business Times
Thu, 27 Aug 2020 12:09 UTC
A dolphin carcass lies near Grand Sable, Mauritius
© Reuters
A dolphin carcass lies near Grand Sable, Mauritius
An oil spill where a Japanese-owned ship had run aground last month. Eighteen melon-headed whales also washed up further north on the country's coast on the same day, but it was not immediately clear if both incidents were connected to the spill.

Fourteen of the dolphins were dead when found, while the others were stranded onshore and appeared seriously ill, Al Jazeera quoted environmental consultant Sunil Dowarkasing as saying.

The whales washed up on Grand Sable, about 25 km north to where the dolphins were. Some of them appeared to have injuries, according to the Japan Times. There was very little information available on the whale deaths.

Environmentalists called on the government to investigate whether the oil spill was responsible for the mass die-offs. Autopsies were being carried out on the carcasses of the dolphins and whales to determine the exact cause of death.

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Question

Rare, deep water bottlenose whales seen in the river Clyde, Scotland linked to mystery rise in strandings and sightings

Xander Richards
The National (Scotland)
Mon, 24 Aug 2020 18:41 UTC
Northern bottlenose whales were spotted in the Clyde yesterday

Northern bottlenose whales were spotted in the Clyde yesterday
A pod of whales spotted swimming in the river Clyde has been connected to a mysterious spike in sightings of the rare deep-water animals across Northern Europe.

Marine wildlife experts from the British Divers Marine Life Rescue were called out to Victoria Harbour in Greenock over the weekend after the group of northern bottlenose whales was seen in the estuary.

The pod was captured on film by Scott Cromar, who shared this video yesterday:

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Sheeple

Lightning strike kills around 500 sheep in Jumla, Nepal


MyRepublica
Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:37 UTC
lightning
Around 500 sheep died due to lightning in the alpine meadows of Patarasi Rural Municipality in Jumla district. The sheep belonging to local farmers Bishnu Budha, Jay Bahadur Bohora, among others, were killed when lightning struck them at Dhanakharka Masimsera under Bagjalem community forest on Monday evening.

Chairperson of Patarasi-4, Kali Bahadur Rawat, said that the farmers were headed toward the incident site. The details of the loss are awaited. Chief Administrative Officer Tek Bahadur Budhthapa said that the lightning hit the sheep on grazing land. Sheep rearing is the main income source for most of the locals of Patarasi area.

Budhthapa said, "Farmers will face problems in their livelihoods as lightning has killed all their sheep." Around 700 sheep had also died from continuous hailstone, rainfall and wind in 2070 BS in the district.
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