SOTT
SIGNS
OF THE
TIMES
OF THE
TIMES
Welcome to Sott.net
The World for People who Think
AnimalsS
© youtubeElephant attacks bikers
This time this particular elephant was roaming right in middle of a bustling National Highway. It lead to traffic getting standstill. A motorcycle rider and his pillion tried to pass the elephant. And then tragedy happened, nearly!
The elephant tried to literally crush the two guys. Barely metres from getting crushed, the guys managed to get back their balance and escape the wrath of the elephant. The motorcycle though was completely destroyed.
© Roger Klein/CTV BarrieHundreds of mysterious eels have washed up on shore near the mouth of the Nottawasaga River
Hundreds of eel have recently washed ashore near the mouth of the Nottawasaga River.
The eels have a pointed nose and spots on the tail
"I have never seen this before," said Rick Baldry with the Georgian Triangle Anglers Association. "This is something completely foreign to my eyes and probably everyone else's eyes around here."
The eels have not been positively identified, but appear to be a type of peacock eel that are sometimes raised in aquariums. Those eels are native to the tropical waters in Thailand, India and Burma and can grow to be almost 40 centimetres long.
Baldry is concerned that somebody body must have released the eels into the wild and considering the numbers they must have reproduced too.
"How did they get here, that's the real concern," he said.
Magpies have been terrorising visitors by stealing their food and attacking people - even children- in Gungahlin, Canberra, that authorities have begun culling the birds
According to ACT Parks and Conservation director Daniel Iglesias, between 25 and 30 magpies lived near Yerrabi Pond in Gungahlin, with some being trapped by rangers and euthanised on Thursday.
Speaking to ABC News, Mr Iglesias said the culling is needed because the number of incidents involving the swooping birds has dramatically increased.
'We have one story, where a magpie stood on a child's head, leant over the child's head, put it's beak in its mouth to get food out of its mouth,' Mr Iglesias told ABC News.
'We've had other incidents where there have been other near-misses with eyes.'
© YouTube/Cool PandaRademenes, the 'nurse cat' lends a paw to veterinarians at Polish animal shelter in Bydgoszczy.
Rademenes was brought to a veterinary clinic in Bydgoszcz, Poland with one purpose — to end his suffering, Izabella Szolginia, the director of the center told Sputnik.
He was in such bad shape that the staff at the shelter would not let him near the other animals.
But when veterinarian Krystyna Kuziel-Zawalich took him in her arms and heard him purr, she decided to help him fight for his life.
It took him half a year to come back to life, Szolginia says. However, after a while the personnel noticed something unusual in his behavior.
The staff were amazed to watch him lying with the shelter's furry patients. He paid particularly close attention to those which were recovering from surgery.
© YouTube/Cool Panda
© New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.A female black bear and her cub were recorded at a watering hole in northeastern New Mexico shortly before the bear attacked a hunter.
The hunter received bite injuries to his foot through his boot as he climbed a tree to try to escape the bear. He was taken to Alta Vista Hospital in Las Vegas, N.M., where he was treated and released.
The attack, which occurred Thursday near the tiny village of Ocate, marked the seventh time a black bear has attacked a human in the state this year, the highest number in the past 16 years, according to Lance Cherry, a spokesman for the Game and Fish Department. It was the fourth attack this year resulting in an injury. None of the attacks was fatal.
Try and pass if you dare
The anteater bravely stepped out in front of the Jeep when it approached on a dirt track in Brazil.
Photographer Luciano Candisani said the animal was making itself look 'bigger' and 'stronger' after spotting the vehicle.
Mr Candisani, 44, was running a photography workshop at the time and was taking them through the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil.
The wildlife photographer said: 'It was very early in the morning. I was leading a photography workshop in Pantanal when the anteater entered the dirt road in front of our jeep and stopped in front of the car.
© ALAMY
A bluefin tuna shoal
A bluefin tuna shoal
The record price for a single tuna on the Japanese market is about £1 million, and the shoal, of around 500 fish, is believed to be the largest sighted off the county in over a century.
Duncan and Hannah Jones, the owners of a tourist cruise company in Penzance who discovered the fish, said it was as though the sea was "exploding".
But EU fishing regulations prevent British boats from catching bluefin tuna. Protection rules mean that only eight countries, including Greece, France and Spain, can land tuna, and even they are restricted to a short season of fishing.
© Trevor Victor Harvey GalleryRaining stones by Mackenzie Thorpe.
A popular theory explains these events as being caused by strong winds that whisk things up from the ground or water and hurl them towards an unsuspecting town many miles away.
But can this theory also explain showers of heavy stones that have been known to damage houses and even kill people and livestock?
A Long History of Raining Objects
One of the first recorded instances of "raining" objects comes from the writings of Roman philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder, who documented storms of frogs and fish in the 1st century A.D. in what is now Italy. In the 3rd century A.D., ancient Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus wrote in his work The Deipnosophists (Book VIII):
In Paeonia and Dardania it has, they say, before now rained frogs; and so great has been the number of these frogs that the houses and the roads have been full of them; and at first, for some days, the inhabitants, endeavoring to kill them, and shutting up their houses, endured the pest; but when they did no good, but found that all their vessels were filled with them, and the frogs were found to be boiled up and roasted with everything they ate, and when besides all this, they could not make use of any water, nor put their feet on the ground for the heaps of frogs that were everywhere, and were annoyed also by the smell of those that died, they fled the country.Since then, numerous other unusual instances have been documented, including a storm in Italy in 1840 that deposited thousands of partially germinated Judas Tree seeds native to Central Africa; a dusting of sugar crystals in 1857 in Lake County, Calif.; a rain of hazelnuts over Dublin, Ireland, in 1867; live pond mussels in Paderborn, Germany, in 1892; and jellyfish in Bath, England, in 1894.
© US Fish and Wildlife Service/FlickrOnly four or five leatherback turtles have been spotted in Denmark in the past 100 years.
An enormous leatherback turtle weighing several hundred kilos washed up on shore on the island of Lolland over the weekend.
The leatherback sea turtle is the world's largest marine turtle. Its global population is considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature but many subpopulations are critically endangered. According to the World Wildlife Fund, leatherbacks have been spotted as far north as the US state of Alaska and as far south as Africa's Cape of Good Hope. It is extremely rare, however, to see one near Denmark.
Comment: More info: Birds indicate a planet in peril, but investing in conservation makes economic sense, Ancient wisdom vs. hi-tech forecasts as climate changes