animals Archives - Page 3 of 8

Crocodiles Eat People Too

I don’t think that I have ever been so drunk that I thought that I was invincible. Being eaten alive is on my list of things that frighten me. In fact it is within the top three.

Those of you who know me are aware that while I may have my own streak of crazy, there are simple rules. For example while I would prefer not to fight a Great White Shark in the ocean, I’d give it a go on land.

And though I’d prefer not to fight a croc, if I had a choice I’d meet it on land as well. The point being that I do my best to stack the odds in my favor.

“Northern Territory police have found the remains of the man who was attacked and killed by a crocodile yesterday near the Daly River community, 150 kilometres south of Darwin.

Early yesterday morning the 20-year-old man and a friend had been drinking, when they tried to swim across the crocodile-infested waterway near the Daly River community.

A crocodile was seen near the pair when the man disappeared.

Police set up an exclusion zone on the river as part of their search to find him.

This morning that search came to an end when rangers found his remains 80 metres downstream.
A 4.3-metre crocodile is believed to have killed the man and has been destroyed.

Duty Superintendent Jamie Chalker says the missing man was one of two who swam across the river to go and get some alcohol.”

Warning- The Polar Bear Will Eat You

I want to assume that this woman was mentally ill, but who knows.

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) — A polar bear attacked a woman at Berlin Zoo Friday afternoon after she climbed a fence and jumped into its habitat during feeding time, police said Saturday.

One adult polar bit her several times after she plunged into the moat, police said.

Zoo workers tossed rescue rings toward the woman to hoist her out and distract polar bears swimming nearby, said Goerg Gebhard, a Berlin police officer.

“They saved her life,” Gebhard told CNN.

Hot Monkey Love- Chimps Put Out for Meat

My apologies to those readers who are offended by the title of this post, but it is based upon science. The following clip helps to document how relations between chimps are conducted.

Come to think of it, maybe we aren’t all that different from chimps. Quite a few of the boys took their wives out for a steak dinner on Valentine’s day. Maybe we should take notes. 😉

The oldest profession isn’t restricted to humans. A new study found that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex.

By stealthily following a group of about 20 adult chimpanzees in CÃ´te dâ€™Ivoire’s TaÃ¯ National Park, behavioral ecologists Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany carefully noted which male chimpanzees copulated with which females. The researchers found that she-chimps put out more often for males that shared food with them at least once, compared to stingy males who never offered meat.

Apparently, buying dinner is a good way to improve the chances of getting lucky on a date, even if you’re a chimp.

The primates’ food-for-sex barter occurs indirectly, over the course of weeks or months, with males seeming to accrue credit with the ladies by plying them with meat killed on a hunt.

Blue Whales

I intend to watch the National Geographic special on Blue Whales. I think that they are incredible.

Blue whales can grow up to 100 feet (~30 m). Lengthwise that’s the equivalent of two city buses and longer than an NBA basketball court.
They can weigh up to 200 tons. That’s about 8 DC-9 aircrafts or 15 school buses.
In fact, their tongue alone weigh as much as an elephant. About 100 people can fit in a blue whale’s mouth.
A blue whale heart is the size of a Mini Cooper and can weigh close to 2,000 pounds (~907 kg). Its heartbeat can be detected from two miles away and a human can easily crawl through its major arteries.
Blue whales can produce sounds louder than a jet engine (188 dB vs. jet engine’s 140 dB) and can communicate with other whales up to 1,000 miles away.
A single adult eats about 4 tons of krill (tiny shrimplike animals) a day.
The spray from a blue whale’s blowhole is almost as tall as a three-story building (30 feet or 9 m).
A toddler can fit into its blowhole.

Here is a link to some more incredible facts.

Attacked By A Dragon- He Lives to Fight Another Day

Ok, this guy’s day officially qualifies as being worse than mine. But I will say that the beast is lucky he didn’t find me or I’d have sixteen new pairs of boots and a belt.

“A park ranger in Indonesia needed more than 30 stitches after he was attacked by a komodo dragon.

The giant reptile managed to climb into a hut where 46-year-old Main was sitting at his desk.

The attack happened on Rinca, one of three islands where the world’s largest lizard can be found in the wild.

Main, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, wrestled with the komodo dragon until it let go.

He fled out a window as colleagues rushed to his aid, using wooden sticks to drive the lizard out of the hut.”

Zoo solves mystery of celibate polar bears

Perhaps I am confused, but I thought that the people running the zoos were supposed to know something about the animals. How do you miss this.

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) — Puzzled zookeepers in northern Japan have discovered the reason why their attempts to mate two polar bears kept failing: Both are female.

The municipal zoo in the city of Kushiro in Hokkaido brought in a polar bear cub three years ago. They named it Tsuyoshi, after the popular baseball outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and waited until it reached reproductive age.

In June, the zoo introduced Tsuyoshi to its resident bear, an 11-year-old female named Kurumi, and waited for sparks to fly.

But much to the disappointment of zookeepers, Tsuyoshi never made any amorous advances toward Kurumi.

Earlier this month, zookeepers put Tsuyoshi under anesthesia to get to the bottom of the matter. That’s when they made their discovery: Tsuyoshi is a female.