Man Eating Squid- Paging Jules Verne

You can list giant man eating squid alongside the rest of the maneaters as one more creature that I will take on in single combat. There is one caveat, they can fight me on land or meet me in cleveland. I'll take them on in water in the land of the burning river.

DEADLY sea monsters have woken from the deep to cause carnage among some of the world’s richest fishing grounds.

Millions of killer giant squid are not only devouring vast amounts of fish they have even started attacking humans.

Two Mexican fishermen were recently dragged from their boats and chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified even by their own families.

No wonder the giant squid are called “diablos rojos” – red devils.

Monster squid are the stuff of legend. But for fishermen and marine biologists along 10,000 miles of coast from Chile to Alaska, the myth has become reality.

And their story is told this week in a Channel Five documentary.

Since 2002, Humboldt giant squid, named after the 18th century German explorer, have been spreading their tentacles to deplete fishing stocks by moving from their traditional tropical hunting grounds off Mexico and laying claim to a vast sweep of the Pacific.

Hunting in 1,000-strong packs the giant squid can out-swim and out-think fish. Scientists believe they coordinate attacks by using pigment cells to communicate.

A single female is believed to be able to lay 30 million eggs, each one capable of becoming a giant killing machine.

Marine biologists wear chain-mail to protect themselves from creatures that can measure 8ft, weigh 100lb and carry an armoury of more than 40,000 fearsome teeth along two “attack” tentacles.

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Australian drunk survives attempt to ride crocodile

Stories like this are more common than you might think.

The crocodile, called Fatso, bit the 36-year-old man's leg, tearing chunks of flesh from him as he straddled the reptile.

He received surgery to serious wounds to his leg and is recovering in hospital, police say.

He had been chucked out of a pub in the town of Broome for being too drunk.

The man, Michael Newman, climbed over a fence and tried to sit on the 800kg (1,800lb) saltwater crocodile.

"Fatso has taken offence to this and has spun around and bit this man on the right leg," Sgt Roger Haynes of Broome police told journalists.

"The crocodile has let him go and he's been able to scale the fence again and leave the wildlife park."

Malcolm Douglas, the park's owner, said that the crocodile was capable of crushing a man to death with a single bite.

"The man who climbed the fence was fortunate because Fatso was a bit more sluggish than normal, due to the cooler nights we have been experiencing in Broome," said Mr Douglas.

"If it had been warmer and Fatso was more alert, we would have been dealing with a fatality."

"No person in their right mind would try to sit on a 5m crocodile, Saltwater crocodiles, once they get hold of you, are not renowned for letting you go."

The man staggered back to the pub bleeding heavily.

Related Links:

Crocodiles Eat People Too
Zoo Tiger Eats Man
Don't Tease The Crocodile
Eaten By An Alligator
Python Bursts After Trying to Eat Gator

Elephants: The African Gentle Giants - ABC News

Loss- A Familiar Pain

Many years ago I worked with a woman who had two dogs. I can't tell you much about the dogs. I don't remember names, breeds or much of anything other than she loved them. Loved them so much that when one dog died she had to take time off from work.

I remember being surprised by this. I had grown up with pets who were part of the family. We had dogs, cats, hamsters, mice and birds. Not all at the same time, but they were a constant part of my childhood. I was familiar with loving my pets but not to the extent that this woman did.

I was a 27 year-old newlywed who lived in a modest apartment. She was about four foot nothing in her stockings and couldn't have weighed more than a 100 pounds. A tiny single mother whose child had gone off to college she had no one but her dogs. Or so I think.

So many years have passed it is hard to remember and it is possible that some of the grains of time have become lodged in my eye and consequently have blurred the details.

What I know for certain, what I can say without hesitation is that I thought of her as being old and was quite surprised at how upset she became when her dog died. I understood that it was hard, but I didn't quite get how it required time away from work.

But age and life experience have helped to bridge the gap and I understand things a little bit better now than I did then. Because the truth is that I still miss my old friend.

This past weekend we took the new puppy to see the vet. The same vet that the big lug used to see. As I stood there I remembered when he was just a puppy, far bigger than the new guy, but just as curious. I stood there and remembered how he used to prance around the house and how we'd play together.

And then I remembered how it was at the end. The struggle to walk, the incontinence and other indignities of old age. How hard it was to make the decision to let him go and how the light went out in his eyes in the same room that I was standing in.

As screwy as it may sound, I felt a twang of guilt. I felt sad that he was gone and that I wasn't able to do more for him. He was the best of friends and a trusted confidant who was taken away far too early. And I realize that every time I see a Golden Retriever I look for him.

He's not coming back. There won't be another like him. There will be other dogs and the bond between the new one and I is growing daily. I suppose that I just felt like I needed to put it out there that he hasn't been replaced. His memory lives on with me.

How Do You Steal A 9.5 Foot Python

Color me confused about this:

"Authorities are looking for a python that was reported stolen from a petting zoo in Fort Myers.
The snake's owner told Lee County deputies that the 9-and-a-half-foot female was locked in its cage Saturday night, but was gone the next morning.

The snake was part of a petting zoo set up in a tent in a shopping center parking lot. The lock on the snake's cage was cut, and a blanket covering the cage had been lifted."

Ice skating bear kills Russian circus hand

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A bear on ice skates attacked two people during rehearsals at a circus in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, killing one of them, Kyrgyz officials said Friday.

In the incident, which happened Thursday, the 5-year-old animal killed the circus administrator, Dmitry Potapov, and mauled an animal trainer, who was attempting to rescue him.

"The incident occurred during a rehearsal by the Russian state circus company troupe which was performing in Bishkek with the program, Bears on Ice," Ministry of Culture and Information director Kurmangazy Isanayev told reporters.

It is unclear what caused the bear to attack Potapov, 25, nearly severing one of his legs while dragging him across the ice by his neck. Medical personnel were unable to save Potapov, who died at the scene.

The 29-year-old circus trainer Yevgeny Popov, who attempted to rescue Potapov, was also severely injured, according to doctors.

Add this to the list of ways I do not want to die. I really don't want to be killed by an animal, especially a bear on skates. I wonder how close he got to the bear. I can't really see the bear speed skating over to him, checking him into the boards and then taking him out.

Ouch.

The Tiger Was Right

Talk about stupid people. On the heels of the pet bear here we go with another animal story. A bad case of stupid is still going around.

(CNN) -- A Siberian Tiger mauled a man Monday morning after he and a friend scaled the fence of the Calgary Zoo and pressed up against the tiger cage, zoo officials said.The information we have is that while his injuries appear not to be life-threatening. They are, however, quite serious," Graham Netwon, the zoo's director and chief financial officer, said at a news conference Monday. 

Officials said two men scaled the zoo's 8-foot perimeter fence, which also is covered in barbed wire, about 1 a.m. Monday morning.

The two 27-year-old men, who were not identified, then headed toward the tiger cage, where they scaled a safety fence meant to keep the public away.

The two men never entered the cage, but stood in between the safety fence and another fence meant to "keep the tigers in" when they startled a 2-year-old Siberan tiger named Vitali.
Vitali "has a fairly significant armament at his disposal: very sharp claws," said Dr. Sandie Black, the zoo's head veterinarian.

Once the tiger was startled, he probably clawed one of the men, officials said.

"My guess would be that the gentleman was hooked by a claw and the arm dragged in and then continued to be attacked from that point," Black said during the news conference.

The second man then struggled to help his friend escape the tiger's grasp, officials said.

Pet bear kills Pennsylvania woman

Every time I read one of these stories I shake my head. What are you doing keeping a bear, lion or tiger at home.

(CNN) -- A 37-year-old Pennsylvania woman died Sunday after being mauled by her pet black bear, authorities said.

Kelly Ann Walz was attacked when she entered the bear's cage to feed the 350-pound animal and clean its cage, according to Pennsylvania State Police. The bear lived in a 15-by-15-foot steel and concrete enclosure on Walz's property in Ross Township.

Other animal stories:

Warning- The Polar Bear Will Eat You
How To Fight A Polar Bear
Komodo dragon attacks terrorize Indonesia villages
Reasons To Be Careful In The Bathroom
Snake Tries to Eat Man, Man Bites Back
Crocodiles Eat People Too
Attacked By A Dragon- He Lives to Fight Another Day
Woman Stuffs Snake Down Pants

Komodo dragon attacks terrorize Indonesia villages

Spend any time around the Shack and you'll see that we love these animal stories. This is the kind of lizard whose tale is worth telling.

The attacks on humans appear to be increasing in frequency. If you read the whole story you'll see that an eight-year-old boy was mauled to death while trying to relieve himself. Talk about inopportune times to be attacked, sheesh.

Believe me, I am not being facetious about this, one of my fears is being eaten alive.

KOMODO ISLAND, Indonesia – Komodo dragons have shark-like teeth and poisonous venom that can kill a person within hours of a bite. Yet villagers who have lived for generations alongside the world's largest lizard were not afraid — until the dragons started to attack.

The stories spread quickly across this smattering of tropical islands in southeastern Indonesia, the only place the endangered reptiles can still be found in the wild: Two people were killed since 2007 — a young boy and a fisherman — and others were badly wounded after being charged unprovoked.

Komodo dragon attacks are still rare, experts note. But fear is swirling through the fishing villages, along with questions on how best to live with the dragons in the future.

Main, a 46-year-old park ranger, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was doing paperwork when a dragon slithered up the stairs of his wooden hut in Komodo National Park and went for his ankles dangling beneath the desk. When the ranger tried to pry open the beast's powerful jaws, it locked its teeth into his hand.

"I thought I wouldn't survive... I've spent half my life working with Komodos and have never seen anything like it," said Main, pointing to his jagged gashes, sewn up with 55 stitches and still swollen three months later. "Luckily, my friends heard my screams and got me to hospital in time."

Komodos, which are popular at zoos in the United States to Europe, grow to be 10 feet (3 meters) long and 150 pounds (70 kilograms). All of the estimated 2,500 left in the wild can be found within the 700-square-mile (1,810-square-kilometer) Komodo National Park, mostly on its two largest islands, Komodo and Rinca. The lizards on neighboring Padar were wiped out in the 1980s when hunters killed their main prey, deer.

Though poaching is illegal, the sheer size of the park — and a shortage of rangers — makes it almost impossible to patrol, said Heru Rudiharto, a biologist and reptile expert. Villagers say the dragons are hungry and more aggressive toward humans because their food is being poached, though park officials are quick to disagree.

The giant lizards have always been dangerous, said Rudiharto. However tame they may appear, lounging beneath trees and gazing at the sea from white-sand beaches, they are fast, strong and deadly.

The animals are believed to have descended from a larger lizard on Indonesia's main island Java or Australia around 30,000 years ago. They can reach speeds of up to 18 miles (nearly 30 kilometers) per hour, their legs winding around their low, square shoulders like egg beaters.

When they catch their prey, they carry out a frenzied biting spree that releases venom, according to a new study this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors, who used surgically excised glands from a terminally ill dragon at the Singapore Zoo, dismissed the theory that prey die from blood poisoning caused by toxic bacteria in the lizard's mouth.

The long, jagged teeth are the lizard's primary weapons, said Bryan Fry of the University of Melbourne.

"They deliver these deep, deep wounds," he said. "But the venom keeps it bleeding and further lowers the blood pressure, thus bringing the animal closer to unconsciousness."

Four people have been killed in the last 35 years (2009, 2007, 2000 and 1974) and at least eight injured in just over a decade. But park officials say these numbers aren't overly alarming given the steady stream of tourists and the 4,000 people who live in their midst.

Reasons To Be Careful In The Bathroom

These two stories should serve as a reminder to look before you begin your business in the bathroom.

"A 2cm long fish apparently found it's way into the penis of a 14-year-old boy from India in a bizarre medical case.

The patient was admitted to hospital with complaints of pain, dribbling urine and acute urinary retention spanning a 24-hour period. According to the boy, the fish slipped into his penis while he was cleaning his aquarium at home. Professor Vezhaventhan and Professor Jeyaraman, who treated the boy and later wrote a paper on the case, explained: "While he was cleaning the fish tank in his house, he was holding a fish in his hand and went to the toilet for passing urine. When he was passing urine, the fish slipped from his hand and entered his urethra and then he developed all these symptoms."

and

"A MAN became a sitting target for a snake, which bit his penis as sat on the toilet.

"As soon as he sat down, he suddenly felt a knife-like pain and reacted instinctively by standing up," the China Times said. "When he looked down, he saw the big snake." (Editor's note: We all say this. ;) ) The 51-year-old Taiwanese man, from Nantou County, Tapei, was under medical care with minor injuries, a director at Puli Christian Hospital said.

"As soon as he has passed the risk of infection, he can go," the director, who declined to be named, said.

"A snake's mouth isn't always clean."

Snake Tries to Eat Man, Man Bites Back

Want to know what snake tastes like? Ask this fellow. Better yet ask the keystone cops how they let the snake escape.

A Kenyan man bit a python which wrapped him in its coils and dragged him up a tree during a fierce three-hour struggle, police have told the BBC.

The serpent seized farm worker Ben Nyaumbe in the Malindi area of Kenya's Indian Ocean coast at the weekend.

Mr Nyaumbe bit the snake on the tip of the tail during the exhausting battle in the village of Sabaki.
Police rescued Mr Nyaumbe and captured the 13ft (4m) reptile, before taking it to a sanctuary, but it later escaped.

The victim told police he managed to reach his mobile phone from his pocket to raise the alarm when the python momentarily eased its grip after hauling him up a tree on Saturday evening. Mr Nyaumbe used his shirt to smother the snake's head and prevent it from swallowing him.

His employer arrived with police and villagers, who tied the python with a rope and pulled them both down from the tree with a thud.

Peter Katam, superintendent of police in Malindi district, told the BBC News website: "Two officers on patrol were called and they found this man was struggling with a snake on a tree.

"The snake had coiled his hands and was trying to swallow him but he struggled very hard. The officers and villagers managed to rescue him and he was freed.

"He himself was injured on the lower lip of the mouth - it was bleeding a little bit - as the tip of the snake's tail was sharp when he said he bit it." Mr Nyaumbe told the Daily Nation newspaper how he resorted to desperate measures after the python, which had apparently been hunting livestock, encircled his upper body in its coils.

"I stepped on a spongy thing on the ground and suddenly my leg was entangled with the body of a huge python," he said.

"I had to bite it."

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 Côte d’Ivoire's Taï 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.

Text Messaging to Save Elephants

I found this article on CNN and thought that it was interesting. Elephants are among my favorite animals.

OL PEJETA, Kenya (AP) -- The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.The huge
bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as "near threatened" in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar, then set up a virtual "geofence" using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once
almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

It's a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone's throw from the conservancy fence. She and her neighbors used to drum through the night on pots and pans in front of flaming bonfires to try to frighten the elephants away.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

"We had to go into town to tell the game [wardens] to chase the elephants away or we're going to kill them all," Mwasu remembered.

But the elephants kept coming back.

Batian Craig, the conservation and security manager at the 90,000-acre Ol Pejeta conservancy, says community development programs are of little use if farmers don't have crops. He recalled the time when 15 families had their harvests wiped out.

"As soon as a farmer has lost his livelihood for six months, he doesn't give a damn whether he has a school or a road or water or whatever," he said.

Crossposted here.

A Monster Fish

This may not be Leviathan, but it is pretty damn big.

"A man-sized grouper that trolls the tropical waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean for octopuses and crabs has been identified as a new fish species after genetic tests.

Called the goliath grouper, the fish can grow to six feet (1.8 meters) in length and weigh a whopping 1,000 pounds (454 kg). Until now, scientists had grouped this species with an identical looking fish (also called the goliath grouper, or Epinephelus itajara) living in the Atlantic Ocean.

"For more than a century, ichthyologists have thought that Pacific and Atlantic goliath grouper were the same species," said lead researcher Matthew Craig of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, "and the argument was settled before the widespread use of genetic techniques."

Senior Citizen Sex- Not What You Think

I thought that this story was kind of cool. In fact when I am 110 I intend to emulate the lizard king. ;)

(CNN) -- Although he's 110 years old and hasn't shown interest in sex for over four decades, Henry is going to be a dad.

A tuatara, a rare species descended from dinosaurs, Henry is a lizard-like creature whose species has been endangered since the 1890s. They are now only found on a handful of New Zealand's offshore islands.

Henry is the oldest tuatara to mate at Southland Museum on the country's South Island. His best years as a lady lizard's man may be ahead of him, though, because he's actually middle aged. His species can live well past 200.

"I had given up on old Henry," said curator Lindsay Hazley, who said he had to keep Henry in "solitary confinement" because he attacked females who approached him to mate.

Henry began to overcome his reptile dysfunction in 2002 when veterinarians realized a lump in the animal's nether regions was a cancerous tumor. They removed it and, over the next few years, his attitude changed.

"If I had a tumor underneath my [genitals], when girls were passing by, I'd be a very grumpy boy, too," said Hazley, who has cared for tuataras at the museum for 35 years.

In March, Henry mated with Mildred, whose age is estimated between 70 and 80. Last month, she laid 12 fertile eggs -- 11 of which are healthy.