Nature & Animals Zookeeper Gabe’s Animal Thread Vol 10.0

[650lb Sumo]

Father and son killed by swarm of hornets while ziplining in Laos

Daniel Owen, 47, and his 15-year-old son Cooper, died just hours after they were taken to hospital

www.independent.co.uk

A US American teacher and his teenage son were killed by a swarm of hundreds of hornets while on a ziplining holiday in Laos.

Daniel Owen, 47, and his 15-year-old son Cooper died on 15 October while visiting an eco-adventure resort near the northern city of Luang Prabang.

Hundreds of what are believed to have been Asian giant hornets attacked the pair while they were trying to descend from a tree, a source close to two US diplomats in Laos told The Times.

Their bodies were 'covered in red spots' after the 'very, very painful' attack, Phanomsay Phakan, a doctor at the Phakan Arocavet Clinic where the father and son were taken, told the newspaper.

Daniel Owen was director of an international school in Vietnam.

“A lot of stings, more than 100, over the whole body. I thought already that it’s a very dangerous situation because I had never seen it as bad as that,” he said.

After the incident the father and son arrived conscious at the Phanak clinic, showing no signs of anaphylactic shock – allergic reactions that can kill people who have been stung by bees, wasps and hornets. However they died just hours later after they were taken to the Luang Prabang provincial hospital.

Asian Giant Hornets are the world’s largest hornet, and are native to tropical parts of East Asia, South Asia, mainland Southeast Asia, and parts of the Russian east. In recent years they have spread to countries in western Europe, including the UK.

They are responsible for dozens of deaths every year owing to the power of their ¼" stingers, which emit a particularly potent venom containing mastoparan-M – a toxin commonly found in wasp venom.

Last month in Spain a man died after accidentally stepping on a hornet’s nest in the Galicia region. Two others died the same month.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

That’s a shitty way to go

 

[650lb Sumo]

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

I saw that, would love to see that in person. Would hate to accidentally walk into it unprepared in a cave

 

[TheNinja]

Sharks from species once thought harmless kill and eat snorkeler in feeding frenzy

Attack could be due to sharks’ previously unreported ‘begging’ behaviour, scientists say

www.independent.co.uk

A 40-year-old male tourist was swimming and filming about 100m from shore in Hadera off the coast of Israel in April when he was suddenly surrounded by a shiver of dusky sharks, a species generally considered to be harmless to humans.

Witness testimonies suggest a shark reportedly lunged at his GoPro camera. Witnesses then heard him shouting: “Help… they’re biting me,” before he disappeared from sight as the water turned red and some shark fins could be seen on the surface. By the time rescue boats could arrive, the water was bloodied and the man was gone, local reports say.

'The day after, searches at sea recovered human remains (in very small quantities) that allowed the forensic confirmation of the victim’s identity, but also led to the conclusion that he had been devoured by ‘several’ sharks during this incident,' researchers wrote.

The report, published in the journal Ethology, documents the first known instance of a dusky shark – a species with no known record of killing humans – fatally attacking a diver during a feeding frenzy.

While dusky sharks are large and seem like imposing predators, growing to about 10' in length, they’re typically shy and wary of people.

The sea off Israel’s Hadera has attracted these sharks in droves due to the warm water coming out of the coast’s desalination plants.

In addition human feeding of these sharks, as well as abundant food waste dumped into the region, has served to attract dusky sharks further, with dozens of them lingering around every winter.

Local boat operators catering to tourists have also thrown fish scraps in these waters to keep the sharks within their vicinity for customers.

These factors together have led the sharks to associate humans with food, and a new behavioural pattern in them called 'begging', scientists explain.

A number of sharks have been documented swimming straight toward divers, sometimes even brushing against them, looking for quick meal handouts.

It’s so messed up. Sharks were scared of humans and stayed away So humans decide to feed them so they could watch them up close like a circus act. Now the sharks associate humans with food and oeople are going to blame the sharks as killers.

 

[Bacco]

 

[nonoob]

Guy saved kitten coiled by Python (video) - ItemFix

Social Video Factory

www.itemfix.com

 

[Anewt]

And what more australians are scared off more than the snakes and spiders. We actually have maps on them.

Personally i have zero issues with the 3 familes of em on my property.

Side note - shed is full of spiders some deadly never been bugged. But young brown snake tried to hide behind my fridge the other day.. about 2 metres from where i waa sitting.. that got the heart rate pumping i admit. No pictures as i was busy trying to keep it and my dogs apart and get it back outside.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/straight-to-the-eye-magpie-attack-leaves-12yo-fighting-to-save-her-sight/news-story/b030df3df2634512d64c79017c055fa4

Straight to the eye’: Magpie attack leaves 12yo fighting to save her sight​

A 12-year-old Western Australian girl faces 18 months of surgeries after a magpie swooped and struck her eye in a devastating attack outside her school.

A map showing magpie attacks in Australia this year. Picture: Magpie Alert

Magpie swooping season is at its tail end. Picture: Supplied

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

Poor kid, those birds really are insanely territorial.

 

[Anewt]

Poor kid, those birds really are insanely territorial.

They also are clever curious buggers.. they do hold grudges tho and have quite a long life span. I used to feed about 30 at work in a massive flock. No one ever got swooped by that flock on our site

• Recognition and memory: Magpies have the ability to recognize and remember individual human faces for many years. Research suggests they can learn to distinguish between up to 100 different people.
• Friendships: They form lasting bonds with humans they perceive as non-threatening or kind, sometimes for life, according to this ABC article.
• Assessing threat: Magpies use this ability to assess risk. They remember who has approached their nest and are more likely to swoop those individuals in the future, explains this article from the University of New England (UNE).
• Swooping avoidance: Individuals who have been kind to a magpie are less likely to be swooped during breeding season, notes Wikipedia and this Facebook post. They can also identify people wearing hats, helmets, or sunglasses, and may not be able to recognize someone wearing these items and may remember them as a threat to their nests, says the University of New England.

Australian Magpie

• Average lifespan: Approximately 25 years.
• Maximum recorded: Some have been recorded living up to 30 years.
• Factors affecting lifespan: Many young magpies die in their first few months due to predators, road hazards, and lack of food, which lowers the average lifespan.

Flocks: These are larger groups, sometimes up to 30 birds, that consist mainly of juvenile and bachelor magpies.

the families are " tribes " apparently. Lovely birds really.. I like the families of em. Good snake warning system. They point things out for the kookaburras to deal with. Well. I think they do and the kookaburras do lol

 

[TCE]

Frankie the Flamingo has been making quite a stir in my hometown making national news.

A flamingo will live a free life after escaping from a wildlife sanctuary in Cornwall and flying to France. Frankie, who left Paradise Park in Hayle, has been confirmed to be on the north coast of France after escaping on Sunday, November 2.

New details have now emerged about her daring journey, including the suspicion that she took flight with the help of a gust of wind.

After a video sighting showed Frankie flying high above the Hayle Estuary area, further sightings were reported to the wildlife sanctuary. However by 9.49am the following day, Frankie was at Île Aganton, an island just off the French mainland.

Paradise Park said that photos of Frankie looking fit and well were forwarded to the sanctuary on Sunday, November 9. At this point, Frankie was along the coast at Plage de Keremma.

Frankie had her right wing clipped, which inhibits the ability to take off, but not necessarily the ability to fly when in the air, according to curator David Woolcock. It is believed she was caught by a gust of wind which made her airborne and she flew off, the sanctuary said in a new statement today (November 12).

Writing on Facebook, David said: "When Frankie left our site on the morning of Sunday 2nd November, sometime between 8am and 8:20am, we were devastated. One confirmed video sighting on Sunday [November 2] showed Frankie flying high and strong over the Hayle Estuary area.


"However, we now know that by 9.49am on Monday, November 3, Frankie was already at the Île Aganton, on the north coast of France! This sighting was reported on the French national citizen science portal for nature. This all became apparent on November 9 when a further set of photographs of Frankie looking fit and well, and who was now along the coast at Plage de Keremma, were forwarded to us."

David explained that when the confirmed sighting of Frankie was brought to the attention of Paradise Park, it knew that it would be unlikely that Frankie would be returned to the park. Due to logistics of capturing the bird and storing the flamingo at a French institution to be health screened, as part of the UK importation process, it has been decided that Frankie will live as a "wild" bird.

'She has shown resilience'​

David said: "It was never our intention for Frankie to end up in the wild. There are a number of reports of similar situations where flamingos have lived for many years and thrived, including over European winters, so while we will continue to worry about her it is a position we have to accept.

"We are confident that her movements will be observed and logged in France by the citizen science members and feel relieved to know that she has shown the resilience and skills that will serve her well as a 'wild' flamingo. Frankie's parents and the rest of the flock at Paradise Park continue to do well.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-flamingo-live-free-life-10640247?fbclid=IwY2xjawOBphVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETExMUhvaFVBM1hKSmVlYXAwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHqufftAMUs2-Yg22F_7xOsmt1we91ekNzmPwKf3RpBAx0CRTHKE9uLScFvty_aem_jqnt9fTj_vj_l7Wr08dVpQ

 

[650lb Sumo]

These rare whales had never been seen alive. Then a team in Mexico sighted two

The search for a ginkgo-toothed beaked whale had taken five years, when a thieving albatross nearly ruined it all

www.theguardian.com

Until the sightings last year, the only evidence of the existence of the ginkgo-toothed beaked whale had come from a few dead specimens that had washed ashore.

It was an early morning in June 2024, and along the coast of Baja California in Mexico, scientists on the Pacific Storm research vessel were finishing their coffee and preparing for a long day searching for some of the most elusive creatures on the planet. Suddenly a call came from the bridge: “Whales! Starboard side!”

For the next few hours what looked like a couple of juvenile beaked whales kept surfacing and disappearing until finally Robert Pitman, a now-retired researcher at Oregon State University, fired a small arrow from a modified crossbow at the back of one of them.

The tip carved out a small chunk of skin the size of a pencil rubber. It was this that would later prove to the scientists onboard, that they were seeing a species that had never before been seen in the wild: a ginkgo-toothed beaked whale.

“I can’t even describe the feeling because it was something that we had worked towards for so long,” says Elizabeth Henderson, a researcher at the US military’s Naval Information Warfare Centre, and lead author of the resulting paper published in Marine Mammal Science, who was also there that day.

“Everybody on the boat was cheering because we had it, we finally had it.”

The Pacific Storm towed an array of hydrophones to listen to the distinctive calls of different pods of whales.

Scientists think the ginkgo-toothed beaked whales live off the shores of California and northern Baja California in Mexico.

When it comes to finding beaked whales such hi-tech aids are an absolute necessity. There are 24 known species, but apart from a few very little is known about them.

They are the deepest-diving mammals on Earth, spending most of their lives in the oceans, only coming up for air for a few minutes at a time, usually far away from coastlines. They are notoriously shy and easily frightened when approached by a boat. Many species have only been described based on dead animals washing ashore and new species are still being discovered, the last as recently as 2021.

A dense-beaked whale, also known as Blainville’s beaked whale. Researchers are trying to build maps of the deep-diving whales’ distribution from acoustic data.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

Some really cool stuff coming out of the PAC NW with the sea wolves

 

[JBSchroeds]

Some really cool stuff coming out of the PAC NW with the sea wolves

Sea wolves? Soon enough and we're going to have whales 2.0.

 

[nonoob]

Karma comes quick to mean old Gramps, shoulda kept his stick in his pants.

https://videos2.watchpeopledie.tv/1761134649sctyiG76NIxmMQ~hd.mp4

 

[650lb Sumo]

Sea wolves? Soon enough and we're going to have whales 2.0.

I thought it would be cool if whales re-evolved to become terrestrial again. Apparently this is considered unlikely. Of course it would be hard for the big ones to maintain that size on land.

There are creatures whose ancestors went aquatic-terrestrial and back though. Idk what the maximum number of steps is but here's an example from memory (details not checked, and I just use tortoise for terrestrial and turtle for aquatic, I know tortoises are a subset of turtles):

Tetrapods (aquatic)
Reptiliomorphs (amphibious)
Reptiles (terrestrial)
Tortoise (terrestrial)
Turtle (aquatic)
Tortoise (terrestrial)

 

[the ambush]

The long life of a Galápagos tortoise

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. She moved slowly, as if time were something best savored. Visitors leaned over railings or knelt at the edge of her enclosure as she stretched her neck toward a...

news.mongabay.com

Gamma was a Galapagos tortoise who recently passed away at the San Diego Zoo. Gamma reached the age of 141 years old. Galapagos tortoises originate from the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. The people of Ecuador are proud of their Galapagos tortoises.

 

[the ambush]

San Francisco says goodbye to beloved albino alligator Claude

The 30-year-old alligator icon had a “quiet charisma” that captivated hearts in his 17 years in San Francisco, the California Academy of Sciences said.

www.nbcnews.com

Claude was an albino alligator who recently passed away at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Claude reached the age of 30 years old. Over the years Claude had become a popular and beloved reptile in the park.

 

[Zookeeper Gabe]

He was a gorgeous creature, I worked with one a few years ago that was a huge dick. She took forever to settle down and start eating then was so hungry she constantly chased me for food.

 

[Ardaric]

I took my dog for a walk a few weeks ago and was somewhat surprised to see that European Beavers have moved into the area (at least some of the time). Beavers went extinct in the UK approximately 400 years ago but were unofficially reintroduced a decade or so ago. The first reintroduction site was the River Otter which is a few miles from where I took the photos (there have been other more official reintroductions since then including at Ealing in London). It's nice to see that they're spreading out.


Trail cam pointed at the dam they've made on the weir of the pool

Also a surprising number of dragon flies about

Clear evidence of beavering. When I went back this tree was gone so they've clearly been back.