Category Archives: Animals

Unable to shoot rabbits this Easter, New Zealand mulls deadly virus to fight ‘plague’

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Pest numbers are booming and the annual cull has been called off, forcing one rural council to look at other ways to control the rabbit boom

In New Zealand, Easter is usually a time for killing rabbits. But, faced with a ban on the annual slaughter this year, one region is hoping to deploy a deadly virus instead.

Wild rabbits are considered a serious pest in New Zealand, particularly in rural areas, with major impact on agriculture and native landscapes. In parts of the South Island, the boom is reaching “plague” proportions, a spokesperson for Otago regional council (ORC) said on Wednesday.

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Police appeal for return of platypus spotted travelling on Brisbane train

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Two people were seen boarding the train with the animal wrapped in a towel

A platypus believed to have been taken from the wild and transported on a Brisbane train urgently needs to be returned to its natural environment, officials say.

Two people were spotted boarding the train at Morayfield on Tuesday with a platypus wrapped in a towel, Queensland police said.

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Snake on a plane forces South African pilot to make emergency landing

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Rudolph Erasmus praised for ‘great airmanship’ after discovery of deadly cobra in cockpit of private plane

A South African pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a 5ft deadly cobra slithered past his side and curled up under his seat.

Rudolph Erasmus was flying four passengers in a private plane at 11,000ft when he said he felt a “cold sensation” on his hip. Thinking that his water bottle might have been leaking, Erasmus looked down instead at the sight of a highly venomous snake disappearing underneath him.

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Japan’s bear meat vending machine proves a surprising success

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The machine in the northern prefecture of Akita sells locally killed wild bear captured by hunters

Japan has added to its large and eclectic pool of vending machines with a new model that sells fresh bear meat – and which has proved an unlikely hit.

The machine, in the northern prefecture of Akita, has attracted a steady stream of customers since it was installed at the end of last year, according to media reports.

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A rare parasite is killing California sea otters – is cat poop runoff to blame?

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The bodies of four furry swimmers tested positive for a strain of toxoplasmosis first seen in mountain lions

Scientist Melissa Miller was seeing something in California sea otters that she had not seen before: an unusually severe form of toxoplasmosis, which officials have confirmed has killed at least four of the animals.

“We wanted to get the word out. We’re seeing something we haven’t seen before, we want people to know about it and we want people working on marine mammals to be aware of these weird findings,” said Miller, a wildlife veterinarian specialist with the California department of fish and wildlife (DFW). “Take extra precautions.”

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Two tigers briefly missing after Georgia zoo damaged by tornado

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The Pine Mountain Animal Safari lost two of its big cats after it sustained weather damage, but found them a few hours later

Two tigers briefly went missing from a Georgia zoo after a tornado struck the state on Saturday night and damaged the facility’s infrastructure.

In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, the Troup county’s sheriff’s office announced that it received a report from the Pine Mountain Animal Safari that a “tiger … is unaccounted for inside the park”.

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‘Spectacular’ spiny crayfish samples rec amid Lismore floods key to mapping species

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Australia Museum says 20-year-old collection will help understand and conserve threatened animals, which are sensitive to climate change

As floods devastated Lismore, a group of ecologists waited anxiously for a break in the weather so they could move an important scientific collection of “spectacular” spiny crayfish to a new home at the Australian Museum.

The samples of the crayfish were collected more than 20 years ago from deep within the rainforests of north-eastern NSW and southern Queensland by Dr Jason Coughran, a freshwater ecologist.

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Pets could be gene-edited under new English law, says RSPCA

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Act opens door to technology being used to create cats and dogs with extreme features, says charity

Pets could be subjected to gene editing under a new government act, the RSPCA has warned.

The animal charity has said that the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act applies to all vertebrate animals, not only farmed animals, and that it could lead to cats and dogs being gene-edited to include extreme features.

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Escaped cow that tore through Brooklyn finds home at sanctuary

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Canarsie cow to meet fellow celebrity escapees at rescue center where animals live on vast pasture: ‘She’ll be ecstatic’

It’s been one hell of a week for the Canarsie cow, a black angus calf who started this week on her way to a slaughterhouse and will end it settling into her new home on a New Jersey farm.

After she escaped a truck hauling her from a Pennsylvania farm to certain death at Saba Live Poultry in Canarsie, Brooklyn, she went on a rampage through the streets. Slaughterhouse employees and workers at a nearby pizza shop tried to catch up with her, in a chase that lasted several minutes.

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A team of vets, four ‘kumki’ and one tranquilliser dart: the plan to capture Kerala’s marauding elephant

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Known as ‘Rice Tusker’ for his insatiable hunger, the 30-year-old pachyderm has been terrorising the Indian region for years

The trail of destruction left by an elephant in Kerala could finally come to an end on Sunday as a crack team of experts plan to capture him.

The team of 71 vets, forest officers and field workers have identified a specific spot among the wooded hills in Idukki district where Arikompan – which means the Rice Tusker, because of his love for rice – comes every couple of days to cool off in water.

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Zebra captured after three hours on the run in Seoul

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Animal, which is thought to have broken out of its zoo enclosure, was tranquillised after being on the loose in South Korean capital

A young zebra walked, trotted and galloped for hours through the busy streets of Seoul before emergency workers tranquillised the animal and brought it back to a zoo.

The zebra – a male named Sero who was born in the zoo in 2021 – was in a stable condition and being examined by veterinarians on Thursday evening, said Choi Ye-ra, an official at the Children’s Grand Park in South Korea’s capital.

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Burrowing badgers halt train services in the Netherlands

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Dutch authorities try to tempt out animals, which dig setts under quiet and raised train embankments

Leaves on the tracks, signal failures and strikes can all cause train delay headaches, but commuters in the Netherlands are facing railway havoc caused by badgers burrowing under the lines, with authorities struggling to tempt the protected animals out.

In the densely populated country, there is limited natural space for the country’s 7,000 badgers. They often dig out their homes, or setts, under relatively “quiet” train embankments, which are ideally situated away from people and also slightly raised, which prevents the sett from flooding.

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World’s biggest single eradication operation aims to remove mice from island

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Invasive house mice threaten endangered seabirds and wildlife on Marion Island in Indian Ocean

Non-native house mice are to be removed from Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean to protect the wandering albatross and other endangered seabirds, in the world’s largest eradication programme of its kind.

Mice accidentally introduced on to the remote island by 19th-century seal hunters have thrived in warmer and drier conditions over the past 30 years, devastating the island’s invertebrates and plants, and then devouring the chicks and even adults of ground- and burrow-nesting seabirds.

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Fate of 1,000 trafficked lab monkeys at center of US investigation in limbo

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Long-tailed macaques at risk of being killed, or laundered or re-trafficked if returned to Cambodia, animal welfare groups say

More than a thousand Cambodian monkeys at the center of a US government investigation into wildlife trafficking are at risk of being killed or returned to their country of origin, laundered and re-trafficked, animal welfare groups say.

The monkeys’ plight first came to light last year when the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asked the animal rights organization Peta about finding a sanctuary for 360 monkeys. Born Free USA, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) later joined the discussions and the number of monkeys increased to over 1,000 as talks progressed.

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Rare 6ft shark washed up then decapitated on Hampshire beach

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Historian Dan Snow pleads for person to come forward who removed head from animal washed up on Lepe beach

An appeal has been launched to recover the head of a rare smalltooth sand tiger shark after the fish was washed up on a Hampshire beach.

The 2 metre (6ft) long shark was initially found on Lepe beach on Friday.

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Knock, knock, who’s there? Alligator bites Florida man after he opens door

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Scot Hollingsworth of Daytona Beach said he heard a noise and after opening door was bitten by 9ft alligator on the thigh

A Florida man answering a knock at his front door was promptly bitten by a 9ft long alligator when he opened it to see who was there.

Scot Hollingsworth, of Daytona Beach, told local TV station WKMG that he was watching TV with his wife when he heard a bump at the door and got up to investigate.

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Breeding birds in captivity may alter their wing shapes and reduce post-release survival chances

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Research into critically endangered orange-bellied parrot finds 1mm difference in length of one feather is enough to reduce survival rate by 2.7 times

Breeding in captivity can alter birds’ wing shapes, reducing their chances of surviving migratory flights when they are released to the wild, new research suggests.

A study of the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot has found that in captive-bred birds, those with altered wing shapes had a survival rate 2.7 times lower than those born with wings close to an ideal “wild type” wing.

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‘Send a chopper’: zebra almost bites farmer’s arm off in Ohio

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Stallion zebra, which was behaving ‘erratically’, shot dead by police after attacking Ronald Clifton, 72

A midwestern farmer called emergency services, shouting: “Come before it gets me again!” after he was attacked by his pet zebra at a farm in Circleville, Ohio.

The zebra, which bit Ronald Clifton, 72, on the arm, partially severing it, was the only stallion in a small herd of four or five mares.

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Toronto dog owners bite back after city posts ‘no barking’ sign at pooch park

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City called off its dogs and said it would review its sign approval process after canine owners called the prohibition ‘lunacy’

Officials in Canada’s most populous city have their tails between their legs after they were forced to call off an effort to stop dogs barking in local parks.

Inhabitants of Toronto are grudgingly accustomed to a daily soundtrack of city life: gridlocked traffic, rumbling trucks, heavy machinery and noisy neighbours.

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‘Alligators don’t make good pets, y’all’: Texas zoo rescues reptile stolen as egg

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Woman who did not have a permit to keep alligator as a pet confessed to taking an egg from zoo near Austin 20 years ago

A Texas zoo said it had taken back an 8ft alligator which was stolen as an egg more than 20 years ago, then kept as a backyard pet.

In an Instagram post accompanying footage of three agents gingerly lifting the alligator into a truck and releasing it into a zoo enclosure, the state parks and wildlife department said: “Alligators don’t make good pets, y’all.”

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