Fishermen on Canada’s Vancouver Island have filmed the moment they rescued a bald eagle from the grips of an octopus’s tentacles after the bird of prey tried to attack it. The footage shows the fisherman removing the bird from the octopus's tight hold, before they release it back to safety
Continue reading...Category Archives: Animals
Close Scottish grouse moors to help climate, report urges
Intensively managed estates have created treeless landscapes with few animals and plants
Conservation groups have called for Scotland’s grouse moors to be closed down and replaced by woodland to protect the country from the impacts of the climate emergency.
A report for Revive, a coalition of environmental and animal rights groups, has found grouse moors cause significant ecological damage by burning heather, allowing heavy grazing by deer and sheep, and using intensive predator control.
Continue reading...NSW fires so destructive thousands of koala bodies may never be found, ecologist says
Inquiry hears most koalas cannot move fast enough to get away from fires leaping from treetop to treetop
Fires burning around New South Wales have razed koala habitats so extensively “we will probably never find the bodies”, an ecologist has told a parliamentary inquiry.
On Monday the NSW upper house inquiry held an urgent hearing into the state’s koala population and habitat after this season’s “unprecedented” bushfires destroyed millions of hectares of forest.
Continue reading...Tigers, elephants and pangolins suffer as global wildlife trafficking soars
Dozens of species are now at risk but a conference this week will showcase new technology that could help stop the illegal trade
The two young women who arrived at Heathrow in February 2014 en route to Düsseldorf were carrying nondescript luggage. Customs officers were suspicious nevertheless and looked inside – to find 13 iguanas stuffed into socks inside the cases. Astonishingly, 12 of the highly endangered San Salvador rock iguanas had survived their transatlantic journey.
“There only about 600 of these animals left in the wild, in the Bahamas, and these animals were being taken to a private collector somewhere in Germany. Incredibly, we were able to return 12 of them, alive, to their homeland – on San Salvador island,” said Grant Miller, who was then working for the Border Force’s endangered species team.
Continue reading...California woman punched mountain lion in effort to save her dog
Miniature schnauzer was killed and its owner suffered a minor cut in attack in Simi Valley
A southern California woman punched a mountain lion and tried to pry its jaws open to save her dog from an attack in her backyard, but the pet was killed, officials said.
The woman suffered a minor cut after the mountain lion attacked her miniature schnauzer on Thursday in the city of Simi Valley, the police Sgt Keith Eisenhour told KNBC-TV.
Continue reading...Electric eel lights up Christmas tree in Tennessee aquarium – video
The Christmas tree at the Tennessee aquarium is being powered by an unusual renewable energy source – an electric eel. Miguel Wattson is the resident eel and through a special system that connects his tank to a nearby tree, the natural shocks he produces when he is looking for food or when he is excited, is being channelled to power fairy lights
Continue reading...Plastic pollution kills half a million hermit crabs on remote islands
Experts fear species decline after huge number of deaths on Henderson and Cocos
More than half a million hermit crabs have been killed after becoming trapped in plastic debris on two remote island groups, prompting concern that the deaths could be part of a global species decline.
The pioneering study found that 508,000 crabs died on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean, along with 61,000 on Henderson Island in the South Pacific. Previous studies have found high levels of plastic pollution at both sites.
Continue reading...Sight of polar bear daubed with graffiti sparks outrage
Environmentalists fear animal filmed in Russia now lacks camouflage to properly hunt
A video showing a polar bear spray-painted with graffiti has sparked outrage among environmentalists amid fears that the creature was targeted by locals in an area where the animals increasingly forage.
Scientists were concerned that the bear filmed in Russia – daubed with the letters “T-34”, the name of a second world war-era Soviet tank – would have trouble hunting and maintaining camouflage with the black lettering clearly visible on its side.
Continue reading...World’s largest ritual animal slaughter goes ahead despite ban
Thousands of Hindus head to southern Nepal for festival honouring goddess of power
Thousands of Hindus have gathered in southern Nepal before a festival believed to be the world’s largest ritual animal slaughter, despite court orders and calls by animal activists to end the event.
The sacrifices, set to begin on Tuesday, take place every five years in the village of Bariyarpur close to the Indian border, in honour of the Hindu goddess of power.
Continue reading...Fishing nations to lower catch limits for Atlantic bigeye tuna
Plan aims to allow tuna population to recover from overfishing, but conservationists say endangered mako shark has been overlooked
Conservationists welcomed “long overdue” catch limits set this week for bigeye tuna and other Atlantic species, but criticised weak measures to rebuild endangered mako shark populations.
The International Commission for the Conservations of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species and bycatch including sharks and rays – set new catch limits for bigeye tuna at a meeting in Palma, Mallorca, this week. It also agreed to reduce juvenile fish mortality by limiting certain fishing practices.
Continue reading...‘I was peeing and a polar bear popped up!’ Secrets of Seven Worlds, One Planet
Shooting poachers, circling polar bears, flailing four-tonne seals, singing rhinos and the world’s worst sea … the team behind Attenborough’s latest extravaganza relive their thrills and spills
Chadden Hunter, producer, North America and South America
Continue reading...Sumatran rhinoceros now extinct in Malaysia, say zoologists
Last of the species in country, a female rhino named Iman, ‘died sooner than expected’
The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, zoologists have announced.
The last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer in the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, it was revealed.
Continue reading...Light pollution is key ‘bringer of insect apocalypse’
Exclusive: scientists say bug deaths can be cut by switching off unnecessary lights
Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date.
Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies.
Continue reading...Aeroflot fails to see funny side of flier’s fat-cat swap
Airline scratches out traveller’s air miles after he used feline double to flout cabin rules
The Russian airline Aeroflot has stripped a passenger of his air miles after he boasted online of sneaking his overweight cat onboard by switching him for a slimmer cat during check-in.
Mikhail Galin wrote in a Facebook post last week that his cat Viktor was judged too fat to be taken into the passenger cabin during a layover in Moscow on a trip from Latvia to his home in Vladivostok, in the far east of Russia.
Continue reading...More than 200 elephants in Zimbabwe die as drought crisis deepens
Parks agency plans to move hundreds of animals in ‘biggest translocation of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s history’
Hundreds of elephants and tens of lions in Zimbabwe will be moved by the country’s wildlife agency as part of a major operation to save the animals from a devastating drought.
More than 200 elephants have died over the last two months due to a lack of water at the country’s main conservation zones in Mana Pools and Hwange National Park.
Continue reading...Mouse deer spotted in Vietnam for first time in 30 years – video
A distinctly two-tone mouse deer that was feared lost to science has been captured on film foraging for food by camera traps set up in a Vietnamese forest.
The pictures of the rabbit-sized animal, also known as the silver-backed chevrotain, are the first to be taken in the wild and come nearly 30 years after the last confirmed sighting of the creature
Continue reading...Mouse deer species not seen for nearly 30 years is found alive in Vietnam
Silver-backed chevrotain caught on camera after it was feared lost to science
A distinctly two-tone mouse deer that was feared lost to science has been captured on film foraging for food by camera traps set up in a Vietnamese forest.
The pictures of the rabbit-sized animal, also known as the silver-backed chevrotain, are the first to be taken in the wild and come nearly 30 years after the last confirmed sighting.
Continue reading...Case of the stolen lemur: man who took animal from US zoo wanted a monkey
This week the FBI released more details of the investigation into the brief 2018 abduction of Isaac, a 33-year-old ring-tailed lemur
When it comes to lemurs, Isaac is known for being an easygoing guy. He’s 33, and mostly enjoys a typical lemur life: resting, eating, exploring, and napping in the sun. He’s the oldest ring-tailed lemur in North America and has lived at the same address since 2000.
Related: Orangutan Sandra granted personhood settles into new Florida home
Continue reading...To the moon and back with the eastern curlew
Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats
• Vote for your favourite in the 2019 bird of the year poll
The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.
Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.
Continue reading...Indiana woman found dead with 8ft python wrapped around her neck
Laura Hurst was found Wednesday evening in a house owned by a local sheriff that contained 140 snakes
An Indiana woman has died after she was found with an 8ft python wrapped around her neck in a house owned by a local sheriff that accommodates a collection of snakes.
Laura Hurst, 36, apparently kept some snakes in the house in Oxford, Indiana, Sgt Kim Riley, an Indiana state police spokesman, said, according to a report in the Lafayette Journal & Courier.
Continue reading...