animal attacks

Hmm....

Staff at the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden first became suspicious in 1997 when they spotted multiple stone piles at the park's "chimpanzee island" where Santino lives, explained Osvath, a Lund University researcher in the field of cognitive science.

Now having read through this far, I can already predict this is not going to end well. You know, like in Michael Crichton's Congo, with the flat discs of rock...

A caretaker performed surveillance by hiding herself behind a blind to investigate what was going on.

Don't DO IT! FOR GOD'S SAKE STAY OUT OF THERE!

"Stone throwing toward a crowd of people has an instant and dramatic effect," Osvath wrote, "and was a way to evoke reactions across the water moat that enclosed the chimpanzee."

And you think the chimp is smart enough to establish a missile cache, but not smart enough to cross the moat?

Santino is the lone male on the island, which he has shared with multiple females over the years. The females "seem to show little interest in the stone caches and concrete disc manufacturing."

So the chimp has all the females to himself, and he's still MANUFACTURING CONCRETE DISCS TO HURL AT HUMANS.

Chimps may not even be the only animals that feel compelled to attack humans with rocks from time to time.

Oh no, it's spreading.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

I'm not really qualified to give chimpanzee-related advice, but...

...when your friend calls for help because her 200-pound Xanax-drugged chimpanzee has stolen the car keys...

His owner, Sandra Herold, 70, had called a friend over to help when "Travis" began misbehaving at 241 Rock Rimmon Road. The chimp had taken the keys to the car. He was also trying to open car doors, which he apparently did to indicate he wanted to go for a ride. Herold was able to coax Travis back to the house and she gave him some Xanax-laced tea, police said.

When the friend, Charla Nash, 55, of Stamford, arrived minutes later, the 200-pound chimp bolted outside and began brutally attacking Nash as she was getting out of her car, leaving her with severe facial injuries. She was in "very critical condition," according to police, and her condition had not improved considerably Tuesday.

...call Animal Control.

Another of our periodic reminders that chimpanzees are not domesticated animals.

Not exactly a metaphor, but certainly of questionable taste in this story titled, "'Sex Pest' Seal Attacks Penguin":

Marion Island is the only place in the world where Antarctic fur seals are known to hunt king penguins on land, so the idea that the fur seal was trying to eat the object of its attention made sense.

"But then we realised that the seal's intentions were rather more amorous."

That's what the New York Times seems to be suggesting:

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Um...not me.

The problem seems to come from unoriginality -- if your blogging strategy is being the absolute first person to point to some other story (the examples in the story are mostly tech writers), then you have to be awake and waiting for it.

Mr. Lam, who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works even harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco -- hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.

"I've got a background getting punched in the face," he said. "That's why I'm good at this job."

Let's just say I'm not in that kind of competition.

Michelle Tsai of Slate tells what to do when monkeys attack:

Baboons, which sometimes attack humans in Africa, are much more dangerous: They're bigger and less predictable, and they're armed with 3-inch-long canines. Last year, a South African man's forearms were ripped to the bone, and doctors dug out a baboon tooth during surgery.

Yeeaaah!

The deputy mayor of New Delhi, India, fell off his balcony and died Sunday after being attacked by monkeys, his family members say. The city has around 10,000 monkeys, some of which have taken to roaming through government buildings as they steal food and rip apart documents.

Heeeaaaooow!

I work in a gum'nt building! Let's look at that story closer:

The increasingly aggressive animals swing effortlessly between the offices of the defence, finance and external affairs ministries and some have even been spotted in the prime minister's office.

"Swing effortlessly?" But macaques aren't brachiators! What are these, some kind of new gum'nt supermonkeys?

Maybe they're a whole 'nother kind of "swingers"?

"Secret Agent: Monkey Suit" photo credit: TCM Hitchhiker, Creative Commons license

"They are moving in very high security areas," says Defence Ministry officer, IK Jha.

Officials say there is little that can be done.

Does this remind you of those stories where parks are inundated by thousands of Canada geese, who just want to stay there all winter, and there's "little that can be done," because heaven knows you can't just shoot them?

Animal rights activists say the main problem is not the rising number of monkeys but the growing population of humans.

"We have encroached on their homelands, we have taken away their fruits, we have reduced their water sources and we are trapping them from their home range, from their forests, so they are coming to urban areas," says rights activist Iqbal Malik.

Monkeys are adaptable, they can live well on trash heaps and handouts, and their populations are growing. Rhesus macaques are not in trouble -- they're like herd-living raccoons that can climb up your walls and open the windows.

Well, we'd better look back at that first story to see what to do:

Primatologists will sometimes send a macaque warning signal called the open-mouth threat. Basically, form an "O" with your mouth, lean toward them with your body and head, and raise your eyebrows. Female victims might seek protection in a group of men, since monkeys are somewhat afraid of males. But whatever you do, don't freak out; those who scream, wave their arms, and run away are only going to make the macaques even more aggressive.

Remember, whatever you do, don't freak out!

They kill more people in Africa than any predator, and now they're hitting the capybaras:

GULF BREEZE, Fla. - A Capybara at a Florida Panhandle zoo died after it was attacked by an adult hippopotamus, zoo officials said Thursday.

The Capybara, a large aquatic rodent, died last week at The Zoo Northwest Florida, just a month after a baby hippo was fatally attacked by an adult hippo.

Fortunately, they're not nearly as dangerous in zoos as gorillas. I guess they shouldn't assume the giant rodents can look out for themselves, though.

This Reuters report certainly has a sinister undercurrent:

"If you think how easily a baboon could rip a person apart, the fact that they don't is quite remarkable," [Jenni] Trethowan said.

It's a long article that covers the problems with baboons invading residential neighborhoods around Cape Town. They're sort of like mega-intelligent pack raccoons:

"I was sitting outside one day, the kids were swimming in the pool, when Eric just flew through the burglar bars and into the house," said Debbie Ellis, who lives in the Imhoff's Gift district. Eric is the alpha male of the local troop.

"It was a bit frightening to see a five-foot-four male baboon standing behind my three-year-old goddaughter."

This, on the other hand, must mean something different in South Africa:

One resident who did not want to be named said he had tried in vain to drive off a big male baboon with a powerful catapult -- against the law because the animals are protected.

I'm envisioning a Roman siege engine, but dictionary.com is kind enough to tell me it can also be a slingshot. Whew!

...it's usually bad news:

The Sierra Leonean driver died as the chimps ripped his body apart, and three Americans were treated at a hospital for minor injuries, said Oliver Somasa, a top police official.

Looks like they're after a whole group:

Armed police were searching Monday for 27 chimpanzees, Somasa said, while four others had already returned on their own accord to the reserve.

Somosa said it was unclear why the chimps attacked or how they were able to escape.

I have two thoughts:

(1) People in a car that will move should be at little risk of chimpanzee injury. So I'm guessing this is sort of like bison attacks at Yellowstone, where people cross the line of safety.

(2) If a chimpanzee group can face down and kill humans armed with an automobile, imagine what australopithecines could have done!

This Reuters article is just brutal:

Lions in the area [southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique] have developed a taste for human flesh because people have been sleeping outdoors to protect their crops from raiding bush pigs, which the cats follow onto croplands, a leading expert said.

"In Tanzania in the early 1990s there were about 40 recorded lion attacks a year. In the past couple of years they have risen to over 100 and about 70 percent are fatal," said Craig Packer, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota.

Even at this high level lion attacks are about on par with bear attacks in Alaska and BC (with fewer people). But there are two main differences -- lion attacks are much more likely fatal, and, well read for yourself:

People in the region and in neighboring Malawi also frequently fall victim to crocodile attacks. But Packer said while crocodiles lay in wait in rivers, the lions actively stalked people even in their homes -- a more chilling scenario.

In short, both are man-eaters but the lions are actually man-hunters.

It is always really challenging to work for conservation of any predator. But this has to be one of the hardest cases -- a real reason for fear in the countryside.

OK, I wouldn't be so concerned about "Gene turn-off makes meek mice fearless" (New Scientist):

The research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

In the experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice wandered out into the centre of an open box, in defiance of the normal mouse instinct to hide along the boxÕs walls to avoid potential predators.

...if it weren't for the fact that I still have nightmares about this story from earlier this year:

The videos confirm that mice are taking on the chicks, biting them over and over until they die from loss of blood or infection. Wanless, an invasive-species biologist from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, vividly recalls watching the first videos. "It was carnage. Chicks half alive, with massive gaping wounds and guts hanging out."

...and this older story from Scientific American:

Scientists may not be able to build a better mouse trap, but they have learned how to build a better mouse. Princeton neurobiologist Joe Z. Tsien and colleagues from MIT and the University of Washington recently created a strain of brainier mice, dubbed Doogie after the teenage genius depicted on TV, by manipulating a single gene.

Superintelligent, bloodthirsty mice with no fear. Lab breeders, please stop now before it is too late!