Gordon Grice's Blog, page 81

Black Bear vs. Cows

I received these interesting photos in an email forward. (Thanks, Mom.) The bear seems to launch a predatory attack on the herd, only to receive a sound thrashing.

Teen Dies in Yard; Home Overrun with Animals

Another strange tale of animal hoarding, this one from Illinois. Animals can transmit many fatal diseases to humans, but there's no proof yet that such a disease is responsible for what happened to these children.
Mother investigated after boy dies, home found overrun with animals - Chicago Tribune:

Roseate Spoonbills

Photography by Dee Puett

Death Stories: Freeze-Dried

I stepped over a sag in a barbed wire fence to follow a trail of disarticulated bones, the leavings of coyotes or stray dogs. I found myself in a few acres of grassy pasture populated with immense bony sheep and Hereford cattle. The trail gave out, and the fragments of bone in my hand, some of them split and still stinking with a fuzz of half-dried marrow, were insufficient to tell me their origin. But by now I'd spotted what I really came to see, what a landowner had told me about, and it held the answer.
One patch of spring weeds rose higher than the rest, forming a hill of green. The reason for this richer growth was the carcass of an almost-grown calf. It had died a year and a half earlier, and the intense winter had kept it from rotting. Its flesh had freeze-dried—mummified, I would have said if it were human.
The tallest weeds outlined the carcass, but they did not intrude on it. The hide was smooth and curved gracefully over the bones, just as it would have in life, but it was hard to the touch, harder than boot leather. The skin had broken through at the belly, and all I could see inside was finely chewed grass. The nose was pink and perfect. A wound at the shoulder showed the marks of canid teeth, made long after the skin had desiccated. The scapular bone in my hand fitted in neatly, but the marrowed fragments proved foreign.
The calf had, I deduce, lain whole and dry until spring, when the coyotes took a meager and apparently unsatisfactory portion of him. His gross anatomy was mostly preserved. Yet this apparent preservation was an illusion. The richness of the weeds around him meant that something of him had escaped, that some of his nutrients had leeched into the earth. What the animals could not take fell to the kingdom of the plants. 
The calf's eye was still there, desiccated. At its center lay a deep, circular hole, and radiating from this center were the arcs of longitude where the moist membrane had gone dry and cracked into geometric perfection. The eyeball resembled the dried bud of a flower, a resemblance so strong I had to touch it to believe I wasn't looking at the head of a plant that had grown through the skull to die as it bloomed in the socket. 




Creative Commons/John O'Neill

Video: Polar Bear Attacks Woman

The details behind this video from Russia are sketchy.

Bat Attacks Woman

Cobun/Creative CommonsSomehow a bite strikes me as a bit more than "threatening". . .

CTV Edmonton - Bat attack prompts partial closure of national park - CTV News:

"Parts of Jasper National Park are off limits for several days after a woman was bitten by a bat suspected of having rabies.

Wildlife officials are keeping people out of the area for that time period.

The woman was sitting at a picnic table when a bat swooped down and bit her on the arm. She managed to snap a picture before it flew away. From that experts have determined it was either a northern or western long-eared bat.

It's believed the animal had rabies since it was going against its nocturnal habits and was acting in a threatening manner."

Crocodilian News

Giant Crocodile caught in Philippines - YouTube:

"A giant saltwater crocodile weighing more than a tonne has been captured in a remote southern Philippine village following a series of attacks on humans and animals, officials said.

Measuring 6.4m (21ft) and weighing 1,075kg (2,370lb), it is the biggest to be caught alive in the Philippines in recent years.

It may also be the biggest specimen ever captured, officials said."

I don't know whether this is legit, but the crocodile seen here is certainly impressive. There seems to be no particular evidence that this one is the man-eater.

Meanwhile, the much smaller American alligator that grievously wounded a 90-year-old Florida woman has been caught. The woman's son had shot it during the attack. It was found alive but "lethargic" on a road, possibly having been struck by a car. Wildlife officials plan to kill it.

http://www.local10.com/news/29093062/detail.html

Spider vs. Grasshopper

A grasshopper caught in the orb web of an Argiope.


Photography by D'Arcy Allison-Teasley

What Eats People, Part 15: Spotted Hyenas

Photos by Jerry Friedman/Creative Commons


These photos show what often happens when some other predator has made a kill and spotted hyenas want it: They take it by force. Of all the African predators and scavengers, only the lions and crocodiles hold their ground against the spotted hyena, and the lion will retreat if sufficiently outnumbered. 


There are three hyena species; the spotted kind is the largest and most dangerous. It has a long history as a predator of human beings, and a disturbing tendency to bite chunks out of people without killing them first. 


This species is also known to prey on people in serial fashion, with some clans having killed dozens or even hundreds of people over time. The news report linked below claims at least two separate attacks, involving six people, by the same hyena. More dubiously, it claims the animal is rabid. I wish we had more evidence here. The fact that it partially consumed one victim casts some doubt on the rabies hypothesis.


Bulawayo24 NEWS | Hyena mauls girl to death, attacks father and other men:

""When the father arrived at the scene, the hyena had already devoured part of the girl's face," said the police spokeperson.


Inspector Bhebhe said Boyna Mzilikazi fought the hyena with his bare hands for some minutes before two other men arrived to fend off the deadly animal.


"Mzilikazi fought the hyena with his bare hands until two of his neighbours, Godfrey Mukwasi and Passmore Mzilikazi, rushed to help him. They attacked the hyena with sticks until it finally ran away into the bush.


Boyna Mzilikazi was seriously injured and he sustained a deep gush on his right arm," he said.


Inspector Bhebhe said the hyena's reign of terror continued after it attacked two more people the following night."


Previous Post in This Series

The Battle of Kruger

Some say the most dangerous animal in Africa is the Cape buffalo, which can take astounding punishment and come back mad. This amateur video, possibly the most famous wildlife clip on Youtube, shows what happens when a pride of lions try to take a buffalo calf. A Nile crocodile gets involved, too.