AT/CH/CA : test of bearproof trashcontainer from Canada Bärin "Martina" at Annsbruck Zoo, Tyrol tries to pop the container (of a design now widely used in Canada) but she couldn't spring the locks (the females are often smarter than the males when it comes to getting at food)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70lOXtvQ_Lw
IN : Snakecharmer on Indian Railways This is apparently perfectly normal on some rush hour trains over there!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZTeesJ9cEA
AT/CH : How to coexist with bears (auf Deutsch) Incidentally the soundtrack sounds like it might have been recorded at the TV studios of that Catholic University in Austria which is about 2km up some mountain (wouldn't be that improbable as its where also where you might find bears, well equipped (even 16 years ago they had state of the art equipment) and a convenient place to edit nature documentaries).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrGm7uUcvbk
MY : Snakes in the city Amjad Khan Ali Khan is the 4th generation in a family of Malaysian snake charmers (unfortunately his dad Ali Khan Samsudin was bitten by a cobra in the 2000s and passed away).
Snake charmer Amjad Khan Ali Khan, who also runs a snake control company, said the chances of finding snakes in these places are high. “I once had a client who called me to remove a snake that had crawled under a heap of used plastic bottles in their garden. “When they cleared the place, they were horrified to find pieces of shed snake skin, a sign the spot had become a snakes’ nest. “I told them, if they continued to leave the heap there, it will be home to another generation of snakes,” said Amjad.
Snakes in the city - Focus | The Star Online
SG : RIP – Singapore’s only wild cow… To this day how it got there is a mystery; there are only about two dairies in the entire country (due to the lack of space) and no one had reported losing a cow....
Coney Island: The life and death of a lonely Singapore cow - BBC News
Profs discover Viking cats! Geigl cites cat remains with this same maternal DNA connection found at a Viking site in northern Germany, and dated to between the 8th and 11th century AD.
"I didn’t even know there were Viking cats," Pontus Skoglund, a population geneticist from Harvard Medical School, who wasn't involved in the study, told Nature.
Cats sailed with Vikings to conquer the world, genetic study reveals - ScienceAlert
US : TX : A Texas sized animal shelter ;) The inhabitants include bobcats, cougars, lions, tigers and bears among other species. As of September 2014, 40 felines 3 coatis, a lemur, a capybara and 29 bears call IEAS home, with spacious habitats, pools and houses.
http://www.bigcat.org/index.php
CH : Cat guides lost foreigner from mountains back to village. Apparently he's not the first person the cat has rescued!
TBH makes more sense to trust a cat than follow the (often inaccurate and incomplete) GPS maps on a mobile phone (which might not even be able to receive overseas data); cats tend to hang around places where food can be easily found and in Europe usually live in or near to human neighbourhoods.
Cat 'guides injured walker to safety' after he got lost in Swiss Alps | The Independent
IN / BD : Indian elephant washed by floods 1000km to Bangladesh and rescued… This also gives some idea of how harsh the weather can be in South Asia. Impressive that she has been rescued alive; was surprised though IN don't let BD keep her as BD is relatively short of elephants and a healthy female would be valuable.
Hoiwever I am not a zoology prof and plenty who are in both countries have been involved in the rescue; it might be better for her to return to be returned to the Indian herd.
Indian Railways are actually fully equipped to transport elephants, tigers, leopards, monkeys and all sorts else along with the humans (they do get separate carriages though guarded by vets at each end)....
Elephant washed from India to Bangladesh by floods - CNN.com
NL : 15th century pet shaming :) this monk in Deventer, Netherlands around the 1400s left a manuscript he was working on unatennded and open at night; a cat (presumably allowed in the library to scare away rats and mice) pissed on the parchment, making a section of the page unusable...
This can be seen below on the right along with a picture of a cat, and two pointing hands, plus an explanation :laugh_at:
“Hic non defectus est, sed cattus minxit desuper nocte quadam. Confundatur pessimus cattus qui minxit super librum istum in nocte Daventrie, et consimiliter omnes alii propter illum. Et cavendum valde ne permittantur libri aperti per noctem ubi cattie venire possunt.”
[Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book during the night in Deventer and because of it many others [other cats] too. And beware well not to leave open books at night where cats can come.]
[IMG]https://www.partyvibe.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=155415&d=1470348598[/IMG]
UK : East : Aggressive swan attacks 8 model boats, ducks, geese… This is unusual as folk have been sailing model boats for years on the same lake without incident (ducks have even been known to ride on the model barges); the boat club (who are mostly middle aged chaps who do not sail them in a way that would deliberately annoy wildlife) report reduced attendance and the Council considering shifting the swan family if they progess to menacing humans - the swan is already attacking some dogs!
Feisty swan ?annihilates? eight model boats on Needham Lake... Queen asked to sort the fowl-tempered bird out - News - Ipswich Star
SG : The urban otters of Singapore. This would be the equivalent of finding them in the River Tees at Middlesborough, or the Orwell at Ipswich (I don't think the water is currently sufficiently clean in either of these British rivers to be suitable for otters)
Singapore's celebrity urban otter family - BBC News
US : premium "raw" cat food recalled over multi species contamination risk Posted this just in case our American friends who post here (and their real life friends) buy this kind of stuff for their pets - these are nasty bugs that cross species boundaries!
TBH probably safer and cheaper to buy the normal pet food or feed the pets small amounts of human food (although once they get a taste for it especially cats will incessantly hassle you for more) :laugh_at:
https://consumerist.com/2016/06/24/three-flavors-of-raw-cat-food-recalled-over-listeria-salmonella-contamination/
