Bad animal news briefs

Animal muggers don't only pick on someone their own size:

A fully-grown man has told how he was mugged by a fox, which cornered him and forced him into handing over his dinner. .. The wily fox, which had been sitting on a kerb at the side of the road, followed him into an alleyway... The aggressive animal leapt at him, circling him like prey and trying to snatch his shopping bag.

Despite making attempts to escape, the fox persisted and carried out a sustained attack on the food he had just bought from Tesco.

Eventually, Mr Baker claims, he resorted to offering the animal his loaf of garlic bread and the fox scampered off.

-Animals aren't concerned about their carbon footprint: in England, a town blames seagulls for keeping their streetlights on 24 hours a day:

Council chiefs in Brighton, East Sussex, say that the light-sensitive photocell mechanism on top of the lamps is being blocked by the birds’ droppings, fooling the system into thinking that it is permanently night time.

-I don't know exactly what's going on here but it's definitely bad behavior:

After two unexpected pregnancies at a sanctuary for retired research chimpanzees, other female chimps have been put on birth control and the males are getting a new round of vasectomies.

The pregnancy at Chimp Haven, opened in 2005 near Shreveport, was discovered on Valentine's Day when a worker noticed Flora, a 29-year-old chimp, carrying a newborn.

An ultrasound Friday confirmed 49-year-old Ginger also was pregnant and due in late July or early August, Brent said.

Every male gets a vasectomy before being sent to Chimp Haven because there's a surplus of captive chimpanzees.

Artist Sandy Skoglund imagines the next nightmarish step in the fox takeover of our prepared food establishments, photographed by Flickr user wallyg.

Out Of Place Animals Week, part 2: On the Go

In our last post we saw animals that wanted to settle down in places they shouldn't. Today, some animals barging in on human transportation:

-Last month, an opossum in New York city decided to try taking the subway. New Yorkers can ignore almost anything weird that goes on on the subway, but apparently this crossed the line. The train was evacuated and a group of police officers decided that despite a bag and heavy gloves, they weren't up to the task of taking the animal into custody. The opossum got a solo, presumably express, ride to the Bronx, where it was extracted by "a group of emergency service officers, an elite squad that handles complex jobs, including capturing rogue coyotes and apartment-invading hawks."

-The train was also the conveyance of choice for a dog in Sweden:

Eira was left at her new day kennel in the southern Stockholm suburb of Hökarängen last Thursday by her owner but struck with home sickness she decided take the matter in her own paws and head out for home.

She evaded her carers and walked the kilometre to the local metro station, ducked the barrier and jumped on a northbound train, according to a report in the Dagens Nyheter daily which has been confirmed both by her owner and the police.

The dog stood patiently among the other morning passengers and waited in the six stops between Hökarängen and her home station of Gullmarsplan - a busy bus, road and metro junction.

The dog got off at the right stop, but was taken into custody by station staff and handed over to the police, presumably for nonpayment of fare.

-In Los Angeles, passerby flagged down the driver of a pickup truck to tell him someone had hitched a ride: a seabird with a seven foot wingspan. I'm guessing that this albatross tried to make the excuse "I just flew in from the South Pacific and boy are my wings tired," but experts weren't fooled. They said that this was no doubt at least the second time the lazy bird had hitched a ride on its journey:

They suspect the bird stowed away on a cargo ship, hitching a trans-Pacific ride to Los Angeles before disembarking and hopping into the pickup.

The seabirds are adept at soaring long distances and can spend years roaming vast areas of the ocean without ever touching land. But they can mistake the flat surface of a passing container ship for a nesting island, landing and sitting there unnoticed until the ship arrives in port.

Yeah, "mistake," sure. Rescuers caught the bird, boated it out to sea, and tossed it overboard, and it took off after a few seconds - using its own damn wings for a change.

There's no place like home

Air travel is unpleasant enough without animals getting involved. We've seen
a runway closed by turtles, a fatal crash caused by panic over a small crocodile escaping from someone's luggage, and birds dropping broken glass on a runway, just to name a few.

If you're in a cold place dreaming of travelling somewhere warm right now, perhaps a few more recent stories like these will make you feel better about staying put:

-In southern Utah, prairie dogs have become a “public safety issue” by burrowing holes in and under airport runways. A $50,000 fence has been proposed, but one legislator, citing cases where these animals have dug into caskets in cemeteries, says a fence won't be enough to keep them out.

-You're probably aware that birds can be a danger to aircraft, as in the commonly reported cases where they're sucked into engines. As the photo above shows, that's not the only possibility. That's an albatross that struck a Japan Coast Guard plane. Fortunately the plane made it to its destination safely.

-Dangerous wild animals aren't the only ones that cause problems when they get loose on a plane. A flight from Halifax to Toronto was preparing for takeoff when a cat escaped from its carrier. Good thing they decided not to proceed, because it turned out that Ripples the tabby had actually wormed his way into the cockpit wiring. Maintenance crew had to remove panels to get him out and then inspect the wiring for damage, causing a delay of almost five hours.

So I'm going to curl up on the couch with a hot chocolate and stick with looking at magazine photos of tropical places. Sure, there's still the chance my pet will set the house on fire, but I'd rather fight bad animals with my feet on solid ground.

Bad Animal Video Roundup

New cases of old animal vices, and some new insights into their depravity, caught on film:

-We've seen so many examples of animals invading places of business that it might be time to retire this one to a Hall of Fame, but what the heck, here's a deer crashing its way into a New Jersey Goodwill store.

-Way back at the beginning of this blog we met a seagull that repeatedly strolled into a store in England to steal its favorite flavor of chips. Check out another example of the thieving persistence of these birds as this gull steals lunch from someone's backpack, completely unconcerned at being filmed the whole time.

-Ever wonder what your cat does all night? Ever wonder why you feel so tired in the morning? Maybe there's a connection. Check out this time-lapse video.

-This one shocked even me: Baboons that kidnap puppies.

-And finally: Yes, it's important to beware of the dangers of animals. But first, make sure the animal is alive. Example: Here's video from Houston of police responding to 911 calls about... a stuffed tiger.

There's even less excuse when you realize that it looks exactly like the tiger in the photo above. That one caused the same kind of ruckus in England back in June. People, you need to keep up with this blog!

Bad birds flying under the radar

To my chagrin, I recently discovered that a considerable amount of bad bird behavior has been sneaking past me.

To be fair, this blog has been on the case even when birds are trying to avoid scrutiny by being in the news in a language other than English. We also did not miss the annual Thanksgiving update on the dangers of turkeys.

But then I spent part of the slow internet season over the holidays catching up on the always interesting Nothing to Do With Arbroath, where I found the story reported last time of the hawk flying into a woman's home to attack her Chihuahua.

And upon further perusal, I found that this blog is a trove of bird stories from the past couple of months. We've got some run-of-the-mill destructiveness:

-In England, a car dealership has had to supply umbrellas to customers even in fair weather to protect them from seagulls. Otherwise they're bombarded by both bird poo and trash from a nearby dump. "If you don't run to the showroom from your car, you will look like a dalmatian. We have had chicken carcasses and tea bags dropped on our forecourt. Chicken carcasses, dropped from a great height, will dent the cars."

-In Oklahoma, starlings tried to ruin Christmas by eating the lightbulbs in a courthouse Christmas star, costing the town $1,200 for replacements.

But, in some more interesting cases, we've got birds using a variety of strategies to get humans in hot water:

-In Wales a woman who caused a firey car crash claimed she had been distracted by a magpie flying alongside her car. To be fair, the fact that her alcohol level was over three times the legal limit may have contributed to the situation.

-But working with human vices isn't their only approach - playing on people's sympathies works too: in Lynn, Massachusetts, an 80-year-old woman is facing criminal charges for illegally feeding ducks and geese.

-And in New York, a pigeon nicknamed Fred has been dive-bombing police assigned to patrol the construction site at the former World Trade Center. Not only is Fred pooping on them, the officers have been reprimanded for defending themselves. Allegedly due to public complaints, a source told the New York Post, “We were told that if we didn’t go easy on the bird, we would get in trouble.”




Yet another warning from Flickr user Andrew Eason.

Not safe in our own homes

You might think you're safe from animals as long as you stay indoors and aren't foolish enough to invite any to live with you. But animal home invasion is an escalating trend.

In December we saw a seal lounging on a sofa and a bear living in a basement. In October it was a deer breaking into a man's home workshop. And this is leaving aside bears breaking into more public places like pizza shops and candy stores and bovines in bars and shopping malls.

And here are three more reports from all over the world, just in the past month:

-On Christmas Eve, a family in Utah was expecting their holiday to include only fictional deer. But a large buck crashed through a window, spending two hours trampling furniture and gifts before wildlife officers could arrive to subdue it.

-In the suburbs of a city in China, a red panda tried to sneak into a home while the residents were picnicking in the yard - although it appeared to have second thoughts once they started taking video of it.

-In perhaps the most frightening case, a 74-year-old woman in England had to save her Chihuahua from a hawk. The raptor first attacked the pup on the patio, then followed it into the house. After wrestling the bird off the dog three times, she finally chased it out. The brave woman told reporters, “I just said ‘you’re damn not going to kill him’."

Keep your doors locked and your windows barred... and come back Monday for more reasons to watch your back.

Truth is scarier than fiction

Last week we saw an argument that bad behavior leads to the development of intelligence. This is a worrying notion, since superior intelligence means an animal can commit even more sophisticated offenses. Considering all the bad behavior I have documented, the possibility of such a truly vicious circle means that we need to be watching our backs.

Or, perhaps, we should be watching the skies, because quite a lot of recent research shows that birds - especially crows and ravens - are already a whole lot more intelligent than we thought.

You might read these reports and think them just a curiosity. One recent study showed that crows can remember the color of a container with food in it up to a year later. A good memory might not seem like a threat, but if you had a good memory, you'd remember our earlier post: Crows can also remember the faces of people who have annoyed them, and can use this knowledge to teach other crows who to attack.

Another scientist has shows that wild ravens can use gestures to communicate. You may think that gestures are primitive compared to language. But before this, experts thought that only primates could do this naturally, without being taught by humans. So not only are birds more intelligent than we thought, but have a way to communicate silently when they're sneaking up on us.

Perhaps most ominously, it's been shown that crows have what scientists call a "theory of mind," meaning they can see the world from another's point of view.

Why is this a problem? Most bunnyhugging animal lovers would no doubt jump to the conclusion that this means they are empathetic and care about your feelings. But knowing what another creature knows has a very important consequence: Now you know how to deceive them. And this is exactly what the researcher saw:

Out in the wild, jays and other corvids will hide food in the ground. We experimented with them, hiding food in two types of tray — one full of pebbles which was noisy when disturbed, and another full of sand which was quiet.

If other birds couldn’t see them hiding the food because they were behind a screen, but could still hear them, the jays picked the sand and were as quiet as mice when they buried food. But if other birds were watching, or if they were on their own, they realized that it didn’t matter how noisy they were.

If the birds were being watched when they hid their food, they rushed to move it to another hiding place as soon as the other watching birds were out of sight

The same researcher has also shown crows can plan ahead better than young human children. There's also the fairly old news that they can use tools - but more recent research has shown they can use up to three tools in sequence to achieve a goal.

So these birds know whether you're watching them, can communicate stealthily, hold a grudge and pass it on to their friends, and can use technology. Also take note of this interesting fact about their strength of character: researchers in Australia found that crows are able to delay gratification, waiting up to five minutes to swap a piece of food for something better.

And crows have plenty of reasons to resent us. While most birds are beloved for their grace and beauty, crows are seen as pests. A flock of bluebirds in your backyard would be considered a magical experience; a flock of crows is a different story. Even possibly the most animal-hugging city in the country, San Francisco, uses pesticides on ravens and crows.

It's said revenge is a dish best served cold, and it's clear that these birds have both the planning skills and the moral fiber to wait for the right moment. Like I said, watch the skies.

New frontiers in bad bird behavior

Some bad animals stick to tradition: there'll always be a place for the dog who bites the mailman. But they never stop coming up with new ideas as well, as demonstrated recently in a town in Norway.

For quite some time, candles left on the graves at a cemetery in Skagen had been mysteriously disappearing. Grieving relatives even begged the thieves to stop in the newspaper - which turns out to have been pointless, because the robbers can't read. They're birds.

The culprits were identified when someone finally realized there was a connection to another problem, this time at the airport across the road from the graveyard. The runway had long been used as a tool by seagulls: they drop mollusks on the hard surface to crush the shells so they can get at the tasty meat inside. But more recently, broken glass was being found all over the runway as well.

It turns out that crows and magpies steal the grave candles, drop them on the runway to break their glass containers, then eat the wax to fatten up for the winter. Now that officials know what to look for, the evidence is clear: "We can see traces of beak marks in the candles," one said.

On the one hand, we might reassure ourselves that these birds aren't all that smart, since they can't tell which candles are edible before stealing them: Electric candles have been found blinking on the runway as well.

But on the other hand, one has to wonder if the attraction of the runway is more than the hard surface, and whether there's a more sinister plan at work here. After all, leaving glass all over the runway where it can blow out airplane tires is a good way to ensure there will be more candles to steal - by sending more people to the graveyard.

Thanks for the tip and translation to Bruce Morén-Duolljá of Animals Behaving Badly's Scandinavia bureau.

Ominous crows by Flickr user Jim Donnelly.

Just a phase?

Another penguin soap opera is in the news, this time in Canada. The Toronto Zoo is planning to split up a pair of male penguins so they can do their duty to carry on the species.

Scientists hesistate to use human terms like "gay" for animal relationships, but the two are exhibiting the same courtship behavior as male-female penguin pairs, including a mating call similar to the bray of a donkey. (Hey, as long as it works for them, right?) Said one zoo official, "It’s a complicated issue, but they seem to be in a loving relationship of some sort."

Loving or no, unfortunately, these penguins are shirking their responsibilities. Their species is endangered, and their population in captivity needs to be carefully monitored to retain its genetic diversity. Penguins are moved around to different zoos for mating, and even heterosexual pairs may be split up if they're not considered a good genetic match.

These two penguins were brought to Toronto from Pittsburgh specifically to mate with two of their females, and it's not the ladies' fault that it hasn't worked out. "The two girls have been following them," said the zoo's curator of birds, "we just have to get the boys interested in looking at them."

We've seen gay penguin controversy before. The most famous case, of course, is that of the penguins from the Central Park zoo who had a much-banned children's book written about them.

But before you leap to this couple's defense with accusations of zookeeper homophobia, remember it's not like it's always humans who break up these relationships. We've also seen a pair of male penguins who raised a chick together - and then one of them left his mate for a female.

Penguins also sometimes neglect their reproductive responsibilities for even more inappropriate partners. That photo is of a German penguin who fell in love with a boot.

And scientists have suggested the penguin same-sex attractions are, yes, just a phase: in the wild, they eventually ditch them for an opposite-sex relationship.

But in any case, in the end, the zoo says that the separation will last only as long as breeding season: once the males have gotten a female pregnant, everyone can go ahead and do whatever they want. We'll find out then exactly how serious these boys were about their forbidden love.

Animals don't appreciate what they've got

Haven't you always thought it would be amazing if you could fly? I don't mean in a big clunky metal tube powered by fossil fuel. I mean, like a bird - just spread your wings and go whereever you want. No traffic jams, a terrific view, fresh air. We've all dreamed about it, right?

Well, not all birds appreciate how lucky they are. In Sweden, a bunch of pigeons have decided that they'd rather take public transportation:

"They stand calmly at the platform and wait for the subway train to arrive. When it does they get on, travel one stop, jump off and then head for their favourite haunts," Rasmus Sandsten, press spokeperson for underground operator MTR, told The Local.

The pigeons are believed to live somewhere near Farsta Strand, in south Stockholm, and travel daily one stop to nearby shopping centre Farsta Centrum where there are many cafés and plenty of food to be found.

According to Sandsten, the most likely explanation is that one pigeon first got stuck on the metro by accident.

"Then, when it saw where it ended up it thought; 'this was a great idea'. Sooner or later more of them followed suit," Sandsten said.

After foraging in the trash at the shopping center, apparently most return home in a more conventional manner, since pigeons are rarely seen travelling in the opposite direction. Maybe they want to work off the calories, but I suspect they're just not smart enough to figure out how to make the return trip.

Despite the bad reputation pigeons have in some quarters, the transit agency has received no complaints. The birds are wisely keeping a low profile: "They behave well while on board and don't seem to be making much of a mess. They also choose to travel later in the day, cleverly avoiding rush hour."

However, although this story is being picked up as weird news all over the place, it's not a recent development, even in Sweden. The transit spokesman went on to explain that conductors first reported a gang of pigeons using the trains in the 1990s. "And since then the birds have been spotted getting on the subway at stations all over Stockholm," he said.

And in fact, lazy pigeons are a worldwide phenomenon in cities with subways. That photo up there was taken in the New York subway by LarimdaME on Flickr, where you can also find photographic evidence of pigeons on the Boston T, London tube, in the subway in Toronto, waiting for the Paris Metro, BART... And it goes without saying, of course, that none of them pay the fare.

So, as is often true, this bad animal news isn't news at all. It's just another of many cases where these animals are flying under our radar - or if they're too lazy for that, taking the subway under it.

The dark truth behind another charming fable

It's a recurring theme of this blog that the better the reputation an animal has, the worse the real truth. It's also a recurring theme that scientists and naturalists are among the worst when it comes to making excuses for bad animals.

But it's only fair to say that it's also scientists who often do the work of digging up those dirty truths, and today we've got one of those stories.

The greater honeyguide is a bird that gets its name from its allegedly helpful behavior guiding humans and honey badgers to beehives where they can get honey. No less an authority than science writer Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science was fooled into repeating this story recently. No fault of his, since as he points out, it appears in a number of respectable sources.

But as he then discovered, it's all lies. For at least two decades ornithologists have been trying to debunk this fable to no avail. A paper published in 1990 points out that over two centuries of research in Africa, "no biologist or naturalist, amateur or professional, has observed a Greater Honeyguide leading a Honey Badger to a beehive."

But the truth is no match for our desire to believe this stuff - especially when someone even faked a video of the legendary behavior using a stuffed bird and a tame badger.

And it turns out that it's not just that the helpful nature of honeyguides a lie. They've also got a murderous secret.

The honeyguide is a brood parasite - that's a bird that lays its eggs in other birds' nests and lets those poor saps do all the work of raising their young while they go off and party. You probably know that a more familiar bird, the cuckoo, does the same thing. But you might not be aware that the baby cuckoo doesn't just settle down and join the family: they push the other babies and eggs out of the nest so they get all the foster parents' efforts for themselves.

The honeyguide has a similar charming attitude towards its foster siblings, but a bloodier way to achieve the same end: it's got a hooked beak to murder them with, which you can see in the photo above. According to the authors of the recent paper that prompted all this honeyguide discussion:

Despite being blind and in total darkness, honeyguides attacked host young with sustained biting, grasping and shaking motions. Attack time of 1–5 min was sufficient to cause host death.

You can see the researcher's actual video of this behavior in Ed Yong's post about the paper. I haven't watched it myself. He says the video is "not pleasant, watch at your own risk." And having lately seen what this man can endure on his new blog Nature Wants to Eat You, if he says that about a video, I think I'll pass.

Vacation Linkarama

While I'm trying to relax at the beach despite having read the last story linked to below, enjoy some high quality bad animal reporting and analysis from elsewhere on the web:

A brave fellow at Gizmodo presents the evidence: Why we should just let the damn pandas go extinct, already

At the Guardian: That pet cat who turned up after five years - heartwarming tale or feline conspiracy?

A world traveller keeps track of the number of birds (and one bat) that have crapped on her

And before you laugh at that: Scientists implicate seagulls in the worldwide spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

And now I'm off to the beach - no, on second thought, the nice bird-free outlet mall.

Don't count your cows before they are captured

It's been a summer of vastly different fates for animals on the run. Elephants that ran away from the circus went peacefully with police who nabbed them before they could catch a bus out of town. The majority of monkeys have eluded the authorities, with the minority being captured without harm.

But not all have gotten off so easily. An emu that was on the loose for two weeks in Maryland was shot by state troopers:

"We did it because residents had expressed concerns about their safety and the safety of their children... There also had been complaints that the emu was getting on roads, blocking traffic and causing hazards."

The same fate befell an escaped macaque in Tennessee who attacked a woman while she was washing her car:

"I had no idea he was even there. Then I could feel his teeth in the calf of my leg, and I really didn't know at that point what it was, I just knew I had to get it off me."

The monkey also injured a responding officer, at which point another shot and killed it.

For one animal in Germany, it could still go either way. Yvonne the cow escaped from a farm in Bavaria in May. She's been on the lam ever since, and become a sort of celebrity - but like with many reality stars, people are divided strongly for and against.

The police, who've failed to catch Yvonne all these months, have decided to authorize officers to shoot her. Apparently the last straw was when she jumped out in front of a police car, startling the officers and then despite being so close, getting away. (Authorities claim that such behavior proves she's a danger to traffic, but one has to wonder whether embarrassment is also a factor.)

On the other side, an animal sanctuary has actually purchased the cow, and is searching for her with all-terrain vehicles and infrared camera.

These people are such bunny-huggers that they would prefer not to use even tranquilizer darts - and instead, actually think it might work to appeal to sentiment. They've also purchased a former stall-mate of Yvonne's as well as that cow's calf and hope this will lure her in."After all, she has had a calf herself," says a representative with a bad case of maudlin anthropomorphism.

Yvonne might want to be aware of yet another recent escaped animal story as she considers her options: Back in July, a rhea escaped from an estate in Suffolk, England. The RSPCA was called in to expertly and humanely recapture it - after which the bird died while recovering from the tranquiliser.

So, even those well-meaning bunnyhuggers might end up not doing you any favors, Yvonne: maybe it would be best to give yourself up.

Bad Bird Roundup

-Vacation dangers: In the seaside town of Bridlington, England, seagulls that hang out at fish and chip shops aren't just waiting for partrons to drop a chip on the sidewalk anymore. They're actually attacking and stealing their food. One shop fears being driven out of business due to the cost of replacing the meals of complaning customers.

-Memorable final performance: At the Taronga Zoo in Australia, an eagle at a free-flight performance took a detour and landed on an toddler in the audience, leaving a gash on the boy's head. Understandly unhappy with this bit of improvisation, the zoo has retired the eagle from show business.

-Useless public servants: Some more birds are bad at their jobs in Germany as well, where a program to train vultures to replace dogs for sniffing out dead bodies has been declared a "disaster." Critics of the scheme had earlier pointed out the possibility that the evidence would disappear down the birds' gullets, but it turned out there was no risk of that: The three vultures failed to find any of the test cadavers. One refused to fly at all, waddling like a duck instead, and the other two did nothing but fight. A trainer admitted:

'They don't seem to be able to do anything other than attack each other.... It seems they are rather cowardly birds - they would rather hide in the woods than be out and about in the open.'

Photo of ambitiously-named failed vulture detective Miss Marple from Der Spiegel.

Ominous trends in bad animal behavior

-Last week we learned of some unexpected animals interfering with air travel when turtles blocked a runway at Kennedy airport in New York. At least those animals were in their native country.

Imagine the surprise of having your flight delayed in Manchester, England by a pink flamingo. It took five hours to capture the culprit, and the most disturbing aspect of this case is that the origin of the bird is a mystery: all the local wildlife sanctuaries denied having lost a flamingo.

-Remember the scientists who discovered that crows can remember the faces of individual people that have done unpleasant things to them? Maybe you reassured yourself that crows aren't that common in your neighborhood.

Well, other scientists now report that the same is true of pigeons tested in a city park in Paris. The pigeons in this study learned to stay away from people who had chased them. But can we be sure that staying away will be their only strategy?

-Recently this blog reported on some British cows who had learned to let themselves out of their barn. At least they stayed on the property. In Wales, a herd escaped into a residential neighborhood and reportedly trampled gardens, ate flowers, and, most disturbingly, peered into people's windows.

You can see from the photo above that this was not the sort of rural lane where people expect to share their space with livestock. As one resident said, "We are used to having pints of milk delivered to our doorstep but not the whole cow."

Another installment of Animals vs Infrastructure

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I'm disturbed by the new ways animals are coming up with to interfere with the technological underpinnings of human society. Climbing animals like raccoons causing power failures is nothing new, but in mid-June in Montana, an eagle caused an electrical outage by dropping a dead fawn on a power line. And other animals are going right to the source, like the jellyfish that caused a nuclear power plant to be shut down in Scotland by clogging up the pipes drawing water into the facility.

Similarly, it's well known that birds can be a danger to airplanes by getting sucked into engines and striking aircraft. Since they basically share the same habitat, this isn't surprising. But you probably had no idea that if you've got a flight at Kennedy airport in New York right about now, you might be delayed because of turtles.

Last week it happened again as it does every year, when diamondback terrapins migrate to their breeding grounds, and don't care that the direct route goes right over a runway.The airport had no choice but to close the runway. "Running over turtles is not healthy for them nor is it good for our tires," said one spokesperson.

Rather than fighting this yearly incursion, airport officials seems resigned to their fate. Workers from the Port Authority and the U.S. Department of Agriculture gathered up the turtles and gave them free transportation to their destination in order to speed the migration along. And everyone seems to have a light-hearted attitude about the situation. JetBlue, one of the affected carriers, said in a statement, "We hope for faster animals next time."

Very funny. But if turtles can interfere with airplanes, is anything safe?

Recurring bad animal briefs

Animals continue to prove that nothing reported on this blog is an isolated incident:

- In our last post we saw crows attacking a police station in Washington State; is it really more than coincidence that bald eagles are doing the same at a post office in Alaska? Because eagles are a protected species, Reuters reports:

There is not much that residents can do about overly bold bald eagles other than to post warning signs, take steps to avoid the fierce birds and wear hats.

- Despite that report on the high cost to British taxpayers of rescuing animals that have gotten themselves into ridiculous positions, a Welsh fire brigade responded to a call to get a sheep down off a roof. A "spokesman," presumably not one of the people who actually had to risk life and limb, downplayed the seriousness of the situation:

"It was certainly an interesting call-out, it's not where you'd expect to find a sheep, really quite funny. It brightened up our weekend, that's for sure."

- And finally, for those of you who are still tempted to rationalize all this bad animal behavior, from another story on Dusty the cat burglar of San Mateo:

"We always try to find meaning in what animals do. But maybe he just does this because it's fun."

Animals vs Law Enforcement: on the attack

Everett, Washington sounds like a nice small city, not the kind of place where the police are constantly confronted by abuse and harrassment from the citizenry. The human citizenry, anyway. But now they've got another species to worry about, as reported by the Everett Herald:

A few days ago, the crows decided they didn't like the cops. They started swooping down on them and dive-bombing them as the officers walked from their cars into the station.

Everett police Lt. Bob Johns recently was flanked by them and "got zinged," he said.

"They're like velociraptors," he said.

The crows don't care much for rank, either -- they've gone for top brass and detectives in particular, police Sgt. Robert Goetz said.

A wildlife expert's advice was to use umbrellas for protection. This may seem like a rather lame defense, but there's a risk to retaliating against these intelligent birds, as they've already demonstrated:

At least one officer has tried using his siren to scare the crows away: They responded by decorating his car with droppings.

And in fact, when you go after crows, you're at risk of very personal revenge. A study published last year showed that crows can recognize and remember the faces of individual humans who've threatened them - and they don't keep it to themselves.

To test specific recognition of faces rather than gait, clothing or other characteristics, researchers wore a realistic mask when trapping and banding crows, an experience that the birds - to put it mildly - don't care for. Then, volunteers visited the trapping sites, some wearing that mask and some wearing other control masks the birds had not seen before. The crows' reactions clearly distinguised the different faces.

“The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently,” said one volunteer who wore the trapper's mask, “and it was clear they weren’t upset about something in general. They were upset with me.”

The crows had long memories - three years later they still remembered and reacted strongly to their enemy. And they taught their neighbors and even their children about him: crows too young to have been born at the time of the trapping knew who the bad guy was.

"Crows hold a grudge, and they are big gossips," says professor David Craig. "They spread the information around. If you're bad to one crow, many more may hear about it."


Photo of helpful warning by the inappropriately named Flickr user pleasantcrow.

Time to panic down South?

There was a moment last week when all of these headlines appeared simultaneously at CNN.com:

* Wild coyotes eat zoo birds (New Orleans)

* Mom stabs dog, saves tot (South Carolina)

* Hawks attack 5 people (Florida)

* Mouse poop found on shelf at local Kroger (Kentucky)

* Pants saved teen from gator ("Florida lawmakers may think twice about banning droopy drawers after a teen claims he was saved from an alligator attack because of his baggy pants.")

Given the range of creatures and offenses involved here, I think I am staying up North for the foreseeable future despite our lingering winter weather.


Photo of sign that needs to be updated with some fashion advice by Flickr user alicetiara.

Who's endangering whom?

Poor Australians. Even under normal circumstances, animals are out to get them. The country is filled with venomous snakes, spiders, and jellyfish, and even a cute wombat can go mad and try to kill you.

On top of that, recently the weather has been after them as well, with devastating flooding all over the country.

And now, the two have combined: Residents of Queensland have been warned to watch out for cassowaries coming out of the forest to look for food, since cyclone winds have stripped the trees of fruit.

If you wonder how dangerous a mere bird can be, you've never been close to a cassowary. They can be up to six feet tall and over a hundred pounds, and it's said that they can disembowel a human - or even a horse - with one kick of their dinosaur feet:

Although only one human death by cassowary has been confirmed, one zoo I worked at had a short list of animals that staff were prepared to shoot to kill if they escaped and endangered humans. The list mostly consisted of the usual large and/or carnivorous suspects - and, the cassowary.

This is not a creature you want to mess with. Australian authorities are so concerned about the situation that they are actually planning airdrops of food into cassowary habitat to keep them away from populated areas.

Somewhat oddly, at the same time, scientists have announced an iPhone app that allows people to report sightings of cassowaries to help with conservation research. But maybe this is actually good timing: How about working to deploy this technology to report cassowary locations so people know where to stay the heck away.


Cassowary giving you the eye by Flickr user mrgarris0n and feet by mulch thief.