Animals and Transportation, aquatic department

Last week we saw snakes and a ferret travelling by train and a penguin overcoming its flightless nature via airline. And while last week's monkeys used their car as a toy rather than a means of transportation, we've seen bears and dogs try to drive cars more than once.

Is no form of transportation safe from animals? Apparently not, since we've recently seen a rash of sea life getting on boats.

In Texas, some fisherman who were after nothing more than red snapper ending up coming home with a 375 pound mako shark that jumped into their boat. The shark, perhaps having second thoughts about its choice of conveyance, thrashed around so wildly that they were unable to help it back into the water, and it died.

Although the men had no permit to catch sharks, officials reasonably concluded that no offense is committed when a shark commits suicide using your boat.

A more serious case occurred a few days earlier when an eagle ray jumped into a boat on the Florida Keys. This fish seemed more intent on murder than suicide: it landed on a woman passenger and slammed her against the deck repeatedly.

The ray was reportedly 8 feet across and probably 300 pounds, and the other passengers thought the woman was going to die. It wouldn't have been the first time - a woman died of head injuries in a similar incident in 2008.

Nearby wildlife officers heard the commotion and rushed to the boat - "shoes were getting thrown off the boat, towels were going everywhere," one told CNN. But by the time they got there, the victim had freed herself, completely uninjured. So their only contribution? Helping the culprit escape back into the water. Thanks, guys - good to know whose side you're on.


The only kind of shark that belongs on a boat by Flickr user MV Jantzen.

Hail to Heroic Humans

So many of the humans in the stories reported in this blog just don't get it. Again and again, we've seen people make excuses for animals or, worse, even enable them.

So it's a pleasure to recognize a couple of true role models in the fight against bad animal behavior.

In the first case, a squirrel was put in its place when it was banned from riding a rollercoaster in England.

Workers noticed it riding the revamped Sonic Spinball roller coaster as it was tested in the mornings and joining visitors who were offered an early go on it before the official opening.

The grey-haired animal was also caught stealing food from the workers.

A spokesman for the Staffordshire theme park said: "It was getting in the way of builders who were painting. They couldn't carry on because they would end up with paw prints in the paint."

Alarms were installed that emit a warning noise inaudible to human ears but designed to ensure the squirrel, nicknamed Sonic, avoids the ride in future.

I'm sure we can all agree that that's the sort of thing we want to see more of. But even more impressive is the case of a woman who was attacked by a shark while snorkling and escaped by punching it.

"I thought 'this shark's not going to get the better of me' and I started punching it on the nose, punching, punching, punching," she told local media.

"And then it got me under the water, but not much because I started kicking at its neck."

She lost quite a lot of blood and is going to have to undergo a number of surgeries, but the woman sees a bright side. Apparently there are unanticipated rewards for those who stand up to bad animals:

"I have to have a new remodelled bottom, so that's a positive," she said.

Photo of that stinking scofflaw squirrel from The Mail.

Lessons for the New Year

To start the new year off right, a collection of stories demonstrating how to - and how not to - treat animals that are behaving badly.

YES:
- Man bites snake in India:

A gardener who was bitten by a snake gave as good as he got, or better. He bit the snake back, and kept chewing until he felt rather ill, vomited, and fainted, but came out on top in the end:

"I was angry when the snake bit me on my finger. I bit it back because that was my way of taking revenge," Ramesh told doctors after regaining consciousness.

His condition is stable. The snake is dead.

- A goat in Germany was jailed for disrupting traffic, and insulted as well:

The only remarks on the arrest papers were "smells very bad."

The goat is being fed bread and water and as is clear from the photo above, his accomodations are suitably spartan.

Traffic enforcement on animal violators seems to be taken more seriously in some places than others. We've seen a dog get away with crashing a car into a store in Australia and everybody making excuses for a crocodile in Turkey.

Let's resolve in the new year not to take those two cases as precedent and work harder to lock up goats and handcuff bulls and big birds who disrupt travel.

NO:
-On the other end of the spectrum from the police department's goat diet of bread and water, we have a report of a zoo hiring a children's chef to make a special Christmas meal for a fussy baby lemur:

Zoo keepers have tried to tempt the animal with a variety of treats, but so far the youngster has turned his nose up at almost everything on offer.

So Mrs Karmel was drafted in to ensure he eats his Christmas dinner.

"He's quite fussy, like most kids are," she said. "He doesn't like vegetables but he likes fruit. The trouble with him is that he is fickle - one day he likes something and the next day he won't eat it."

-Even worse, on the other end of spectrum from the snake-biting gardener, the past year saw victims of shark attacks, including a man who had his arm bitten off by a shark, lobbying for shark conservation.

Enough said. You know what to do.

It's OK, sharks: you're ruthless killing machines after all

If you were saddened by the post last week that dealt a blow to our metaphors involving sloths and pigs, this might make you feel better.

Sharks have a reputation as ruthless killing machines. But experts will gladly ruin the fun by telling you that this reputation is vastly exagerrated: that the majority of species are small and harmless, that many more sharks are killed by humans every year than vice-versa, blah blah shark-hugging blah.

But here's some good news. In a triumph of interdisciplinary research, a recent study not only confirms our stereotype, but gives it a new twist: it shows that great white sharks stalk their prey in the same way as human serial killers.

Research linking sharks and serial killers began when the late Canadian shark scientist R Aidan Martin read about geographic profiling, which tries to find criminals by looking for patterns in where they strike.

He contacted Rossmo, a pioneer in that field of investigation, and they applied the methods of tracking down criminals to researching shark strategy.

In the latest study, Martin and Hammerschlag watched sharks from sunrise to sunset, applied geographic profiling and found patterns of stalking, Hammerschlag said.

And who would know better than a veteran cop?

"They both have the same objective, which is to find a target or prey or victim," co-author D. Kim Rossmo, a professor of criminal justice at Texas State University-San Marcos, said.

"They have to lurk. They want to be efficient in their search," Rossmo, who was a police officer in Canada for more than 21 years, said.

Photo from Flickr user Harrymoon and thanks for the link to Sir Pilkington-Smythe's Twitter.