The law stands up to bad dogs

It's reassuring that once in a while there are cases where bad animals are NOT getting away with it. And it's even more gratifying when it's one of the animals that has the most frequent opportunities to trouble us: Dogs.

-In Germany, a woman who tied her dog up while she went shopping returned to find a ticket attached to its collar. As readers of this blog would expect, she denied the dog was at fault:

"I was only away for 20 minutes. They said Tessa had been left in the wrong place and was blocking the pavement. But she was sitting quietly and people had plenty of room to walk around her. She's sweet and tiny and loves attention, she'd never hurt anyone."

But authorities are not taking any nonsense, claiming the dog barked and tried to jump on passers-by. And since the owner contested the ticket and lost, instead of her original 35 euro fine she now owes 58.50.

-And in Hawaii, business is booming for dog trainers after a new anti-barking law was passed. It's now illegal to bark continuously for 10 minutes, or repeatedly for 20 minutes within a half-hour. More complaints are being successfully lodged than under the previous law, which required busy police to time barking for half an hour and then allow the owner to try to shut up the pooch for an hour.

Incessant barking these days adds insult to injury: According to the Wall Street Journal, there's speculation that complaints have risen because with the high unemployment rate, more people are home to be annoyed by their neighbor's dog.

As usual, some still side with the animals, like one local resident who said "To me, barking is good because it notifies you somebody's around who shouldn't be around."

But as in Germany, authorities are not messing around. One couple was cited five times for their two noisy dogs, accumulating fines of $575. They made a deal with the prosecutor to dismiss all but one citation if they submitted to "dog counseling" and remained clean of violations for six months. All is quiet for now, but it's not over, their dog trainer said ominously: "If [they] re-offend within six months then the matter will be revisited."

Sharing the blame

Two very different charismatic large animals are veritable poster children for the terrible effects of human activity on the planet. The polar bear is threatened by global climate change because sea ice is a crucial part of their habitat. And collisions with human pleasure boats are a major cause of death for manatees.

But it's only fair to say that sometimes these animals are really not helping themselves, as a couple of recent news items show:

-Bear Suicide by Cop
A Newfoundland man awoke to a commotion early one morning to find a polar bear breaking into his home. He fired two shots to drive it off, but that just sent it off to make trouble elsewhere:

He said the bear beat in doors and broke windows at three other homes, and killed some sheep and ducks at a nearby stable without stopping to eat.

“It seemed like it was killing for the sake of killing. It wasn't hungry.”

At one home, the bear “just broke the windows out of each side of the house and went on,” he said. “It seemed like he was in a bad mood.”

Wildlife officials tracked down the bear and shot it, and honestly, after this violent crime spree, who can blame them? We have a right to defend our own species. And if an animal's survival is already threatened, shouldn't it be a little more careful about provoking armed citizens?

Sea-cow Stupidity
Scientists apparently have never had any idea why the heck so many manatees get hit by boats. It's true that they can't see very well, so that could be part of it. But motorized boats are pretty damn noisy. Are these animals deaf too?

Well, that's not the answer either. A recent study proved that manatees in fact have very sensitive hearing, as shown by a test where they were trained to hit a paddle to get a treat when they heard a sound. In fact they're so sensitive that they refused to participate when the noise was at higher frequencies, as if it annoyed them.

So if they can hear the boats, why don't they get out of the way?

The scientist suggested:

"Manatees might be less aware of these sounds when they are sleeping, eating or performing other activities related to their daily lives that require their full attention," Gaspard said. "There are also a multitude of environmental factors that come into play. Understanding how animals use their various senses is a complex process. Could their sense of touch also be playing a role here? We are working on that question now."

But an alternate theory was proposed on Twitter by my go-to guy for marine animal science, @WhySharksMatter:

@WhySharksMatter Why can't manatees avoid speedboats?... Because they're dumb. They shouldn't die for that, but it's true.
@WhySharksMatter The manatee is nature's D student.

Yes, perhaps boaters should be more careful. But if boats are making a racket that an animal can hear perfectly well and it can't be bothered to move out of the way.... well, it takes two to make a collision, you know?





That design submitted to Threadless in 2007 apparently never made it to a t-shirt. Too far ahead of its time, I guess.

Bad animal classics

More new cases of traditional offenses:

-Reptiles on a plane: An Australian cargo pilot was making a solo flight when a snake slid out of the dashboard and along his leg. Australia being a place where a decent proportion of the wildlife can kill you with various venoms, he did not wait for a positive species ID, and quickly made an emergency return the airport.

His level head saved him, unlike the passengers of a flight where a small croc escaped from someone's luggage. In their panic they unbalanced the aircraft and it crashed, killing all but one of them.

-Cats vs Post: Yet another customer had mail service suspended in England because of his vicious cat. Similar to previous cases, (for example here and here) the owner claimed the accusation that his pet was a 'health and safety risk' was "utterly ridiculous," and a neighbor said 'Snowball is a lovely cat and friendly. I can’t imagine her ever attacking anybody.'

But you can't fight the post office, and delivery was only resumed when he built a cat-excluding cage around his letter slot.

-Bears where they shouldn't be: Officials in LA captured a bear that's been wandering a neighborhood for about a month, committing offenses like breaking into a refrigerator and eating frozen meatballs. The bear didn't go down without teaching one resident an important lesson: A man was caught on video nearly walking straight into the bear because he was texting.

Let this be a warning to keep those phones in your pocket when you're on the move, because you never know when you'll come face to face with a bad animal.


Cat waiting for the postman by Flickr user nonasuch.

More stuffed animals messing with our minds

Last week we saw several cases where emergency responders were called out to subdue a large wild animal that turned out to be a life-size stuffed toy. Normally I would not revisit this topic so soon, but two recent events suggest that that post may leave some with the wrong impression.

In Nottinghamshire, England, police were called when a passerby saw a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel asleep in the back of a car in what counted for England as extreme heat (according to The Sun, "temperatures soared to 18°C (64°F).")

This is indeed a potentially dangerous situation, and no one should ever leave a dog in a hot car. Unless, of course, as in this case, it's a stuffed toy.

And in Scotland, a woman called the SPCA when she found a five foot long snake in her attic. "I'd brought gloves and a pillow case to enable us to handle and contain the snake safely, but as soon as we spotted it we realised the equipment wouldn't be necessary," said an officer. In fact, it was a snake-print stuffed draft blocker of the sort that you lay along the bottom of a door in cold weather.

The Scottish officers were sympathetic - "It did look very snake-like and was folded over into a box," one said - and had a sense of humor about the situation: They've given the "snake" a name and a home in their office.

The Nottinghamshire police, however, remained prickly about the situation and blamed the owner of the car, saying “Officers believed a dog could be suffering. This is a perfect example of why drivers need to think about what they leave on view.” No doubt they are cranky because they now have to reimburse the owner for the damage to the car.

The lesson here is obvious: it's not just imitation megafauna that can cause this kind of problem. Much smaller stuffed creatures can be just as problematic.

So again: We've got enough trouble dealing with the bad behavior of real animals. So let's all try to just look a bit more closely before calling in the troops.

Animal Excursions News Briefs

A selection of recent cases of animals on the loose in interesting ways:

-In Ireland, an elephant made a break from a circus and went on an outing to a local shopping center - well, its parking lot, anyway - reportedly because she didn't want to take a bath. (See video here.)

-In Italy, a dog decided to go on a visit to its owner's girlfriend:

The female pooch walked herself to the train station in the town's center, waited on the appropriate track at the right time, then boarded the regional line towards the home town of her owner's girlfriend, seated in the car she habitually took with her human companion.

Nice try, but she didn't make it. As we've seen happen before, when train staff saw the dog disembark alone she was apprehended and taken to an animal shelter.

-And another case of a classic type: In Russia, someone unwisely left three dogs in a car with the engine running. The dogs got the car into gear and drove down the road till they crashed into another vehicle. That driver ran off to get police, who returned to find the dogs had made their getaway. Fortunately they were located nearby and apprehended before they could do more damage.

Wasted efforts

This blog strives to demonstrate that you need to be careful around animals. But it actually is possible to take this caution too far. Some people are apparently so poised to spring into action at the least hint of trouble that they see bad animals where there are none.

I don't mean they see bad animals where there are good animals, assuming such a thing exists. I mean cases like this one:

Police in Germany raced to the scene after a jogger rang the emergency line in Braunschweig in a panic, saying she had spotted a tiger on her early morning run... Police officers immediately responded and discovered the animal standing motionless on the bridge.

On closer inspection, the officers were struck by the friendly demeanour of the smallish beast measuring about 80 by 80 centimeters (31.5 inches). "They succeeded in taming the predator and took him back to the police station. It wasn't a difficult task because the tiger was a stuffed toy."

While this blog takes the position that any animal can behave badly, we mean any live animal. Apparently regular reminders of this are necessary. We've actually covered two previous examples of police being called out in response to a stuffed tiger, in England and in Texas, and in another case in Germany a man called police to report that he went out to his car and found a tiger sleeping in front of it.

We've also seen police shoot an alligator before realizing it was a statue, and as you know if you've read the book, animal control officers are regularly called out to "rescue" not only fake animals, but inanimate objects that not even animal-shaped, mistaken by kind-hearted ninnies for creatures in distress.

Some who make these erroneous reports even claim a certain level of expertise. In another case of a large stuffed feline, in Germany, a man called police insisting that he saw the corpse of a leopard floating in a lake in a city park: "He assured us that he knew what he was talking about, that he was a trained hunter and even had relevant 'African experience'," said a police statement. "He said he had even gone back home to get his binoculars to make sure he hadn't made a mistake."

These incidents may seem harmless, but there are too many real bad animals around for us to waste resources on false alarms. Of course I don't recommend anyone sticking around, possibly in harm's way, to make specific species identifications. But I think it's safe to say that if you don't live in tiger habitat, you should consider the odds, and perhaps take a moment to make sure you are looking at a living, breathing creature before calling out the authorities.

And a final note: There's another category of people who bear some of the blame for these incidents: the irresponsible owners who let these imitation animals loose in the wild. So please, if you own such large stuffed creatures, dispose of them responsibly.

Turkey Terror Updates

I'm shocked to find that it's been a year since we covered the wild turkey situation. With apologies for neglecting this important issue, here are a few recent incidents showing that their incursions have not slowed down:

-A normal Friday morning was interrupted at a high school in Brockton, Massachusetts, when a turkey crashed through a third floor window into a classroom. Fortunately it was before class had started, but enough people were around to get photos and video.

-In Michigan, a woman is being stalked in her own home by a tom she's nicknamed Godzilla.

He lurks in her front yard, screeching at her constantly, even jumping out occasionally and attacking her when she dares wander outside alone.

"I'm afraid to go out of my house," said Geisler, 69. "I have to go to the post office at 6 o'clock in the morning to avoid him."

When she returned home with groceries recently, Geisler couldn't get in her front door.

"I had to go next door to the neighbors and have him use a push broom to keep him away while I brought the groceries in," Geisler said.

The bird seems to treat harassing this woman as his job, commuting in from a nearby woods each morning and returning in the evening. A wildlife official suggests scaring the bird off with a big umbrella, but a reporter notes another possible strategy: turkey hunting season begins in just a few weeks.

-And a neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis is living with an entire flock of turkeys which stroll boldly down the street as in the photo above.

A recent community meeting heard reports that a woman had to beat the birds off when they attacked her toddler and a postal worker had one jump on her back.

But some downplay the danger. "At most, they are a 15 to 20 pound bird. What harm are they going to do to you?" said a wildlife officer. And many encourage the birds by feeding them.

Worst of all, some even celebrate the enemy: One local store reportedly sells a t-shirt reading "I heart the Johnson Street turkeys."

Panda-preoccupation Payback

The goal of this blog is to unmask the secrets of cute animals and reveal how they cloud men's (and women's) minds. And there's no animal that does a better job of that than the panda.

Millions of dollars are spent on conserving this animal that scientists admit is basically crummy. People want baby pandas so badly that they're willing to humiliate themselves to help them reproduce. And zoos have even gone so far as to silence other animals' expressions of dissent against the panda-industrial complex.

Frankly, I'm so tired of fighting this battle that I can only be pleased by recent news of a plan to exploit this ridiculous obsession. An entrepreneur in China is growing tea organically fertilized by panda poop, and he's going to milk idiot panda-lovers for every last cent he can:

Each lot of 50 grams will then go for 22,000 yuan (£2,200), which according to Mr An makes for the world's dearest cup of tea.

Most people use about three grams per cup, meaning each one brewed would set one back over £130.

That's about 200 US dollars at current exchange rates.

There must be some reader of this blog with the business sense to jump on this and import the stuff. After all, nothing else seems to be working to get the economy going again. If there's a chance we can pull this country out of a recession by standing on the backs of panda-lovers, there is nothing that would please me more.


In the meantime, contribute to economic activity by buying that bad panda t-shirt here.

Mauled and mortified

I probably don't have to tell you to be afraid of crocodiles and their relatives. I'm sure you have the sense to be wary of crocodilians even without reading recent research proving that saltwater crocodiles have the strongest bite of any living animal.

You probably also know enough to stay away from gharials - that crocodilian with the incredibly skinny snout - even without knowing that the same research shows that their delicate-looking jaw can bite just as hard as that of its stockier-looking relatives.

And you're probably afraid enough of modern crocs without knowing that their ancestors were the most dangerous biters even when dinosaurs walked the earth. The same scientist devised a way to calculate the bite strength of extinct animals, and concluded that ancient crocs bit harder than a T. rex.

So you know these creatures are dangerous. But recent news shows that an attack by these animals can also be extremely embarrassing:

-In Uganda, a crocodile recently chewed off a man's buttocks.

-We all hope for a more dignified death than the Indonesian man who was killed by a croc while pooping on a river bank.

-And in Zimbabwe, a man wading across a river "had his testicles and part of his manhood torn into shreds" by a croc. He only escaped with his life by dropping a box of tomatoes he was carrying, distracting the animal.

Of course, what these examples also show is you're most likely to get yourself bit in an unmentionable place by a croc if you are using poor judgment. The Ugandan "reportedly jumped into the lake to evade law enforcement officials." And that poor emasculated fellow told reporters that he was wearing only his underwear because he had had taken off his pants so they wouldn't get wet.

Dry pants, or an extra layer of protection for your most delicate organs? The choice is apparently not as obvious as I would have thought. Yes, these animals are bad - so let's make sure we have our priorities straight around them, OK?


Don't underestimate the absurd-looking snout of the gharial in that photo by Flickr user Chris Gray.

Don't bring a gun to a bear fight

New research about how to defend yourself against bears has some bad news and some good news - and, unsurprisingly, brings the bad animal enablers out in force.

The bad news is that even if you have the right to bear arms, arms aren't always effective against bears. Yes, a gun worked to kill or drive off the animal in 80 percent of cases, but it turned out that statistic is not as comforting as it sounds. Many people were mauled or killed anyway, resulting in the surprising conclusion that carrying a gun made no statistical difference to the outcome of a human-bear encounter.

How is this possible? Bears aren't immune to bullets, thank goodness, but people often couldn't load or shoot fast enough. And there's another reason guns were ineffective that should not surprise readers of this blog: one-fifth of the armed humans were reluctant to use the weapon against the animal.

If that's not enough bad-animal enabling for you, another "expert" suggested that what we should really do is - wait for it - try to reason with the bear:

Talking in a calm voice, not moving when the bear's coming toward you, giving the bear a chance to think things over and realize you're not threatening. A lot of times that will resolve the situation.

Yes, we've got professional wildlife experts suggesting that we should let bears "think things over." Still, all is not hopeless. While the study author said "A charging animal is like a small car running at you," fortunately there's at least one big difference between a small car and a bear: bears don't like pepper spray. In an earlier study, he found that pepper spray worked for all but three of 156 people in 71 conflicts with bears.

I like those odds better - and it also means that if you're ever caught unarmed in a pizza shop invaded by a bear, at least you can try throwing the shaker of red pepper flakes.


Illustration by Natalie Dee, who is obviously not a bear enabler.

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.

Mainstream media fails to ferret out pro-panda plot

It's not often that a news story makes me as ambivalent as this seemingly insignificant article about the Edinburgh zoo penguin colony being shut for maintenance.

Seems routine and hardly of interest to an outsider, right? Only the most attentive reader would realize the import: This is apparently the same penguin colony we reported on a few months ago because it was pooping on visitors lined up along the side of its exhibit.

You'd think I'd berate such behavior, but there was a twist: The visitors were waiting in line to see the zoo's new panda exhibit.

There are few animals as infuriating as pandas. Their power to cloud our minds with cuteness is unsurpassed. Millions of dollars are spent to bring them to American zoos where they sit and do no more than a stuffed animal would. And yet more money is spent convincing them to reproduce in captivity, with deranged humans going so far as to dress up in panda suits to raise the babies.

So although I rarely side with animals against humans, there was a bigger issue at stake here, and I praised the penguins for their anti-panda poo protest.

And now we see the risk when you try to raise a stink about pandas: The protesting penguins are being forcibly relocated - some until the summer when their exhibit is scheduled to reopen, but some permanently.

The report by the Edinburgh Evening News does refer to the zoo's pandas, but it's clearly an irrelevant side note, dropped in simply because no reporter can write a story about a zoo with pandas without mentioning them:

Meanwhile, Edinburgh Zoo’s giant panda pair, Tian Tian and Yang Guang, are ready to welcome their 100,000th visitor today, less than four months after arriving from China.

The reporter seems oblivious of the history between these penguins and the pandas. And it was obviously not mentioned by zoo publicists - who are a major part of the panda-industrial complex and no doubt insiders to this conspiracy.

The story also notes that while the relocation is temporary for some of the penguins, some are moving as far away as Belfast and Denmark, and "Some will never return."

This is surely significant. Decisions about where to send zoo animals are never made randomly. What better opportunity for the pro-panda cabal to identify the ringleaders and put a permanent stop to their demonstration?


Photo of the penguin perp walk from the Edinburgh Evening News. Will any of our Scottish readers stand up for these brave protestors? Occupy Pandas!

GRAVE ROBBING BADGERS

Really, there are some post titles that can only be in ALL CAPS.

We've seen before that animals have no respect for the sacred eternal resting places of our human dead, with crows stealing candles from a cemetery and squirrels stealing Memorial Day flags of the graves of soldiers. And of course this blog is an endless chronicle of humans enabling bad animal behavior by making excuses and refusing to stand up to it.

These two themes come together in a particularly gruesome fashion in Britain, where badgers are actually digging up human skeletons - and apparently there is nothing that can be done to stop them.

One cemetery that has the problem, in Swindon, opened in 1881 and is the final resting place of 33,000 people including 100 soldiers who fought in World War I. Another, in a churchyard in the village of Long Clawson, dates back to the 12th century, and stopped taking new burials in the early 1900s because it was full.

In both places, bodies are now being disturbed by badgers digging tunnels. Earlier this year someone noted a skull and a bone on the ground in the Long Clawson churchyard, and it's been going on for even longer in Swindon, according to a source: "Two or three years ago I received a phone call from a distressed person to say vandals had struck," he said. “I visited the cemetery to see the grass completely torn up. I have never seen it so bad. It wasn’t vandals but the very cute badgers.”

The animals have continued to bring pieces of skeletons to the surface, and because of conservation laws there's nothing that can legally be done to stop the desecration. The Protection of Badgers Act, passed in 1992, makes it illegal to interfere with their activities, at the risk of a sentence of six months in jail.

The reverend of the church has been unable to get a permit to relocate the badgers, and the law prevents him from even re-burying the bones in their original places because it would disturb their tunnels. "I have been told to carry out a monthly bone patrol, collect them all up and re-inter them in a new grave," he said.

The reverend blames the people more than the animals: "It lacks any common sense but sadly reflects the bureaucracy of modern life." True, but if it weren't for the badgers' bad behavior, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. There's plenty of blame to spread around here, so let's not let either species off the hook.



Badger trying to convince you it's a cute sweet thing that likes to smell flowers by Flickr user Tatterdemalion.

Dolphin sexual harrassment: video proof!

This video contains extremely clear and unmistakable proof that dolphins sexually harrass human beings. If the mere words in news stories aren't enough to convince you - or your dolphin-hugging friends - trust me, this will do it. Not safe for work. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Cats and parasites behaving badly

Foolishly, I thought everyone already knew that their cats were controlling their minds. I don't mean just with their demanding mews - you do know that cats use a special vocalization that's acoustically similar to a baby's cry, a sound that we've basically evolved to be unable to resist?

You would know that if you'd read the Animals Behaving Badly book. And you'd also know about their even more sinister method: they carry a parasite that changes your personality.

This is not news. You also could have read about it, for example, on Ed Yong's blog way back in 2008. But a new article in The Atlantic called "How Your Cat is Making You Crazy" is getting so much attention that people have clearly missed earlier coverage.

Given that so many cats have infiltrated human homes, this is an issue of major importance, and obviously I've neglected it on this blog for far too long. You've may have heard of toxoplasmosis as a disease that is carried by cats, probably in the context of warnings that pregnant women shouldn't clean the litter box. But these warnings don't go into detail about the effects that this disease may have on us. As I explain it in the book:

The parasite toxoplasma, when it infects a rat, overwhelms its fear of cats and makes it actually feel attracted to them, with predictable results for the rodent. (It then infects the cat, which is where it really wants to live.) Humans infected with toxo also show mental changes: they have an increased risk of traffic accidents, and there’s a correlation with schizophrenia. But the most frightening possibility: If it makes rats attracted to cats, does it do the same to people?

So, you think you like your cat because it's cute and warm and furry. But just maybe you like your cat because an alien that lives in your brain is telling you to and you're powerless to resist. It would explain a lot, don't you think?



Sinister kitty by Flickr user cloned milkmen.