Goats betray their fellows, then pay the price

On an island off South Australia, a population of feral goats, descended from animals brought by settlers for their meat and milk, is following the usual routine of invasive species the world over. They're eating their way through the native plants, including one that's the main food source for the endangered black cockatoo.

By itself, hardly unusual enough to be worthy of mention. But here's where the really bad animals come into the story: the eradication effort, which involves what's being called "Judas goats."

From the Australian Broadcasting Corp:

The unwitting traitors are shipped over from the mainland, sterilised, fitted with radio tracking collars and released.

Project officer Nick Markopoulos says the program exploits the animal's sociable nature.

"Generally the goat will have about a week's sulk and once it gets over its week of sitting down and just adjusting itself to the new environment it's been released into, it will go off ... and find friends," he said.

"The feral goats are quite happy to accept them into their mobs and they fit right in."

The radio collars allow officials to find the group of feral goats and then, let's just say, they don't gather them up and take them to a goat shelter and adopt them out.

But what the Judas goats don't know is that they're going to pay the price for their collusion:

Mr Markopoulos predicts the island's feral population will be eradicated in a year.

Once they have done their job, the judas animals will also be destroyed.

World Cup Wildlife

As an American and not a sports fan, I may be prejudiced, but somehow I'm not surprised that the World Cup is bringing out the hooligan in our fellow species:

A parrot in England has caught World Cup fever - and she's added bad language to her taste for vodka and Coke and habit of bathing in beer:

Landlady Amanda Weston, 50, who runs the Duke of Albany pub in Weymouth, Dorset, said: "She loves watching the football and after Saturday's performance it was things like 'come on England you w*****s' and 'shoot the ref'.

Landlord Malcolm Weston, 52, said: "Roxy is a saucy bird. She does raise an eyebrow or two. She comes out with swear words I have never even heard of. I think she's brilliant."

On location at the World Cup itself, though, they've got more to worry about than a little bad language. We reported earlier on concerns that baboons that steal from cars would target tourists, but they're not confining themselves to either tourists or vehicles. Journalist Henry Winter gave a play-by-play of the action at breakfast one morning via his Twitter feed:

Baboons everywhere, grabbing bread off table. Kitchen cats hissing at them & staff seeing them off with pebbles & paint-ball gun. Score-draw.

Baboons just taken the lead - & the sugar, five sachets at a time, even the canderel, now sitting in trees, pouring sugar down throats. 2-1.

Baboons on roof now just out of range of gun-man firing small marbles. “I aim for the arse” says Mr Primate Control. Accurate up to 50 yards.

Nothing is sacred to these maruading primates - not even the athletes themselves and their innocent families. One bunch invaded a hotel room at a resort in Sun City occupied by the family of England's Peter Crouch.

The footballer's fiancee was quoted as saying "These three baboons jumped in, walked straight through the bedroom into the lounge to the fruit bowl, took what they wanted and walked out.” Clearly a levelheaded woman, she doesn't make it sound like much, but remember, these are baboons:

A source close to the family said: “One minute they were sat back having a bit of peace and quiet, the next thing they were confronted by these terrifying beasts.

“It all sounds funny to say some monkeys popped in and burgled them. The actual experience was anything but.

It was like having wild Alsatian dogs in the lounge with them. Fortunately they left without causing any harm.”

The family got off easy: The Johannesburg Times reports that they ignored warnings to keep sliding doors and windows locked in unoccupied rooms. Let's hope they learned their lesson.


Baboon with no respect for property from Flickr user tedlington.

Lesson learned - maybe

Here's a warning to us all: the story of a British woman with a phobia of monkeys who couldn't leave well enough alone.

Her fear went back to when her father raised a chimpanzee, an animal she described as "positively evil." With more close-up and personal experience of non-human primates than most people, you'd think she'd realize that her fears were pretty rational, right?

But no. She decided to go on a trip to Thailand, to tour an island full of macaques and "confront her fears." Here's what happened, as reported in The Daily Mail:

After arriving on the beach, she decided to sit down and take in her surroundings.

'I thought I was heading for safety under this rock in the shade, only to cool down. I laid the towel down and there were no monkeys in sight,' said Mrs Darwell.

'The next thing I noticed, this monkey walked up next to me and I thought, "Oh dear". I began to stand up to move away.

'Then, the monkey took my wrist and pounced on my right arm, sinking his teeth in and hung off it.'

He wouldn't let go; he was locked on. I was absolutely petrified. I was shaking from head to foot and I froze,' she said.

'Then another, bigger monkey bit my arm, just next to the other one biting me, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by monkeys.'

She said three or four of the creatures began attacking her from all sides, grabbing her arms, legs and rear end, leaving bruises all over her body.

'I thought, "This is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged by these monkeys," then I went into shock,' she said.

Of course, if she'd read this blog, she'd know that macaques don't care for tourists and are just as horrible to the locals even in places where they treat them like gods. So what did she expect?

As you can see from the photos in the linked story, the woman seems to have recovered nicely, looking fairly cheerful in a brightly colored sundress despite her bandaged arms. Let's hope she's learned her lesson.


Macaque picture from Sky News. See the teeth? If you live in a nice safe country where these guys do not roam free, have the sense to count your blessings instead of purposely travelling to a place where they do!

Harsh penalty for cow seductress

From the Times of South Africa:

An 18-year-old man on Indonesia's resort island of Bali claimed he was seduced by a cow after being caught having sex with the animal.

A neighbour caught Gusti Ngurah Alit in the act on Sunday and immediately reported him to local authorities, village chief Embang Ida Bagus Legawa said.

"He was caught by one of the residents standing naked while holding the back of the cow," Legawa said.

On Friday, Alit underwent a cleansing ritual in which he was bathed and the cow was drowned in the sea to rid the village of bad luck.

Alit said he did not see a cow but a beautiful young woman. "She called my name and seduced me, so I had sex with her," he said.

He had to pay 2,000 old coins as a traditional punishment while the village chief paid the owner of the cow 5 million rupiah (545 dollars) in compensation.

OK, I'm usually an advocate of placing blame on animals that have earned it instead of humans making excuses for them. And I'm not suggesting Alit should have been drowned as well. Still, the difference in penalties here does seem a bit harsh. Can't we find a middle ground?


Pretty cow by Flickr user GuruAnt.

Bad birds and buildings

Avian architecture critics? A bird has put a temporary stop to one building, and a bunch of them have caused a fuss by bypassing one building for another. And as is typical, some of the humans involved don't know whose side they are on.

In England, a goose has put a hold on a one million pound building project:

The bird has laid three eggs right in the middle of the building site and has been given her own bodyguard to protect her and her brood.

Security guard Jake Fielding has been assigned to give the Canada Goose 24-hour protection and takes his duties extremely seriously.

A spokesman from Fitzgerald admitted that the goose was a source of both amusement and annoyance.

He said: 'The goose has been her for about three weeks now, and she's settling in quite nicely, which is unfortunate for us."

In California, some birds have apparently retired from their career as a tourist attraction to spend their time at a golf course.

The famous swallows that nest at the historic Mission San Juan Capistrano bypassed their traditional summer home for a newly built country club with a golf course:

Facility director Travis Blaylock says the birds' arrival took everyone by surprise.

"I saw a few one day and then it's like they went and told all their friends, 'Hey, I found the spot,'" he says. Soon, thousands of swallows were busily building their conical mud nests.

It took the colony about a week to spit together hundreds of nests along the eaves. Blaylock said their collaborative effort impressed staff and club members.

"If only the contractors I've hired in the past worked as well as these birds," he says with a laugh.

The club's PGA golf pro, Bob Emmons, gave the birds two thumbs up for style.

"What really impresses me is how they color coordinated the nests with the building," he says with a wry smile.

The birds cause extra cleanup because of debris that falls from their nest, and there's the other obvious problem:

Blaylock, who is chief bird watcher and guardian, keeps six extra shirts in his office.

"I've been bombed twice in one day," he says. "I've learned my lesson." He's quick to warn visitors to close their mouths when they look up at the nests and swooping swallows.

Despite this, the staff are inexplicably enthusiastic about the intruders. While the Mission is working with an ornithologist to come up with a plan to lure the birds back, the golf course would be pleased to have them back next year.

"We have everything they need right here at the clubhouse," Blaylock says. "Why would they go anywhere else?"

Bad bird briefs

Along with the crows taking a cigarette break in the photo, some birds and their vices in the news.

A wandering parrot returns to its bad habits, From the Times UK:

A parrot that escaped from its home in Brockley, South London, was lured back with a glass of red wine and crisps. Reggie was missing for more than 24 hours before its owner, Hubbell Walker, decided to put the treats on the windowsill. Mr Walker, 27, said: “He loves Pringles and red wine — he’s quite an unhealthy parrot really.”

In Australia, a kookaburra is on a diet. After four weeks of carefully attended spa treatment, the bird is still too fat to return to normal life:

The female bird had a weigh-in on Monday and tipped the scales at 481g - 20g short of its target.

It can't be released back into the wild unless it can shed those last grams, the zoo said.

A local Mosman resident found the over-fed Australian native bird being chased by dogs at Rawson Park on May 4.

It weighed 545g, 40 per cent more than the typical kookaburra, and was unable to take flight.

"I've seen many kookaburras, but never before have I seen one so fat," Taronga Zoo wildlife hospital nurse Gemma Watkinson said in a statement.

Animals vs. Law Enforcement continued: Traffic Division

Despite the fact that dogs love to go for a ride in a car, animals and vehicles are not a good mix. Spring is a particularly bad time of year, when the weather warms up and all kinds of creatures start to dash around, so involved in looking for fresh food and other animals to have sex with that they don't bother to look both ways before crossing the street.

Big wild animals are the most familiar risk. In Maine, authorities are urging motorists to slow down and look for moose, which have already caused at least one highway fatality. "Moose is Maine's most deadly animal," said one official.

But all kinds of animals can cause these problems. Not all are wild: a wandering cow sent two people to the hospital after collisions in Texas. And some are not large at all: a highway in Greece was shut down when millions of frogs crossing it were causing cars to slide off the road.

Elsewhere, officials are doing more than just talk to convince drivers of the danger. In Germany, they've staged crash tests with the model wild boars in the photo above, and the result might convince some drivers to forget about driving and take the train:

But why are we the only ones getting the warnings? 27 humans died and 3,000 were injured in 2009 in Germany, but also, "hundreds of thousands" of animals. Animals can't read the newspaper, but something needs to be done to make them look around and take notice - why isn't someone laminating those photos and passing them around some forests?

Photos from Germany's ADAC auto club via Der Spiegel.

Animals vs. Law Enforcement

In California, a win: Just making the local news now is a victory back in March, when Santa Cruz county animal services finally caught a stray dog they called Highway Man.

When drivers reported the dog hanging out near a highway exit, authorities feared he'd cause accidents by getting into traffic. It was the start of an extended battle.

"We literally went out there 80 times," [field supervisor] Stosuy said. "All I ever saw of him was his butt because every time he would just run away."

On five to 10 occasions, California Highway Patrol shut down the highway for 10 minutes at a time as Animal Services tried to catch Highway Man.

"He ingested tranquilizers, but didn't go down," Stosuy said. "It was pretty intense. We finally camouflaged the trap so well that it looked like a cave. We rubbed it down with lamb's neck so he could get the scent.

"We finally trapped him on March 31. We weren't ready to give up, but we were starting to think that we would never get this dog."

And what was Highway Man trying so hard to avoid? See the photo above. He's now lying on a comfy blanket in a nice foster home, waiting to be adopted.

In Berlin, a draw: May is crow attack season in the German city. Chicks of the hooded crow begin to leave the nest, and mother crows aggressively "protect" them from innocent passerby who are perceived as threats:

The tabloid Berliner Kurier on Wednesday reported that a cyclist near the Stasi archives was bloodied and needed medical attention after a crow attack. "It was like a Hitchcock horror film," one bystander told the paper. "They simply pecked away! And their beaks aren't so small either."

Of course, as usual, some make excuses, such as the head of a conservation organization:

The strikes vary in scope from threatening dive-bombs to full-on pecking blitzes. But Sorges says that often, too much are made of the attacks. "The attacks are more of a terror and shock for people than they are dangerous," Sorges says. "If a crow does make contact, the injuries are minimal, but nasty scrapes and blood make the attacks look more dramatic than they really are."

Police are swinging into action this year, Der Spiegel reports - but unfortuately their efforts are not too impressive:

Officials have put up red and white tape around the entrance and exit to a central-Berlin parking lot at the archives of the former East German Secret Police, the Stasi, in central Berlin. The area has the look of a crime scene.

A sign at a nearby crosswalk gives notice to pedestrians: "Warning: Aggressive Crows."

(And they litter, too - photo of crow taking trash out of a bin in Berlin by Flickr user colinruminant.)

Cute animals interfere with scientific progress

You'd think scientists, at least, would be objective about animals. Sadly untrue, as The Guardian reports on a paper published in the journal Conservation Biology:

According to a new study, rampant bias exists among researchers towards "cuter and more interesting" animals. The meerkat has clocked up more than 100 published studies since 1994. The manatee has been the subject of just 14, and academic neglect may be a vital factor in its currently parlous position. "Scientists are people too," says Morgan Trimble, a conservation scientist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, who carried out the study. "And many of them want to work with the big and furry stuff."

Lovers of chimps, pandas and elephants like to argue that saving habitat for these creatures has a trickle-down effect, preserving less attention-getting animals as a side benefit. But if you don't live in the neighborhood of some charismatic mega-fauna, your species is apparently out of luck:

Threatened large mammals dominated the studies, appearing in 500 times as many published papers as threatened amphibians. Threatened reptiles, birds and small mammals also received much less attention. The most studied animals were chimpanzees, with 1,855 mentions, and leopards, with 1,241 mentions. Even within the relatively well-studied group of threatened large animals, more than two-thirds of scientific effort went on less than a third of species. For threatened reptiles, some 98% of research studied less than a quarter of species.

Should we really allow certain animals to cloud our minds and suck up all our research dollars just because they are big and fuzzy instead of brown and mushy like that cute baby Japanese giant salamander in the photo?

Learn more about endangered ugly things at the blog Endangered Ugly Things and see a place that has the good taste to celebrate that brown mushy creature with its own festival here.

An elephant with a different sort of drinking problem

There is nothing I can add to this story headlined "Elephant picture explains mystery of leaking jacuzzi" in the Telegraph. All you need is the photo caption:

An elephant nicknamed Troublesome is snapped taking a drink from the pool at Etali Safari Lodge, South Africa. Susan Potgieter, owner of the lodge, said: "When I first saw the photograph of her drinking I couldn't believe it. It was something of a relief because we had been trying to work out why the pool had been draining so quickly for weeks but couldn't find a leak anywhere."

(If you missed our post on the more usual sort of elephant drinking problem it's here.)

Making excuses for man's best friend

They send us to the emergency room, cause car accidents, destroy great works of literature. And how do humans respond?

In Ottawa, a driver lost control of his car and crashed it into a coffee shop, fortunately with minimal damage and no injury. Initial reports said that the accident was caused when a dog bit the driver's hand.

Mistaken information goes out on the news every day that's never corrected. But in this case, the Ottawa Citizen rushed to print more than one story that cleared the Chihuahua of responsibility:

A six-month-old Chihuahua initially blamed for causing a car crash that sent a vehicle careening into a coffee shop has been cleared.

Initial reports said the dog bit the driver of a moving vehicle in the Glebe, causing the car to crash into a second one before hitting a coffee shop on Thursday afternoon. However, the dog's owner said the Chihuahua bit the man after the crash, when he tried to get it out of the car.

Do-gooders will even leap to the defense of dogs in the age-old battle between canines and cats, evoking an appropriate response from sensible Scottish cat ladies:

Angela Blanchard, from Cruden Bay, said she was shocked by a visit from welfare officers after her cat Rosie attacked the dog in a school playground.

Mrs Blanchard admitted four-year-old Rosie did not like dogs but said she was bemused the incident had been reported to the authorities.

It seems like the only thing that a dog can't get away with is a direct attack on officers of the law - like the dog who was sent to anger management classes after attacking a police car. And yet even when a dog bit a police officer in Ohio, it was his owner who was fined. Really, how far does it have to go before a dog takes the blame?


Bad dog contemplating her sins by Flickr user jurisdog.

Bad Animal Research Reports

Now there's a title for a journal I'd subscribe to in a minute. But since it doesn't exist, I'll try to keep you all up to date:

-In Wales, PhD student Hanna Nuuttila is using high-tech listening devices to figure out why dolphins beat up on porpoises.

This carries on from a previous acoustic monitoring study she did for The Seawatch Foundation, prompted by the discovery that Cardigan Bay dolphins were killing porpoises.

"When dead porpoises stranded, you could tell dolphins were involved from dentition marks in their flesh," she explains.

"The porpoises were also suffering massive haemorrhages and their internal organs were all mushed up. They were being battered to death, really."

My hypothesis is that the reason is "because they're assholes," but I understand: this is science and hypotheses must be tested, not assumed. We look forward to the results of this research.

-Purdue University scientist William Muir is working to breed a strain of chickens that won't kill one another. This is necessary because humans want to raise chickens more humanely, and here's how they thank us when they are kept in groups in large enclosures instead of in solitary confinement:

"If you have a lot of birds that want to be top bird there's going to be fighting," Muir said. "If you leave their beaks intact it's a bloodbath. They will literally kill each other. It's kind of a dominance thing. ... They just peck each other to death."

-Finally, scientists in England have found that wild birds are skeptics about the claims that organic food is better. In a three year study, birds consistently ate more of the non-organically-grown seed, searching it out when feeders were switched around.

Researchers suggested that this might be due to the fact that the non-organic seed was actually more nutritious, with a ten percent higher protein content. But I don't know if that's it. Have you ever tasted some of the stuff they sell in those organic markets? Animals may be bad, but they're not idiots.


Evil chicken by Flickr user Photo Lex.

Kangaroo pervert commits cross-species harassment

Perhaps naming the area "the Honeymoon Ranges" gave one kangaroo the idea that it was the right place to look for love. But the human females of Australia are understandably less than thrilled with the attention. The Northern Territory News reports:

One resident who walks along the bike track to the Mary Ann Dam regularly said she realised she was being followed early one morning.

"I turned around and saw this big kangaroo behind me, so I hastened my steps," she said.

"It seemed a bit odd, but I continued walking and didn't think much about it.

"Then on the return walk he was there waiting for me," she said.

"With his male pride on full alert, he started circling me.

"There was no doubt about what he wanted, the randy old thing.

"It was a huge kangaroo and quite intimidating.

"I yelled at him to go away, waved my hands about and let him know I wasn't interested, but he was persistent - I'll give him that."

The kangaroo was also reported to have approached the crowd at an evening car race and chatted up a woman who approached him thinking he was just "a cute, friendly kangaroo."

Tanya was oblivious to the amorous nature of the interlude, but the kangaroo's intentions were clearly evident to other speedway fans.

"Yeah, apparently he was quite aroused," she said.

"I'm actually glad I didn't notice."

She got off easy, but let's hope the women of Australia take a lesson from this. For safety's sake, better assume animals are guilty until proven "cute and friendly," not the other way around.


Rude kangaroo by Flickr user Dan Taylor.

Animals taking advantage

Readers of this blog know that animals are constantly taking advantage of our good nature and our foolishly positive attitude towards them. It should be no surprise that they're not above taking advantage of our troubles, as well. In Chicago, the home foreclosure crisis has turned out to be a boon for raccoons, who have moved into abandoned properties.

This would be all well and good if they were responsible tenants, making roof repairs and mowing the lawn, but they turn out to be the sort that you don't want living next door. Although comments that they are "orangutan-sized" are surely exaggerated, they're said to be bigger and bolder than ever before, and they don't stick to the vacant properties, either. One terrorized neighbor reported that they invaded her home:

“I came down the hallway, went into my bedroom and barricaded myself until morning because I know they’re nocturnal. The next morning, I went into the kitchen. I had the window up, but I have bars on my window. He or she had clawed the screen and squeezed through the bars in the kitchen. There were some corn curls in a bag on the counter. That was all over the floor [along with] some dry macaroni.

The raccoons keep bad company - other squatters in the vacant homes include drug dealers - and a city administrator says that now that they've learned to live in our houses, these big bad furballs are here to stay.

“It’s almost impossible to cull the raccoon population because nature abhors a vacuum. If you remove the raccoons, something else is going to move in. It might be skunks. It might be raccoons from elsewhere. As long as the habitat is good for them to live in, they’re going to keep moving back in.”

Raccoons aren't the only animals that are evolving as a result of living alongside humans. One recent study demonstrated that pet rodents are smarter than their wild counterparts.

After seeing what becomes of raccoons living a civilized life in our houses, I think we need to reconsider our breeding strategies. Do we really want our domestic animals to be more intelligent? Are we sure we can stand the competition?

Detail of photo of raccoon home invasion by Flickr user Pip R. Lagenta.

Anti-Emu Heroics from South Carolina

This blog has reported more than once on the recurring problem of emus on the loose. Setting a high standard for how to react in this situation were a group of citizens of Rock Hill, South Carolina:

Dauntless but "sure enough there was an ostrich runnin' right by my nose so I couldn't just sit by and do nothin'," house painter Jerry Gibson armed himself with an electric drop cord Tuesday morning and took off running after the giant bird that ran 5 feet from his unbelieving eyes.

The large flightless bird was actually an emu, but no one stopped to consult a reference book. Rather, neighbors leapt to assist, or at least encourage.

"Get him!" screamed Ginger Strong in her bed slippers.
"Get a rope!" howled animal rescuer Sheila Dover.
"Get this rope around his neck!" screamed out Billy Grayson, who sure enough had a rope around his neck for just that purpose.

If you've never been up close with an emu, don't downplay the nerve required here. They've got feet like a dinosaur and an attitude to match:

"Figured I could get up to him and lasso him," said Gibson. "I was right about gettin' up to him. Had him by the neck feathers. Wrong about the lassoing though. And he sure give me a fight when I tried to grab a hold of him. Tough sucker, strong, he run off on me."

Gibson tells no tales either, as that emu scraped him on his leg and arm after he pulled a sneak attack near a fence just off Main Street. Although Gibson grabbed onto that emu like a mother-in-law grabbing a purse off a 75-percent-off sale rack, he got bullrushed by the emu for his trouble and left bloodied yet unbowed.

And, showing that it's never too late to join the fight against bad animal behavior, the hero of the day was a 75-year-old:

The chase added dozens of Pied Piper-like chasers including the cops, and culminated with the emu's capture by a veteran emu wrangler who just so happens to be a senior citizen with Popeye forearms named Bobby Mangrum. Mangrum was armed with nothing but a fishing net and a bellyful of courage.

"Got him!" Mangrum called out as he tackled the bird, then got some help to keep the emu down until Mangrum could tie the emu up with a dog leash an officer named Sgt. Lee McKellar grabbed from one of the chasers just in the nick of time.

Read the whole story by Andrew Dys at the Herald Online. I mean it, go read this one; I'm really going to have to start giving some kind of award for local coverage of bad animals, and along with the recent goose story from Illinois, this one's a definite nominee.