Weird news - Man jumps into tiger enclosure in zoo, escapes with injuries

If you see programs about wildlife or see movies where wild animals are involved, you will understand the sheer power of these animals. They can be very dangerous, and their instincts are not the same as that of humans - which means that they can attack you for reasons that seem natural to them, but which may be dangerous to you. Which is why people are advised to be careful when they are near wild animals, and when they are in the zoo, there are enough protection measures to prevent people from getting close to these wild animals.
However, you cannot make everything fail safe, and there have been cases where people have climbed over protective measures and entered the cages of animals such as bears, tigers, lions, etc, and have been mauled, and sometimes have died. So, it is hard to understand the motives of this person who made an effort to jump into the enclosure from a monorail that moves over the zoo at tree height (link to article):

A man was mauled by a 400-pound tiger after leaping from a moving monorail train and plummeting over a protective fence at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said. The man was alone with the tiger for about 10 minutes Friday before he was rescued by zoo officials, who used a fire extinguisher to chase it away. He suffered bites and punctures on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg. The tiger mauling happened at around 3 p.m. in the Wild Asia exhibit, where a train with open sides takes visitors over the Bronx River and through a forest, where they glide along the top edge of a fence past elephants, deer and a tiger enclosure.

The man was lucky to have escaped with whatever injuries he suffered.

Weird news - Swedish man discovered after 2 months in a snow isolated car

In many cases, people get lost in the wild outdoors without any form of support. The ability of a person to retain onto their life, even in adverse conditions continues to surprise people all the time. When somebody gets lost in the outdoor without any form of food or drink support, you would expect unfortunately for them to not survive for too much outside, so people feel very good and happy when those stories come out where somebody has survived for a long period of time in the outdoor without any form of support.
Consider the following article where this Swedish man was lost outdoors, in freezing temperatures and without any food or drink, and was then found alive. This was a remarkable story, and you need to admire the fact that the person managed to survive outside for so much time (link to article)

"We received word yesterday (Friday) that a person had been found in a snow-covered car deep in the woods, more than 1.5 kilometres (nearly a mile) from the main road," Ebbe Nyberg, a duty officer in the northern Vaesterbotten county, told AFP. 

A man on a snowscooter had noticed the top of the car on the deserted and snowfilled forest road, not far from the northern town of Umeaa, just south of the Arctic Circle, and after clearing off some of the snow had peered inside. 

"He saw movement and realised there was probably a person in there and called the police," Nyberg said, adding that rescue services and an ambulance that had been belted to drive on the snow had rushed to the scene. 

Foolhardy: Getting mauled by a lion after climbing into its cage

Wild animals are called wild for a certain reason. Their behavior is unpredictable, they can be aggressive if they feel that they or their young ones are threatened, or if their territory is being encroached upon. Further, for many of them, their nature is such that they can be aggressive; but that does not deter people from trying out some crazy and wild stunts. What would you call a person who gets into a lion cage in a zoo and is then saved from serious damage by the keeper of the cage ? Such a person was inviting trouble, and it is only prompt action that saved him (link to article):

A travel writer was lucky to escape with minor injuries after his venture into a lion's den turned ugly. British journalist Charles Starmer Smith visited the South African wildlife park to "play" with one-year-old lion Mapimpan — whose name translates to "little baby".
Finally the handler was able to corner the cat in the pen's corner, allowing the journalist to calmly make his escape. He could be seen bleeding from his leg through his shredded torn pants and required stitches for his relatively minor injuries.

Cuddly giant panda attacks human, again !

Giant pandas would probably we counted as among the most cute and cuddly looking animals on earth, so cute in fact, that they are the symbols of the World Wildlife Fund. However, the giant panda is a wild animal, and like any other wild animals, must be approached with caution. Here is a gentleman who thought that a panda was all cute and cuddly, and suffered quite serious bites as a result:

Gu Gu is not your typical soft and cuddly giant panda. Zhang Jiao was attacked by Gu Gu the panda when he fell into the pen at the Beijing Zoo on Wednesday. For the third time, he's tasted the flesh of an unwitting intruder in his pen at the Beijing Zoo. His most recent victim was 28-year-old Zhang Jiao, who told CNN he fell into the panda pen Wednesday while trying to catch a small toy thrown by his young son.
The 240-pound giant panda sunk his teeth into Zhang's left leg before moving on to the right leg. "The panda is a national treasure, and I love and respect [him], so I didn't fight back," Zhang said. "The panda didn't let go until it chewed up my leg and its mouth was dripping with my blood." Zookeepers needed to use tools to pry open Gu Gu's jaws.

However, there is no end to the stupidity of man. This happened in the enclosure of a seemingly cute animal, but people have been known to step in the enclosures holding dangerous animals such as tigers, lions, crocs, etc.

Don't suddenly jump into a zoo cage

A zoo / Park is a place where animals are kept, for scientific observation, for protection, and for people to get a look at these animals. A lot of these are wild animals, who can be dangerous for humans if they come in close unsupervised proximity to these animals. There have been cases of wild bears / tigers / lions, and others causing harm (including death) to humans who have suddenly jumped into their cage. However, there are always humans who apply their own thoughts in their dealings with animals. Take this case where a person jumped into the enclosure of a panda, because the animal was so cute after all:

BEIJING (AP) -- A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday. The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.
He said the student was bitten on the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said. "We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge." Pandas, which generally have a public image as cute, gentle creatures, are nonetheless wild animals that can be violent when provoked or startled.

There is a reason that wild animals are kept in cages or away from humans; it is only those humans who are expert in dealing with animals who can do this unsupervised.

Text from elephants warns of danger

The title of this post seems a bit misleading. This is an interesting innovation, trying to address a problem when elephants (or other animals) live in a sanctuary or compound that is close to human habitation. In such cases, there can be many cases of conflict between the humans and the animals; such conflict is typically where either the animal is foraging for food, or moving out of the current territory. However, this causes problems when humans are nearby - this can lead to the humans treating the animals as a danger, with poisoned food, or with weapons. In some cases, especially when dealing with larger animals, humans have also lost their lives:

The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms. The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message.
The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit. So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani's collar, then set up a virtual "geofence" using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory's boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers. They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer's field four months ago.

This is very interesting, and may help a long way in resolving the tension that comes in when humans and wild animals interact in the open, outside their traditional boundaries.

Crocodile inside a bar in Australia

Imaging sitting in a bar, enjoying your drink with your plans, and having the fun that you are sitting there for. And then suddenly, you find that you have another companion, a baby salt water crocodile. This could only happen in Australia. In this case, patrons at a bar found a baby crocodile outside the door of the bar, and pulled him inside the bar for photos (and this bar located some distance away from the remote city of Darwin in Australia's North has hosted many strange animals in the past). Read more:

It sounds like the setup to a joke: A crocodile walks into a bar...
Drinkers at a watering hole in the Australian outback found themselves toasting a baby saltwater crocodile that wandered up to the pub's door Sunday. No one knows how the two-foot long (60 cm) crocodile ended up outside the Noonamah Tavern, located off a dusty highway about 25 miles (40 km) from the Northern Territory capital of Darwin.
But unusual creatures are all in a day's drinking for the tavern, said bartender Leila Naray. "We've had a lot of horses pop up. We've had cane toads, which are yukky," she said. "We have had a big buffalo come in, wander around. There's a photo of him with a beer." Two women who work at a gas station outside the bar first spotted the creature. Incredulous bar patrons then rushed out. A couple of men brought the crocodile inside the pub, taped its mouth and Naray snapped photos.

Seems interesting; the concept of picking up a crocodile without fear and then pulling it inside to take photos of it is either very brave or very foolish.

Pythom stalks family dog and eats it

Australia is famous for its dangerous animals, and this was proved in an example that you will read below. The python is a non-poisonous but dangerous snake that kills by squeezing its prey to death. In an attack hitting a family in Queensland state, a 16 foot scrub python stalked the pet dog of a family for days before attacking, killing and eating the pet dog in front of the horrified members of the family:

Stuart Douglas, owner of the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, said scrub pythons typically eat wild animals such as wallabies, a smaller relative of the kangaroo, but sometimes turn to pets in urban areas. "It actively stalked the dog for a number of days," Douglas said.
"The family that owned the dog had actually seen it in the dog's bed, which was a sign it was out to get it," he added. The zoo manager, Todd Rose, said pythons squeeze their prey to death before swallowing it whole. The 5-year-old dog would have been suffocated within minutes.

Squirrel on rampage

One is afraid of big animals such as wild dogs, lions, tigers, snakes, etc. It is far easier to live in a city as such dangerous animals are not present in the city, and the only thing you need to be afraid in the city are other humans, whether the are muggers, careless drivers or junkies. You do find very cute animals in the city, such as small birds, puppies, cute cats, and even wilder animals such as squirrels and racoons. However, even such a small animal such as a squirrel can become dangerous:

An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.
The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

It takes a lot for a small animal such as this one to become agitated; doubtless there must have been some of irritation caused to the squirrel for it to become violent like this one did.

Elephant robbing motorists

You must have heard of elephants sometimes running crazy, destroying crops and maybe humans as well. But in another sign of how closely we have managed to get wild animals to integrate their life style with us (not a very good sign), an elephant in India that has got old stops cars and does not let them pass until the inhabitants have given it food. Refer this article:

An elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food, a newspaper has reported.
The Hindustan Times said Monday the elephant was scouting for food on a highway in the eastern state of Orissa, forcing motorists to roll down their windows and get out of the car.
"The tusker then inserts its trunk inside the vehicle and sniffs for food," local resident Prabodh Mohanty, who has come across the elephant twice, was quoted as saying. "If you are carrying vegetables and banana inside your vehicle, then it will gulp them and allow you to go."

Yet another sign of how much the human civilization has encroached on the domain of wild animals, where the elephant has chanced upon this technique to get easy food. This is a very imperfect balance, because there is a very real chance that one of the car inhabitants will irritate the elephant, and then the situation could turn ugly.

Alligator blocks traffic

Traffic can choke on freeways for any reason, but an alligator being the reason for the choking is something that is unusual. In Texas, an alligator moved onto a busy freeway, and stopped traffic. Police responding to the scene were puzzled; after all, their training certainly does not cover this.
Police tried their sirens to scare the alligator off, didn't work; they threw orange traffic cones at the alligator, it just snapped at the cones, but couldn't care less otherwise; in fact, at one point, the alligator even assaulted a police car, but no one filed charges against it.
In the end, they use lassos and metal poles to force the alligator off the road, and into a drainage ditch leading to a lake. Read the CNN story here.

Cow that relishes chicken

In a rural chicken farm, suddenly chickens started vanishing. Such an occurrence is bound to pinch, although initially the neighbouring dogs were suspected. It was only when a watch was kept that a most incredible sight was seen. A calf was found to be the chicken eater, having devoured 48 chickens.
The family watched at night as the calf went over to the coop and grabbed a chicken with amazing precaution. This is very strange behaviour. In India, Hinduism considers a cow to be holy, and such a behaviour is most unusual.
The local vet thinks that this could be caused by a lack of vitamins in the body, and has asked for further investigation. Read the story here.

Cat injures its owner over jealousy

A cat sent its owner to a hospital for treatment, when threatened by the introduction of another cat in the house. When a neighbour showed up at the door with another cat (thinking it was the house cat), the house cat severly attacked its owner, a lady in her 60's. The injuries were pretty serious, and the lady had to be taken to the hospital with over 20 injuries.
Now, it appears that the cat is going to be sent to a shelter since this was not the first time that such an incident happened. Read the CNN story.

Woman found from jungle

A family in Cambodia had some good news. A woman who emerged from a jungle a week back was claimed by a family as their long missing daughter. Read the CNN story.
However, where she was upto, what she speaks is all a mystery. Biggest current mystery is that her hair was trimmed short, so if she was lost in a jungle all these years, who was taking care of her ? And it will take some time before she can be claimed to be 'civilized' again.