Morning spice reported that a dog attacked a two-year-old girl at Clifton’s first beach on Wednesday this morning. It turns out that the same dog whisperer, James Lech, responsible for a dog that mauled a girl in a similar attack last year, is responsible for this latest incident too.
A public and media outcry followed the release of information that a KZN businessman, who has not been identified, made a winning bid of R969 150 for the right to hunt a male white rhino in Mkuze Game Reserve. Rhino hunting permits are actually issued far more often than you might think.
When it comes to representing females in the media, one has to tread very carefully in order to avoid offending people. This is a lesson the BBC has recently learned after they included a giant panda called Sweetie alongside Pippa Middleton and Adele in its list of the 12 women of the year.
Life is difficult for those who live on a permanent diet of Viagra and velvet robes. Not only does Hugh Hefner have to juggle himself between a whole group of playmates, but now they want to take his puppies away from him as well.
Miami taxidermist, Enrique Gomez De Molina, is facing five years of jail time and a quarter million US$ in fines for importing body parts of rare and exotic animals to build a series of bizarre hybrid taxidermy sculptures.
Most end of the year top ten lists are pretty boring, but this one is a little different. A New Zealand website has now released the top ten list of animals that were dicks in 2011 There’s even a South African on the list.
National Geographic announced yesterday that we have lost a staggering 443 rhinos to poaching this year – a number that seems to climb exorbitantly on a daily basis. It’s with open arms that the country welcomes the sentencing of Hsu Hsien Lung to six years imprisonment for his part in rhino horn smuggling.
Pockets Warhol is white-capped capuchin monkey. He has been given that name because he uses his tail, hands, feet, and of course, a brush, to daub canvases with his own unique artistic paintings. Pockets has become a money-spinning machine for bosses at at Story Book Farm, a primate sanctuary in Canada, with his paintings selling for as much as R3 500 each. See examples of his work after the jump.
Two male African penguins recently made worldwide headlines after it appeared the two might be gay. As it turns out, Toronto Zoo’s gay penguins were not really gay after all. A female has come between them, and they have officially been split up.
This clip, taken last year, is believed to have been filmed at the Olympic Game Farm in Washington. It features a huge Kodiak bear waving back at sightseers and has quickly become a hit on the internet. Viewers are particularly delighted by his cheery demeanour. I love how he gives that, “OH IT’S YOU!” look before waving back.
Love is in the air at Yunnan Wild Animal Park in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, as millions of Chinese internet users have flooded staff at the park with requests to keep a very odd couple together.
On the back of the dreadful statistics that poachers have killed a new record of 405 rhino’s in South Africa since the beginning of the year, comes the news that the Kruger National Park will immediately halt the posting of rhino sightings on its notice boards.
Wild at Heart is a British TV show being shot in South Africa. One of its stars is Lucy, a nine year old pregnant giraffe. This week she fell into a swimming pool on set – forcing rescue workers to demolish it in order to free her. Video after the jump.
Scientists have thus far cloned sheep, mice, cats, horses and even a water buffalo, but now they want to clone a woolly mammoth. They also think they’ll be able to clone said mammoth within five years, all owing to a recovered thigh bone that has well-preserved bone marrow from permafrost soil in Siberia.
Taiwan has the fourth largest shark-finning industry in the world, but it will soon become the first Asian country to ban the practice of removing shark fins in open water. But the majority of Taiwan’s glamorous hotels have refused to take shark-fin soup off the menu in order to do their bit for the cause.
The Beagle Freedom Project rescues dogs that are bred and used for lab testing. These dogs are born in laboratories and live in cages their whole lives. The project recently rescued 40 dogs, between ages four and seven, who have never seen outside sunlight.
Joao Leite dos Santos is one loco ese! On Sunday he visited a Brazilian zoo in Sao Paulo, got drunk, and decided to take a swim in the monkey enclosure. As you’ll see from this video, he ended up being attacked and badly injured. According to experts, the only reason why he survived was because the monkeys were afraid of the water.
Pandas are undoubtedly nature’s cuddliest bear. Those big, black, doughy patches that house their eyes could soften the heart of a steely-eyed Navy SEAL. But, are they cute enough to convince you to substitute that cup of Rooibos with a cup of their poop?
There is a good chance you will have come across, or heard about, a cat meme. Either in picture or video format, they can be rather amusing. Or not. This isn’t an actual cat meme, but rather a lewd take on the phenomenon of cats and the internet.
“Humphrey’s like a son to me, he’s just like a human. There’s a special relationship between me and Humphrey”. These words were uttered by Klerksdorp farmer, Marius Els earlier this year. Pictures were also taken of him happily riding on his 1 200kg pet bull hippo’s back. But on Saturday night, Humphrey the hippo gouged Els to death by repeatedly biting him.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles The Red List, and which is widely recognised as the most comprehensive method for evaluating the conservation status of animal and plant species around the world, has declared the subspecies, the western black rhino (Diceros bicornis longipes), as extinct.
The Black Rhino Range Expansion Project recently successfully transported 19 black rhinos 1 500 kilometres across South Africa. They did this by airlifting each rhino by its ankles before carrying it upside down! Read exactly why they do it this way, and see some amazing images of this process, after the jump.
Hoo. Santa Cruz surfer Barbara Roettger got way up close and personal with a pod of humpback whales when she unwittingly found herself in the middle of a lunge feeding session; two massive whales popped up right next to the surfer and her kayak friends, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s pretty rad.
Jamie O’Brien is a well-known Hawaiian pro-surfer. He recently decided to create some awareness surrounding fibropapillomatosis – a herpes-type virus that affects sea turtles. His “campaign” involved posting a picture of himself “riding” one of these turtles underwater. But it turns out he may have instead broken laws against harassing turtles, as well as offended fellow Hawaiians who consider these creatures as ancestral guardian spirits.
Despite what we might think, the skies do not belong to us. In fact, we weren’t even the first beings up there. This was proven conclusively when a man paragliding in the Himalayas had a mid-air collision with a vulture.
Bukelwa Mbulawa, a cleaner at Luhlaza Secondary School in Khayelitsha, is an animal rights hero. On realising a stray dog was being buried alive by two colleagues on the school field, Bukelwa called animal welfare organisation International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to alert them to what was going down. The dog was saved and later called Warrior. IFAW says she’s a hero. But Bukelwa has now been fired.
When reversing genetics in an attempt to create a real, live, man-eating dinosaur, it pays to know what the consequences may be. In this case, being the paleontologist who advised Steven Spielberg on the making of four Jurassic Park movies and decades of children’s nightmares about killer lizards should just about cover it.
A red-tailed hawk from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens miraculously survived after being shot on purpose by someone with a nail gun. For almost a week after incurring the injury, the nail extended from its cheek through the front of its head. He was rescued over the weekend and is currently being cared for at the Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley in San Jose.
A second fatal shark attack, believed to be by a Great White, has occurred off the Australian west coast – the second such attack in 12 days. A 32-year-old US man was mauled to death off Perth’s Rottnest Island on Saturday. By Sunday, Australian authorities were hunting the shark.
Of the 56 wild animals – including six black bears, two grizzly bears, nine male lions, eight lionesses, one baboon, three mountain lions, 18 tigers, and two wolves – that escaped their private wildlife sanctuary in Zanesville, Ohio, only six were rescued; the rest have been shot by local authorities.