ANIMAL PLANET
More walks (and drives) on the wild side from around the world
DRIVING DOG
A 35-year-old Jerusalem man was arrested for reckless driving after he posted a video to social media that showed his dog driving his car. The clip showed the dog sitting in the man’s lap with its two front paws on the steering wheel as the car drives through the city’s narrow streets. The owner was remanded in custody for the offence and was also charged with driving a car without a roadworthiness certificate. It is not clear what happened to the dog. timesofisrael.com, 3 Sept 2022.
SNEAKY SEAL
When Jenn Ross of Mt Maunganui, New Zealand, got into her car at 6am one morning to go to the gym, she was unconcerned when she heard a barking noise from under her car. “She thought it was someone’s dog… and didn’t really think too much of it,” said her husband Phil. However, when she returned an hour later, she opened the front door and was surprised to find “a cute little seal” in the hallway. “It got a bit of a fright and humped its way down the hallway into the spare room,” she said. Phil, a marine biologist was not at home. “The big joke is that this is really the only family emergency where it would be useful to have a marine biologist in the house,” he said. “I really missed my time to shine.” The baby fur seal would have to have squeezed through two cat flaps to get into the house. Phil suspects it had come up from the sea 150m (500ft) away and had a confrontation with the family cat, Coco, outside, and was chased through the two cat flaps. The seal then spent about an hour in the house, without waking the children who were asleep upstairs. It stayed in the spare room and spent some time on the couch before it could be coaxed back out. Coco, meanwhile, had taken refuge in a neighbour’s house, and
when she returned refused to go downstairs and was “clearly pretty traumatised.” theguardian. com, 19 Aug 2022.
“It humped its way down the hallway into the spare room”
ANIMAL RAMPAGES
The Japanese city of Yamaguchi spent several weeks besieged by a pack of macaque monkeys that attacked and injured almost 50 people. A city official said: “Initially, only children and women were attacked. Recently, elderly people and adult men have been targeted too.” Most injuries have been minor bites and scratches, but he added that it was “rare to see this many attacks in a short period of time.” Police have been trying to trap the animals since early July without success and specialist hunters have been brought in. They succeeded in capturing and putting down a four-year-old male identified as being responsible for many of the attacks, but the search for others continues. “Eyewitnesses describe monkeys of different sizes, and even after the capture, we’ve been getting reports of new attacks,” said an Agriculture Department spokesperson.
Meanwhile at Koshino Beach near the western Japanese city of Fukui at least six swimmers
have been attacked and bitten by dolphins, with some receiving injuries serious enough to require hospitalisation. One man was bitten on both his arms, while later the same afternoon a man received injuries to fingers on his left hand in another attack. Swimmers have been warned of the danger from dolphins and advised to avoid the sea, as the animals have been seen even in very shallow water, less than knee-deep. Officials have installed ultrasonic transmitters to try and deter dolphins from the area. BBC News, 27 July, 12 Aug 2022.
NINJA BEAR VS ROBOT MONSTER WOLVES
Dairy farms in Hokkaido, Japan, are under siege from an animal that has become known as the “Ninja Bear” after its midnight attacks, stealthy behaviour, and ability to evade both hunters and security measures. Officially known as Oso 18, because the bear was first captured on camera in the Ososhibetsu district and because its paw tracks are 18cm (7.1in) across, it is a large bear for Japan, with an estimated weight of about 300kg (661lb). The animal has never actually been seen directly, and has only rarely been caught by security cameras, but farmers know the same bear is behind more than 60 attacks on cows around the towns of Shibecha and Akkeshi because of the traces it leaves and the way it deals with its prey. In the same period, all the rest of Hokkaido has seen only about a dozen similar incidents despite the island being home to many bears. Ninja Bear is unlike other local bears who, when they kill something they can’t eat in one sitting, stay around until they’ve eaten it all; he just eats a portion of the carcass, then vanishes back into the forest, leaving the rest. He is also suspected of walking along rivers so that he doesn’t leave tracks or a scent and has been known to dig his way under electric fences. One farmer is so concerned for his herd that he has invested in a pack of what are described as “robot monster wolves” to deter the elusive predator. These are mechanical wolves manufactured by Ohta Seiki, a local machine parts company (see FT403:11). They are armed with motion sensors that swivel the wolf’s head towards any movement, turn on its glowing red LED eyes and trigger a loud startling sound from the library of 60 that the wolf is programmed with, including wolf howls, human voices and the sound of gunshots . Whether this has had any effect on the Ninja Bear is unclear, but Yoshikazu Sato, a professor of wildlife ecology at Rakuno Gakuen University, has expressed concern that other local bears could start learning from him, leading to a whole clan of unstoppable ninja bears on the island. soranews24. com, 14 Sept 2022; 21 Oct 2020.
COPY CAT
In Harrison, Arkansas, Ariel Contreras was surprised when her cat started to give birth. “I went to go do laundry. I’d seen my cat was meowing, and then all of a sudden babies started coming out, and I started yelling for my husband,” she said. They were even more surprised by the second kitten to appear. “My husband said, ‘Honey, it has two heads,’ and I went, ‘No way!” Contreras added. The kitten had craniofacial duplication, a condition that occurs occasionally in cats and is also known as Janus Syndrome after the two-faced Roman god. Rather than taking the classical route when naming the kitten, Contreras decided to call him “Harvey” after the two-faced Batman villain, Harvey Dent. Although most Janus cats do not live very long, Contreras was optimistic about Harvey’s survival. “There was one that made it to 12 years, and one that made it to 15 years, so I’m really praying this one makes it that long, and we will do whatever it takes.” Sadly, though, Harvey didn’t make it, and died at four days old. metro.co.uk, 22 Aug 2022; petsradar.com, 24 Aug 2022.