Stories tagged animal attacks
A Rhesus monkey: Full of hate, a monkey's most powerful emotion. (phot courtesy of OskarN on flickr.com)A week ago Sunday, the Deputy Mayor of New Delhi, India, died as a result of being attacked by monkeys.
Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was attacked by Rhesus Macaque monkeys on the balcony of his own home. Overwhelmed by the monkey pack, Bajwa fell from the balcony, and sustained severe head injuries upon impact with the ground.
Rhesus Macaques generally live in “troops” of about 20 individuals (a group this size is technically referred to as “pretty scary”), but troops have been known to be as large as 180 individuals (technically “super scary”). In addition to small but thriving colonies in Florida and South Carolina Rhesus monkeys can be found across southern Asia from Afghanistan to China. They are particularly populous in cities like New Delhi, where they have overrun many public buildings and neighborhoods. Coincidentally, these locations have recently been added to my list of places I don’t want to live: Florida; South Carolina; New Delhi all of southern Asia.
Part of the problem in New Delhi is that some devout Hindus consider the Macaques to be manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman, and encourage their occupation of public places by feeding them peanuts and bananas. Unafraid of humans, even Deputy Mayors, the Macaques will sometimes bite or steal food from people.
Rhesus Macaques are also extensively used as biological and medical test subjects, leading some (me) to theorize that this may have been a misguided revenge killing. What’s more, Macaques have accumulated significant space travel experience (NASA launched a bunch in the 50s and 60s, and Russia sent one into space as recently as 1997), and have even had their genes spliced with those of a jellyfish, making them powerful and unpredictable potential foes to humanity.
In an effort to deal with the Rhesus situation, Delhi authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs, “a larger and fiercer kind of monkey,” to scare away or catch the Macaques. Nothing stops a dangerous monkey problem like “larger and fiercer” monkeys.
Speaking of deadly arms races, last week was also the 45th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Will humanity never learn?
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The Fearsome Ratel: Sure, it isn't giant, and it's not eating a person, but you try doing that to a snake. Man, those mustelids are something else. (photo from Wikipedia commons)Sometimes things happen in the real world that are so cool that my imagination just has to sit down in the corner and pout with jealousy.
Rumors have been spreading in the Iraqi port city of Basra that giant, man-eating badgers have begun to stalk the city at night. Many believe that British military forces stationed in the area released the creatures. A spokesman for the British forces said this: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”
Iraqi scientists believe that the offending creatures are much more likely to be a type of Honey Badger, or Ratel, than a genetically engineered weapon of the Brits. However, the badgers are reported to have killed livestock on the outskirts of the city, and even to have attacked some humans, and many insist that these incidents began only after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and so the rumors are dying hard.
Ratels are in fact native to the region, but are nocturnal and generally avoid humans. They are also fearsome hunters, with prey ranging from earthworms to small crocodiles, and have been known to attack animals much larger than themselves.
Also, Wikipedia’s entry on Ratels includes this statement: “Several African tribes report that the honey badger attacks the scrotum of larger mammals if provoked and has even castrated humans.” This is an unsourced claim, but it’s one of those things where I’d just as soon err on the side of safety with Ratels. At the very least, one can’t blame the people of Basra for getting a little jumpy around them.
Well, the end of the world has started again, and it's happening in Germany (big surprise there - any country that shows so much affection for the fifth horseman, Hasslehoff, has to be tempting the apocalypse).
They are watching you: Watching and waiting, and their time has come (photo by ghat).
It has been reported that a mad squirrel attacked and injured three people in the town of Passau in southern Germany. The creature first ran into a house and "leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman," before latching onto her hand with its teeth. The horrified woman ran into the street, where she managed to shake the squirrel off. The squirrel then attacked a construction worker, biting him on the hand and arm before he could fight it off with a measuring pole. Its thirst for human blood not yet slaked, the tiny monster ran into a nearby garden, where it attacked a 72-year-old man. Though bitten on the hands, arms, and thigh, the pensioner still managed to then kill the squirrel with his own crutch. (A similar thing happened to me once, but the crutch only knocked me out).
A dangerous game.: We have let them get too close...(photo by sooz)
As much as I would like to consider this an isolated incident, and just blame it on Germany, I'm afraid we could be in some serious trouble here:
Spanky the drug-dealing squirrel attacks cops!
The list goes on and on, my friends. But this has to be the scariest thing I've read in my life.
Lock your doors and protect your nuts.
It's Mad Max from here on out.
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