Man's New Best Friend: Duck Plays Fetch, This highly motivated mallard looks nothing like a dog, but it sure acts like one. We've always said that we would own a duck if only it played fetch. There's nothing more irritating than a dog that doesn't play fetch to us, so the clear obstacle in making room for a Mallard is the ability to retrieve.
But now it seems we have no excuse. This video popped up this week and is currently getting more and more popular on the web, and despite the poor quality of the visual, it's undeniable: the bird is highly motivated to return objects cast away.
Sold yet? Oh sure, training a duck probably isn't as cut and dry as this fetch session seems. Plus, you have to constantly worry about the little guy or gal running flying away. But this bird's our favorite. You might say he gets top billing in our book. (Shameless, we know.)
Woolly mammoth find surprises scientists, Perfectly Preserved Woolly Mammoth Discovered in Siberia, A perfectly preserved 10,000-year-old animal reveals characteristics that alter long-held theories. Scientists in search of ancient tusks made a startling discovery. They uncovered the nearly perfectly preserved remains of a woolly mammoth in northern Siberia. Fully Preserved Woolly Mammoth Found in Siberia, Scientists discovered a fully preserved Woolly Mammoth that might shed new light on history, and a missing cat is reunited with his owner 15 years after going missing. The juvenile mammoth is believed to be more than 10,000 years old, but was only 3 to 4 years old when it died. It is unlike any other mammoth that has been unearthed before.
The scientists reveal their discovery, which they named "Yuka," in a BBC documentary. Yuka has strawberry blond hair, unlike the dark hair that other mammoths have been found to have. Plus, Yuka's footpads are incredibly well preserved, but some of his bones are missing.
Scientists are trying to determine how Yuka died. They believe it's possible that it could be due to human interaction with the animal. It's plausible that ancient humans may have stolen the mammoth from lions. If their theory proves correct, this will be the first relatively complete mammoth to show evidence of human interaction.
Our next story has to do with another rare animal find, but this is more of the domestic variety.
A woman was reunited with her long-lost cat after he had been missing for more than 15 years. Poldi, as he is affectionately known, was found in the woods behind a home in Munich.
At first, the teenager who found him thought he was a stray, but an ID tattoo behind his ear showed that he belonged to a family and had been missing since 1996.
The ginger tomcat was malnourished and missing his front teeth, but he was friendly and receptive to the strangers who cared for him for a few days. When they discovered his tattoo, they took him to an animal sanctuary to see if his name was in the database of missing animals. He was, as was his owner's information.
When Poldi's original owner was contacted, she was dumbfounded. She had long given up hope of finding Poldi. She says she thinks he originally ran away because he did not get along with her other furry feline.
Ecstatic Dog Welcoming Soldier Home Goes Viral, Excited dog greets returning soldier, Video of Nick comes home after eight months in Afghanistan and gets a different type of hero's welcome. The unconditional love of a pet stands out as being some of the most affectionate love there is. A video of a soldier being greeted by his dog is going viral, because the boxer is so thrilled to see his owner, he cannot contain his excitement. Nick served eight months in Afghanistan, and when he returned to his wife, Katie, in Germany, Chuck was overjoyed to see him. A Video of a dog welcoming his owner home from Afghanistan is going Viral.
Two words get Chuck so excited, that he leaps out of the back of a parked SUV as if on command: "Daddy's home." He then jumps all over the soldier, licking him and yelping with happiness. The soldier cannot even get a good grip on Chuck, because he is so happy and jumping and showing how much he missed his owner.
Katie uploaded the video to YouTube less than a week ago, and it already has more than 1.3 million views. This is not the first time Chuck has been a viral video sensation. A year ago, he welcomed his owner back from a different deployment, and he was just as thrilled to have him return home safely.
Excited dog greets returning soldier, Video of Ecstatic Dog Welcoming Soldier Home Goes Viral, Nick comes home after eight months in Afghanistan and gets a different type of hero's welcome. The unconditional love of a pet stands out as being some of the most affectionate love there is. A video of a soldier being greeted by his dog is going viral, because the boxer is so thrilled to see his owner, he cannot contain his excitement. Nick served eight months in Afghanistan, and when he returned to his wife, Katie, in Germany, Chuck was overjoyed to see him. A Video of a dog welcoming his owner home from Afghanistan is going Viral.
Two words get Chuck so excited, that he leaps out of the back of a parked SUV as if on command: "Daddy's home." He then jumps all over the soldier, licking him and yelping with happiness. The soldier cannot even get a good grip on Chuck, because he is so happy and jumping and showing how much he missed his owner.
Katie uploaded the video to YouTube less than a week ago, and it already has more than 1.3 million views. This is not the first time Chuck has been a viral video sensation. A year ago, he welcomed his owner back from a different deployment, and he was just as thrilled to have him return home safely.
Dramatic whale rescue caught on video, Entangled gray whale freed after dramatic marathon rescue effort. A whale-watching adventure off the coast of California takes an alarming turn. A whale-watching adventure late Friday off Southern California developed into a dramatic and prolonged rescue effort after a young Pacific gray whale was spotted trailing about 50 feet of a commercial fisherman's gill-net.
A trained disentanglement team led by Dave Anderson was successful in freeing the 30-foot whale Saturday evening off Dana Point in what the team described as a miraculous event (see video below for some of the action).
That description was based partly on what occurred overnight, after the team had attached a lighted buoy to the net in order to maintain sight of the whale until morning.
"The whale shook free of the buoy and we lost sight of it, but we were able to find it again by shutting off our engine and listening for it," said Gisele Anderson, who with her husband runs Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari. "That took about two hours and it was unbelievable that we were able to relocate the whale in the dark like that."
After it had secured another lighted buoy to the net, Peter Bartholomew and two other volunteers arrived to spell the disentanglement team until dawn, when the team would return to begin cutting the net's ropes.
What it discovered was alarming. The monofilament netting, which had sliced deeply into the whale's tail section, was extremely heavy and had trapped and killed other marine creatures, including a sea lion and two sharks.
"This whale was towing an entire ecosystem behind it," bemoaned Dave Anderson, who was granted permission to conduct the attempt by NOAA Fisheries.
Gray whales are migrating from Baja California breeding grounds to Arctic feeding grounds and it's believed that the juvenile, which was very thin, had become entangled about a week earlier.
The team, using inflatable boats and specialized disentanglement equipment, spent all day slicing away at large sections of gill-net.
Gill-nets are like giant volleyball nets that trap and kill marine life indiscriminately. The team used poles and grappling hooks to collect sections of netting, which they then cut with knives.
It also attached sharp clip-hooks onto thicker sections of netting at strategic points. Those hooks were tied to control lines and secured to buoys, so when the whale submerged the lines would tighten under the drag and the hooks would slice into the netting.
Finally, just before dark, the whale dived, dragging four large buoys beneath the surface like a scene from "Jaws."
The pull of the buoys cut what was left of the netting -- except for a short tailing of line that had become embedded in the skin -- and the whale surfaced a minute later as a free animal.
"It really was a miracle," Gisele Anderson said.
Coincidentally, Dave Anderson recently published a coffee table book titled "Lily, A Gray Whale's Odyssey," which tells the saga of another gray whale that Anderson helped rescue years earlier.
The juvenile whale was named "Bart" in honor of Bartholomew, for keeping track of the mammal's movements in the darkness. Others involved in the effort were Tom Southern, Mark Tyson, Steve Plantz (of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center), Barry Curtis and Mike Johnson.
Web buzzing over gigantic wasp, Monstrous New Wasp Species Discovered in Indonesia, A frightening species measures more than 2 inches and boasts an open jaw bigger than its legs. A new insect has been discovered in Indonesia, and it looks like something you would see only in your worst nightmare. It's a new species of wasp found last year by entomologist Lynn Kimsey, a professor at the University of California at Davis. Horrifyingly gigantic wasp discovered in Indonesia. Discovery of huge "Garuda" wasp; woman sues Apple after walking into a door. This week, Kimsey formally published her findings on the bug, dubbed "the Komodo dragon of wasps" because of its tremendous size and ferocious appearance.
Discovered in the Mekongga Mountains on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, the wasp is 2 1/2 inches long and greater than three times the size of an average wasp. Its jaws are so big that when its mouth is open, its jaws are bigger than its legs. Kimsey admitted she's surprised it can even walk with those kinds of proportions.
Kimsey has named the monstrous insect "Garuda," the national symbol of Indonesia that is part human, part eagle, and known as the "king of birds." This new species of "digger wasp" is known for how the female paralyzes other insects, buries them, and then lays eggs on top of them, providing food for their offspring. It's starting to look like a real "Bug's World."
Scuba diver shares high-five with shark, Scuba diver gains notoriety for high-five greeting by large shark, A photo of a man's friendly encounter with a lemon shark he named "Taxi" becomes a Web hit. It may seem far-fetched that a person could develop a relationship with a wild shark, but Eli Martinez claims to have bonded with a lemon shark he has named Taxi, who is pictured in what looks to be a high-five greeting off the coast of the Bahamas.
"This shark is my buddy, I work with her a lot," says Martinez, who is editor of Shark Diver magazine. "Her name is Taxi, I named her that because of the entourage of remoras that follow her around. My work with her is almost like a dance, we just flow well together she is a total sweetheart."
The image has been making the rounds on the Internet since a story on Martinez appeared on British tabloid websites.
Martinez, 40, explained to the Daily Mail that he has encountered Taxi many times and of this particular dive he said, "She is very laid-back so I knew if I held my hand out she would come over."
Of the shark unexpectedly slapping his hand with its fin the veteran diver added, "Luckily my friend who owns an underwater camera captured it all on film for me to show the grand kids."
Lemon sharks, so-named because of the pale yellow-brown color of their skin, are found in subtropical waters and reach lengths of about 10 feet.
They're not known for being aggressive toward humans but have been implicated in sporadic attacks. One of the most recent involved well-known and controversial diver operator Jim Abernathy, who was bitten on the arm last year while on an expedition to the Bahamas.
Monster snake lands in Grand Central, taunting commuters
Monster snake lands in Grand Central, taunting commuters, Monster snake in Grand Central, Monster titanoboa making public debut, Monster titanoboa snake invades New York, A full-scale replica of the recently discovered mega-snake may shock New York City commuters. New York commuters arriving at Grand Central Station will soon be greeted by a monstrous sight: a 48-foot-long, 2,500-pound titanoboa snake. Titanoboa: Monster Snake, Courtesy of the Smithsonian Channel.
The good news: It's not alive. Anymore. But the full-scale replica of the reptile -- which will make its first appearance at the commuter hub on March 22 -- is intended, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer happily admitted, to "scare the daylights out of people" -- actually has a higher calling: to "communicate science to a lot of people." The scientifically scary-accurate model will go a long way toward that: If this snake slithered by you, it would be waist-high and measure the length of a school bus. Think of it as the T-rex of snakes.
This newly discovered species, known as titanoboa (yes, the words "titan" and "boa" are in there), which lived 65 million years ago, is about to have its close-up. The New York City appearance is promoting an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History in D.C. opening on March 30, which ties in to a TV special on the Smithsonian Channel called, what else, "Titanoboa: Monster Snake." The two-hour program airs April 1.
Remains of the titanoboa were first discovered in a Colombian coal mine in 2005. One of the researchers specializing in the Paleocene era, the time after the death of the dinosaurs, was Jonathan Bloch. A vertebrate paleontologist from University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, the scientist led multiple expeditions, along with Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The team collected remains from the mine, which resulted in the find. Together with ancient-snake expert Jason Head of the University of Nebraska, they named the world's largest snake Titanoboa.
Speaking on the phone to Yahoo! News, Bloch admitted that when the team was first collecting the skeletons of Titanoboa, he didn't immediately understand what he had found until he returned to the lab. With the help of his students, he was able to identify the fossils as snakes, just much, much bigger than the ones of today. He described the enormous vertebrae as "sort of like if you saw a mouse skull the size of rhino skull."
The predator, which is related to a boa constrictor but actually behaved like an anaconda, lived in water and fed on fish, other titanoboas, and crocodiles (very, very large crocodiles).
If this sounds like Hollywood's next blockbuster, Bloch noted that this time around, truth is actually bigger than fiction: The predator from the movie "Anaconda," for one, is not as big as titanoboa. "This is really an example where reality and the past have exceeded the imaginations of Hollywood."
400-pound gorilla bites zookeeper, 400-pound gorilla escapes, bites zookeeper at Buffalo Zoo, Koga, a 24-year-old adult male gorilla, attacks his female keeper before being tranquilized. A 400-pound adult male gorilla escaped his cage at the Buffalo Zoo on Monday, biting a female zookeeper before being tranquilized and captured in what a SWAT team leader called, "the scariest thing I've ever done."
Zoo officials said Koga, a 24-year-old silverback gorilla, took advantage of an unlocked door in his living quarters on Monday morning and slipped into the space behind it, used by zoo personnel but closed to the public.
A keeper who has cared for Koga since he arrived in 2007 was bitten on her hand and calf, in what officials said was an act of excitement rather than aggression.
"He was probably just as surprised coming face to face with her as she was with him," Buffalo Zoo President Donna Fernandes said.
The keeper, whose name was not released, took refuge inside the habitat of a female gorilla and her newborn baby, Fernandes said. The keeper had a good relationship with the mother who, like Koga, is a West Lowland gorilla, native to West Africa and the Congo River Basin, she said.
Meanwhile, police sent in the SWAT team to secure the area while a veterinarian used a handheld blow pipe to sedate Koga through a porthole.
Visitors to the zoo were moved indoors and stayed there throughout the roughly 45-minute ordeal -- the zoo's first escape, Fernandes said.
"That was the scariest thing I've ever done in my career," said SWAT team captain Mark Maraschiello.
"It's a 400 pound animal that's capable of who knows what. He could rip your arm out of its socket," Maraschiello said.
The sedated gorilla was dragged by zoo staff back to his habitat once the drugs took hold, about 15 minutes after they were administered.
The keeper's decision to lock herself inside the separate habitat likely kept her from being further harmed, according to officials at the zoo. Several locked doors kept Koga from running amok through the zoo and beyond.
Fernandes promised an investigation into how Koga escaped.
"I'm sure it was very dramatic for (the zoo keeper) and for all the keepers. It was pins and needles," she said.
The wounded zookeeper was undergoing an evaluation at a nearby hospital but her injuries were not considered serious.
Koga was born at the Bronx Zoo in New York City and transferred in 1994 to the Memphis Zoo before landing in Buffalo. Fernandes said he has no history of unusual aggression.
Penguins take flight on frigid waves, Frozen Planet: Wonders of Icy Worlds, Documentary filmmakers discuss stunning footage they captured in polar regions. A stunning portrait of the polar regions that took four years to produce.
Feline fetches like Fido, Cat Is Confused About Role In Life, This cat is so ashamed of its feline genetics that it's willing to act like a canine at all costs!
Cat Is Confused About Role In Life, Feline fetches like Fido, This cat is so ashamed of its feline genetics that it's willing to act like a canine at all costs!
Dog disqualified for pooping during agility competition
Dog disqualified for pooping during agility competition, Ah, a dog's life. No responsibility, no stress and the world is your bathroom. Exhibit A: a little gal named Libby, while in the middle of a scorching run during the Crufts obstacle course competition, just couldn't hold on until the end. Although the spontaneous squat meant instant disqualification, Libby appeared to be in good spirits, as one often is immediately after emerging from a bathroom emergency. The collective "ooooooohhh" reaction from the crowd suggests that this isn't a common occurrence at Crufts, but as the understanding announcer rightly points out, "A dog's gotta do what a dog's gotta do."
Dog Adopts Abandoned Kittens, Minnu the dog decided to raise a very unusual but very cute family after her owner brought them home. A dog decides to raise a very unusual but very cute family.
Images of bear taking bath spark intrigue, Bear Taking Bath Caught on Camera, Camera catches yet another animal showing the kind of thinking we used to believe was uniquely human. Animals display human-like attributes.
World's Smallest Frog Discovered, The smallest animals in the world, Small Animals: World's Smallest Frog Discovered, Miniature species of frogs, snakes, and even parrots have evolved over many millennia. A newly discovered frog from Papua New Guinea is the world's smallest, tinier than a dime. Many of the world's tiniest creatures are found on islands, where they've shrunk over millennia of evolution.
The smallest animals in the world, Small Animals: World's Smallest Frog Discovered, Miniature species of frogs, snakes, and even parrots have evolved over many millennia. A newly discovered frog from Papua New Guinea is the world's smallest, tinier than a dime. Many of the world's tiniest creatures are found on islands, where they've shrunk over millennia of evolution.
Dog is just learning to 'roll over', Dog Gives Best Effort, Still Gets A Treat, Kiko hasn't quite mastered "roll over" yet, but she gets so close that her mom instantly caves and gives her the treat anyways!
Dog and Bird Share Noodles, Bird Shares Noodles With Its Pooch Pal, Video: This pet bird is so thoughtful, it shares a snack with the family dog. The cute pair are true fettuccine friends. The four-legged one, however, is a bit hungrier.
Signing cat becomes a Web sensation, Cat Signs For Food, This hungry kitty looks like it's just trying to get its owner's attention — but then it asks for food. Instead of begging like a sucker, this cat uses its newly found sign language skills to get food.
