“Aflockalypse” Mapped on Google

The recent string of mass animal deaths that the Washington Post and some bloggers have taken to calling “the aflockalypse” can now be monitored on Google Maps.

The regularly updated resource pinpoints mass animal kills all over the world with blue arrows, tracking the die-offs from Dec. 2010 to the present.

Read more here.

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Hundreds of turtle doves die in Italy’s ‘Aflockalypse’

With the twelve Days of Christmas over, the turtle doves apparently were no longer needed. In what is being termed the ‘Aflockalypse,’ mysterious bird deaths in Arkansas, Louisiana and now Italy have some predicting the deaths harken the end of the world.

In the Italian city of Faenza, white turtle doves hung lifeless in trees like a kind of Tim Burton macabre Christmas scene.


Read more here.

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The mystery of mass bird deaths

Some commentators have dubbed it "the aflockalypse" - instances of mass bird deaths that have perplexed observers over the past week. So why have birds quite literally been falling out the sky?

It all started when residents of Beebe, in the US state of Arkansas, woke to find thousands of dead blackbirds strewn across roads on 1 January. Then, in Louisiana, about 500 birds - including starlings, cowbirds and redwing blackbirds - rained down from the skies.

Read more here.

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Weird feeding habits of the slingjaw wrasse

Almost 6,000 people have watched the YouTube footage of Epibulus insidiator, a strange predator found in tropical waters in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Normally, the slingjaw wrasse looks like a fairly nondescript brownish fish. But when it attacks its prey, it looks anything but.

Its mouth shoots out like that of the monster in the Ridley Scott film Alien, slinging forward up to half the fish’s body length and engulfing the victim in moments.

Read more here.

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Giant ants' nests given special building protection

Insects' towering structures will be safeguarded during timber removal process in Northumberland woodland.

The forestry Commission's Jonathan Farries checks the GPS settings on one of the rare giant ant nests in the Holystone forest. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

A rare British "skyscraper city" made by ants has been given the equivalent of listed building protection and a place on maps to safeguard it from forestry work.

Nests up to two metres (7ft) high, constructed from millions of conifer needles in Northumberland woodland, will be monitored during the felling of "intrusive" 20th century conifers amid the ancient oaks of Holystone, near Rothbury.

Read more here.

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Alligator Bites Off Golfer's Arm

A golfer in his 70s had his arm bitten off by a 10-foot alligator while trying to retrieve his ball from a pond. The golfer was playing a round at Ocean Creek Golf Course in Beaufort County, South Carolina when the alligator pulled him into the pond and ripped off his arm in the struggle.

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Ancient Shark Gang Fed on Giant Plesiosaurs

Some 85 million years ago in a shallow ocean, a handful of miniature great white sharks were pigging out on the carcass of a giant marine reptile called a plesiosaur, a new study suggests.

During this apparent feeding frenzy, some shark teeth got stuck in the plesiosaur's bones, which were subsequently buried and remained undiscovered until a high-school student in Japan found them in 1968. Other shark tooth fossils were found near the bones. Only recently did paleontologists examine and describe the fossils scientifically.

Read more here.

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40 Maggot's Found Up Woman's Nose

When 70-year-old Laxmibai (name changed) first got a nose bleed, no one really paid much attention to it. Only when the bleeding continued
for five days and two hospitals couldn't find the cause for it that her family took her to civic-run Sion Hospital. The doctors there came up with the right diagnosis: she had maggots in her nose.

The doctors could not fathom how Laxmibai could have got the maggots in her nose. The woman, a Bhiwandi resident, had an explanation though: a housefly had entered her nose on Monday, a day before she started bleeding. She was taken to two other hospitals where she was given tablets and nose drops but none of the doctors could diagnose that the housefly's larvae were at the root of all trouble.

Read more here.

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Million to one apple is half red, half green

Fruit grower Ken Morrish was left stunned when he found a golden delicious apple on his tree split exactly half green, half red down the middle.

The fruit's striking colouring is thought to be caused by a random genetic mutation at odds of more than a million to one.

The apple has caused such a stir in the village of Colaton Raleigh, Devon, that Mr Morrish is inundated with neighbours queuing up to take pictures of it.

Mr Morrish, 72, who has been harvesting the apples from trees in his garden for 45 years, said: "It's truly amazing.

"It looks as if a green apple and a red apple has been cut in half and stuck together."

Read more here.

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High Numbers Of Spiders Predicted

After months of gloom about the environment and Britain's embattled wildlife, reassurance may be on its way from a creepy and often-unloved source.

Scientists and conservationists are optimistic that an annual survey will record a bumper crop of the country's spiders – more than 650 species which variously weave, jump, hunt and have up to six eyes.

Anecdotal reports of high numbers of spiders, from amateur enthusiasts as well as specialists, are already piling up at the campaigning charity Buglife and the British Arachnological Society (BAS). Temperate weather since the end of winter, with few very hot or cold spells, has suited the animals, which emerge at this time of the year to mate.

Read more here.

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Sydney Turns Red In Huge Duststorm

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Strange Gelatinous Fish Found in Brazil

A bizarre fish recently caught off the coast of Brazil may not be a completely new kind of creature, as originally thought.

The six-foot-long (two-meter-long) gelatinous animal was found floating dead off the Bahia coast by researchers from Brazil's TAMAR Program, a sea turtle conservation group.

Initial accounts quoted the scientists calling the creature "completely new, scientifically speaking."

But fish experts looking at video footage of the bizarre fish have identified it as a member of Ateleopodidae, a little-understood group of deep-sea fish known to science since the 1840s.

Read more here.



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Sharks swarmed on ancient sea monster

Remains of a shark-bitten, 85-million-year-old plesiosaur reveal that around seven sharks likely consumed the enormous dinosaur-era marine reptile in a feeding frenzy, leaving some of their shark teeth stuck in the plesiosaur's bones, according to a new study.

The findings, which will be presented at next week's 69th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, are the first direct evidence of the diet and feeding behavior of Cretalamna appendiculata, a now-extinct early relative of today's great white sharks.

Read more here.

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Explorers hope Sumatran ape will yield clues on human development

AN unknown species of Indonesian ape could shed light on how our human ancestors began to walk erect.

The orang-pendek of Sumatra is said to be a powerfully built ape that walks on two legs like a man. Both native people and western explorers, including two noted scientists, have reported the creature from the deep jungle.

This week four English scientists and explorers will brave the rainforest in search of the orang-pendek.

Read more here.

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Legendary man-eating New Zealand bird 'did exist'

A giant man-eating bird that appears in ancient Maori legends did actually exist, according to new research.

The Te Hokioi was described as a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand.

Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast's eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago.

Read more here.

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One Legged Snake Found

A woman in China has found a snake with a single leg and a clawed foot crawling across her bedroom wall.

“I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw,” 66 year old Duan Qiongxiu told the Delfi.

Read more here.

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Animals Named After Rock Stars

German researcher Peter Jäger revealed earlier today that he's named a new Malaysian species of spider after David Bowie – the fetchingly titled Heteropoda Davidbowie. But what other animals have been named after famous music stars?

Read more here.

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Snake Found In Toilet

An Australian man had to call in the snake catcher after he discovered a 10ft-long python living in his toilet.

Erik Rantzau was used to seeing the enormous Northern carpet python slithering around his property, set in a rainforest 19 miles from Darwin in the Northern Territory. Occasionally the snake — which he had nicknamed Axl — would slide through his lounge while he was watching television. But last month Mr Rantzau discovered the reptile curled up inside the bowl of his toilet.

Read more here.

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Land Of The Lost Discovered.

A host of weird and wonderful animals has been discovered by a BBC expedition which ventured deep into some of the world's most remote rainforest.

The team explored the crater of a pristine giant extinct volcano located in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Accompanied by the first biologists ever to set foot in the crater, the team filmed strange spiders, giant caterpillars and tree-living kangaroos.

Read more here.

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Irish Meteor Strike

Astronomers are on the trail of a meteorite after a massive explosion over Ireland.

The fireball, said to burn as bright as the full moon, was seen flashing across the country on Wednesday night.

Astronomy Ireland said the suspected meteor was spotted from Valentia Island, Skibbereen, west Cork to Cavan and further north in Raphoe, Co Donegal.

Chairman David Moore believes it may have ditched in the Atlantic.

Read more here.

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