Woman attacked by otters in Wisconsin lake

An Austrian woman on vacation in Wisconsin is getting rabies shots after she said she was bitten several times by at least two otters while swimming in a lake.

Brigitte France, 51, told the Duluth News Tribune that she was swimming on Lake Owen near Drummond, Wis., last Wednesday when she heard something hissing behind her.

She spotted an otter. "I thought it was really cool," she said. "I'd never seen an otter before. Then, all of a sudden, there were three of them."

She felt uncomfortable and swam to shore. She said she had her hands on the shore and legs in the water, "and there they were -- one on the right leg and one on the left leg"...

Capital Times

Brown Highland cattle produce rare white calf

The five-day-old calf, named Heather, was born to cow Isabelle and bull Robert, which both have the species' distinctive long and shaggy brown hair.

Breeders say Heather is not albino, but has a recessive gene which means she has been covered in completely white and pale hair.

The distinctive Highland cattle are one of Britain's oldest breeds and are instantly recognisable for their rusty, red and brown hair and long horns.

Heather's owner Andrew Nunn, 42 from Bere Ferrers, Devon, said he was surprised when he saw her colouring.

He said: "I looked out of the window after breakfast and just saw this pure white calf – I was stunned. I could see her from right across the field.

"At first I thought I was seeing things, but there she was. I was elated. She is just gorgeous. She is so friendly, a lot of cattle are wary of people, but Heather will come up to you like a dog...

--Telegraph.co.uk

Top 10 oddballs of the animal world

From the outside, the platypus looks like a grade-school art project assembled by a kid too busy making spitballs to pay attention in class. The creature, which is classified as a mammal, has a duck's bill and webbed feet, lays eggs like a reptile, but has fur and rears its young on milk.
Researchers say the platypus genome is equally cobbled together from bird, reptile and mammalian lineages. One more oddity: Males can deliver venom from tiny spurs on each hind limb. Click on the "Next" arrow above to learn about nine more oddballs in the animal world...

--MSNBC

Teenager finds bat asleep in bra

A teenager who thought movement in her underwear was caused by her vibrating mobile phone found a bat curled up asleep in her bra.

Abbie Hawkins, 19, of Norwich, had been wearing the bra for five hours when she plucked up the courage to investigate.

When she did, she found a baby bat in padding in her 34FF bra. The hotel receptionist said she was shocked but felt bad for removing the "cuddly" bat. "It looked cosy and comfortable and I was sorry for disturbing it," she said.

She was sitting at her desk at work when she decided to investigate the strange movements in her underwear...

--BBC News

Hedgehog used in non-lethal assault

A New Zealand man has been accused of assault with a prickly weapon -- a hedgehog.

Police allege that William Singalargh, 27, picked up the hedgehog and threw it at a 15-year-old boy in the North Island east coast town of Whakatane on February 9.

"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," police Senior Sgt. Bruce Jenkins said Monday. The teen did not need medical treatment, he added.

Police arrested Singalargh shortly after the incident, and charged him with assault with a weapon -- "namely the hedgehog," Jenkins said.

At a hearing in Whakatane District Court on February 14, Singalargh's lawyer said he intended to plead innocent, The Herald on Sunday newspaper reported. The case is due to resume on April 17. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, Jenkins said...

--CNN

Postal workers attacked by wild turkeys

While rain and snow may not deter the postal service, wild turkeys are a bird of a different feather.

Mara Wilhite, manager of the Hilldale Station Post Office, said wild turkeys have been pestering postal delivery workers in Parkwood Hills, a neighborhood on Madison 's West Side near Owen Conservation Park and home to a number of the large birds.

Between five and 10 large male turkeys, or toms -- apparently a little giddy with the onset of turkey breeding season -- have been bullying postal workers as they make their rounds, pecking at them and even trying to rough them up with the sharp spurs on their legs. One of the birds launched itself through the open door of a mail truck and scratched the driver.

Eric Lobner, regional wildlife program supervisor for the state Department of Natural Resources, is on the case, investigating the turkey gang...

--Madison.com

Giant marine life found in antarctic waters

Scientists who conducted the most comprehensive survey to date of New Zealand's Antarctic waters were surprised by the size of some specimens found, including jellyfish with 12-foot tentacles and 2-foot-wide starfish.

A 2,000-mile journey through the Ross Sea that ended Thursday has also potentially turned up several new species, including as many as eight new mollusks.

It's "exciting when you come across a new species," said Chris Jones, a fisheries scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "All the fish people go nuts about that — but you have to take it with a grain of salt"...

--MSNBC

Circus zebras briefly escape in Md.

Three zebras from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus briefly escaped from their downtown venue on Thursday but were quickly corralled by their trainer and two handlers.

The zebras — Mali, Giza and Lima — spotted an open door at the 1st Mariner Arena and dashed into traffic on Hopkins Place, but were rounded up half a block away.

Carrie Coleman, a veterinary technician for the circus, told The Baltimore Sun it was a frightening incident because the animals were in traffic lanes before returning to the sidewalk...

--USA Today

Rare white killer whale spotted in Alaska

The white killer whale spotted in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent researchers and the ship's crew scrambling for their cameras.

The nearly mythic creature was real after all.

"I had heard about this whale, but we had never been able to find it," said Holly Fearnbach, a research biologist with the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle who photographed the rarity. "It was quite neat to find it"...

--MSNBC

Kitten survived in crate from Singapore to Ohio

A scrawny, black and white female kitten has apparently survived a trip across the Pacific Ocean and North America inside a shipping crate.

Cleveland Animal Protective League Executive Director Sharon Harvey says a Cleveland company that received the crate of spooled steel coil Friday found the kitten inside one the spools.

Harvey says the mother cat and other kittens found in the crate were dead. The crate came to Samsel Supply Co. from Singapore. It was sealed Feb. 4 and shipped three days later...

--USA Today

Iowa man recovering after being shot by his dog

A hunter is recovering after he was shot in the leg at close range by his dog, who stepped on his shotgun and tripped the trigger, an official said Tuesday.

James Harris, 37, of Tama, was hit in the calf Saturday, the opening day of pheasant season, said Alan Foster, a spokesman with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

"He had surgery and is doing pretty well," he said. "He took between 100-120 pellets in about a 4-inch circle to his calf"...

--USA Today

Awakened man wrestles leopard out of his bed

A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch's small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.

Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added...

--CNN

Sea lion joins California schoolchildren's walk-a-thon

He has flippers instead of feet — and certainly no sneakers or hiking boots. But that didn't stop a sea lion from joining schoolchildren on a walk-a-thon.

The marine mammal apparently noticed children doing laps Friday morning around a course they had set up at the Marin Country Day School next to the shores of the San Francisco Bay. The 185-pound Steller sea lion waddled ashore, shocking students and teachers.

"He did a whole lap," said Kelly Watson, director of constituent relations and web communications at the private school.

It was the latest brush with humans for the 1-year-old sea lion, called Astro by staffers at the Marin Headlands-based Marine Mammal Center.

Astro's mother abandoned him at Ano Nuevo Island off the San Mateo coast in June, prompting biologists to bottle-feed the pup. They released the adolescent on April 25 with a radio tag...

--USA Today

Cat survives trip from China to N.C. in crate

After Eric Congdon opened a crate from China and discovered a cat inside, coming up with a name for the furry stowaway was easy.

China the cat had chewed through one of the boxes before it left Shanghai on April 3 and spent at least 35 days on a ship inside the container filled with motorcycle gear.

"I saw something in the container move," Congdon said. "I turned up the headlights on the fork lift to get a better look."

That was when he saw the cat cowering in a corner, weak but still alive. Congdon, owner of Olympia Moto Sports in Hendersonville, said he and a co-worker called the county's animal services when the cat would not let them near...

--USA Today

Knoxville Zoo displays albino alligator

This white alligator has it made in the shade. Without an alligator's normal dark camouflaging color, the new inhabitant at the Knoxville Zoo would not live long while exposed to predators or the sun.

In an exhibit made to look like the Louisiana bayou with tree stumps and hanging moss, the 12-year-old American alligator spent one recent afternoon basking under a heat lamp beside a warm pool with one claw lazily dipped in the water. If outside, her skin would burn in the sun.

An albino gene makes the alligator's skin white and her eyes pinkish, and the rare find creates a popular exhibit at zoos around the country.

The exhibit in Knoxville — marketed with the slogan "Look in Dem Eyes" in reference to a legend that good luck will follow those who see the animal — will last through Labor Day...

--USA Today

Monkeys, capybaras are zoo's odd couple

They're Japan's odd couple.

Capybaras and squirrel monkeys, unlikely neighbors in the wild, are living in the same enclosure at a zoo outside Tokyo and so far, they're loving it.

The monkeys ride on the capybara's backs and kiss the world's largest rodents, who tolerate their tricks. But in the wild, their paths do not cross -- capybara's live on river banks while the monkeys live in forests.

Keepers at the Tobu zoo said it took the capybaras years to tolerate the monkeys...

--Yahoo! News

Canada Post cowed by "very threatening cat"

Canada's postal system has stopped delivering mail to a home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after a mail carrier was scared away by a "very threatening cat," the Winnipeg Free Press said on Friday.

A Canada Post spokeswoman said the agency was concerned about the safety of its carriers, although it hoped for an amicable solution to its dispute with cat-owner John Samborski.

"The letter carrier who delivers mail there ... was brought up on a farm, she is very comfortable with animals," spokewoman Kathi Neal told the newspaper. "Apparently this is a very threatening cat"...

--Reuters

Student attacked by giraffe at Lithuanian zoo

Climbing into a giraffe's cage at the local zoo seemed a good idea after a few drinks.

But the prank went wrong when the 1.3 ton animal flew into a rage and attacked the three student trespassers at a zoo in Lithuania on Monday night.

Ruta Greiciute, a 22-year-old student at Kaunas Technology University, was hospitalized with a broken collar bone and nose after the nine-year-old male giraffe, named Solut, attacked her.

The other students survived the incident unscathed...

--USA Today

Illegally parked alligator snarls Texas traffic

All it takes is one illegally parked troublemaker to tie up freeway traffic — especially if it's an 8-foot alligator sprawled across the pavement.

"I don't remember any of this in the academy," police Officer Albert Silva said of the traffic jam early Sunday. "As far as I know, there's no procedure on this other than: 'Don't get bit."'

Police car sirens didn't persuade the big reptile to budge off Loop 410.

Police threw orange traffic cones at the gator, but it just snapped at the cones and flung them away.

The gator even assaulted a police car, biting a chunk out of its bumper...

--USA Today

Waterfowl wage genital warfare

A sexual arms race waged with twisted genitals has been discovered in waterfowl.

The genitalia of the females of these species have at times apparently evolved to make it harder for males to successfully impregnate them, according to new findings that shed light on the eternal war of the sexes.

Most birds lack phalluses, organs like human penises. Waterfowl are among the just 3 percent of all living bird species that retain the grooved phallus found in their reptilian ancestors.

Male waterfowl are especially unusual in that their phallus length varies greatly among different species, ranging from a half-inch to more than 15 inches long. They also display a remarkable level of diversity how elaborate they are, ranging from smooth to covered with spines and grooves.

Scientists had speculated that male waterfowl evolved longer phalluses to give them a competitive edge over those not as well-endowed when it came to successfully fertilizing females...

--MSNBC