Great White Eats Tourist!!

Fatal South African Shark Attack a Rare Encounter

Experts say the shark attack that killed a Zimbabwean tourist off the South Africa coast on Tuesday was a particularly rare occurrence, considering the relentless manner in which the animal apparently attacked the man.

Witness reports of the incident off Cape Town, South Africa, were gruesome , describing what sounded like a scene from "Jaws" – an innocent tourist targeted by a "dinosaur-sized" Great White shark who struck three times, leaving nothing but "a pool of blood in the water."

One official said: "It didn't bite him and let him go. It came back and carried on eating."

After days of searching, Lloyd Skinner's body had not been found.

A deadly shark attack often captures global fascination and attention, but experts say the sort of aggressive attack that occurred at Fish Hoek beach is striking.

"White sharks in general are rare and fatal white shark attacks are even more rare," said George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the state's Museum of Natural History.

He said the majority of human-shark encounters are "investigatory," with the shark detecting the silhouette of a floating object and trying to determine if it's prey.

The attack on Skinner, however, seems to fall into a far more unusual "predatory" category."It appears he was hit very violently, with very high energy," said Richard Collier, noted shark expert and president of the Shark Research Committee.

"In this case, it seems the shark meant to disable or kill its prey on initial contact."

Any number of triggers could make a shark lash out in predatory attack, including a sense of danger or a perceived threat to its territory, according to scientists.

Collier estimates that only 5 to 10 percent of shark attacks are predatory, but Skinner's location did not work in his favor.

Studies have shown that shark attacks are more frequent in cool water environments where beaches are used more heavily, like Australia and South Africa. According to Collier, South African sharks are also a bit hungrier than their counterparts along United States' Pacific coast.

"There is less available food in the waters off South Africa," he said. "The seal and sea lion prey are smaller by mass than those we see in California

Still, Burgess points out that a person is more likely to die from an insect bite than a shark bite.

"It's hard to balance the human emotion with the scientific reality – that this is an extremely rare event, especially considering the millions of hours humans spend in the sea."According to the Shark Research Institute, of the approximately sixty unprovoked shark attacks reported globally in 2009, only seven were fatal.

"I would be more concerned about my drive to the beach, or stepping on a bottle on the shore than my interaction with a shark," said Collier.

While Burgess acknowledges that any fatal shark attack is a tragedy, he says "the real story isn't shark bites man, it's man bites shark."

"Overfishing is claiming the lives of millions of sharks a year," he said. "It's easy to see who the real threatened species is."

It's really sad and horrific when something like this happens. Especially the way this one did. However, as the article says, they, the sharks, "are the real threatened species"....

"Animalz Rule, Even Sharks",

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White Stripeless Tiger & Blue Lobster

Fareeda

Stripeless White Tiger Is 1 in 100

Fareeda is one cool cat. The white Bengal tiger cub was born without stripes.

Fareeda astonished her keepers when she was born on Christmas Day 2008 without traditional markings, but they knew stripes could still appear as she aged. Now, at over 6 months old, Fareeda isn't expected to develop them, the Daily Mail reported.

The cub is thought to be one of fewer than 20 white Bengal tigers in the world today without stripes, and all the others live in captivity. Fareeda is part of a breeding program in Cape Town, South Africa, aimed to increase the endangered species and eventually return them to the wild.

Fareeda was part of a three-cub litter, but both of her siblings have stripes, as do her mother and father. The odds of Fareeda being born without stripes are 100 to 1, according to the Daily Mail.

"Most white Bengal tigers are bred in the U.S. from a single male captured in India in the 1950s, but Fareeda is the first to be born in Africa, which is very special," Cango Wildlife Ranch employee Odette Claassen said.

There are currently only a few hundred white Bengal tigers alive in captivity worldwide.

"It's clear that Fareeda is truly one of the rarest of her kind," said Claassen.

Blue Lobster Is 1 in 2 Million Find

A blue lobster is likely feeling anything but after his rare color saved him from being served as dinner.

The blue-hued crustacean, named Donald, has been displayed in a tank at a restaurant in Charlottetown on Canada's Prince Edward Island for several weeks, CBC News reported.

The 2-pound lobster is attracting a few visitors to the Water-Prince Corner Shop and Lobster Pound, some more interested than others.

"We have been asked for a certain time or two to serve a blue lobster," store owner Shane Campbell told CBC News. "We wouldn't bother doing it, because it's more valuable to us to either have (it) mounted or put back in the ocean."

Donald is a truly rare find: Only one in 2 million lobsters is blue.

Two more great living species that beat the odds. Stripeless tigers and blue lobsters, who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered or born.

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Unknown Population Found Thriving

New Orangutan Population Discovered

JAKARTA, Indonesia (April 12) - Conservationists have discovered a new population of orangutans in a remote, mountainous corner of Indonesia — perhaps as many as 2,000 — giving a rare boost to one of the world's most endangered great apes.

A team surveying forests nestled between jagged, limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of Borneo island counted 219 orangutan nests, indicating a "substantial" number of the animals, said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist at the U.S.-based The Nature Conservancy.

"We can't say for sure how many," he said, but even the most cautious estimate would indicate "several hundred at least, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 even."

The team also encountered an adult male, which angrily threw branches as they tried to take photos, and a mother and child.

There are an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 90 percent of them in Indonesia and the rest in neighboring Malaysia.

The countries are the world's top producers of palm oil, used in food, cosmetics and to meet growing demands for "clean-burning" fuels in the U.S. and Europe. Rain forests, where the solitary animals spend almost all of their time, have been clear-cut and burned at alarming rates to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations.

The steep topography, poor soil and general inaccessibility of the rugged limestone mountains appear to have shielded the area from development, at least for now, said Meijaard. Its trees include those highly sought after for commercial timber.

Birute Mary Galdikas, a Canadian scientist who has spent nearly four decades studying orangutans in the wild, said most of the remaining populations are small and scattered, which make them especially vulnerable to extinction.

"So yes, finding a population that science did not know about is significant, especially one of this size," she said, noting that those found on the eastern part of the island represent a rare subspecies, the black Borneon orangutan, or Pongo pygmaeus morio.

The 700-square mile jungle escaped the massive fires that devastated almost all of the surrounding forests in the late 1990s. The blazes were set by plantation owners and small-scale farmers and exacerbated by the El Nino droughts.

Nardiyono, who headed The Nature Conservancy's weeklong survey in December, said "it could be the density is very high because after the fires, the orangutans all flocked to one small area."

It was unusual to come face-to-face with even one of the elusive creatures in the wild and to encounter three was extraordinary, he said, adding that before this expedition, he had seen just five in as many years.

Conservationists say the most immediate next step will be working with local authorities to protect the area and others that fall outside of national parks. A previously undiscovered population of several hundred also was found recently on Sumatra island, home to around 7,000.

"That we are still finding new populations indicates that we still have a chance to save this animal," said Paul Hartman, who heads the U.S.-funded Orangutan Conservation Service Program, adding it's not all "gloom and doom."

Noviar Andayani, head of the Indonesian Primate Association and Orangutan Forum, said the new discoveries point to how much work still needs to be done to come up with accurate population assessments, considered vital to determining a species' vulnerability to extinction.

"There are many areas that still have not been surveyed," she said, adding that 18 private conservation groups have just started work on an in-depth census based on interviews with people who spend time in the forests.

They include villagers and those working on plantations or within logging concessions.

"We hope this will help fill in a few more gaps," said Andayani, adding that preliminary tests in areas where populations are known indicate that the new interview-based technique could provide a clearer picture than nest tallies.

"Right now the information and data we have about orangutans is still pretty rudimentary," she said.

Some experts say at the current rate of habitat destruction, the animals could be wiped out within the next two decades.

This article brings two things immediately to front of mind. 1) It just shows how little we know about our planet and what other life forms share it with us. 2) If humans can screw things up, it is a safe bet that they will. Hopefully these great animal souls will survive and thrive long after us.

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