Bizarre animals

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Stork sets siege to village with car attacks
12th July 2013
thelocal.de

A stork has been causing thousands of euros of damage in a north German village by attacking parked cars and pecking at windows. It is said to be confused and thinks every reflection of itself is a rival bird.

Stork expert for the Mecklenburg Western-Pomeranian Bergholz area Jens Krüger believes that the bird is having an identity crisis. It has been, he said, catching a glimpse of itself in car windows and thinking it is a rival stork. So out of anger, or possibly confusion, the stork has been viciously pecking at the reflection and in some cases has caused serious dents in cars. “At least four vehicles in the areas have been attacked,” mayor Ulrich Kersten confirmed on Friday. The damage to more expensive cars has been estimated at €1,000 a time. The bird has also been pecking at windows and glass doors, leaving some residents scared to leave their homes.

“How do we protect ourselves?” local woman Johanna Preuß asked the Nord Kurier newspaper. She was woken up at 5am on Friday by the large white bird, beak pressed against her terrace door. “We saw the bird hacking away at our family car,” Bergholz resident Kerstin Werth told the newspaper. “After we scared it away there it was, going at our neighbour's car,” she said. In some houses, Bergholzers have been hanging up blankets across doors and windows to avoid late-night feathery disturbances.

The bird is thought to have a nest with three young babies which are not yet of flying age. The entire village is, Nord Kurier said, waiting patiently until migration season rolls around and the troublesome family head south.

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"Stork expert for the Mecklenburg Western-Pomeranian Bergholz area" - now there's a job to aspire to!

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Olinguito: New Mammal Is Identified
The raccoon-sized creature, which lives in South America, had previously been discovered but was mistaken for a sister species.
Sky News
15th August 2013

A raccoon-sized creature with a teddy bear face has been identified as a new species of mammal. The olinguito lives in the mountainous forests of Ecuador and Columbia, where it leaps through the trees at night. It eats mostly fruit, weighs about two pounds (0.9kg) and is about 2.5ft (76cm) long, according to a Smithsonian researcher who has spent the past decade tracking the animal.

The olinguito belongs to a grouping of large creatures that includes dogs, cats and bears. The creature was known - one of them once lived at the National Zoo in Washington - but it had been mistaken for a similar animal. "It's been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time," said Kristofer Helgen, the Smithsonian's curator of mammals who made the announcement in Washington.

The Washington zoo's olinguito, named Ringerl, was mistaken for a sister species, the olingo. Ringerl was shipped from zoo to zoo in the US from 1967 to 1976 to try to get it to breed with other olingos – but it never did. "It turns out she wasn't fussy," Mr Helgen said. "She wasn't the right species."

Mr Helgen first figured olinguitos were different from olingos when he was looking at pelts and skeletons in a museum. He later led a team to South America in 2006. "How is it different? In almost every way that you can look at it," he said, adding that olinguitos are smaller, have shorter tails, a rounder face, tinier ears and darker bushier fur. "It looks kind of like a fuzzball," Mr Helgen said. "Kind of like a cross between a teddy bear and a house cat."

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Another day, another deceased horned sea monster washed up on shore
Michaela Gianotti
msn.com

To quote local authority Maria Sanchez: "We have no idea of ​​what [it] can be, but it smelled bad." The corpse of a mystery demon fish creature washed up on a beach in Spain, and nobody can figure out what the thing is (though the word "dragon" has been thrown around).

The decaying corpse, said to be 13 horrifying feet long, was forced to be buried due to health concerns, robbing biologists of the chance to assure the public that it's just a really ugly shark or something. For now, the conspiracy theories live on. Horned mermaid. Promotion stunt for the upcoming season of "Game of Thrones." The Loch Ness Monster's love child. We can keep going ...