Tag: animal

News

Huge Australian Steer Goes Viral (But Pssst … There’s A Bigger One In Canada!)

Knickers the steer has caught people’s interest, around the world.
The 6’4″ steer is so much bigger than the cattle he lives with that he has become an Internet sensation. Knickers lives in Australia and weighs 1,400 kilograms. An average bull weighs about 1,100 kgs.
Tyne Logan, at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) told reporter Jacqueline Lynch about an enormous Holstein Friesian steer he had seen. She went along to see for herself just how big Knickers is. On the ABC website, she says Knickers was “pretty intimidating when all of his 1,4000 kilograms first came lumbering through the gate towards me.”

Animals Science

Rare Five-Metre-Long Oarfish Discovered In California

A marine biologist, who was snorkelling off the coast of California, has made a fantastic discovery.

Jasmine Santana found a dead oarfish so long that she needed 15 people to help her drag it out of the ocean.

Santana works for the Catalina Island Marine Institute. She was snorkling when she saw something shimmering.

It was the body of an oarfish. But it wasn’t just any oarfish–this one was more than five metres (18 feet) long.

Oarfish are plankton-eaters. They are rarely seen by humans, because they live deep in the ocean–up to 1,000 metres down.

They are long, like a “sea serpent.” In fact, oarfish may have been the mythical sea serpents of legend.

Animals News Science

Pipeline Worker Finds Massive Hydrosaur Skeleton

A massive dinosaur fossil has been unearthed in Alberta.

But it wasn’t an expedition of paleontologists who found it.

It was a pipeline worker.

A man was using a backhoe to move some earth for a pipeline that was being installed near Spirit River, Alberta. The worker hit something he thought was a rock.

He laid the piece of “rock” to one side, and kept digging, according to CBC News.

But it wasn’t rock at all. It was a huge fossilized skeleton—a tail, to be precise.

It was about two metres long.

The worker stopped digging and called in some experts.

Animals News

Toronto Zoo Elephants Prepare For Trip To California

For two years, the Toronto Zoo and Toronto City Council have been trying to agree on the best way to move three senior elephants to California.

The elephants are quite old and must be treated very carefully.

Now, if all goes well, Toka, Thika and Iringa will begin their trip next month.

At first, they were to make the move by plane, but that idea was turned down in favour of driving.

Now they will go in containers on a 50-hour journey with several stops along the way for feeding and cleaning of the crates.

Veterinarians and handlers will go with them on the trip to make sure the animals are safe and not stressed.

Animals News

Non-Venomous Python Found In Winnipeg Dumpster

A Winnipeg resident was surprised on Tuesday to discover a five-foot Ball python in a dumpster behind an apartment building.

The snake is not poisonous.

The resident called police; one of the officers used a small recycling box to corral and hold the snake.

The police then called the city’s animal services department.

They came right away and rescued the animal.

Ball pythons are a bit smaller than most pythons. Ball pythons are about one metre long.

Police said that finding a snake in this way is extremely rare—it almost never happens.

The person who discovered the snake had been putting out their garbage and heard a noise; they saw a snake moving around.

The snake will be held until a good home can be found for it.