Tiger Shot Dead After Killing Zookeeper

A tiger has been shot dead after killing a female zookeeper in Germany.

Police said the giant male cat, called Altai, appears to have walked through a gate which was not shut properly at Cologne Zoo.

It got into an adjacent storage building, and mauled the 43-year-old keeper, who later died of her wounds in hospital.

The zoo's director Theo Pagel told how he used a rifle to shoot the four-year-old Siberian tiger through the building's skylight before it could make its way to the visitor areas.

"Today is surely the most terrible day in my career. We have lost a keeper today who was attacked by our male tiger," he added.

"As it appears, it was a question of inadvertence. Out of respect for the family, we will not name the person.

"I was not at the zoo at the time, and I only came later and shot and killed the animal so that we could enter the enclosure and take a look.

"But the employee was already dead."

Police said it was unlikely that members of the public had witnessed the attack which happened at noon on Saturday.

Officers briefly cleared the area, but the zoo later reopened for visitors.

Cologne Zoo was founded in 1860, and is one of the oldest and best-known zoos in the country. It is home to some 10,000 animals from 700 species.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tiger-kills-keeper-german-zoo-120829386.html

Rhino Crisis Round Up: World Rhino Day is September 22 #worldrhinoday

It’s almost that time again — time to celebrate the five species of rhino on September 22: World Rhino Day!

This year marks the third annual World Rhino Day, with a variety of events and celebrations planned in several countries.

World Rhino Day events

Planetsave (http://s.tt/1lFAi)
Continued:  http://planetsave.com/2012/08/24/rhino-crisis-round-up-world-rhino-day-is-september-22-worldrhinoday/

Injured cuckoo finds freedom in Italy

An injured cuckoo flown to Italy by plane to "catch up" on its migration after treatment has been successfully released to join its fellow birds.

The rare bird was released at a wetland centre in Turin where three cuckoos fitted with satellite tags in the UK were spotted.

Veterinary nurse Lucy Kells, from the Leatherhead Wildlife Aid Foundation, carried the bird on the British Airways 737, said it was a "goose bump moment".

The cuckoo, named Idemili after a Nigerian goddess, took a month to recover from serious head and wing injuries after other birds attacked it in Tolworth.

Ms Kells said: "The release went beautifully, it was a really amazing day.

"She sat on my hand for ages then flew off straight to a big tree. When we wandered over we saw it was covered in caterpillars.

"She then called for the first time. We'd had her in a month and she never made a sound, it was one of those really emotional, unrealistic moments.

"It was a goose bump moment, it was an amazing feeling. I was crying my eyes out."

Cuckoos are brood parasites, meaning they lay eggs in the nests of dunnocks, reed warblers and meadow pipits.

Once hatched, the chick ejects the legitimate occupants and then gets fed by its unsuspecting foster parents.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/9890701.Injured_cuckoo_finds_freedom_in_Italy/

Bigger Creatures Live Longer, Travel Farther for a Reason

ScienceDaily (Aug. 24, 2012) — A long-standing mystery in biology about the longer lifespans of bigger creatures may be explained by the application of a physical law called the Constructal Law.*

What this law proposes is that anything that flows -- a river, bloodstream or highway network -- will evolve toward the same basic configuration out of a need to be more efficient. And, as it turns out, that same basic law applies to all bodies in motion, be they animals or tanker trucks, says Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Professor of mechanical engineering at Duke and father of the Constructal Law.

In his latest theory paper, appearing Aug. 24 in the journal NatureScientific Reports, Bejan argues that there is a universal tendency for larger things, animate and inanimate, to live longer and to travel further.

He starts his argument with an examination of the well-known observation in biology that larger animals tend to live longer. Bejan wanted to see if this general rule might apply to inanimate systems as well and proceeded to mathematically analyze the relationship in rivers, jets of air and vehicles.

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120824082532.htm

Bright red bird recaptured by Edinburgh Zoo

A rare bright-red bird which escaped from Edinburgh Zoo last week has been recaptured about four miles away.

Keepers noticed the scarlet ibis was missing on Tuesday and it was later spotted close to the city centre.

The two-year-old female bird was recaptured on Sunday afternoon on the shoreline in the Cramond area and is now recovering in quarantine.

It is believed the bird escaped after a squirrel chewed a hole at the top of its cage.

The ibis has been at the zoo since 2010 and shares her enclosure with the six other members of her flock and 36 resident flamingos.

Colin Oulton, team leader of the bird section at Edinburgh Zoo, said: "It's really quite surprising how far the scarlet ibis flew, eventually ending up at the shore at Cramond.

"Being flock birds, you would expect them to stay quite close to the rest of the flock."

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-19391284