Newsflash/Nature Strikes Back: Acts of Dog.

If you're a regular follower of this blog, you know my stance on dogs. Specifically, people see dogs through glasses so rosy that they forget that there's another species beneath that fur. Yes, dogs are helpful animals. Yes, they were the first domesticated animal. Yes, they can effectively mold themselves into human habits. Are they people? No. There's still a fair amount of wolf in there, and anthropomorphizing that away causes a lot of problems.That includes canine-related fatalities.

Dog attacks happen all the time. This most recent of reports shows exactly how easily it occurs. It's not even news- dog attacks just happen. That is how common they are. Granted, it still dwarfs the overall amount of dogs owned, but it's still pretty common.

What?

That said, it takes special stuff to get a dog attack into the news. The blog above mentions a "pit bull" in the reports. I love the quotes around "pit bull," if only because it's a huge buzz word that practically guarantees a media review. The dog involves could have been 25% pit bull with retriever mixed in, but as long as there's some pit in there, it's legit fodder to get the attack reported. No wonder pit bulls have the most reported attacks; people know what the media wants to see.

Yes, reporting animal attacks has a lot to do with reputation. While I am not a dog person, know that these attacks are reported and/or occurred because the breeds listed are raised for aggression. The blog is 100% right that dogs that are not well-socialized become aggressive as well. You raise a dog to attack? Oh, and leave its balls on? Yeah, no kidding, you're asking for a bite. "My own dog bit my face off!" should not be a surprise at that point.

The reality? Chihuahuas bite far more than pit bulls ever will. Again, it's an issue of training, but this time in reverse: there's something called "Small Dog Syndrome" that occurs very frequently with small dogs, including Chihuahuas. Long story short, SDS occurs when a small dog presents dominant behaviors, but the human owners do not do anything about it, leading to all sorts of issues. Chihuahuas in particular have to be bred for docility. No doubt bites from Chihuahuas are frequent, but no media outlet would report on it because, well, no Chihuahuas have actually gone "killer bunny" on people and left corpses in their little wakes. Now that would be a news story!

Nature Strikes Back: The Infamy of Japanese Crows.

Crows are the last thing one would suspect after drunk elephants. Sandwiching them between elephants and big cats seems almost unfair. Nonehtheless. when it comes to species humbling humanity, it's hard to find a better example than Japanese crows. Well, that, or various bacteria and insects. Let's just stick with crows for now. Japan is in an all-out war with crows.

For starters, Japanese crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) are big. They're a great deal bigger than the crows in the United States. We'd make a joke about how this is the opposite of everything else in Japan, but one, that would be a lame joke, and two, Japanese hornets. For those of you who need a refresher, Beedrill, I choose you.



Japanese crows are not just big, they are smart, too. They have figured out how to use some big and fast like, say, a car or train to crack open a nut or shellfish. Step one: Put a nut or other crackable thing in the middle of a road. Step 2: Wait for a car or train to run it over. Step 3: Wait for said vehicle to pass. Step 4: Enjoy inner meat. It's quite an ingenious way to crack a nut, if I do say so myself.

Japanese crows take this to horror flick levels. There are several recorded instances of Japanese crows putting stones, not delicious nuts, on train tracks. This naturally caused train delays, although the jury is still out on While officials assure us that the crows were only putting small bits of gravel on the tracks, it's still a very odd behavior, and suggests a strange spirit to these birds - pardon the joke.

That's not all. These crows are evidently master trolls, too. In efforts to chase the crows away, exterminators look for crow nests...and hopefully find an inhabited one.Japanese crows are so smart that they'll predict where humans will look for a nest, then make a completely fake nest just to fool people. That's almost diabolical. If every criminal did that, the police wou- oh, wait. Was the Monster With 21 Faces in cahoots with these crows, by any chance?

Suddenly, what seems like "hey, that bird's using people technology to crack what it thinks are nuts or oysters - that's pretty smart" has become "we're glad these birds are using their intelligence to give us red herrings instead of outright killing us, Hitchcock-style." Welcome to Japan; it's a very scary place when you know some of the fauna. If corvid intelligence in Japan is any indication, they'll be around even longer than the people will.

Nature Strikes Back: Drunk Elephants.

A lot of religions, and even nonreligious people, like to think that humans are something special. "Closest to God" comes up a lot. Basically, we think very highly of ourselves, even though we have screwed things up - sometimes irreparably. We may build skyscrapers, but whoops, that's more undiscovered species dead!

This week flies in the face of that vain way of thinking. In other words, nature doesn't give a **** about how special humans supposedly are and causes havoc anyways, treating them just like every other animal on the planet. Every so often, there are events that will remind humans that, hey, there's a huge wild world out there, and we're just a small part of it that is slowly decimating the rest. We aren't just talking about predators going on killing sprees; we're talking about craziness like...

...drunk elephants. You are reading that statement 100% correctly.

Yes, elephants like drinking. There are plenty of animals that like altering their consciousness on some level. Anybody who has given their cat catnip will tell you that most of them seem to like getting high as a freakin' kite on the stuff. It's kinda rare for animals to like liquor - or, rather, to like liquor and be able to tolerate it. (Please don't give your dog beer; it's not worth risking their health for something funny.)

It turns out that elephants might be able to get drunk without the aid of humans as well. In South Africa, there is a fruit called a "marula" that is not only delicious when ripe, but ferments into potent liquor after being ingested. There is some doubt as to whether elephants in particular get drunk off of a few fruits, but the "documentary" Animals Are Beautiful People at the very least shows us what a drunk elephant might look like so that we can get the eff out of the way.



Basically, elephants are smart, huge animals that like getting wasted. They have figured out that humans have booze, and will go out of their way to get it. Talk about nature being adaptive; these elephants will literally trample right over people to get their fix. They act aggressive and awkward while drunk, and presumably say all the things they want to say but normally wouldn't in front of their elephant buddies.

Sound familiar? Yes? Well, add on the usual human drunkenness to tons of muscle and a 30 mile-per-hour charge. Suddenly, the image of a drunk elephant is not so funny. Multiply it by fifty; elephants can rush their version of a bar en masse, too. It happens a lot wherever humans and elephants happen to coincide. Y'know, as if the elephant had not already been subconsciously linked with liquor.

As a reminder, this is a thing.