May 2008 Entries

May 28, 2008

Shark attack in Dudley

A Dudley teenager has survived being bitten in the face by a shark - in his own bedroom.

Sam Hawthorne, 14, was 'attacked' when he sleepwalked into a long-dead souvenir shark hanging on the wall, reports Metro.

He was left with the creature embedded in his cheek and blood pouring from a wound.

His mother, Susan Hawthorne was woken by her son's screams but arrived too late to fend off the holiday souvenir.

She said: "It was like something out of a horror film. The shark must have been embedded in Sam's cheek for about 15 minutes and he was in a lot of pain."

Sam, who escaped with just a small scar, added: "It was the most frightening experience of my life."

May 23, 2008

Who ever said Mexicans were crazy?

A Mexican donkey has been freed from jail.

Blacky was held in the prison for three days for biting and kicking two men near a ranch outside Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas state.

He was freed after his owner, Mauro Gutierrez, paid a fine and hospital bill for the two men injured, reports ITN.

Mauro said: "This issue has been already paid for and fixed, so I'm no longer involved in this."

Mauro must also pay £244 to each man to compensate for loss of wages.

May 16, 2008

In the dog house

[the BBC report...]
Two women have been rescued from a river after one was led into the water by her guide dog.

Buckinghamshire Fire Service said one of the women was visually impaired, and a spokesman said it appeared the dog made a mistake.

The incident happened on Wednesday in the River Great Ouse near the Millfield Flats, Willow Lane in Stony Stratford.

Three rescue crews helped the women and said one of them had sustained injuries during the ordeal.

---

I am wondering how the police have decided this was a mistake on the part of the dog. How about acid in his breakfast put there by a scheming cat? How about malicious intent? Maybe the blind owner was nightmare to work with. Maybe it was a simple suicide attempt by the dog and he forgot his owner was shackled and committed to follow. And what about the other woman? Did she just watch while Doofus led his owner into the drink?

May 9, 2008

Happy Birthday Verity

Three years old today and enjoying every minute.

May 8, 2008

File under 'improbable'

Flowers "wave" at insects to get their attention, scientists have discovered.

The finding helps explain why many flowers waft in the breeze, and reveals a hitherto unknown trick used to attract pollinators.

Scientists made the discovery while studying common wildflowers known as sea campion on the Welsh coast.

Mobile flowers are visited more often by insects and also produce more seeds, they report in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Moving flowers also attract a wider variety of insect species than more static blooms.

For years, biologists have known that flowers use striking colours, fragrances, elaborately shaped petals and nectar to attract pollinating insects such as bees and flies.

Yet no-one had ever seriously considered whether wafting in the wind acted as a similar signal.

"I was lying on the beach watching flowers wave in the wind at my daughter's birthday party, and I wondered why they have stalks and risked getting damaged in such an exposed habitat," recounted John Warren from the University of Aberystwyth.

So he looked at what research had previously been done, and found very few answers.

"The only reference I found to motion in attracting pollinators says it's unlikely to be important, because insects are not good at detecting movement; which is clearly rubbish."

To find out more, Dr Warren and colleague Penri James experimented with sea campion (Silene maritima) growing on an exposed coast within a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Cardigan Bay in west Wales.

They observed 300 specially grown flowers of varying stem lengths, recording how much each flower moved in the wind, how often it was visited by insects and for how long, and how many seeds it went on to produce.

Their experiments reveal that flowers mounted on long, thin stalks move around more in the wind.

This acts as a powerful signal to passing pollinators, allowing the plant to attract more insects than less mobile flowers growing atop short, thick stems.

"We found wavy flowers are more visible to insects, and thus attract more pollinators and set more seeds," said John Warren.

But flowers ultimately face an evolutionary trade-off, he believes.

"Short, fat-stalked flowers don't wobble enough and are less attractive to pollinators; yet very wobbly flowers are just too wobbly for the insects to handle, as the insects cannot land on them.

"Only flowers that wobble the right amount are successful in setting seeds."