In Other News

[BeBMan]

Give a seal a fish...

[Broken_Erika]

Baby seal found on city streets is learning to eat fish so he can swim free The underweight pup was found far from the water in New Haven, Conn.


Animal rescuer Sarah Callan was surprised, to say the least, when she learned about a baby seal flopping around the busy streets of New Haven, Conn.

Callan is the manager of animal rescue at the Mystic Aquarium in Stonington, Conn., which runs a 24-hour hotline for reports of lost or injured marine life in the area.

It's not unusual, she says, to get a call about a grey seal turning up in a sleepy beachside community in the east coast state. But on Sunday, the New Haven Police Department called to report a tiny pup stranded on an intersection in the city.

"[I] never, never would have imagined this," Callan told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann. "I've been in this field for well over a decade, and as soon as you think you've heard the craziest story … then we get another call."

The pup, she says, likely wandered inland in search of sand dunes and grass, which they sometimes use for protection from weather and predators. But instead, he ended up on a streets roughly half a kilometre from the water.

As more of the city's shoreline gets developed, she says, encounters with marine life become more common. 'Everyone's amazed at how small and tiny he is'


The pup, Callan says, is now recuperating at the aquarium, "doing great," and preparing for his eventual release.

Aquarium staff estimates he's about five or six weeks old. He was dehydrated when he arrived, but otherwise no worse for wear.

But before he can be released, Callan says, he needs to get his weight up. Right now, he weighs about 28 pounds (12.7 kilograms). But at his age, she says, he should be closer to 100 pounds (45.3 kilograms).

Seal pups, she says, usually wean from their mothers at three to four weeks old, at which point they fend for themselves.

"Everyone's amazed at how small and tiny he is," she said. "He hasn't had that experience on his own where he's learned how to hunt."

So far, staff have mostly been feeding him a diluted fish formula. But they are teaching him to swallow fish whole on his own — and he's already making progress.

"He actually ate on his own for the first time today, a fish. So that was a huge milestone," Callan said. "Now we just have to get him to eat the whole fish. He ate half of the fish." Still waiting for his name


The Mystic Aquarium's policy is to let those who found a rescued animal bestow a name upon it. In this case, that means the police.

The department seems to have taken a liking to the pup, introducing him on social media as "the newest addition to the department."

"On site today, they told us a couple of the names that are in the running. I think the name that's in the lead right now is Chappy, because the seal was found on Chapel Street," Callan said. "I also heard Vinny was in the running, and maybe Tyler."

Once Chappy, Vinny or maybe Tyler is bigger and better at eating, Callan says staff will release him with a tracker.

"That way we'll be able to make sure that we're monitoring his behaviour on a regular basis to make sure those movements are typical for his species," she said.

"And if we had any concerns, we would know his location and we could always send someone to go check on him."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens...icut-1.7464127

[Dinner]

Probably the person has to much cholesterol.

[BeBMan]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/13/whale-swallows-kayaker-chile

[BeBMan]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/beavers-dam-project-czech-republic_n_67a63a7be4b0d9a21f36c768

"Beavers always know best"

[BeBMan]

I don't have a robot vaccum cleaner Take that, skynet!

[N35t0r]

Speaking of self cleaning I am loving my robot vacuum cleaner and mop. I still have to mop and vacuum once per month but the robot does a pretty good job. The one thing it doesn't seem to handle well is the hairballs my cat seems to regularly barf up. Usually right after he eats his food to fast.

Why would he eat his food in order to not eat food?

We have one too and also love it. It has some issues with one of our rugs (insists on zigzagging right across the edge, and gets tangled, so I've fed up and just tell it to avoid cleaning it), but otherwise very happy.

[Dinner]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...g-road-surface

Self-drivng cars need self-healing potholes

Next please: self-cleaning rooms and dishes

Speaking of self cleaning I am loving my robot vacuum cleaner and mop. I still have to mop and vacuum once per month but the robot does a pretty good job. The one thing it doesn't seem to handle well is the hairballs my cat seems to regularly barf up. Usually right after he eats his food to fast.

[BeBMan]

Might be hard to do headshots on spiders, which is the only sure way to deal with zombies, as every non-zombie knows

[Broken_Erika]

Fungus-infected 'zombie spiders' found in Irish caves

It's the stuff of nightmares - or even the hit TV show and video game The Last of Us: a novel fungus that turns its hosts into "zombies".
Thankfully, so far, it's only been found in spiders located in several cave systems across the island of Ireland, including the Whitefathers' Caves on the Fermanagh/Cavan border.
Named after Sir David Attenborough, Gibellula attenboroughii was first discovered in County Down during the filming of BBC Winterwatch in 2021.
The fungus changes the spider's behaviour, making it leave its concealed lair or web to die in an exposed position on the roof or walls of a cave.

It does this using dopamine, the brain's happy chemical, to make the spider favour the dispersal of the fungal spores over preserving its own life.
Scientists say the behaviour of the fungus mirrors that of ants infected by fungi of the genus Ophiocordyceps, previously reported from the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil.
The story of the "zombie ants" led to a number of zombie-fungus themed books, as well as the hugely popular The Last of Us video game.
The game, which takes place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by fungus-infected zombie humans, was later adapted into an award-winning TV show starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

After finding the fungus on a spider in the gunpowder store at Castle Espie in County Down, a team of scientists led by Dr Harry Evans from the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), began to look for more specimens.
Dr Evans and his team used a speleologist - a cave explorer - to help their research.
That work led them to the conclusion that this was a native fungus specific to indigenous cave-dwelling spider species.
The fungus favours man-made habitats like culverts, tunnels and cellars.

It has been found on two species of spider occupying different types of environments in the cave systems.
Both Metellina merianae (Tetragnathidae: Araneae) and Meta menardi are reclusive, orb or circular web-weaving cave spiders that favour dark, damp places.

Dr Evans' team's work has been published in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution.
He said more research is needed to understand just how the fungus succeeds.
But human beings needn't worry - at least yet.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2q8l3yw7lo

[BeBMan]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/03/farewell-potholes-uk-team-invents-self-healing-road-surface

Self-drivng cars need self-healing potholes

Next please: self-cleaning rooms and dishes

[-Jrabbit]

Brutal. Glad you're OK. Presumably the Camaro is also fully recovered.

[BeBMan]

For all fans of Rick Astley here

https://news.sky.com/story/pop-hit-makers-stock-aitken-and-waterman-get-blue-plaque-13294478

[My Wife Hates CIV]

In other news. Mwhc got a new windshield for the camaro. Plow other side of road.... must have thrown a rock. Shattered the glass! No worries... I am ok.

[BeBMan]

A fare-dodging passenger on a German high-speed train ended up clinging to the outside when it pulled out of the station before he was ready to get on, police say.

The 40-year-old man had boarded the ICE train in Munich without a valid ticket and wanted to take a smoking break at the station in Ingolstadt.

But he lingered too long over his cigarette and the train doors closed, leaving him with the prospect of being stranded.

He then jumped on to a bracket between two carriages and held on to cables while the train powered on towards Nuremberg at up to 282 km/h (175mph), until federal police brought it to a halt about 30km away.

Witnesses alerted officials and they contacted the train driver, who made an unscheduled stop at Kinding in Upper Bavaria. The intercity express was on a six-hour journey to the northern city of Lübeck.

The man, a Hungarian national, told police he had left his luggage on the train during his cigarette break and did not want to be parted from it.

He was "amazingly" unharmed after his daredevil ride, said a police spokesman.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpp9p5z00o

IronMan