2007: Wacky animal tales

19/12/2007 13:05 - (SA)

Paris - A selection of unusual animal goings-on from the year 2007.

Heavily-armed police surrounded a bank branch in the Philippines after a jangling alarm alerted them to movements inside it. When all exits but one had been closed off, and the police piled in for the expected showdown with armed robbers, a stray cat sauntered out. It had set off the alarm after getting in through a small hole in the roof.

Among recipients of the spoof "Ignobel" awards for zany science, handed out each year at the time of the real Nobel prizes, was one for a research team which ascertained that hamsters could more easily get over jet-lag when given the sexual impotence drug Viagra. Another winning team tried to find out whether rats could distinguish between Japanese and Dutch when spoken backwards - they couldn't.

A pet cat taken to a veterinary clinic in Australia with dilated pupils, a racing heart and agitated movements, turned out to be high on cocaine and other drugs left around after a party. It recovered.

In Sweden, the risks involved in giving medical treatment to large animals were illustrated when a giraffe collapsed on zoo officials who were trying to anaesthetise it. The boss of the zoo suffered concussion, while the unfortunate giraffe died from its fall.

Hedgehogs are a threatened species on the British mainland, where they notably get run over by cars, but they are far too numerous on the remote Scottish island of Uist, where they eat the eggs of rare birds. When animal lovers got upset about the local practice of culling the prickly creatures, the local authorities simply decided to round them up alive, take them across the water and release them.

Security officials taking part in an anti-corruption drive in Bangladesh were called to the home of a former government minister not to seize ill-gotten luxury goods, but to confiscate an impressive menagerie. Animals kept illegally in the man's home included four deer, seven peacocks, two emus and various other rare birds.

A 17-year-old tame cockatoo at a wildlife sanctuary in England decided that a bowl of chocolate Easter eggs was the real thing, and spent two weeks sitting on them, officials said.

Officials from a town in Australia's tropical north Queensland region suggested that local golfers could try practicing their drives on cane toads - an introduced species that has become a notorious pest. Animal rights defenders were not amused.

Fishery officials in China restocked a river with 13 truckloads of live carp, only to realise that thousands of residents from a nearby city had immediately swarmed to the banks a short way downstream and caught almost all of them.

The rustic image of the traditional sheep-herder took a hit in Greece, when it emerged that a shepherd in the centre of the country had simply trained his flock to follow his car. Getting on in years, the resourceful herder was no longer able to walk alongside the animals.

A bird hunter in the US state of Ohio suffered the indignity of being shot in the leg by one of his own dogs. As he was retrieving a bird, the dog stepped on the trigger of his gun, which was lying on the ground and pointing in his direction.

In a bid to emulate the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" in Los Angeles, dog fanciers in London inaugurated a canine version. Many of the first inductees were in fact fictional creatures, including the film stars Lassie and Fang, the latter from the Harry Potter stories. But fans of the Belgian boy detective Tintin, a cartoon character, regretted the omission of his dog, Snowy.

Meanwhile a real-world dog, a Maltese called Trouble, was reported to have been removed from her residence in New York and taken to live at an undisclosed location in Florida. Trouble became probably the richest canine in the world when her late mistress, controversial hotel heiress Leona Helmsley, left her $12m in her will. The dog's keepers explained that she had received death threats in New York.