The Kouris Dam, which impounds the River Kouris in the Limassol Distric on Cyprus, is now rumoured to house its very own lake monster. Tales about the dam being home to a “strange creature” began to surface three years ago, but these rumours centred mainly on the alleged dumping of a crocodile in the 3.6 km³ large dam. Today, local residents are instead talking about a serpent-like creature; a sort of Cypriot Nessie.

After receiving numerous reports about the creature, the Cypriot Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Affairs has launched a search for the extraordinary dam dweller but has failed to come up with any proof of its existence.

Even without any hard evidence, the Kouris Serpent may prove just as alluring for holiday-makers as its Scottish equivalent. According to local community leader Savvas Sava, housing may have to be constructed around the dam to cater for the needs of tourists wishing to catch a glimpse of the elongated beast. Tourism already occupies a dominant position in the economy of Cyprus, with 1 in every 3.4 jobs being found in the tourism sector.

The Kouris dam is the largest dam in a network of over 100 dams on Cyrpus. Situated at an altitude of 250 meters, the dam regulates the water flow of the rivers Kouris, Kryos and Limnatis. Water is also diverted into the dam through a connecting tunnel from the river Diarizos. The water storage volume is 115 million cubic metres and the overall catch area exceeds 300km². It is a fairly young dam, with construction being completed in September 1988.

Lobsters caught in the Northumberland Strait in eastern Canada are normally black, so it is easy to imagine the surprise fisherman Danny Knockwood of the Elsipogtog First Nation must have felt when he suddenly found himself face to face with a yellow and white specimen. Knockwood made the unusual catch while pulling his traps out of the sea near Richibucto Village, where the Richibucto Rivers empties into the northern Atlantic.

The Canadian fishermen named his new pet Autumn and made a short video of the animal for YouTube. As of October 8, the video had managed to attract several hundred viewers – some of them suggesting that Knockwood should eat his rare find.

Knockwood has however decided to keep Autumn away from the boiling water and has instead managed to find her a new home at the Aquarium and Marine Centre in Shippagan, a museum where marine animals are housed in real seawater. The marine centre is already home to a substantial collection of oddly coloured lobsters, so Autumn will fit right in.

“In captivity, the lobster could live for many years,” says Curator Aurele Godin of the Shippagan Aquarium and Marine Centre. “And I’ve got many other coloured ones — blue ones, yellow ones, orange and blacks. Every year fishermen come up with them. They call me and I go pick them up.”

Instead of showing dark spots on a dark green base colour like normal lobsters, Autumn sports a vivid yellow colour on top while her underside is almost white. According to a specialist from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who examined the video and photos of Autumn, genetic defects can cause the shell of a lobster to develop strange and unusual colours. The specialist also confirmed that Autumn is a female lobster and estimated her to be roughly 10 years of age.

Until Autumn is transported to the museum, she will be residing in a an underwater cage near Knockwood’s home.

The below story is unrelated to the first one but is still worth a look as it shows how big lobster can grow:

For many years, residents living along the Great Kali River at the border between India and Nepal have claimed that a mysterious underwater creature is catching and devouring humans who dare to venture into the river. The rumours have now been investigated by biologist Jeremy Wade, who says the perpetrator might be a Goonch catfish (Bagarius yarrelli).

Local residents says that the creature probably changed its diet to include freshly caught human flesh after getting used to eating the remains of partly burned corpses. In Hinduism, corpses are traditionally cremated in pyres as a as part of the funeral rite and the remains are often placed in a river.

“The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses,” says Wade. “It has perhaps got this taste for flesh by feasting on remains of funeral pyres. There will be a few freak individuals that grow bigger than the other ones and if you throw in extra food, they will grow even bigger.”

Last year, and 18-year-old Nepali was dragged into the river by a creature described as “an elongated pig”, but this was not the first attack. 10 years ago, a 17-year-old Nepali was pulled below the surface while bathing, and three months later the same thing happened to another young boy.

Jeremy Wade is a biologist and TV presenter who investigated the Kali River-rumours for a TV documentary. You can find out more about him and his work here. (http://www.jeremywade.co.uk/about_jeremy_wade.html)

This August, a turtle decided to take a stroll through a cannabis garden in a secluded part of one of America’s public parklands. This wouldn’t have been a problem for the resourceful horticulturist responsible for the plantation if it hadn’t been for the fact that this particular turtle was fitted with a GPS tracking device and followed by a park ranger. When the park ranger realised that the turtle had led him to an outdoor hydroponics lab, he contacted the police who stalked out the patch and eventually arrested its illicit gardener.

Florida Box Turtle. Picture by: Jonathan Zander

“He felt like he had a layer of security, but he probably never counted on a turtle with a tracking device leading us to that location and finding the field,” says Sergeant Robert Lachance of the U.S. Park Police. On a personal note I must humbly admit that I likely would have made the same misstake and been caught by Sergeant Robert Lachance as well. But after this I will make sure to consider the risk of turtlea with GPS tracking devices if I ever decide to get into the drug trade. (Just joking!)

The park in question was the Rock Creek Park, a large urban natural area with public park facilities that bisects Washington, D.C. The parklands follow the course of Rock Creek across the border between D.C. and Maryland and connect with the Rock Creek Stream Valley Park and the Rock Creek Regional Park in Montgomery County.

The sturgeon on the picture is not the sturgeon in the story
Photo by NOAA

A four year old boy got his arm broken by a jumping sturgeon on the Suwannee River on September 7. At the same time, the boy’s father was cut by the fish. According to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, witnesses observed the family’s boat moving through the water at about 30 miles per hour when a three to four foot long sturgeon jumped up from the water in front of the craft. The sturgeon shattered the boat’s windshield and cut 32-year old Christopher Howard before smashing into his four year old son Chandler Howard. The impact was severe enough to break the arm of the young boy.

The Suwannee River is home to a major sturgeon population. According to state biologists, about 6,500-7,000 specimens spend up to 9 months per year in the river. Since their average weight is 40 lbs (18 kg) and the largest specimens caught in the Suwannee weigh about 200 lbs (90 kg), these sturgeons can cause serious injury to humans when jumping up from the water at high speed.

Fifteen-year old Seth Russell was floating down Lake Chicot in Arkansas on an inner tube being towed by a boat when a carp suddenly leaped out of the water and crashed into his face. The impact was severe enough to render the boy unconscious and break his jaw, but the experience must have even worse for the fish because Russell was covered in fish blood and guts after the accident.

The carp in question was a Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix). This fish is not native to the United States; it originates from north and northeast Asia. During the 1970’s Silver carps were deliberately introduced to U.S. waters to control algae growth in aquacultures and municipal wastewater treatment facilities. Specimens soon began to escape into other bodies of water and Silver carps can today be found in the Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri rivers and many of their tributaries.

This shows that invasive species doesn’t have to be a direct problem for animals and plants in the area only; some can actually cause direct harm to people as well. The Silver carp has earned the nick-name Flying carp for is propensity to leap from the water when frightened. It can leap 3 meters / 10 feet high in the air and is certainly not something you wish to crash into since it can attain a weight of 18 kg / 40 lbs.

Does anyone remember the Danish artist Marco Evaristti. No? I am not surprised. But if I ask you if you remember the artist who put goldfish in blenders a few years back I am sure most of you know who I am talking about. A quick recap for those of you who don’t remember the story. Marco Evaristti displayed an exhibition at the art museum in Trapholt, Kolding in Denmark. In the exhibition he placed goldfish in household blenders and invited the viewers to turn on the blenders and kill the fish if they wanted to. This was in the year 2000, now he wants to display a new exhibit where he feeds the dead body of an executed prisoner to goldfish.

The convict in question is Gene Harthorn who is awaiting the death penalty for murder in Texas. He has given the artist consent to use his body as fish food in the name of art.

Marco Evaristti, who doesn’t see anything ethically wrong with his project want to freeze the body of the convict and make fish food out of it. He has found a German company that is willing to freeze the body. He wants to have an exhibition featuring a large tank with hundreds of goldfish and allow the visitors to feed the dead body to them.

The purpose of the art is to inspire discussion about the death penalty. He wants to create opinion surrounding the fact that people are killed legally in our western civilization.

He has yet to find a venue to display his art in.

An Italian museum in Bolzano have defied and angered the papacy by refusing to remove a piece of art that the Vatican has condemned as blasphemous. The piece of art depicts a crucified green frog. The tongue hangs out of its mouth and it has a beer mug and an egg in its hands. The sculpture is about 1 meter 30 cm (4 feet) high The Vatican demanded that the piece should be removed from the exhibit and not be displayed again.

The statue is made of wood and crafted by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger (died 1997) and is called “Zuerst die Fuesse,” (Feet First). The artists considered it a self-portrait illustrating human angst.

The Museion (art and culture multitude) museum is as earlier mentioned located in the city of Balzano which is located in northern Italy. The board of directory discussed removing the painting and a majority vote decided that the frog is to be consider a piece of art and as such should not be removed from the exhibition.

Balzano is located in a heavily catholic area and the local resident Franz Pahl has started to hunger strike to get the statue removed from the exhibition. He says that the statue is to be considered as blasphemous and that it will upset a lot of people in the are. He further states that: “This decision to keep the statue there is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population,”

Art experts disagree as art must always be free and without restrictions.

You can see a picture of the frog here.

A 25 year old worshipper was killed and eaten by a crocodile in Bangladesh last week. The death took place in a pond next to a shrine and the man was seeking the crocodiles blessing when he was killed.

The man had travelled 50 km to visit the shrine with his mother. The shrine is an important religious place for Muslims in the area. The Khan Jahan Ali shrine is a place where visitors offers hens and goats to the five crocodiles that lives in the pond. Many worshippers bath in the pond as a part of the ritual and the crocodiles seldom injure worshippers although accidents have happened in the past as well although they are rare. The man was making his way into the water to get blessed when the crocodile attacked him and dragged him into the deep parts of the pond.

Numerous other worshippers (around 25) jumped into the pond and tried to find the man. They were unsuccessful and the body of the man was found a few days later when it floated up the surface. Large parts of the body had been eaten.

The crocodiles are apparently normally very friendly.

It should be mentioned that the sacrificing of hens and goats to crocodile is not a part of mainstream Islamic fait and only a small percentage of Muslims do this.

This is just a very short post about the piglet in japan that supposedly was born with a monkey face. It looks kind a freaky but i imagen a deformity could make a pig look like that as it is not “that” different looking from a pig. If the picture is genuine that is. I leave it to you to decide.

see the picture

The family who own it reportedly was very afraid of it at first.