5 Animals That Have Gone Wild in Australia

Australian scientists are looking to use a fish virus to control the exploding population of European carp that is damaging freshwater ecosystems in the country’s agricultural heartland. Biocontrol agents have been previously successful in controlling rabbit plagues. Scientists and lawmakers hope the koi herpes virus CyHV3 can do a similar job with the invasive fish known by most Australians as the “cockroach of the waterways.” But the country’s past experience of controlling so-called “alien” species has been mixed.

Here are five animals that have gone wild in Australia:

1. Rabbits

Rabbits were introduced to Australia in 1859 by a wealthy farmer who was eager to hunt them. The rabbits escaped and over the course of 70 years, they fanned out to cover most of the country—the fastest mammal invasion, according to government scientists. In 1950, scientists released the Myxomatosis virus which killed 500 million rabbits, though 100 million survived. Their numbers today are a fraction of pre-Myxomatosis levels, but rabbits still cause an estimated 200 million Australian dollars (US$149.2 million) in economic damage annually.

2. European Red Foxes

Like cats, foxes were introduced to Australia by settlers in the 1830s for hunting. They also spread quickly. Foxes are now found in all states except Tasmania and are a common predator in all areas outside the northern tropics. The fox is even seen in major cities and is blamed for numerous mammal extinctions or population declines. Controls include shooting and dropping poison bait from planes. But the fox population today still numbers more than 6 million.

3. Cats

Cats arrived with British settlers. Feral cats are now being blamed by scientists for a second wave of animal extinctions in Australia. With their population estimated at up to 23 million, these cats are believed to kill 75 million native animals each night, according to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, including birds, lizards and even small kangaroos. Scientists have tried biological control, but effective control requires trapping, fences and shooting.
Associated Press

4. Flies

An average cow drops up to 12 dung pads every day, according to government scientists. With more than 28 million cattle, this is a huge amount of dung and contributes to Australia’s fly plagues. Each pad can produce up to 3,000 bush flies and waving them away has become known as the “Aussie salute.” Since 1969, the country has imported dung beetles from Africa and southern Europe to break down dung, helping control disease and health hazards spread by flies.

5. Cane Toads

Toxic South American cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1935 in an effort to contain two types of cane beetles that were ravaging sugar crops. Imported from Hawaii by the government’s Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, the toads—which weigh up to 4 pounds—had no impact on the beetles. But they have quickly marched across Australia’s northern tropics, killing native predators and birds that aren’t used to their toxins.

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5 animals that are better parents than humans

Humans have protected animals, killed them, caged them, freed them, loved them and hated them...and now parents can learn a thing or two from them. Here are five ways animals are better parents than some humans:

1. Barn Owls

Humans can learn faithfulness from barn owls because these owls mate for life. If one dies their mate often dies soon after, unless there are little owlets to take care of. The male always provides food and protection for his mate untill his owlets are born. When the eggs hatch, the male makes it possible for his mate to focus her energy on teaching the little owls how to survive. Male and female barn owls will hunt for their owelts together once their little babies are able to be left in the nest.

2. Elephants

These majestic creatures don't often have babies, but when they do the calf is well protected. Protection is important for these mothers, and the entire herd. Occasionally, another herd will steal a calf but when this happens the original herd will all attack the calf theives and get the child back to its mother. This protection is important lesson for human parents; Let your community help protect you and your child and do the same for others.

3. Seals

Seals are adorable to watch and the way they teach their children to survive is amazing. Not only do they begin teaching survival techniques while their pups are young, seal parents protect their pups fiercely. It is a difficult balance to keep their pups safe while teaching them to survive, but somehow they manage. From seals, human parents can learn how to keep their kids safe, while still letting them experience life.

4. Orangutans

Orangutan mommies spend up to nine years in seclusion to teach their children how to feed and protect themselves and ensure mom and baby have a strong bond. When these orange cuties can't handle a danger themselves, they know mom will be there to protect them. That level of trust in a crisis is something all human parents should strive to have with their children.

5. Dolphins

I cannot talk about animal parents without mentioning playful dolphins. Dolphins have strong parental instincts - instincts that provide them extraordinary patience. Dolphin mothers will keep watch over her newborn calf for over a month, non-stop, without any sleep. They also patiently teach their calf how to swim, breath and survive the the ocean. But on top of all, dolphins also teach their young to be playful.

Humans do a great job raising our children (most of the time) but we could all use a little help learning faithfulness, protection, parent-child bonding, patience and playfulness...good thing we can learn from animals!

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5 Animals With An Extraordinary Sense Of Smell

Albatross

Find Schools of Fish
The albatross can smell fish from the air. Researchers have found that an albatross will alter its course toward prey located well out of visual range. The birds can monitor a miles-wide swath of ocean as they fly in a single direction.

Eastern American Mole

Smell In Stereo
Scientists recently discovered that the Eastern American mole smells in stereo. Because they're blind and have little use for hearing, moles use stereoscopic smell to determine their location and the location of their prey.



Moths

Locate A Distant Mate
Moths don't have noses. Instead, they have antennae covered in scent receptors. While they don't detect every scent well, male silkworm moths can sense a single molecule of female sex hormone from at least a mile away.


Sharks

Detect Specific Proteins
Sharks breathe with their gills, so their noses serve only to smell. They are particularly well tuned for hunting. Sharks can sense a prey's amino acids at concentrations as low as one part per billion.


Dogs

Target a Single Scent
Dogs have a keen ability to discriminate among smells. An Auburn tracking dog can follow a single human trail, laid more than 24 hours before, across a campus crisscrossed by tens of thousands of students.

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5 Animals that Might Show Up in Your Toilet

The critters on this list might convince you to keep the toilet seat down and your bathroom door closed—and, most of all, to look before you sit.

1. SNAKES

Last night, San Diego's Department of Animal Services removed a 5.5-foot-long Columbia rainbow boa (above) from a toilet in an office building. Stephanie Lacsa, co-founder of Vertical PR + Marketing, noticed a higher than normal level of water in the bowl and, when she began to plunge it, the snake popped out. “I thought my eyes were deceiving me,” Lasca said. “This is every person’s worst nightmare.”

Officials believe the snake Lasca found didn't come in through the toilet, but was instead left there by someone. Still, snakes seem to pop up in toilets fairly often: An Isreali man was bitten on the penis by a snake in his toilet; a Staten Island man was brushing his teeth when he saw a California kingsnake in his toilet bowl; a Mumbai family discovered a 6-foot cobra in their toilet, mere moments after someone had used it; a Pennsylvania woman found a black snake in her commode; a construction worker in Alabama stumbled upon a snake in his office bathroom; and so on.

2. RATS

It’s no urban legend: Rats can totally crawl up into your toilet bowl (here’s how they do it). Just ask the couple in South London who were afraid to go to the bathroom after a rat kept poking its head into their toilet bowl for 8 months, or the Brooklyn residents who were watching TV when a rat entered their apartment through the toilet, or the many people who have posted videos of rats in their toilets on YouTube. “It happens all the time, especially if you live in the basement or a first floor apartment,” Eddie Marco of Brooklyn Pest Control told Gothamist. “The pipe is empty, the rat crawls through the pipe and up over the hump and into the porcelain. And he can’t get back out.” Vector control in Portland, Oregon reportedly receives 10 to 15 calls a year from residents who have found rats, alive and dead, in their toilets. Marco’s advice: If you find a rat in your toilet bowl, flush it down—and if it gets into your apartment, call the experts to deal with it.

3. FROGS

It’s less scary than finding a snake or rat, but it’s probably still pretty disconcerting see a frog hanging out in your toilet bowl. It happens to lots of people: Googling “frog in toilet” yields nearly 1.2 million results. One Florida resident found enough frogs in his toilet that he wrote in to the Tampa Bay Times for advice: “How does a frog (of a pretty good size) get in the toilet? We had one a number of years ago and then again just Sunday.” The newspaper recommended putting a mesh screen over the toilet vent and keeping lights off at night (keeping them on would attract bugs and, therefore, potentially frogs).

4. SQUIRRELS

Rats aren’t the only rodents to pop up in toilet bowls. In 2008, a writer for Tallahassee magazine recounted what happened when her cats tipped her off to a squirrel in the toilet, and in 2010, a woman in Edmond, Oklahoma, discovered a squirrel splashing around in the bowl. It took two officers several minutes to “apprehend” the creature—which jumped out of the toilet and ran around the bathroom—and release it in a local park. And in 2013, Winnipeg resident Angela Campbell heard loud sounds coming from her toilet. “I was envisioning ... monsters,” she told the Winnipeg Free Press. Instead, she found a very smelly squirrel, “caked with whatever was inside the pipes, from wherever it was coming from.” Campbell didn’t freak out, though; instead, she removed the sad, weak little squirrel, cleaned it up in her bathtub, and set it free.

5. POSSUM

It appears that, in addition to playing dead, some possums enjoy taking a swim. In 2008, Brisbane, Australia resident Tim Fraser was doing the laundry in his bathroom when the water in the toilet began to gurgle—and out popped a baby possum. "It was like the toilet had given birth," Fraser told the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2011, Austin, Texas photographer Shaylan Nelson’s husband found what he thought was a baby rat, but was actually an adorable baby possum, in their toilet; they rescued the little guy and set him free. And in 2013, West Virginia writer Karin Fuller recounted the tale of finding a dead possum in her toilet—which, depending on your point of view, might be worse than a live possum.

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