System 13

While reading my feeds this morning, I ended up coming across 3 different animal-related stories that I thought were worth sharing.

First, I want you to imagine an ostrich. Got it? Alright, now, imagine that it is roughly 16 feet tall, and weighs 1.5 tons. To help you visualize, here’s what you should be aiming for, size-wise:

That’s the size attributed to the newly found Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which was discovered in a desert in northern China. The new find probably represents the largest feathered animal that’s ever lived. It’s a creature I would not want to run into. Ostriches are supposed to be mean bastards; I don’t want to meet a 16 foot tall one. Here’s the news article about it from National Geographic.

Next up, we have a news story that sounds so strange that you might be tempted to think it fiction. Apparently a squirrel went a bit crazy in the German town of Passau:

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

“After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man’s garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” the spokesman said. “Then he killed it with his crutch.”

Heh. It bit a woman, then attacked a construction worker, and then finally assaulted a man before being killed by a crutch. That’s one badass squirrel.

The last animal-related story that caught my attention was about a chap (Dr. Brady Barr) dressing up in a crocodile suit so he could get up close and personal with the beasties. Under the suit, he was inside a cage covered in Kevlar armor:

He’s a braver man than me, that’s for sure. I wonder if he would’ve tried a trick like that with the 16 foot tall ostrich dinosaur.