This issue of CREATURE FEATURE is brought to you by dog pounds. In much of the southern United States, dogs in pounds live outside in chickenwire cages exposed to the elements (that’s where Zelda lived before she was brought to Toronto. She’s wedged in the corner of the couch under my left arm as I write this.) Incarcerated people coming from South and Central America also live in “dog pounds” along the border, as Texas Monthly reports this week.
Image: Live lobsters in a tank at a fish market. (Credit: Pixabay/premagraphic)
Lobster rolls no more?
Climate change has brought a lobster boom to Nova Scotia, for now. “The same northwest Atlantic warming that helped create a lobster haven may soon push them out–or even cause their mass deaths,” writes Haley Ryan for The Toronto Star’s Halifax bureau.
Extra credit: Why aren’t a Mexico village’s sustainable lobster fishing practices for Caribbean spiny lobster being adopted in Florida, Erik Vance asks for Biographic.
Someone knifed an alligator
An alligator is swimming around a lakeside Texas community with a knife in its head, reports ABC13.
"I saw him swimming and then I saw him turn, like swimming towards me, and I saw something sticking out of his head," said Erin Weaver. "It looked like a steak knife that was sticking out of his head, I don't know if it was in his eye, but it looked, if it wasn't in his eye it was very close to his eye."
White tigers are bad, pass it on
Three white Bengal tiger cubs have been born in Austria’s Weiss Zoo, EFE reports. Their names are Hector, Pascha and Zeus. “The coloring of these felines is due to a genetic mutation in the Bengal tiger, something that is rare in nature, although there are hundreds of them in captivity in zoos around the world,” writes the press agency.
Thing is, white tigers are rare in the wild not because they’re endangered, but because they’re not genetically healthy. For more on this issue, check out this thread from The Revelator editor and friend of CREATURE FEATURE John R. Platt.
Fact: There are around 2500 Bengal tigers left in the wild, and an unknown number in zoos and other establishments around the world.
Bonus round
More things I read this week.
It’s a shark-eat-shark world at this Seoul aquarium (Newsweek, Polly Mosendz)
Savanna elephant poaching on the rise in Botswana (National Geographic, Dina Fine Maron)
How many Formosan bears remain in Taiwan? (CNN, Ben Westcott)
Monkey water war in India (Asian News International)
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CREATURE FEATURE is edited by Tracey Lindeman.
All images in CREATURE FEATURE are used under Creative Commons licensing. Efforts have been made to ensure that photographs of living animals or natural scenes have been taken ethically, in responsible pet ownership conditions, at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums or under safe, non-damaging conditions in the wild. If you see an issue with any image we share, please notify me.