Flying Fish Crash Into Boaters

Said to have come from local canal

(NEWSER) - Residents of a South Florida town found a surprise visitor in their pool last night: an 8-foot alligator. Someone—nobody owned up—tied the creature to a tree with an extension cord before calling for help, the Miami Herald reports. When deputies arrived, a crowd of 30 was ogling the gator; police called a trapper to collect it. "It thought it was home," said a sheriff's office rep. "We live in the Everglades. The alligators were here long before us." More»

(NEWSER) - While the physical changes brought on by global warming—droughts, floods, and the like—are fairly easy to model, the effect on ecosystems is disconcertingly unpredictable, John Waldman writes in Yale Environment 360. Species will shift migration patterns and seek new homes, affecting other species in ways we can't imagine. Waldman fears so-called “global weirding” will be “a most apropos, if not downright tepid, label.” More»

Cosmetology board cites rules on animals in salons, sanitation concerns

(NEWSER) - Fish pedicures—in which small carp eat dead skin from clients’ feet—have been banned in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The state’s Board of Cosmetology determined that the practice, introduced last year, violated a ban on animals in salons, as well as sanitation requirements that mandate disinfecting of pedicure materials between clients. There is no way, the board noted, to disinfect a pool of fish. More»

Saved from icy Cape Cod waters, 'Dennis' sets off on truck trip

(NEWSER) - Animal experts staged a dramatic rescue in Cape Cod yesterday, pulling ashore a juvenile 1,000-pound manatee and hauling it into a moving van bound for Florida, the Cape Cod Times reports. “Things went as well as we could have hoped for,” a rescuer told the Boston Globe, noting it’s the first time a manatee has been found so far north. More»

Arkansas boy knocked unconscious by Silver Asian carp

(AP) - An Arkansas teenager's jaw was broken when a fish flew from the lake where he was riding in an inner tube and smacked him in the face last week. Seth Russell, 15, was cruising Lake Chicot on a large inner tube towed by a boat when a Silver Asian carp leaped from the water and knocked him unconscious. More»