SCIENTISTS have claimed a fearsome mutant fish has begun actively hunting people – after gorging itself on human corpses which have been dumped in rivers.

A huge type of catfish, called a goonch, may have developed a taste for flesh in an Indian river where bodies are dumped after funerals, reports The Sun newspaper.

Locals have believed for years that a mysterious monster lurks in the water. But they think it has moved on from scavenging to snatching unwary bathers who venture into the Great Kali River, which flows along the India-Nepal border.

The extraordinary creature has been investigated by biologist Jeremy Wade for a TV documentary.

He said: “The locals have told me of a theory that this monster has grown extra large on a diet of partially burnt corpses. 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.”

Jeremy discounted theories that crocodiles could be responsible for the carnage before turning his attention to goonches – among the world’s biggest freshwater fish.

He caught one which tipped the scales at 161lb and was nearly 6ft long – a world record weight and far bigger than any landed before.

He said: “If that got hold of you, there’d be no getting away.

An 18-year-old Nepali disappeared in the river last year, dragged down by something described as like an “elongated pig”.

But the first victim of a goonch attack was thought to have been a 17-year-old Nepalese boy.

He was killed in April 1988 as he cooled himself in the river.

Witnesses said he was suddenly pulled below the surface.

Three months later a young boy was dragged underwater as his father watched helplessly.

Source: CourierMail Link filed under Cryptozoology

Penang, Malaysia –  A woman made an unusual find when she bought a one-metre long shark from a fisherman at the Batu Maung jetty this week.

Mary Looi, 48, said she only realised the shark was different when she wanted to cook tomyam fish for her family.

“When I was about to cut the shark I found two webbed feet sticking out from the lower part of the body.

Looi said she dared not cook the fish after consulting her husband Gooi Man Kaw, 57, who told her that according to Chinese belief, eating fish with unusual features could bring disaster or ill luck.

“Immediately, I returned the fish to the fisherman that night at about 10pm.

“He threw it back into the sea,” said Looi.

Looi, who has been working at Malaysian Fisheries Development Board for 10 years, said this was the first time she had stumbled upon such an unusual find.

When contacted, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Muka Head marine research station head Prof Dr Zulfigar Yasin said this is the first time he had heard of fish with legs found in the Malaysian waters.

“There is a possibility that the fish could have swum from other waters into Malaysian waters.

“As far as I am concerned, fish species with legs or boney fins can only be discovered in the waters of North Sulawesi in Indonesia or South Africa,” he said.

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Source: UnderwaterTimes Link

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This Hyper-Sexual Orangina Ad Featuring an Animal Orgy, Lap Dances and an Orangina Money Shot
has received numurous complaints in Britain by equal rights and childrens groups.

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Conflicts between baboons and humans in the suburbs of prosperous Cape Town have gotten so bad that monitoring teams have been deployed to keep the animals away.

Urban development has cut off a troop of 350 baboons from territory where they used to roam free and forage for food – so instead, they now hunt for food in the trash cans and kitchens of the humans who have taken over their former neighborhood. Some days, areas in the Cape peninsula look like they had been the scene of a massive food fight, with overturned trash cans and shredded garbage bags galore.

The large monkeys invade people’s homes, sometimes confronting people who try to scare the baboons off.
Some residents have retaliated by shooting and poisoning baboons and by running them over on local roads.

The situation has also caused rifts within communities. In a suburb ironically named Welcome Glen, rival societies have formed, with some trying to protect the baboons and others wanting them removed or killed.

Joan Laing is co-chair of a rival Welcome Glen Baboon-Free Neighbourhood Action Group. She says the animals are a menace.

“They break windows to get into houses,” Laing said. “They even know how to open doors. And once inside, they make a mess. They empty the fridge, ruin furniture, and defecate all over.”

And they’re not afraid of people, she says.

“I have had them in my house several times, even while I was there. They simply brushed past me. I had to get out of the way,” Laing said. “Even my husband got threatened by a baboon.”

Source: National Geographic Link Posted by Drew. Filed under Weird World News

A catfish met an unpleasant fate in Germany when it tried to eat a football floating in the river. Police patrolling the Main River say it’s the weirdest case they’ve seen in 30 years.

A police handout photo showing the catfish found in a sluice near the southern city of Würzburg.
A giant catfish died trying to eat a soccer ball and was found floating in a river with the ball wedged in its large snout, police in Germany said.

The two-meter long fish was found on Monday in a sluice in the Main River with its teeth sunk into the blue and white plastic ball.

“The catfish had evidently bitten into the ball and suffocated,” Bavarian police said in a statement. “Whether the fish was swept up in the current excitement about football in the wake of the EURO 2008 championship could not be ascertained.”

Reiner Jünger of the river police said: “I’ve never seen anything like this in 30 years on the job.” He said catfish are among the biggest freshwater predators. They lie in wait on the river bed and attack prey on the surface. They sometimes even attack ducks swimming past.

Source: Spiegel Online Link Posted by Drew. Filed under Weird Animals.

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A group of filmmakers claim to have successfully captured Sweden’s legendary Great Lake Sea Monster (Storsjöodjuret), which is said to lurk in the waters of the Storsjön outside Östersund in northern Sweden.

A film crew which set up cameras on one of the lake’s islets last spring now say that they have an image of the seamonster, according to Svergies Television.

The film clip shows a blurry, long and narrow silhouette moving in the lake’s depths.

“It clearly shows that it’s warm and is made up of cells, otherwise our cameras wouldn’t indicate red, so it can be a sea snake or some other kind of sea animal,” said a female member of the film crew to Sveriges Television news in Jämtland.

The effort to find the monster has generated a great deal of interest, with the American television network NBC planning to document the hunt.

Next summer, the number of special cameras placed in the lake will increase to thirty.

This isn’t the first time that crews have hunted for the Great Lake Sea Monster.

Back in 1894, a Swedish sea captain named Dedering created a stock company with the express purpose of catching the renowned beast.

The hunt, which was also sponsored in part by King Oscar II, even featured whale harpooners.

Great Lake Sea Monster website

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TURNER, Maine –Residents are wondering if an animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation.

The animal was found near power lines along Route 4 on Saturday, apparently struck by a car while chasing a cat. The carcass was photographed and inspected by several people who live in the area, but nobody is sure exactly what it is.

Michelle O’Donnell of Turner spotted the animal near her yard about a week before it was killed. She called it a “hybrid mutant of something.”

“It was evil, evil looking. And it had a horrible stench I will never forget,” she told the Sun Journal of Lewiston. “We locked eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I’ve lived in Maine my whole life and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. The animal has been blamed for attacking and killing a Doberman pinscher and a Rottweiler the past couple of years.

People from Litchfield, Sabattus, Greene, Turner, Lewiston and Auburn have come forward to speak of a mystery monster that roams the woods. Nobody knows for sure what it is, and theories have ranged from a hyena or dingo to a fisher or coydog, an offspring of a coyote and a wild dog.

Now, people are asking if the mystery beast and the animal killed over the weekend are one and the same.

Wildlife officials and animal control officers declined to go to Turner to examine the remains. By Tuesday, the carcass had been picked clean by vultures and there was not much left of the dead animal.

Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist, said it’s unlikely that the animal was anybody’s pet.

After reviewing photos of the carcass, Coleman said he was bothered by the animal’s ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified. In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.

Mike O’Donnell, who is married to Michelle O’Donnell, said the animal looked “half-rodent, half-dog” to him.

It was charcoal gray, weighed between 40 and 50 pounds and had a bushy tail, a short snout, short ears and curled fangs hanging over its lips, he said. It looked like “something out of a Stephen King story.”

“This is something I’ve never seen before. It’s an evil-looking thing,” he said.

Source: AP via Boston.com Link posted by Drew. Filed under Weird Animals

These Ten animals and reptiles, all born with extra appendages, have been circulating the Internet in recent years, gaining fame and popularity. Here they are in one place – a kind of celebrity page for mutant animals. The Top 10 Mutant Animal Photos.

The Four-Eared Cat.
A household pet, named Yoda, was born with an extra set of ears. Valerie and Ted Rock took him in two years ago after visiting a bar near their home in Chicago, where he was being passed round by curious drinkers. He was one of a large litter and the owners were looking for a home for him.

The four-legged chicken was found in China in 2005.

The two-headed calf born in Iowa, US in April 1998 had four eyes and three ears and was appropriately named Reflections.

The six-legged fawn, born in July 2008, has two pelvises and uses one leg from each pelvis to walk.

This five-legged amphibian was discovered by 10-year-old Tom Chudley in his family’s garden pond in Devon, UK, in April 2006.

The 2006 two-headed kitten was deemed by veterinarians a deformed animal. But feline lovers Zubir Kamaruddin, 49, and wife Sabariah Hassan, 43, in Perak, Malaysia, believe their kitten was a gift from God.

Jake the five-legged lamb was born on a farm in Toddington, UK, in 2001.

The two headed pig named Rudy was also born in Iowa, US, in March 1998, just a month before the double-headed calf.

This reptile was sold on eBay, in January 2006, by an aquarium in St Louis with bids starting at $150,000.

In 2005 this two-headed Cuban Slider turtle was found by the banks of a river in Havana, Cuba.

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Radio-Canada reports that a mutant fish with two mouths has been discovered in Alberta, Canada.

Posted by Drew. Filed under Weird Animal News. Source: Radio-Canada.  Link (In French)

Surgeons reattached a Taiwanese veterinarian’s forearm today after a 200-kilogram Nile crocodile chomped it off and colleagues recovered the limb from the reptile’s mouth.

The male crocodile severed Chang Po-yu’s forearm at the Shaoshan Zoo in the southern city of Kaohsiung yesterday when the veterinarian tried to retrieve a tranquiliser dart from the reptile’s hide so he could give it medication, zoo officials said.

The forearm was reattached following seven hours of surgery today.

The Liberty Times newspaper said Chang failed to notice that the crocodile was not fully anaesthetised when he stuck his arm through an iron rail to medicate it.

As Chang was rushed to the hospital yesterday, a zoo worker shot two bullets at the crocodile’s neck to retrieve the forearm, Chen Po-tsun, a zoo official, said.

“The crocodile was unharmed as we didn’t find any bullet holes on its hide,” Chen said. “It probably was shocked and opened its mouth to let go of the limb.”

The 17-year-old reptile is one of a pair of Nile crocodiles kept by the zoo.

Known as a man-eater because of its voracious nature, the crocodile is listed as an endangered species, and is rapidly disappearing from its native African habitat.

Chen said the zoo bought the crocodile 10 years ago from a local resident who had kept it as a pet.

Source: The Liberty Times, Taiwan