Bear eats campers as they slept

One man was killed and a man and a woman were injured afterbeing eaten by bears in attacks in the middle of the night on Wednesday at a popular campground on the edge of Yellowstone Park, Montana in late July 2010.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department spokesman Ron Aasheim said it was believed one bear was involved and at least two tents were left in tatters in the attack, which occurred at the height of the tourist season.

"I thought I would be dinner," said Deb Freele, 58, of London, Ontario, who recalled awakening from in her tent to find a bear chewing on her arm.

"Within hundredths of seconds, I felt the teeth in my arm, heard bones breaking. I screamed and that seemed to aggravate him. He sunk his teeth into me again," she recounted in a telephone interview from her hospital room in Cody, Wyoming.

“I had a sense that something wasn’t right, but I hadn’t heard anything. I had just woken up and felt a bit of pressure on the tent, and he closed his jaws right down on my arm. Then I screamed. Then he bit harder and I screamed more,” Freele said from her hospital bed.

“It was a brutal attack. It wasn’t like, ‘Oops, I made a mistake brewing beer.’ He was out to get me and the other people,” Freele said. She described the bear’s attack as silent and methodical, giving her the feeling that she was being hunted.

“It hurt. I can’t describe the pain. I couldn’t control the screaming, and I knew what was happening. I thought I was dead, and couldn’t believe it was happening. I thought, ‘This doesn’t compute, it just doesn’t jive, with what I understand about bears,’” she said.

Here's a picture of the 'mother' bear that was caught with some others that were believed to have been the people eaters. The fate of this bear was to be put down after it was determined after DNA tests confirmed it was the responsible bear. This was done using hair, saliva and tissue samples. Her three cups would be sent to a local zoo.

Soda Butte, which offers 27 campsites in a national forest known for its blue-ribbon trout fishing, was immediately evacuated and nearby campgrounds were closed after Wednesday's attacks.

Wildlife officials launched an all-out search for the bear, or bears, including the use of aeroplanes and helicopters on the lookout for radio-collared animals or others in the vicinity. Eventually, the beers were caught in the traps as seen in the photograph below:

Tony Latham, a retired conservation officer who has investigated previous bear maulings in the region, said predatory attacks on people are unusual, especially if fatal.

"In my 22 years as an officer in Idaho, there was only one predatory attack, and the person got away by getting into a river," he said. "I don't believe there was ever anyone killed in Idaho by a caustic bear in those 22 years."

Phew, time for a soda stream carbonated beer then eh?

What do Jelly Fish eat? And who eats them?

What do jellyfish eat, and how do they actually pull it off?

Like boobies, Jellyfish come in all shapes and sizes and indeed, colours. But what do they eat? How do they catch their food, when do they feed, and what kind of conditions make them most effective predators? Also, yes, someone out there is eating them right back.

Quick truth: jellyfish are mostly opportunistic carnivores. 

They do not “hunt” like a shark. 

They turn water movement, stinging cells, and simple geometry into a drifting ambush system that works best when tiny prey are concentrated and visibility does not matter.

These Jelly Fish are the right way up!

First up, what are Jelly Fish? Are they actually fish?

The internet reveals all: Jellyfish (also known as jellies or sea jellies or medusozoa) are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. “Jellyfish” is a broad label, different groups evolved the bell-and-tentacle lifestyle in different ways, and Medusa is the adult stage name for many of them.

Really? I thought Medusa was a lady with snakes in her head. But I digress, what have we learned here children? Jelly Fish are not actually fish. Fish are fish. Fish are also friends, not food. Sometimes.

So what do jellyfish eat?

Okay, I told a lie. Jellyfish eat fish. Or more accurately, many species eat fish eggs, fish larvae, and small fish when they can catch them. The core menu, though, is the stuff that turns the ocean into soup: zooplankton.

• Micro- and mesozooplankton: copepods, nauplii, tiny crustaceans, and other drifting bite-sized animals.
• Fish eggs and larvae: high-value, defenseless, and often concentrated in seasonal pulses.
• Small fish: especially when currents or night conditions push fish into tentacle range.
• Other jellyfish: yes, some jellies eat jellies, including scavenging damaged ones after storms.
• Bigger jellies, bigger crunch: large medusae can take larger crustaceans like shrimp.

A useful detail from field studies on moon jellies (Aurelia): digestion for small copepods can be on the order of about an hour, which matters because digestion time and prey density set the upper ceiling for how much a jelly can process in a night of good feeding.

Extra reading if you want to go full plankton nerd: diel vertical migration basics (why prey are often near the surface at night) via NOAA: vertical migration.

How do they catch food?

The simple version is “tentacles with stingers.” The useful version is: jellyfish run a contact-triggered, one-use weapon system at microscopic scale.

• Nematocysts: stinging cells fire tiny harpoon-like structures when touched, delivering toxins and “stickiness” that prevent escape.
• Drift lines: many jellyfish fish passively, tentacles spread like a net, letting currents deliver prey to them.
• Bell pumping as a vacuum: when the bell expands, it pulls water in, increasing the odds that prey drift into the tentacles and oral arms.
• Oral arms as conveyor belts: once prey is snagged, it is moved to the mouth, then into the gastrovascular cavity for digestion.

Some species add extra tricks. Upside-down jellyfish can rely partly on symbiotic algae for energy (less “I must eat constantly,” more “I can supplement”), and some jellies use mucus to trap micro-prey in the water column.

A clean visual of the business end of the operation: tentacles, oral arms, and the mouth region doing the intake work.

When do they eat, and why then?

Jellyfish feeding is often timed to when prey are easiest to intercept, not when prey are tastiest. In many ocean systems, that points to night, dawn, and dusk. Why? Because a lot of zooplankton migrate vertically: they rise toward food-rich surface waters at night and drop deeper in daylight to reduce predation risk. If your favorite meal is doing that commute every day, you surf the schedule.

Even in species that do not “choose” in any conscious sense, behavior still shows patterns. Light levels can influence depth distribution in some jellyfish, and when the population shifts vertically, feeding opportunity shifts with it. More prey in the same layer of water means more contact events per unit time, which is basically the entire jellyfish business model.

The jellyfish advantage: they do not need clear water, sharp eyes, or fast decision-making. That makes them unusually effective in turbid, nutrient-loaded coastal waters where visual predators struggle and plankton can spike.

The “how” in one sentence

A jellyfish is a drifting capture surface that turns prey density plus water movement into calories, then digests everything in a single cavity and expels the leftovers through the same opening.

But what does that mean in practice?

It means jellyfish do best when prey are clumped. Think plankton blooms, baitfish nurseries, current seams, tide rips, fronts, harbors, and anything that concentrates small life into a smaller volume of water.

• Patchy prey: ingestion rises with prey concentration, and jellies can capitalize on dense patches fast.
• Escape behavior matters: prey that dart or jump away (some copepods) are harder to capture than slow larvae or nauplii.
• Size is destiny: as jellies grow, they can take larger prey, and their “net area” expands.

This guy is simply here because he looks cool!

What is their optimal eating environment?

If you want the “best” jellyfish feeding conditions, picture a place that concentrates prey but does not require good visibility.

• High prey density: plankton blooms and larval fish pulses are a buffet because contact rates shoot up.
• Gentle-to-moderate currents: enough flow to deliver prey across tentacles, not so much turbulence that tentacles collapse or prey is swept past too quickly.
• Stratified coastal water: layers (warm over cool, fresh over salty) can trap plankton in bands that jellies exploit.
• Low light or turbid water: a weird advantage, because many fish lose efficiency when sight is compromised, while jellyfish do not care.
• Temperature sweet spots: species-specific, but metabolism, growth, and digestion all track temperature. Warmer water can speed digestion and activity up to a point, then stress takes over.

That last point is why bloom years can feel sudden. If temperature and food line up, jellies can grow quickly, mature, and then their predation on eggs and larvae can feed back into the ecosystem by suppressing some fish recruitment. In plain English: good jellyfish years can be self-reinforcing, at least locally, because they eat the next generation of things that might compete with them.

Who eats jellyfish?

I may have written above that fish are friends and not food, we know that's not necessarily true. The same does not apply to Jelly Fish. Many sea creatures find jellies and the members of the Medusa family to be tasty treats. Like jelly is.

So fish like to eat Jelly Fish:

Starfish seem to like to eat them, but how the hell do they catch them? The answer is: they do not need to chase. If a jellyfish is slowed, grounded, or drifting low, a sea star can simply climb onto it and begin feeding. Slow predator, slower prey, and sometimes a tide line does the delivery work for them. Also, that “stinging” problem is not universal, some predators have mucus coatings or behaviors that reduce sting effects.

That is what sunstars do with octopus, different animal, same vibe.

And there’s always a hungry turtle around that’s keen to try any fish once. Some turtles are famous for it, especially leatherbacks, which can target jellies as a major food source.

A more “sciencey” way to think about jellyfish eating

If you strip away the myth and the sting, jellyfish feeding is mostly physics plus physiology: contact rate, capture probability, and digestion capacity.

• Contact rate: how much water passes your tentacles, and how many prey are in it.
• Capture probability: whether prey escape, how sticky or potent the nematocysts are, and how tentacles are arranged.
• Handling and digestion: the internal processing speed, which increases with temperature up to a point and varies by prey type.

So when you see a bloom, do not just think “more jellyfish.” Think “a lot of small prey in the same place, delivered by currents, on a schedule shaped by light.” That is when a jellyfish stops looking like a passive blob and starts looking like a very efficient interception machine.

If you want to keep the tone but add a couple of serious sources without changing the vibe, these are clean starting points: jellyfish overview and Cnidaria, plus NOAA’s simple explainer on vertical migration.

Tuatara: Living Fossils

New Zealand's Living Fossil: The Sole Survivor

The tuatara is New Zealand's famous gift to the world, scientifically revered because it is the only survivor of an ancient group of reptiles that roamed the earth at the same time as dinosaurs. 

To call them "lizards" is a common mistake; they belong to a distinct order called Rhynchocephalia (beak-heads).

While lizards and snakes evolved into thousands of different species, the dinosaur era relatives of tuatara died out about 60 million years ago, leaving the tuatara as the last standing member of this lineage. 

This is why the tuatara is often called a ‘living fossil’ - they provide a biological window into the Triassic period, over 200 million years ago.

Hi, I'm Terry Tuatara, I breathe only once per hour!

 

Physiological Marvels: The Third Eye
One of the most fascinating "expert" facts about the tuatara is their "third eye." Located on the top of their head, this parietal eye has a retina, lens, cornea, and nerve endings. 

While it is visible in hatchlings as a translucent patch, it eventually becomes covered with scales. 

It doesn't see images, but it absorbs UV light to regulate their circadian rhythms and seasonal cycles.

A Diet of Opportunity
Tuatara are famous for feeding on the New Zealand weta, a giant flightless cricket that is an ideal meal for this nocturnal hunter. 

However, they are opportunistic carnivores that predominantly prey on a wide variety of invertebrates, including beetles, crickets, and spiders.

Their unique dentition aids this diet: they have two rows of teeth on the top jaw and one on the bottom. When they bite, the bottom row slides between the top two, creating a shearing mechanism perfect for sawing through the hard exoskeletons of insects. 

Their diet also consists of frogs, lizards, and even their own young (cannibalism is a known threat in dense populations).

Weta ya reckon? Nice picture?

Conservation and Habitat
Tuatara once lived throughout the mainland of New Zealand, but the introduction of mammalian predators - specifically rats (kiore) and later Europeans - drove them to extinction in that habitat. They are unable to reproduce fast enough to survive predation; a female breeds only once every 2 to 5 years, and the eggs take up to 15 months to hatch.

They are now found only on 37 off-shore islands and mainland islands, protected by strict biosecurity to keep them predator-free. This includes specific entities like the Karori Sanctuary (Zealandia), which re-established the first wild mainland population in over 200 years.

Taxonomy: One Species or Two?
Historically, science stated there were two species. Sphenodon punctatus is the common tuatara, while the Brothers Island tuatara (formerly Sphenodon guntheri) was considered distinct. However, recent genetic work typically classifies them all as a single species, Sphenodon punctatus, with significant geographic variation.

For management purposes, we still distinguish the Cook Strait tuatara which live on Stephen's Island (Takapourewa) in the Marlborough Sounds—home to the densest population of tuatara on earth (over 30,000 animals).

The Northern tuatara, Sphenodon punctatus punctatus, is a sub-group which live on offshore islands around the north of the North Island. Total tuatara population on all these islands is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000.

The Seabird Connection
Tuatara share a complex relationship with burrowing seabirds. 

They often co-habit in the burrows of petrels and shearwaters. It is a relationship of convenience and terror; the tuatara benefits from the guano which attracts beetles, but they also eat bird's eggs and, fun fact, baby chicks like baby petrel which they find unprotected in nest burrows.

You wanna share my baby Petrel?

Tuatara are often described as cousins with Komodo Dragons, in the sense they are living relatives of the ancient dinosaurs, though they sit on an entirely different branch of the reptile family tree. Unlike the tropical Komodo, tuatara thrive in cool weather, remaining active in temperatures as low as 5°C (41°F).

Extra for Experts: Tuatara are known to have a low sex drive and incredibly long lifespans (potentially 100+ years). Perhaps the most famous example is Henry, a resident of the Southland Museum. This Tuatara took one hundred years before he popped his cherry, becoming a father for the first time at age 111!

What do eels eat? Ducks? Fish?

Spare duck, maam?

What do eels eat? Ducks? Fish?

Well apparently Boris the eel likes to eat baby ducklings so we might be on to something. But first what are eels?

Eels are elongated fishes, and look like snakes. Most eels prefer to dwell in shallow waters or hide at the bottom layer of the ocean, sometimes in holes. Some eels dwell in water as deep as 4,000 metres (13,000 ft). Others are fairly active swimmers and some have even been known to travel across dry land in search of bodies of water. 

Did I leave the oven on?

But what do they eat? This article suggests that a freshwater eel is believed responsible for the disappearance of water fowl, small ducks and possibly birds at the pond near the Eagle Vale Leisure Centre, somewhere in Australia.

New Zealand's department of Conservation's site tells us that freshwater eels eat "live" food. Small long-finned eels living amongst the river gravels will feed on insect larvae, worms and water snails. When they get bigger, they begin to feed on fish. They will also eat fresh-water crayfish and even small birds like ducklings (like Boris!).

Sometimes however, eels with find themselves on the back foot - nature will strike back and in return for eating a swan's sweet tasty little goslings, the swan will simply eat the eel!

No gag reflex?

Humans also love to eat eels as well. The Japanese and Maori people are well known to love eel on their sushi or smoked. And sometimes kids land grown up kids love to go eeling for the sake of it:

And another proud Kiwi family showing off their catch: