This is one of those amazing story that makes you love the animal world and that so many times I've written about in SeaWayBLOG.
This story is set in the Mara River, a river in Africa, flowing through Kenya and Tanzania, that lies across the migration path of ungulates in the Serengeti/Masai Mara game reserves:

©Roger Nilsson

This story happened almost one year ago on December 29th, in the Alaskan town of Barrow, the northernmost town of the United States, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle. A man was returning to his car when he saw a polar bear clearly looking for food. With no time to unlock the door of his vehicle and climb inside, he tried to duck out of sight. As you can see in the following photo-sequence the man and the bear started a very dangerous (for the man) version of a game, half hide-and-seek half peek-a-boo, with the polar bear chasing his target around man's car and a near pick-up truck.
The man finally took refuge in this pick-up truck that quite luckily had its door opened. The Polar bear however managed to land a few heavy swipes on his prey.
The man's back and head were covered in more than 100 deep scratches where the massive claws had managed to rip through his thick winter clothes!


©Roger Nilsson

©Roger Nilsson

©Roger Nilsson

©Roger Nilsson

©Roger Nilsson

Polar Bears are the world's largest land predator, and are the only animals that actively hunt humans. They are predominantly carnivores, eating seals, fish, reindeer, seabirds and even whales and baby walruses. However The wildlife group Polar Bears International says only one person has been killed by a polar bear in the U.S. in the past 30 years. In Canada eight have been killed and in Russia, 19.
A spokesman said: 'In all instances in which a human was killed by a polar bear, the animal in question was undernourished or had been provoked.'

Read more on Daily Mail

Can you see the baby clinging to mother's chest under her left arm?

The pictures of this sequence from WWF are not high quality but they depict an amazing and intense moment that happened a few days ago in the Malaysian island of Borneo. This is a story about the courage of a desperate mother and also about the help some good men gave to an endangered animal (at last!).
The photographs taken by local officials of the WWF caught the moment when a terrified Orang-Utan mother caught a rope thrown to her by humans and swam across a flooded river to bring her baby to safety.


The mother grabbing the rope


The mother and her baby were stranded in a tree when a river flooded on the north east tip of the island and got trapped there for several days. Finally the villagers decided to ask for help and The Sabah Wildlife Department, which is linked to WWF, sent a team to the area. They set up a rope bridge so they could get close to the hungry mother and baby but once they were there it seemed there was no way to take them back to safety. Orang-Utans are terrified by water, even when it rains they scamper for shelter. As a last impossible try, they threw the mother a rope to cling on to so she could swim to the nearest river bank and unbelievably she reached out and grabbed it and in an unbelievable scene she climbed down the tree, with the baby on her back, and slipped into the water, clinging to the rope, and ensuring the baby's head was above the water, she dog-paddled towards the river bank and scrambled up taking her baby finally to safety. The officials gave her some food and then the mother and the baby disappeared into the jungle.




She finally took the plunge and dog-paddled through the water to safety

Nadya Vessey is a woman from New Zealand who was born with a condition that meant her legs would never develop properly and by the time she was 16 she had both her legs amputated. However she is a woman with a great inborn fortitude and a lot of humour:

"One day a little boy came up, he must have been about four and he saw me taking off my (prosthetic) legs and he started with the 'why' questions, you know, 'why haven't you got any legs', etc. And I said 'have you heard of The Little Mermaid and he said 'yes' and I said 'I'm a mermaid' and he got this look on his face and he said 'wow that's cool' and ran off to tell his dad."

The idea however stuck in her mind and she found the courage to ask directly to WETA Digital (Peter Jackson's digital visual effects company, famous for having realized the visual effects for academy award-winning blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong) if they would realize for her a mermaid tail to help her swim. She probably never believed they actually would but their answer was Yes!



Two years of study, eight creative artist, and the masterpiece was ready, a fully-functioning tail complete with a fitted suit, and covered with digitally printed sock with hand-painted mermaid scales.



Nadya was astounded and delighted...
'It was absolutely amazing,' said costumer Lee Williams. 'It's beautiful to watch Nadya swim and to see that dream come true and to be a part of that. I feel quite blessed.'




See Nadya finally swimming like a true mermaid and listen to interviews to WETA artists in the following videos:

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

This is a story that moved a lot of human beings this week. Nari, a dolphin severely wounded by a shark have been protected and escorted by his mate Echo for three days and then led by him to the seaside for help.
Before he was savaged by a three meters Bull Shark, Nari, the 12-year-old dolphin, usually came for a nightly hand-feeding ritual on the coast of Moreton Island, near Brisbane, together with his other 12 mates. Marine vets feared he had died when he did not appear at feeding time for days.
However, on Tuesday night Nari reappeared at the beach, looking tired and frail. He was led in to shore by his mate Echo looking for the help of humans.
Vets and Volunteers immediately captured Nari without any struggle and transferred it to Sea World on the Gold Coast where it underwent surgery for deep wounds and was given antibiotics to prevent infection. It is recovering under the watchful eye of marine vets and is expected to rejoin the pod and his mate Echo within eight weeks.



Experts suggested that Echo's sympathy for Nari may stem from an incident in 1996 when Echo was himself attacked by a shark.
Having disappeared the same day as Nari and reappeared at his side There is no reason to think other than that Echo stayed with Nari for a few days, waiting until Nari was well enough to make it back to the feeding area. How can we call this thing other than love and friendship?
What has thrilled wildlife experts even more is the trust that Nari has appeared to put in the humans who were able to lift him without a struggle into a boat and take him to the mainland to be treated by vets.




'The injury is quite severe - the bite went right through the skin, flesh and blubber down to the muscle and Nari's pretty sore. We're going to cut out the large piece of flesh that has been ripped by the shark and treat him in a special quarantine pool at Sea World. Then it will be a case of the wound healing from the inside out. We're got high hopes he'll recover and then we'll release him back into the wild where we're sure his friend Echo will be waiting for him.' said a vet.


Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Photographer : Kit de Guymer

Enjoy a video of the story:

If you've listened to the newsreel in these days you certainly have heard about the exceptional heat wave that have hit some regions of Australia and the terribles bush fires that are one of the consequencies. The heat wave and the blazes have already killed more than one hundred human beings. You can imagine how many Koalas, slow and tightly depending on the trees where they live, have died.
Now I want to focus on three stories with an happy end about koalas that have survived thanks to people that have helped them. Normally Koalas almost never drink water. They get fluids from the eucalyptus leaves they eat. On the other hand in extreme situations like the one of these days, when temperature goes widely over the 40 degrees, they need much more water and they are perfectly able to drink. In the following stories you'll have some nice examples.


Joey, the abandoned baby Koala

Joey is a baby koala that was found some days ago shaking and looking very sick beneath the verandah of Mrs Tracey Young. It was later discovered that he had been deserted by its sick mum and left to roast in the blistering temperatures. Probably his mum had become distressed and disorientated by the heat so she left the baby on its own without even realising. Blisteringly hot conditions forced the baby koala out of its tree, he find relief in the shadow of the verandah where he was eventualy found by the children of Mrs Young. The best part of the story start now as you can see in the pictures taken by Mrs Young:

When she filled a bucket with water the cute creature gets a handle on the it quite shyly


then it realised what it was


and started immediately to drink




and finally, why not, he thought it was the perfect moment for a cool bath!!


and it really seems to like it....




It was taken away for care treatment by a wildlife officer shortly after. Its mother, meanwhile, has returned to their tree and is on the lookout for her baby.


Mr Face-in -the-Sprinkle

the second sory is about a Koala that was found cooling off in Hahndorf, South Australia, in a very funny way:


Oblivious to anything else, the young male koala had eyes only for the sprinkler on a 43-degree day.


Once he was thorougly soaked, the little fella didn't mind a quick dry off with a towel:



Sam, the thirsty Koala

The third story is the most famous because it has been widely covered by many news media.
Sam, as it was nicknamed by its rescuer, Local CFA firefighter David Tree (with that surname he was destined to become friend of a koala!!!), is a Koala that was found injured in the ashes in the area of Mirboo North after deadly fires. The picture of Sam, bewildered and badly burned, drinking water from the bottle offered by Dave has quickly travelled all over the world.




Sam has immediately become a star and a symbol, he was later taken to the house of Mrs Colleen Wood (another incredibly fitting surname!) where it received loving care and its deeply burned hands were treated.

Norwegian skier Fred Syversen was filming a ski movie Nuit de la Glisse with his crew last year. While he was approaching the grand finale, the big drop in the end of the line Fred Syversen went too right and dropped the wrong cliff.



Unintentionally he skied a line that lead to his 107 meters cliff drop. His speed was estimated to be over 80 km/h when he jumped. Fred is lucky to be alive. A 107-meter fall is absolutely staggering. It’s incredible that he survived. Fred even landed close to the rocks, and he was buried more than 2.5 meters in the snow. He was flown to hospital where they found minor damage in his liver. He was ordered to take it easy for the next few weeks.







More info here