Coyote or Wolf?
The story of the 82-pound coyote not only has this province and the Internet buzzing, but wildlife watchers across the country are talking about it, too.
Memorial University is doing the DNA testing on the brute, shot this week by Joe Fleming on the Bonavista Peninsula. The story garnered nearly 60,000 hits on The Telegram website and more than 180 comments by mid-afternoon Thursday.
Many are skeptical it is, in fact, a coyote because it looks wolf-like.
Environment and Conservation Minister Terry French wondered Wednesday if the creature could be a wolf that crossed on the ice from Labrador or, perhaps, a hybrid or the result of a coyote-dog crossbreeding.
The DNA testing could have complications, but the mystery could be solved soon.
Steve Carr of the biology department at MUN said how the testing proceeds and what further genetic investigation is required will depend on what’s found at each stage.
The tests will be completed by Beth Perry, assisted by Brettney Pilgrim at the university’s Genomics and Proteomics (GaP) Facility, he said.
The breed of coyote in Newfoundland is known as the eastern coyote, which is believed to have interbred with wolves during their trek from the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, through the Maritimes and into Newfoundland.
Carr noted research by Dawn Marshall on Newfoundland coyote genetics and is assuming the animal is a hybrid.
“My guess would have been a wolf-coyote hybrid that’s relatively recent. Another possibility is that it could be a dog-coyote hybrid as some people could have suggested,” he said.
And he further suggested it could be the result of a male coyote mating with a female husky.
Carr noted MUN has amassed a large database on the animals on the island.
“The biggest one that’s ever been seen on the island is about 40 pounds and a 50-pound coyote would be really big anywhere,” he said.
Coyotes, based on MUN’s research, are believed to have shown up on the island in the mid-1980s, possibly a single pair.
Some academics and wildlife watchers remain incredulous at the thoughts of an 82-pound coyote.
“Eighty two pounds is way out there … It sounds far-fetched. On the scientific side of it, I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Lesley Sampson, co-founder of Coyote Watch Canada, a group based in Niagara region, Ont., that tracks coyote sightings, but also promotes “compassionate” wildlife communities.
The group is not in favour of killing the animals.
Sampson wondered Thursday if the animal was a dog let go into the wild or a wolf crossbreed.
She said Ontario data indicates male coyotes weigh in between 35-45 pounds.
Brad White, chairman of the biology department at Trent University and director of the Natural Resources DNA Profiling and Forensic Centre, said researchers use the term “canis soup,” to describe the hybridization among species — wolf, coyote and dog genes mixed together.
But he was still amazed at the size of the creature Fleming shot, if it is, in fact, a coyote.
And if tests do reveal it is just one massive eastern coyote, he said the population may be evolving in size as a predator for moose.
“It might actually control the moose population,” he said.
The attention the story is getting has retired national parks worker Fred Wallace concerned.
“It’s being hyped up as the big, bad wolf,” he said Thursday.
He said the coyotes are afraid of humans.
“They are living in cities now.... They don’t steal kids. They don’t eat kids,” said Wallace said, adding dogs and cats are just small rabbits to them.
And he said the caribou they take down are usually the older, sicker animals.
Wallace also criticized the 10-month coyote season and said when females are shot, no one thinks about their pups which may be dying a slow, miserable death somewhere. - thetelegram
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Ossuaries
The Sedlec Ossuary
In the small town of Sedlec in the Czech republic is something truely extraordinary. A Roman Catholic chapel profusely decorated with the skeletal remains of the dead. 40,000 skeletons were used in the decoration of the chapel, with the bones forming up chandeliers, coats of arms, and other accents to the gothic interior. The story of the Sedlec ossuary starts in 1278, when a certain Henry, Abbot of the Cistercian monastary at Sedlec, made a pilgrimage to the holy land. He brought back a handful of earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the cemetery where the ossuary now lies. Soon, the desire to be buried in this cemetary exploded, and during the period of the black death thousands were laid to rest here.
In the year 1400 the present church was built in the center of the cemetery, which was by then extraordinarily overcrowded. New burial space was required, so thousands of graves were exhumed and stacked in the lower section of the church. In 1870, the Schwarzenberg family commissioned a local artist named Frantisek Rint to use the piled up bones to decorate the church. The result was nothing short of amazing. Even the artist’s signiture is in bone, and the great chandelier contains examples of every bone in the human body.
Crypt of the Capuchins
In the heart of Rome lies the church of Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins. The church was constructed in the early 17th century, and is the burial place of over 4,000 Capuchin friars. Between 1528 and 1870 these bones were carefully arranged in the rococco and baroque style, culminating in an oddly decorative and cheery arrangement of the dead, in contrast to the austere gothic arrangement used at Sedlec.
Each of the rooms comprising the ossuary is themed. One celebrates the resurrection, another celebrates death itself. The so-called Mass chapel is composed entirely of unarticulated free bones, to symbolize freedom from purgatory. Quantities of heads make up the crypt of skulls which is crowned by an hourglass with wings made from shoulder blades. The adjacent room is dedicated to pelvises, and the one after to legs and thighs. The final crypt bears the reaper on its cieling, as a skeleton, holding his characteristic scythe and a scale. The whole display serves as a reminder that life is finite, and at its end a sign alludes that you too will someday meet the reaper.
Bones in Paris and Portugal
Possibly the most visually disturbing ossuary lies in Portugal in the city of Evora. This ossuary contains the bones of 5,000 people, again arranged decoratively, but accented with several corpses hanging from chains that are not skeletal, but are dessicated mummies. Above its entrance are the words “We bones that are here, for your bones we wait”.
To the north lies by far the largest of all ossuaries, located in the catacombs of Paris. Containing the bodies of over 7 million people, these chambers span miles, with no one really certain as to their full extent. The bodies were disinterred from multiple Paris cemeteries to make room for more burials, or when a church became defunct and new construction facilitated the need to exhume the graves. One Paris cemetary had so many burials, that the repeated burials of mass graves led to the ground level rising almost twenty feet. Starting in the 18th century, the bones were removed as needed and placed against the stone walls of the catacombs, which were originally Roman-period limestone quarries. To get to the original stone walls of the corridors, one would have to climb over an average of nine feet of human bones. During WWII, both the Germans and the French Resistance used these caverns, and in 1871 the communards in Paris killed a group of Royalists in one of the chambers.
Modern Ossuaries
A more modern ossuary lies in Douaumont, France. Dedicated to soldiers who died at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. 130,000 unidentified soldiers, both Axis and Allied, lie in the ossuary. The bones in the ossuary can be seen through small windows, carefully stacked in small alcoves. This ossuary serves as a burial place, but also as a reminder of the horrors and sheer enormity of the first world war.
Ossuaries are a fascinating reminder of our mortality, and while they may seem macabre, they serve a purpose. As our population expands, and our available burial space declines, new ossuaries may be built to house the disinterred bones of old cemetaries. While they will likely lack the artistic flare of the past, they will be no less potent in their ability to remind us that death is always around the corner. Check out the images at Paranormala
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Underground UFO Base Near Camp Lejeune?
Jacksonville, NC - 11/7/2011 - unedited: Me and my girlfriend were leaving a friends house late at night, i took the same back road i always take to get home because its quicker. We were on a two lane road surround by trees an its pitch black not even a star in sight. we were a about half way home when i noticed in my rear view mirror less than a second a neon blue light flashed behind me just a little than a second later it was over on right of us falling down from the sky. We only saw the bottom of the ship as fell to the ground in a filed of trees. there was no noise no crash no explosion. It was as if the ground opened up and it flew straight into the ground like a underground base was there the trees didnt even move. At this point i knew we just saw a ufo. the bottom of the ship was round and flat like a pizza pan and had neon blue lights on each side that were designed like a sleeping mask u would wear on your face. The ship was black behind that and u could see this greyish white trail as it fell but like a blur.after it fell i wanted to stop and check it but my girlfriend was just wanting to go home. We were in shock at the fact that it was so close to us and we really saw this. this is the first time im telling anyone this. - MUFON CMS (NOTE: this is near Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune)
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Doughnut factory mishap causes lady to be 'jelly filled'
Bakery worker Anke Friedman, 24, is recovering after her hand was injected with marmalade by a machine that fills doughnuts with the sweet filling in a freak accident in Sonthofen, Germany.
Anke had been clearing a blockage in the system when it suddenly restarted, sending a shot of the sticky filling into the back of her hand.
"The jam was bulging under her skin and it was causing her a lot of pain," said a paramedic team spokesman. "At hospital they had to open up the wound, clean out the jam and then stitch her hand back up. She will be fine once the swelling goes down," they added.
A spokesman for the bakery said: "There is a security bar which the woman was supposed to lift before she put her hand inside which would have turned off the system. But to get it done quickly she had bypassed that bar and was injected with marmalade jam."
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'Phantoms and Monsters'
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Wife tires hubby out with sex, kills, cuts and feeds him to dogs
An Egyptian woman had sex with her husband all the night to exhaust him, waited for him to fall asleep and stabbed him to death. She then cut his body into little pieces and fed them to cats and dogs.
The woman, who was arrested two weeks after the murder, told police she decided to murder her man because he had persistently mistreated her.
It also took her nearly two weeks to plan for the murder. After surfing through the internet for a good plot that could elude police, she found that the best way is to exhaust him by having sex with him all the night so he will fall asleep.
The woman, a tour guide, said she carried out that plan to the letter and that it did work. Her husband Adel Abdullah, also a tour guide in the central town of Minya, was worn out and was fast asleep after a full night sexual session.
She then brought a knife and started to stab him but he did not die as the knife was small. She then brought a big knife and finished him off before lying on the bed next to him for several hours to take rest.
“After I woke up, I began skinning him and cutting his body into little pieces.…I put the pieces inside bags and started throwing them to stray cats and dogs in the back garden…I then sat on the balcony watching them eating,” she told police, according to Egyptian newspapers.
“Every time they finished a piece, I threw them another piece….I then crushed his skull and bones with the gas cylinder, put black paint on them and dumped them in the garbage bin so no one will recognize them.”
Newspapers said her husband’s brother, reported him missing nearly 15 days after the murder, adding that a dustman stumbled across a painted part of the husband’s leg, which led police to discover the crime.
“I killed him because he never stopped insulting and maltreating me…he had totally obliterated my personality…our dispute had reached a dead end after he refused to divorce me, which left me with no choice but to kill him,” she said.
One newspaper quoted a local university professor as saying it was an individual crime which showed the killer had been under strong psychological pressures given the hideous nature of the murder.
“This crime should serve an alarm to any one who exercises oppression and cruelty against the one who cares for him, whether a wife, a worker or a son…yet, a murder can never be justified,” said Dr Mohammed Abu Al Futouh, psychology professor at Cairo University. - emirates247
