WebClawer: Nearly 800-pound stingray caught, rare bird helps nudists, “monster pig” blocks traffic

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

From the giant (stingrays and pigs) to the tiny (the Dartford Warbler, a small bird) to the downright mean (a ladder-climbing, ranger-attacking Komodo dragon), the Web is full of animal news today:

-- British biologist Ian Welch has captured the largest freshwater fish ever caught with a rod: a nearly 800-pound stingray found in the Maeklong River in Thailand as part of a giant freshwater stingray tagging program. The stingray is 7 feet long, 7 feet wide, and had a sting measuring 10 feet. It took Welch an hour and a half to reel the fish in and 13 adult men to pull it from the water. ‘It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in had my colleague not grabbed my trousers -- it was like the whole earth had just moved. I knew it was going to a big one,’ Welch said of the battle with the stingray. After the struggle to pull it into the boat, he explained, ‘...there was just silence because everyone was just in awe of this thing. That line from the film Jaws came to mind about needing a bigger boat because we had to get it to the shore to tag it.’ The team finally managed to get the stingray to shore by pulling it behind the boat in a 12-foot-wide net. The stingray, which turned out to be a pregnant female, was tagged and a DNA sample was taken before it was released. Giant freshwater stingrays are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ‘red list,’ meaning they’re considered vulnerable for extinction. Telegraph

-- A Komodo dragon climbed a ladder to an Indonesian park ranger’s hut and mauled the man, who received severe lacerations on his hand and foot. Infection is a risk because the reptile’s saliva contains 50 known bacteria strains, but the man, who goes by the single name Main (common in Indonesia), seems to be recovering and a nurse said there was no sign of toxin poisoning. ‘I’m lucky I survived,’ said Main. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened to me ... in 25 years on the job. I’ve never been attacked.’ Associated Press

-- A rare bird called the Dartford Warbler is an unlikely ally to nudists who feared they would lose their beach of choice to a planned luxury apartment development. A recent study found the warbler, which is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s ‘near threatened’ list, may be nesting near the disputed beach in Portsmouth, U.K. Plans for the development are now on hold until the results of a full bird survey are available. Telegraph

-- Motorists in the German state of Hesse were so terrified by what they called a ‘monster pig’ blocking traffic that they stopped in their cars and called police rather than try to move the animal. The sow, estimated at 440 pounds, was moved out of the road by police, who then engaged in what they termed a ‘painstaking search’ to find its owners. ‘She was about 3 kilometres from home and they obviously weren’t going to go tramping through the countryside looking for the pen,’ a police spokesperson explained. The Local

-- The Bristol Zoo is celebrating their first birth of an endangered Malagasy giant jumping rat in more than four years. The rats, which experts predict could be extinct in the wild within the next 24 years, are native to the island of Madagascar. ‘The birth of this baby is great news for Bristol Zoo as well as for the European captive breeding population,’ zoo spokesperson Katie Cummins said. There are 52 Malagasy giant jumping rats in captivity in Europe. BBC

-- Lindsay Barnett