Did Somebody Order Dinner To Go?
Visitors to the Beekse Bergen Safari Park in the Netherlands got a true picture of mother nature on Monday. Several Sloth bears ate a hardy meal of Barbary macaque after chasing it down and killing it. Welcome to the great outdoors, folks!
The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."
"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals," it said.
I'll say the harmony was disturbed.
And in a related story, some people are up in arms because state conservation allowed 63 elk to starve to death over the winter near Mount Saint Helens. There were about 630 elk wintering in the immediate area out of a total herd of around 13,000. Mother nature can be hard at times. Too many elk and too little food makes this inevitable.
I find it a bit difficult to get worked up over either story. In both cases, this is nature at work. It's not all pretty and orderly, sorry to disappoint you.
Weird Stuff | Gaius Monday, 15 May , 2006
By Black Jack, Monday, 15 May , 2006 @ 6:35 pm
A wise man said: Nature is red in tooth and claw.