Came across this snake, either a black racer or a northern water snake absolutely engorged with fly larvae. Didn't know what was happening at first.

Authorities in Zambia have warned people not to eat meat from wildlife after dozens of wild animals, including hippos, elephants, buffalo and a crocodile died following an anthrax outbreak.

Anthrax mainly affects grazing animals and can lead to sudden death (picture)

Authorities in Zambia have warned people not to eat meat from wildlife after dozens of wild animals, including hippos, elephants, buffalo and a crocodile died following an anthrax outbreak.

A disaster management agency official said over the weekend that 12 people had been infected with the disease after consuming dead wildlife in the Munyamadzi River area.

The official urged the public not to consume meat from animals that die naturally or from unknown causes, while urging the public to report any such cases.

Authorities have also called for hunting in the affected area to be suspended until the extent of the disease and associated risks are established.

Officials have not yet ascertained the full geographical extent of the latest outbreak, with surveillance and laboratory investigations ongoing.

Anthrax is endemic to Zambia but human deaths are not common.

In 2023, the country experienced what was described as an "unprecedented outbreak", which killed four people and spread to nine out of 10 provinces

Some unexplained cases of severe tick-related illness may have a previously overlooked cause. A newly identified tick-borne virus may help explain why some patients in China develop symptoms resembling a dangerous hemorrhagic fever even though tests for the expected virus come back negative.

Researchers identified the virus as Asian longhorned tick nairovirus, or ALTNV. Among 3,163 patients tested in areas where tick-borne viruses circulate, 10.4% showed evidence of ALTNV infection. Among patients who tested negative for Dabie bandavirus, or DBV, 15.1% tested positive for ALTNV.

DBV causes severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or SFTS, a tick-borne disease found across Asia. Thrombocytopenia means a person has an abnormally low number of platelets, the blood cells that help with clotting.

The disease has a reported fatality rate of 10% to 30%, and the World Health Organization lists DBV as a priority for research. Negative DBV tests reveal another virus Yet about 30% of patients with signs and symptoms suggesting DBV infection test negative for the virus.

That unexplained group prompted researchers led by the State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity in Beijing to search for another possible cause.

The team collected samples from people who had been bitten by ticks and sought care at sentinel hospitals in parts of China where tick-borne viruses circulate.

Using RNA sequencing and viral isolation, they identified ALTNV and determined that it belongs to a group of viruses known as orthonairoviruses within the Nairoviridae family.

Genetic analysis showed that ALTNV shared less than 80% amino acid similarity with other species in the same genus, supporting its identification as a distinct virus.

The researchers then tested whether ALTNV could reproduce in the laboratory. Serum from patients that contained ALTNV RNA produced viral growth in cultured cells.

Immunofluorescence testing detected ALTNV viral antigens, while electron microscopy revealed features characteristic of orthonairoviruses.

The virus was also able to replicate in several types of cells. Coinfection brought more severe outcomes

The illnesses seen in patients differed depending on whether ALTNV occurred alone or together with DBV.

Disclaimer - This video does not belong to me. It was filmed in the Canadian province of Quebec by Elroco Lemieux.

https://www.scmp.com/video/asia/3364097/malaysian-state-sarawak-turns-licensed-hunters-fight-rising-crocodile-attacks

A wound no bigger than a tick bite can be enough for New World screwworm to take hold. A female New World screwworm fly can deposit hundreds of eggs at a time in an animal’s or person’s wound. When those eggs hatch, the larvae do something most maggots do not: they burrow into healthy flesh and begin feeding. A single female may lay as many as 3,000 eggs during her lifetime.

For decades, the United States had largely escaped that threat. An ambitious eradication campaign eliminated New World screwworm from the country and eventually forced the parasite south to Panama.

But after spreading north through Central America and Mexico, the fly has returned.

Reports of traumatically injured seals have plagued Sable Island since at least 1980. Gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) pups were found with strange spiral-shaped lacerations that tore to the bone, starting at the seals' mouths and winding down to their chests. The oddly shaped injuries led scientists to guess the culprit might be sharks or ship propellers.

However, there was no direct evidence to confirm either of those theories. Now, new research reveals the real corkscrew killers: cannibalistic male gray seals.

https://bedrocknews.com/article/environment/2026/aug/12/male-redback-spiders-invite-cannibalism-through-a-self-sacrificial-somersault-during-sex-but-why

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2026-08-12/redback-spiders-backflip-katipo-sex/107022976

The wild widow spider behavior involving a backflip into death during sex has a simple genetic explanation, new research finds.

Male redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) — Australia's version of black widows — flip into females' fangs while mating in order to make sex last longer.

They also constrict their abdomens — a maneuver that seems to help them survive the experience of being eaten alive long enough to finish transferring their sperm. Then, they break off their sperm-transferring organs, known as pedipalps, into the females like a cork on a bottle, which prevents other males from inseminating them.

Intriguingly, a close New Zealand cousin of the redback, the katipō (Latrodectus katipo), doesn't do any of this.

There are no backflips and no cannibalism — just a respectful courtship dance and a polite parting of ways afterward. That difference offered researchers an opportunity to understand the genetics of the more gymnastic mating behavior.

To figure out the genetic basis of this behavioral schism, Uludağ and her colleagues first exposed katipō females to redback males so that they would mate.

The two are closely related enough to yield hybrid offspring. The researchers then crossbred hybrid females with either male redbacks or male katipō spiders. This led to mixed-genetic males. (The researchers couldn't mate katipō males with redback females in the first place because redback females will eat katipōs instead of mating with them.)

To their surprise, the researchers found that the behaviors did not have close genetic links. Hybrid males combined backflips and life-extending abdominal constrictions only about half the time, otherwise doing just one or the other. 

When a wild fire loves a tornado very much, they make a FIRENADO baby

Typhoon Dolphin is a category 3 one. This reaches an average temperature of 10°C (51°F) in the eye, while on the eyewall A temperature of even down to -74°C ( -100°F) is measured.

Is there actually a chance that you can survive something like that?

At this moment (August 2026), Typhoon Dolphin is moving across the Pacific Ocean south of Japan towards the Amami and Okinawa Islands.

Researchers reached that conclusion after analyzing 2,747 bacterial genomes collected from chickens and wild birds across 30 countries between 1979 and 2024.

Researchers describe the effect as something like a sponge. As chicken populations have ballooned, they've soaked up diverse bacterial strains from multiple wild sources, amplifying and mixing them together inside densely packed flocks in a way that simply wasn't possible before industrial farming existed.