Here at Microkhan world headquarters, there are few things we admire more than passionate attention to detail, especially when it’s in the service of chronicling the arcane. And so you can imagine our joy upon encountering this awesomely comprehensive list of bygone mountain lion attacks, which does an excellent job of illustrating North America’s century-long […]
The recent kidnapping of two Assamese forestry officials may have been peacefully resolved, but the caper hints at a deepening problem in India’s long troubled North-East. No, not the continued prevalence of insurgent groups that double as organized-crime outfits, but rather the bulldozing of woodlands that are the region’s foremost natural resource. The forestry officials […]
Tags:animal attacks·Assam·corruption·environment·India·kidnapping·leopards·North-East India
Nature just hasn’t seen fit to color many terrestrial animals blue, which is why the mere mention of the concept usually makes us think exclusively of fictional beasts. But as it turns out, blue bulls are rather common in India, and they have recently been causing serious problems: Led by Una district committee of Himachal […]
Tags:animal attacks·animals·blue bulls·India·philosophy·wildlife management
For those suffering from a grave case of ursinophobia, we provide the following snippet from Bear Facts, an informational brochure produced by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game: Many bears live in Alaska and many people enjoy the outdoors, but surprisingly few people even see bears. Only a tiny percentage of those few are […]
Tags:Alaska·animal attacks·bears·dogs·North Dakota·public health·statistics
For those of us who worship at the altar of hops and malted barley, no trip to Kenya can be complete without sampling a bottle or twelve of Tusker, East African Breweries’ flagship beer. It’s by no means a great lager—when served cold, it reminded us of the thin-yet-refreshing Brazilian brew Antarctica. But Tusker gets […]
Tags:animal attacks·beer·elephants·George Hurst·Kenya·Tanzania·Tusker
It’s probably a bit of stretch to file 1999’s Deep Blue Sea under our ever-popular Bad Movie Friday heading. While the premise of the film could scarcely be more ridiculous—hyper-intelligent mako sharks?—the sunken-laboratory thriller is not without its guilty pleasures. Chief among them is this classic scene, which features Samuel L. Jackson at his edgy […]
Tags:animal attacks·Bad Movie Friday·Deep Blue Sea·movies·Now the Hell Will Start·Samuel L. Jackson·sharks
We’ve long assumed that antivenins were stocked in every hospital pharmacy, so that snakebite victims need only worry about getting medical attention in time. But, alas, that’s really not the case at all—even mainstream antivenins such as CroFab must often be shipped in to address specific cases, and rarer remedies are getting increasingly hard to […]
Tags:animal attacks·antivenin·Canada·Florida·medicine·Ontario·snakes
In light of February’s horrific chimpanzee attack in Stamford, Connecticut legislators have proposed a sweeping ban on pets deemed capable of harming humans. And they’ve spared no effort in identifying animals who they’d like to render bestia non grata in the Nutmeg State. This entry in the bill’s verboten list caught Microkhan’s eye: (10) The […]
There are less than 500 wild tigers left in Indonesia. But they’ve been mighty busy in 2009, mauling nine Sumatrans to death over the past five weeks alone. The victims were all either illegal loggers, or poachers, or possibly both. As with the tanking global economy, things are bound to get a lot worse before […]
Tags:animal attacks·environment·Indonesia·tigers·wildlife management
The Australian Navy is hunting for the shark that recently mauled one of its more experienced divers. How will the Aussies know when they’ve found the real culprit, rather than just another shark? It ain’t easy.
A tragedy in Stamford brings an old mystery to the fore: Why are chimpanzees so fantastically strong, at least compared to their human brethren? The rule of thumb states that chimps are five-to-seven times stronger, pound-for-pound, than members of our species (with whom chimps share 99 percent of their DNA). That’s a bit puzzling, since […]
My son’s first birthday was on Sunday, so I just took him to the pediatrician for his one-year checkup. At the end of the appointment, I was handed a sheet detailing the main hazards that kids like Maceo face: Tylenol tablets, shade cords, plastic bags, etc. Useful advice, for sure. But why didn’t the doc […]
