Animal Videos

Arakawa River Seal Sighting Ignites Media Frenzy

The seal I blogged about yesterday is still hanging out in Saitama, and it seems to have ignited a major media frenzy:

The animal has been seen in the Arakawa river near the Akigase water diversion weir, around 35 kilometers upstream from Tokyo Bay. According to locals and other sources, the seal began appearing in the area a few days ago.

On Oct. 11, around 100 spectators including parents with their children had gathered on both banks of the river. When the seal poked its head out from the water about every 10 to 20 minutes, people would call out to it.

Could it be Tama-chan, the seal that became a national celebrity back in 2003?

Although both seals were spotted in Saitama prefecture, a side-by-side comparison of photos shows that this seal looks very different. An expert says that they are two entirely different types of seals.

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Saitama Residents Spot Seal in Arakawa River

For the last three weeks, residents of the city of Shiki in Saitama prefecture have been reporting the presence of a wild seal:

It’s in a part of the Arakawa River that is quite far inland. It’s very rare to see any seals in this part of Japan, especially when you consider the fact that the seal would have had to swim its way upriver through Tokyo to reach Shiki.

Here’s the location on Google Street view, for those who might be interested in checking it out:

View Larger Map

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Cat Election in Japan

The city of Saga has found an interesting way of dealing with stray cats. Instead of sending animal control officers to round up and imprison the cats, it has turned them into celebrities. Two years ago, eight of the downtown area’s stray cats were designated “stray cat idols.” Local shops began to sell souvenirs featuring images of the eight “lucky” cats, and one bakery sold cookie reproductions of them.

However, the project soon encountered a problem that wasn’t exactly unpredictable. Sometime last year, two of the eight cats could no longer be found. Stray cats are hard to track, and apparently they sometimes relocate to new areas or just disappear.

So two of the eight cats were gone, and the city had a couple dozen other stray cats wandering around downtown. To select new members of the lucky eight, they decided to follow the example of AKB48 and have fans elect the two top idol cats:

Eight candidates were chosen and citizens were allowed to vote by placing stickers on a voting board. The voting was carried out over a period of 3 months.

The #1 cat was “Horie no Pan” (Horie’s Bread), named after a local bakery. Second place went to “Chibi #4.” However, Chibi was disqualified because he disappeared from the downtown area, apparently lured away by a female stray. Ultimately, the second spot was awarded to “Ni Sen Man En” (20,000,000 yen), who had actually come in third place.

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Chimpanzee Grills Fish & Arranges Flowers

Pan-kun the chimpanzee learns how to grill some saury and arrange flowers:

I am guessing that Pan-kun can sense the heat of the grill and is smart enough to know that he should avoid touching it, but still seems like a pretty risky stunt.

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Baby Monkey Survives Typhoon & Befriends Dog

Earlier this month, Typhoon Talas swept through Wakayama prefecture, causing deadly landslides. Shortly after the typhoon, one resident of Tanabe was walking near a heavily damaged area and discovered a baby monkey. The monkey’s mother was nowhere to be found, so the man adopted it:

The monkey now considers the man’s dog, Goma (a male), to be his surrogate mother. Whenever the Goma goes for a walk, the monkey clings to his back.

The narrator remarks on how this dog and monkey combo is very different from the common image of dogs and monkeys as enemies. [In the Japanese language when one says that two people are like "dogs and monkeys" (犬猿の仲), it means that they don't get along well. ]

For now, the monkey is a baby and is relatively easy to take care of, but when it gets older, it will be hard to keep as a house pet. The man is looking for a zoo that will adopt the monkey.

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Ostrich in Fukushima

Here’s some footage filmed by an official who was accompanying former residents as they made temporary visits to their homes in the Fukushima Daiichi exclusion zone:

At one point near Ono Station, he encountered an ostrich. There was an ostrich farm in the area, and although many of the animals probably starved to death, this one seemed to have escaped from the farm. The official put some dog food on the street, and the hungry ostrich happily ate it.

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