Third headless crocodile found in Queensland.

No, really.

For the third time in as many months a crocodile has been found decapitated in northern Queensland.

The three-metre saltwater crocodile was found near the Gulf of Carpentaria town of Karumba, after similar incidents in Mount Isa and Innisfail in August.

(Via Facebook) Whoever is doing this is taking the head but not the hide.  Which is weird, because crocodile hide is valuable on its own and saltwater crocodiles are a protected species in Australia (that, alas, makes the hides worth even more on the black market).  It’s still probably poachers, but somebody put it on a Call of Cthulhu Facebook page for the same reason that I’m putting it here: the adventure scenario practically writes itself.

Don’t poach elephants.

OK, look, I suspect that the author of this is a tree-hugger. But even if she is…

People are shooting, poisoning, and spearing [elephants] at such a rate across the continent that some scientists already consider them “ecologically extinct.” There are now fewer than 500,000 wild African elephants—maybe no more than half that number—and barely 32,000 Asian elephants.

They cannot fight against us; they cannot win this battle.

And the horror of what is happening to them is surely compounded in their minds by the empathy they feel for one another—an emotion that scientists have at last been able to demonstrate experimentally in elephants.

Continue reading Don’t poach elephants.