When scientists set up 225 camera traps in Tanzania's Serengeti Park in May 2010 to capture the inner lives of its wildlife, they didn't expect to get 1.2 million sets of photos in the next three years. But the real trouble began when it was time to look through the photos — they simply couldn't do it.

"It was too much for me to sort through," said study researcher Alexandra Swanson, of the University of Minnesota, Saint Paul. "We were simply overwhelmed."

So they asked for help.

Swanson and her colleagues connected with Zooniverse, a citizen science platform that allows people on the internet to participate in real scientific research.

Together they created Snapshot Serengeti, a website that let internet users do the work for them.

By 2013, 28,000 registered volunteers had found that 322,653 photos contained "48 different species and species group, including rare and elusive animals such as aardwolf and zorilla," according to the study published June 9 in the journal Scientific Data.

The scientists compared the volunteer's classifications with those of experts and found that though most users had no background in animal science, they were correct 97% of the time, Swanson said.

"Some photos were really tricky even for those really recognizable animals," Swanson said. "The filtering interface produced really realizable data."

Here's how it works.

When a user signs into the website, an automated walk-through guides them through the process. The options below the photo include tick boxes for fire or for when no animals are present. It also allows the user to see where the photo was taken. In this example photo, a wildebeest crosses the frame.

Wildebeests were a common sight among the photos. 1.6 million wildebeests and zebras migrate every year across the 434 square mile area where the cameras were rigged. The user could select wildebeest in one of the 57 options to the right, but what if you aren't so sure?

The interface's algorithm could narrow down to a specific animal based on the selected characteristics. For example, users can select what the animal looks like from a list of seven common animals.

From there, five defining features — pattern, color, horns, tail, and build — narrows the options further. Wildebeests don't have a defining pattern or particularly bright colors but their horns are distinctively curled, unlike the waterbuck, which has sharp, straight horns.

Wildebeests and zebras were often photographed together because they migrate en masse to avoid being killed by lions. The wildebeest takes up the majority of the frame but users are warned to be vigilant of other species lurking in the background.

Here, the zebra's distinctive black and white pattern can be seen through the trees.

Once the animals are identified, users are asked to note what each is doing. The animals also included descriptions and additional photos of the animal.

All of the data collected is added to this searchable database of images.

The study has concluded but the camera traps are still taking photos and Swanson estimates there are 300,000 more waiting to be picked up from Tanzania. She said 700,000 photos have already been been classified on the website since the study ended, and users are still actively working through them.

It's easy to let time get away from you while classifying animals. Once you're done with one photo, another pops up. It's also a great way to learn about rare animals like the aardwolf, a shyer cousin of the hyena who prefers termites to meat. People who wouldn't normally get the chance to see animals from the Serengeti can get up close and personal with them, and participate in real scientific research at the same time.

"This kind of research wouldn't be possible without the help of volunteers," Swanson said. "Getting everyday people who are not scientists involved has enabled this really cool research."

SEE ALSO: Incredible new images reveal the secret lives of animals in the Serengeti

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Recognizing your reflection in the mirror as yourself is something we can all do by about the age of two, and it's something sort of special about us as humans.

We are one of only a few species in the animal kingdom that can do this. The club includes dolphins, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos. 

Being able to recognize your reflection in a mirror as yourself is a marker of self-awareness, part of higher intelligence that not all animals have.

Take this jaguar caught in a video taken by photographer Xavier Hubert-Brierre, for example:

Cats and dogs fail the mirror test. They don't realize their reflection is not another animal.

Even gorillas, which do have the self-awareness to recognize themselves in the mirror, can get confused seeing their reflections for the first time (as there aren't normally large mirrors in the jungle if people aren't doing research). This silverback might think he's meeting a rival he wants to intimidate:

On the other hand, chimps are able to recognize their own reflection — though it can take them a little while to figure it out. 

But once they catch on, they sometimes use it to check out parts of their body they don't normally see, like this one does:

Maybe the next time you look in the mirror, it'll be with a little more appreciation — for your brain.

Watch the whole video of animals reacting to their reflections here:

[h/t io9]

SEE ALSO: This bizarre worm vomits out a creepy tree-like 'hand' to grab its food

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Lions, tigers, wolves, a hippopotamus, and other potentially dangerous animals escaped from a zoo in the Georgian capital after heavy rainfall damaged their cages.  

Severe flooding in Tbilisi on Sunday also killed at least 12 people, while dozens are still missing, the Associated Press reports. There workers were also found dead inside the zoo.

The zoo's director, Zurab Gurielidze, told the AP that's it's impossible to know how many animals were set free because the zoo was still under water. As of Sunday night, however, five lions and may monkeys were still unaccounted for, a zoo spokeswoman said.

Rescue teams helped to chase down a hippopotamus, which was shot with a tranquiliser dart.

Other animals have been shot and killed, including a white lion named Shumba, a zoo favourite. At least one elephant is now safely behind bars.
 

Below, rescuers try to pull the body of a camel out from mud in the flooded zoo.

The animals "haven't been fed, and in their hungry state they might attack people," a resident told the AP. 

Residents have been told to stay indoors while helicopters have been sent to locate the wandering animals. 

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Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was in a state of chaos this weekend after a massive rainstorm ravaged the city and set loose dozens of dangerous animals from a local zoo, the New York Times reported.

Twenty wolves, eight lions, several tigers and jaguars, and a hippopotamus escaped from the premises and had to be tracked down by local police and zoo staff, Russian news agency Interfax reported, according to the Times.

Twelve people were killed in the flood and 24 others are currently missing. In addition, six wolves found lurking around a children's hospital, as well as several other animals, were killed during the flood, the New York Times reported.

Zoo employee, Guliko Chitadze, who had her arm amputated after being attacked by a Tiger in May, also died on Sunday trying to save the lives of animals stranded around the city, Interfax reported, according to the Times.

Here are some jarring photos of the zoo animals, as well as the flood damage, in Tbilisi. Some of the animals are still missing, according to The Mirror.

SEE ALSO: Photos of the devastation caused by massive floods in Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico

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It is so rare, it has happened a mere 15 times in 100 years: the sighting of a white harbor porpoise.

On June 8, the porpoise was spotted near Denmark in the Baltic Sea by a layperson who caught the animal on camera. "This is an extraordinary sighting," says Fabian Ritter, marine biologist with the organization Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), which received the incredible footage.

And not only was the sighting extraordinary in itself, says Ritter, but the marine mammal's behavior was equally exceptional.

"This animal appears to be playing with the vessel, swims alongside it and rides the bow wave. That is quite unusual behavior for a harbor porpoise," says Ritter. "I'm not saying it's impossible," he adds, "but they are usually a wary species, and not especially interested in vessels. This is quite curious behavior."

Darker-colored harbor porpoises are not uncommon in the region, and are listed as "least concern" by IUCN. One (separate) Baltic Sea subpopulation is listed as critically endangered.

White harbor porpoises, however, are almost never seen. In fact, a brief butfascinating study of these sightings notes that white harbor porpoises have been spotted in 1911, 1928, 1929,1937 and 1988 in Ukraine, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark. In 2007, a white porpoise was spotted underneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Ritter explains that the white color of this harbor porpoise is due to leucism. It is genetic, marked by a partial lack of skin pigmentation. Albinism is a more extreme version of the condition.

Although it is an unusual phenomenon, explains Ritter, there are reports of other white marine mammals, including an orca off the coast of Russia and a famous humpback whale named Migaloo.

Although the striking white color of a marine mammal can translate into great enthusiasm from the public, having leucism or albinism can be problematic because the animal isn't able to camouflage in defense against predators. Leucism can also cause harm to vision, hearing or skin, says Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director for WDC in North America.

But there are outside threats to the white harbor porpoise in the video, including gray seals, who want to eat them. Other threats are ever-present toxins, which can cause problems for the small-toothed porpoise's immune system and liver, and gillnets — which are used in the fishing industry. The porpoises get caught in the nets and drown, explains Asmutis-Silvia.

But this beautiful porpoise has outlived all the threats so far, notes Ritter. "It appears that this is an adult. And although it's susceptible and more visible, it has made it until adulthood without being predated."

Let's hope things stay that way.

Watch the full video of the rarely seen white harbor porpoise here: 

See footage of Migaloo the white whale here: 

SEE ALSO: Incredible new images reveal the secret lives of animals in the Serengeti

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NOW WATCH: Stunning video of a man swimming through millions of jellyfish

(Reuters) - A black bear has been spotted in Indiana for the first time in more than 140 years, state wildlife officials said on Tuesday.

Paw prints and a scat pile found in northwest Indiana were left behind by a young male black bear that likely walked into the state from Michigan within the last week, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said in two statements.

"It's quite unusual and exciting for a Michigan lakeshore black bear to move this far south," said Mitch Marcus, an Indiana DNR wildlife official.

It was the first evidence of a wild bear in Indiana since 1871, the DNR said, adding there was no panic in the state about the unexpected visitor.

The scat pile was found in a driveway just north of South Bend and the paw prints were found in LaPorte County, about 70 miles (110 km) southeast of Chicago, according to the department.

Young black bears disperse in the springtime as they seek new territory to settle, it said.

Black bears, once a native species in Indiana, are now listed as an exotic mammal and protected under Indiana law.

"Indiana does not have a breeding population of black bears, and we expect this one to turn back north eventually," Marcus said.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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NOW WATCH: Researchers tested a rat’s empathy by giving it a choice between chocolate and a drowning friend

A tiger that escaped from a zoo in the Georgian capital during freak floods at the weekend killed a man in the city center on Wednesday, an interior ministry spokeswoman said.

"A tiger from the Tbilisi zoo killed a man" near the capital's central square, the spokeswoman told AFP.

"Police special forces were deployed and are hunting down the animal."

Georgian media said the tiger had been hiding in a warehouse and escaped the citywide police search for the animals, many of which were shot dead.

Floods hit Tbilisi on Sunday, killing at least 17 people and ravaging the city's central districts including the zoo, where hundreds of animals — including lions, tigers, wolves, and a hippo escaped.

More than half of the animals — some 300 species — either drowned in the muddy waters or were killed by police.

Note: Original reports that it was an escaped lion that killed the man have since been corrected by Georgian officials. It was a tiger, not a lion.

SEE ALSO: Startling photos show dozens of zoo animals roaming around Georgian city after massive flood

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As this delightful tweet from Sir Richard Branson that has been making the rounds of the internet points out, sharks aren't even close to the scariest creatures on the planet.

With Shark Week coming up and summer vacations at the beach about to kick in, we'll be seeing a lot of fearsome-looking sharks on TV — "Jaws" was the film that created the summer blockbuster phenomenon, after all.

But it's important to remember that these fascinating creatures have a lot more to fear from us than we do from them, at least in general. Humans kill somewhere between 63 million and 273 million sharks a year, with average estimates around 100 million sharks killed annually. In comparison: Three people died after being bitten by a shark last year.

We could quibble with the "most dangerous animal" designation. Mosquitoes spread diseases like malaria, which kills about 600,000 people a year, while humans murder about 475,000 other humans each year — though perhaps we are responsible for more deaths than that, with road injuries (cars were created by humans) and diseases caused by smoking (cigarettes were also created by humans) both making the top-10 causes of death worldwide.

Either way, humanity is pretty dangerous and apparently much more likely to bite each other than to be bitten by a shark.

So even though any news of a shark bite quickly becomes front-page news, people should probably spend a little less time worrying about what's under the water.

SEE ALSO: Giant eyes and hooked tentacles: Meet the Colossal Squid

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NOW WATCH: Punching a shark in the nose is not your best defense

The overpopulation of koalas in Australia is causing many of them to starve to death. Western Victoria wildlife officers are hoping a birth control program will be the key to saving Cape Otway's koalas. 

Produced by Grace Raver. Video courtesy of Associated Press

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Peaceful interactions rarely occur between a predator and prey. But researchers in Ethiopia caught wild wolves and monkeys called geladas intermixing without agression.

The seemingly tamed wild wolves just up and walk through the monkey herd, while the monkeys act like the wolves don't exist.

Other carnivores on Ethiopia's Guassa Plateau, feral dogs and servals mostly, hunt the gelada monkeys — it would seem that the wolves would be a natural predator as well. But instead researchers observed the two species happily intermixing for years.

This peaceful interaction could be similar to how dogs were first domesticated by humans. "The gelada case is comparable to what early domestication of dogs might have been like," study researcher Claudio Sillero, of the University of Oxford, told New Scientist's Bob Holmes.

From their observations, they think the mutual friendship helps the wolves hunt, by making rodents easier to spot and catch.

They reported the incident in the Journal of Mammalogy

An uncommon friendship

High up on the grassy Guassa Plateau 12,000 feet above sea level, gelada monkeys travel in herds up to 700 members strong. With long fangs, and wild manes of hair the gelada monkeys appear pretty vicious for an herbivore that likes to eat flowers and seeds. They share these grasslands with their main predators, servals and feral dogs, as well as wolves.

According to New Scientist:

"You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time," says [study researche Vivek] Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.

When the wolves enter the gelada monkey herd, they alter their behavior to show the monkeys they aren't aggressive. Normally wolves run in a zig zag pattern or make rapid movements when searching for rodents. But when around monkeys they slow down to a more sedate stalk even when hunting.

And even more surprisingly, the wolves in the study don't try to eat the baby geladas — an easy-to-get meal. 

There's always exceptions to the rule, of course, and during their observation period the researchers did observe one altercation: One of the wolves attacked a baby monkey. The adult geladas quickly mobbed the wolf, which dropped the baby monkey unharmed and ran off.

Primates have been observed to form associations with other animals, but, the authors write, these relationships are rare and often fleeting. In contrast, the gelada's relationship with the wolves is pretty stable — the researchers observed it over the course of years — and it doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon.

Why work together?

Other than engaging in fewer fights, were there other benefits to these co-habitating creatures? The researchers found that when these two species intermingle, the wolves can snatch up rodents about 40% more often than when hunting away from the monkeys.

Why? The researchers have two theories: Either the geladas flush rodents out of their homes, making them easy targets, or the rodents have trouble distinguishing between the two similarly sized and colored animals, and don't run away from the wolves.

While the wolves earn easier meals, the monkeys don't seem to benefit from having the wolves around. They don't scare away other predators that prey on geladas — the researchers saw feral dogs kill numerous monkeys during the study.

Historically wolves also tagged along behind another species: humans. Thousands of years ago researchers believe that wolves scavenged along the outskirts of human settlements or groups. While the humans probably killed aggressive wolves, the non-aggressive wolves were tolerated and eventually domesticated after people found value in them as hunters and possible companions.

SEE ALSO: Crazy video of what different animals do when a giant mirror shows up in the jungle

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NOW WATCH: Amazing video captures how exotic animals drink water

The largest camera trap study ever, done in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania continues to reveal hidden gems from the park's unique wildlife. The 1.2 million sets of photos (three photos a set) reveal the daily lives of the Serengeti’s wild inhabitants as they eat, play, nap, and even take inadvertent selfies.

One awesome find from the set is this solitary baboon who examines a camera trap and takes an artful selfie.

Most baboons living in the Serengeti form huge troops, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. They often spend hours grooming and eating the parasites clinging to fur.

Though the baboon troops mostly keep to themselves, they’ve been found in the same areas as massive herds of zebras and wildebeest, potentially to avoid predation by animals like lions. Wildebeest have even learned to respond to baboons' alarm calls.

The 434 square mile area where the 225 cameras were mounted sees an annual migration of 1.6 million wildebeest, zebra, and gazelles, according to the study published on June 9 in Scientific Data.

The cameras, mounted on trees and metal poles, takes three photos every time a combination of heat and movement. You can search Snapshot Serengeti's site to find your favorites.

SEE ALSO: Incredible new images reveal the secret lives of animals in the Serengeti

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NOW WATCH: Soon you can take selfies from the world’s most expensive satellite — for free

Dots of bright baby squids float through the sea in the incredible video below from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.

The video was taken back in 2002 in California's Monterey Bay Canyon with a remotely operated submarine operated by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), but it's making the rounds of the internet again this week with Hoff's haunting Vimeo video.

The video was the first to show the awesome behaviors that some squid adopt to protect their thousands of eggs.

Instead of letting its unhatched eggs float out free into the ocean, the squid, Gonatus onyx, holds them close in a cone-like shape between its arms.

It's an incredibly beautiful feat of nature. Check it out:

This brooding behavior was reported in the journal Nature in 2005 by MBARI researchers. In the last few years researchers have found two other species of squid also show this unique behavior, as well, the Gonatus madokaiand the Bathyteuthis berryi.

Researchers did find a similar sheet of eggs belonging to a fourth species of squid, Gonatus fabricii. But since no one has seen it actually holding its eggs, the official number of brooding squids is three.

The eggs are actually held in a shimmering membranous tube that undulates regularly as the mom pumps water through it to provide oxygen to her eggs. Since the squid live pretty deep in the ocean, about 1 to 1.5 miles down, where there's less oxygen in the water, the pumping motion keeps the eggs healthy.

While the baby squids in the gif above look like they are glowing, they actually aren't bioluminescent, Steven Haddock, a squid researcher at MBARI, told Business Insider in an email. They only look like they are glowing because of the lights from the submarine.

The amount of care these squid mothers give to their eggs is impressive — and much riskier than letting their babies float free.

The eggs get in the way of these squids' ability to evade predators with nimble escape patterns and quick bursts of speed — their arms are busy clasping their brood, instead. They stay that way for up to 9 months, before releasing their babies into the dark ocean.

Check out the full video, taken by MBARI and set to music by Hoff on Vimeo. The mother squid doesn't come into view until about 3:00 minutes in, so jump forward if you want.

SEE ALSO: Giant Eyes And Hooked Tentacles: Meet The Colossal Squid

SEE ALSO: Insane video shows what happens when you strap a camera to a human-sized squid

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NOW WATCH: Punching a shark in the nose is not your best defense

Those boxing kangaroos have a secret: They're southpaws.

New research finds that the eastern gray kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) and the red kangaroo (Macropus rufus) prefer to use their left forelimbs when feeding and grooming. (No word on fighting, which kangaroos tend to do in a boxer stance, leading to cartoon portrayals of the animals in boxing gloves.)

The discovery of handedness in kangaroos is surprising, scientists said. Though hand (or paw) preferences have been noted in some animals, humans are considered unique in showing a strong preference on a population level: About nine out of 10 people are right-handed.

As marsupials, kangaroos are well removed from the primate lineage, suggesting that handedness is something that has evolved independently over time, researchers said.

"What we observed in reality, we did not initially expect," study leader Yegor Malashichev of Saint Petersburg State University in Russia said in a statement. "But the more we observed, the more it became obvious that there is something really new and interesting in the wild."

Pick a hand

Malashichev previously found that some species of walking frogs show handedness, while jumping frogs are less likely to do so. Other researchers have studied handedness in great apes, both in captivity and the wild, but have found evidence for a preference only on certain tasks. Chimpanzees might prefer using their left hands while fishing for termites and their right hands for cracking nuts, researchers reported in 2005 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Humans, by contrast, tend to stick with one hand preference: Righties don't typically switch to left-handedness just to eat, for example.

In the new study, Malashichev and his colleagues observed four species of marsupial in the wild: the eastern gray and red kangaroos, as well as the red-necked wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) and the Goodfellow's tree-kangaroo (Dendrolagus goodfellowi).

The wallaby and the tree-kangaroo showed inconsistent handedness, not unlike nonhuman great apes. For example, red-necked wallabies preferred using their left paws while grooming or while standing on their hind legs to eat, but they switched to using their right paws to eat while standing in a three-legged pose. The Goodfellow's tree-kangaroo showed no particular handedness at all.

Two-legged lefties

But eastern gray and red kangaroos were overwhelmingly lefties, the researchers report today (June 18) in the journal Cell Biology. These kangaroos used their left paws more frequently regardless of whether the animals were standing on two limbs, four limbs or three.

The likelihood of developing paw preferences doesn't seem to depend on the family to which a species belongs, Malashichev and his colleagues wrote. Members of different families show similar levels of hand lateralization, while closely related species vary. All four species studied in the new research were from the same family, Macropodidae, and yet some were clear lefties while others switched hand preferences based on their activities, or showed no preferences at all.

This lack of familial pattern suggests that handedness may develop in response to certain ecological challenges, the researchers wrote. Marsupials that more frequently move around on two legs tend to have higher levels of handedness, suggesting that bipedalism may drive the adaptation, the scientists said.

However, little is yet known about how handedness works in the marsupial brain. In humans, the left and right halves, or hemispheres, of the brain are specialized. This specialization of function seems related to handedness, though exactly how is not clear. To date, no one knows much about the symmetry — or lack thereof — of the motor regions of the marsupial brain, Malashichev and his colleagues wrote.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• The 12 Weirdest Animal Discoveries
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NOW WATCH: Watch This Determined Squirrel Steal A GoPro

Sonia Faruqi has investigated animal farms around the world.

In an exclusive, edited excerpt from her first book, "Project Animal Farm," she describes what happened when she, Brick, and Will, the owners of the farm she was living on, came across a chicken that had escaped from its cage.

It was rancid and repulsive with thousands of cages arranged in three endless columns.

Each cage was the size of a microwave but confined four or five hens, summing up to 13,000 hens in the factory.

Cages were the epitome of cold, steely efficiency. Hens drank water from a dripper at the back of their cage, and they ate yellow-brown pellets off a feed belt at the outside front of their cage.

They lived underneath a manure belt that sagged under the waste of the hens above, and they stood on a wire floor that was slanted so their eggs would roll automatically onto the egg belt running parallel to the feed belt outside their cage.

Each cage was a small, self-sufficient, automated black box. 

And yet there were six hens far down one aisle of cages, walking around.

Will strode in the direction of the fugitive hens. He opened the door to the room’s cooler, saying, “Chickens always go into the cooler," and captured them.

Clutching them three to a hand, upside-down by their legs, he brought them back to the cages.

When just one hen remained in his hands, he turned around to face me. “Since you helped me catch them,” he said, “you can cage this one.”

During the hen hunt, I’d acted as a useless accomplice. If I took the hen, I would change from abettor to abuser. 

One part of me ordered, “Don’t cage the hen,” for confining the hen to a cage would be like twisting or tearing off her legs — she would never walk again.

The other part of me countered, “Cage the hen,” for a rejection of Will’s effusive offer would be a slap to Brick and Will’s faces. (I was living with them in their house.)

“What’s going on?” Will asked me. “What are you waiting for? It won’t bite, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“I’m just trying to decide which cage to put the hen in,” I said.  

My fingers closed around the hen’s legs. So far, in all the time that I’d spent at my host family’s factory farm, I’d been surrounded by hens, but I hadn’t touched any of them.

The only point of human interaction with hens was with dead hens when their carcasses were extracted from cages.

In my hand, the hen felt like an extension of my own hand, and we were bonded in that moment of contact.

Unwilling to fling my hen into a cage by her legs, I turned her upright.

“Don't!!” Brick hollered.

Before this moment, I hadn’t even noticed the hens’ wings, for they remained pinched to their sides in their cages. Now, I saw that a hen’s wingspan measured more than the width of the entire cage she shared with others.

The hen propelled herself into the air.

Brick launched into a creative string of curses. I acted apologetic, but felt ecstatic, for the hen was free (at least for now), and Brick still trusted me. The hen hunt was a handshake of friendship.

Excerpted from Sonia Faruqi’s "Project Animal Farm: An Accidental Journey into the Secret World of Farming and the Truth About Our Food" (Pegasus Books, July 2015). Copyright 2015. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Two shark attacks in North Carolina this weekend were a solemn reminder that animals are not always our friends. In fact, some of them are ruthless predators.

So which animals kill the most Americans?

Check out the Washington Post's chart here »

Shark attacks claim one American life per year on average. In April, a shark killed a 65-year old woman off the coast of Maui.

Alligators and bears also average one kill per year. Last September, a 22-year old Rutgers student lost his life when he was mauled to death by a black bear in New Jersey.

Venomous snakes and lizards claim the lives of six Americans each year. In May, a 37-year old Missouri man who was wading through a river in the town of Nixa was bitten on both legs by a venomous snake and died in the hospital the next day, USA Today reported. 

Spiders kill seven Americans every year. A boy in Alabama died last November after being bitten by a rare brown recluse spider.

Non-venomous arthropods (mosquitoes, ticks, lice, mites) kill nine Americans every year. The CDC is currently investigating a new strain of virus  dubbed as "Bourbon" that may be carried by ticks after a Kansas man died from a tick bite in February, according to Bloomberg.

Cows kill 20 Americans every year on average. Yes, cows are twenty times more lethal than sharks, bears, or alligators. The Post points out that most of these deaths are attributed to workplace accidents involving farmhands. As the CDC notes, "large livestock are powerful, quick, protective of their territory and offspring, and especially unpredictable during breeding and birthing periods."  

Dogs, also known as man's best friend, kill man 28 times each year in America. In May, the Chicago Tribune reported a tragic story in which a dog bit a 5-year old boy in the throat. He died shortly thereafter.

The Post's chart shows mammals, including horses, pigs, and deer, claim the lives of 52 Americans each year on average. But the most deadly animals for Americans are also some of the smallest.

Bees, hornets, and wasps kill 58 Americans every year on average, mostly by anaphylactic shock after a sting. As recently as last week, a 65-year old man in Texas was killed after a swarm of bees attacked him while he was mowing his neighbors lawn. According to USA Today, the man had bumped into a shed that a beehive was attached to, causing a part of the hive to fall off and a cloud of bees to fly out.

So there you have it — the dogs you might encounter on a daily basis are more likely to kill you than sharks or bears. And you may never look at cows the same way again.

SEE ALSO: Startling photos show dozens of zoo animals roaming around Georgian city after massive flood

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NOW WATCH: A Passionate Argument For Killing Animals You Eat With Your Own Hands

The release of Jurassic World has reignited our love for palaeontology. Many of us share a longing to understand the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth long before we arrived. But palaeontology is a discipline much broader than this.

Dinosaurs dominated the land for 135 million years, but what happened during the rest of the Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history? The role of palaeontologists past and present has been to unravel the mysteries of life on Earth, and in doing so they’ve found a lot more than just dinosaur bones.

1. The spiky-backed ocean dweller

Hallucigenia was discovered when a 508 million year old fossil was found in 1911 in the world-famous Burgess Shale fossil site in Canada. Since then, our understanding of this ocean-dwelling creature has changed dramatically.

Its age means it falls into the geological Cambrian period, a pivotal moment for all life on Earth when complex lifeforms started to rapidly evolve. When originally described, Hallucigenia was first thought to have walked along the ocean floor on spiny legs and used tentacles on its back to catch food. Palaeontologists also argued over which end was its head.

But when a similar fossil was found in China, Hallucigenia was re-examined. Palaeontologists then discovered that its “legs” were actually protective spines on its back, and the tentacles formed two rows on its underside enabling it to “walk”. Researchers are still debating many of the features of Hallucigenia today, more than 100 years after it was discovered.

2. (Almost) the first fish out of water

100 million years on from Hallucigenia, aquatic habitats were thriving, but life on land was still in its earliest stages. Tiktaalik, part fish, part four-legged animal, is believed to be the first creature to develop characteristics that would help animals move out of the water and on to land.

It had gills, fins and scales like a fish, but also evolved features such as a flexible neck and a reptile-like head and lungs, beneficial for life on the ground. Fossils also show Tiktaalik had long fins that acted as legs, meaning it could “walk” along riverbeds as well as swim.

3. The giant Scottish scorpion

Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis, a 70cm-long scorpion, lived in what we now know as Scotland 340 million years ago. At a length greater than that of the average pet cat, this terrifying creature used its tail to catch and kill its prey.

Pulmonoscorpius also had unusually large eyes compared to its modern relatives, so most likely hunted during daylight hours. Scorpions shed their skin as they grow, so fossils of both the skin and the animal itself have been found.

4. The spiral-lipped shark

Helicoprion, a shark-like fish alive during the Permian (290 million years ago), had a rather unique dental structure. With a face that baffled palaeontologists for years, this creature had a lower jaw made up of a spiral of teeth, known as a tooth-whorl.

Modern sharks are able to lose and replace their teeth, but Helicoprion kept them all, with older teeth hidden within the inner layers of the tooth-whorl. When it caught its prey (most likely relatives of the squid), it would close its mouth and rotate its tooth-whorl to shred its catch.

5. A tiny, drunk horse

The Messel Oil Shale, once a volcanic lake in Germany, has plenty to offer the world of palaeontology. Eurohippus messelensis, was a miniature horse (the size of a modern day fox) originally thought to have died from eating fermented berries and in a drunken stupor, fallen into the lake. It’s now believed the 47 million year old horse actually died from inhaling toxic gas occasionally released from the depths of the lake.

But the misfortune continues, as it was later discovered that the horse was pregnant. Palaeontologists used high-resolution microscopes to identify the bones of a foal within the adult Eurohippus, improving our understanding of foetal development in these animals.

Palaeontology is a career firmly seated on many childhood wish-lists alongside movie stars and astronauts, and rightly so. But it’s important to remember there’s a lot more to palaeontology than the dinosaurs. This list is just the start.

Charlotte Stephenson is PhD candidate, palaeoenvironments & palaeobotany at University of Hull.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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NOW WATCH: NASA scientists are stumped by this dwarf planet

Close to half of all living species on the Earth could disappear by the end of this century, and humans will be the cause.

This is the sixth mass extinction— a loss of life that could rival the die-out that caused the dinosaurs to disappear 65 millions years ago after an asteroid hit the planet. 

This time, though, we’re the asteroid.

At least that's the finding of a recent study in the journal Science Advances.

The study found that animals are disappearing about 100 times faster than they used to and, ironically, humans could be among the first to go for good.

Not since the age of the dinosaurs ended 66 million years ago has the planet been losing species at this rapid a rate, said a study led by experts at Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley.

The research, which comes on the heels of another similar study done last year, "shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," said co-author Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University professor of biology.

"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead," Ehrlich said.

Humans may be one of them.

"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.

In her 2014 book, "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History," science writer Elizabeth Kolbert warned of the same phenomenon. She'd been inspired to write the book after visiting Panama and reporting on the rapid decline of several frog species there.

"We are deciding," Kolbert writes, "without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy."

The new analysis, which comes to some of the same conclusions Kolbert did last year, is based on documented extinctions of vertebrates, or animals with internal skeletons such as frogs, reptiles and tigers, from fossil records and other historical data. 

Its authors described it as "conservative."

Nevertheless, they found that the "average rate of vertebrate species loss over the last century is up to 114 times higher than it would be without human activity, even when relying on the most conservative estimates of species extinction," said the study.

"We emphasize that our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis because our aim was to place a realistic lower bound on humanity's impact on biodiversity."

The causes of species loss range from climate change to pollution to deforestation and more.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, about 41% of all amphibian species and 26% of all mammals are threatened with extinction.

"There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead," Ehrlich said.

The study called for "rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations — notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change."

READ MORE: Earth is on the edge of a 'Sixth Extinction'

SEE ALSO: International travel is turning the world into one giant supercontinent — and that's a very dangerous thing

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NOW WATCH: Researchers tested a rat’s empathy by giving it a choice between chocolate and a drowning friend

The largest camera trap study ever done in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania revealed the daily routines of the park's unique wildlife, often as they got up close and personal with the cameras.

This isn't a view of a cheetah that anyone would normally have without risking life and limb.

The scientists of Snapshot Serengeti mounted 225 camera traps on trees and metal poles in a 434 square mile area of the park in the hopes of capturing their secret lives. What they got was astounding. The cameras captured 1.2 million sets of photos (three photos per set) from June 2010 to May 2013, according to the study published on June 9 in Scientific Data.

While the cameras aren't rigged to attract wildlife — they wanted to see what the animals were doing in their natural habitats, without any humans around — the group caught tons of amazing photos.

"We wanted the cameras to give an unbiased view of how these animals were using the landscape," Swanson said. The photos captured Serengeti's wildlife, like the cheetahs below, in ways not many have seen them before. Cheetahs seemed to love mugging for the cameras, often lounging, playing, and eating in front of them.

Cheetah are notoriously fast — they can hit up to 60 miles per hour in a matter of seconds. The stationary cameras wouldn't have captured this cheetah as it chased its prey, but it did manage to photograph the aftermath of the hunt.

You can search Snapshot Serengeti's site to find your favorites.

SEE ALSO: Incredible new images reveal the secret lives of animals in the Serengeti

SEE ALSO: Help science by looking at pictures of animals on the internet

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NOW WATCH: 3 goats went airborne in China as part of an elaborate stunt with a giant kite

A snake captured some baby rabbits and was just settling down for a meal, when their mother came to the rescue.

In this epic video posted by YouTube user Ramakanth p, the mama rabbit takes on the snake in an epic battle of nature, red in tooth and (scales).

It's arguably crazier than the Battle of Kruger.

Here are the highlights of the matchup.

The unsuspecting snake sits coiled around the baby rabbits, when Mama rabbit comes out of nowhere and pounces on the snake. 

The two wrestle for a while, and then the snake attempts to make a getaway over a rock wall. But the rabbit has other plans.

The snake isn't going to take this lying down, however. When its harasser gets too close, the snake makes its move, and the rabbit pulls some jiu jitsu moves to get away.

The weary snake make its getaway over some gravel, but the rabbit follows in hot pursuit, and delivers its final smackdown.

The video doesn't specify what kind of snake it was, but some outlets identified it as a black snake. Watch the full video here:

SEE ALSO: Our interest in unlikely animal friendships reveals something surprising about humankind

SEE ALSO: A Monstrous, Deadly Brown Snake Was Caught In An Australian Backyard

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NOW WATCH: A Passionate Argument For Killing Animals You Eat With Your Own Hands

In a first-of-its-kind project using cameras mounted onto the fins of deep-sea sharks, researchers have made surprising discoveries about what keeps these mysterious creatures afloat.

Previously, scientists assumed that sharks were negatively buoyant (meaning they have a natural tendency to sink) or neutrally buoyant (meaning their buoyancy is canceled out by their weight in the water).

Now, by combing through photos and data captured by the swimming sharks, researchers have found that two species of these deep-sea creatures— sixgill and prickly sharks — have a small amount of positive buoyancy that pushes them toward the surface.

Scientists at the University of Hawaii and the University of Tokyo attached a flashlight-size camera to deep-sea sharks to study their swimming habits. The camera works at depths of up to 6,500 feet (2,000 meters), and can be paired with a strobe that provides light to take pictures in dark, deep waters.

Every 30 seconds, the strobe would illuminate the shark's surroundings and the camera would snap a picture, while sensors recorded the depth and temperature of the water. The scientists also included an accelerometer and magnetometer in the camera pack, on a small metal band fastened to the shark's fin.

"We set a date and time we want it to come off, the metal band breaks and drops off the shark and the package floats up to the surface of the ocean [and] sends us a satellite sign of where it is," said study co-author Carl Meyer, an assistant researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

The results of the deep-sea investigation were surprising, according to the researchers. "It was not at all what we expected to find," Meyer said. "Conventional wisdom suggests sharks are generally negatively buoyant — they'll sink if they stop swimming."

Though there has been some research suggesting that sharks have some neutral buoyancy, there was no reason for Meyer and his colleagues to expect that sharks actually float up.

Meyer was initially so puzzled by the finding that he wondered if the equipment package could be changing the shark's buoyancy. But after re-calibrating and repeating the experiment, the results stood firm, he said.

The scientists can tell that the sharks were using energy to muscle downward from data recorded by the accelerometer and by the frequency of the sharks' tail movements.

"What we saw by comparing uphill and downhill movements, among all the individuals tested, the tail was working harder at any given speed than when they were going up," Meyer said. "When they were going uphill, they could glide for minutes at a time without beating their tails."

Figuring out why it's beneficial for sharks to be buoyant — and how many species have this trait — will take more work, the researchers said.

Meyer wonders if positive buoyancy is widespread in deep-sea organisms, to help animals survive and exploit a challenging habitat. "The deep sea is dark and cold, with low oxygen and limited food resources," he said. "There may be that something about being positively buoyant allows you to go down into very unfavorable locations, and still make it back up to where it's warmer."

The sharks studied in Hawaii make a daily migration: After spending their days at depths of more than than 2,000 feet (610 m), they head up around sunset to a depth ranging from about 600 to 1,000 feet (183 to 305 m), where the water temperatures are around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius).

The reason for this daily trek is a subject of debate, Meyer said. "There are a number of papers suggesting that sharks either hunt warm and rest cool, or hunt warm and rest warmer," he said. "Food and sleeping spots aren't the same places."

Moving between ocean depths could help sharks digest and process their meals, Meyer said. "You go up to catch stuff, and then the colder area lets your digestion suck up the nutrient," he added.

Additional studies with fin-mounted cameras may help the researchers peek into sharks' other habits. For example, the sharks may just be following prey up and down the water column. The scientists are also eager to learn whether the sharks' activity rates — how much the animals move around — change as a function of core muscle temperature.

Meyer pointed to the need to dig a lot deeper into the mysterious lives of fish that creep in the deep: "Finding positive buoyancy in [deep-sea] sharks is demonstrative that we have a lot to learn about deep-sea animals and how they survive."

The detailed findings of the study were published June 10 in the journal PLOS ONE.

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