Georgia Aquarium CEO says dolphin abuse video likely doctored

The Georgia Aquarium is raising questions about a video that surfaced last week that allegedly shows its new vice president abusing dolphins.

Aquarium CEO Mark Leven told Channel 2’s Jessica Jaglois he believes the video has been doctored but that forensics experts will determine the veracity of the video and if the allegations are true, he says, their new VP will be fired immediately.
 
An animal rights group released the disturbing video on Tuesday which allegedly shows the Georgia aquarium’s new vice president Jose Barbero hitting, kicking and screaming at dolphins he trained in Spain.
 
“This video is disturbing, we are not happy about it and we are investigating,” Leven said.
 
Leven said he has handed the video over to forensics experts who believe it is fake.
 
“We have blown it up. It’s very poor. We have seen that it could be doctored. There is no real indication that we have found yet of any animal abuse in that video. That’s not to say we won’t,” Leven told Jaglois.
 
Barbero has denied the allegations, but ever since the group SOS Delfines put the video on their website, Barbero’s family has received death threats and his wife was also hospitalized due to stress, Leven said.
 
The group says the video only shows what they said they’ve known for years.
 
“Actually, we had had information that these were the training methods at this center and finally, a few months ago some neighbors and informants gave us the footage,” said Jennifer Berengueras with SOS Delfines.
 
Jaglois went to the group’s website for an update, which currently only reads, “our website is temporarily disabled,” in Spanish.
 
The international marine animal training association is also investigating and that the aquarium will stand by Barbero unless the video is proven to be real, Leven said.
 
“If Jose is proved to abuse animals, he will not have a future here,” Leven said.
 
Barbero is currently in Spain with his family until March.
 
Leven hopes the investigation will be complete by then. 

The Georgia Aquarium has also released an outline of their investigation.

Georgia Aquarium CEO says dolphin abuse video likely doctored

Curiosity killed the cat: Terrifying Jaws-style attack caught on video

Video has captured the terrifying moment the tables turned on a curious kitten who ventured too close to a garden pond full of Japanese koi carp.

The footage, which has gone viral since it was posted online last week, shows the young cat hovering precariously over the lip of the pond as it peers into the murky water in Japan.

Another cat stands over the kitten protectively as its feline friend paws at the brightly-coloured koi circling below.

Suddenly, a huge brown-coloured fish leaps out of the pond and grabs the young cat as shocked onlookers scream.

Both predator and its prey vanish beneath the water as the last-standing cat remains frozen in terror.

It has been suggested that the attacking fish is of the pike variety as opposed to the placid koi.

It is not known if the kitten survived.

© ninemsn 2014

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Curiosity killed the cat: Terrifying Jaws-style attack caught on video

Octopus Cannibalism Caught on Video for First Time

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When octopuses go hunting for prey, they sometimes end up “dining” on members of their own species, and the cephalopods seem to have a taste for their victims’ arm tips.

Divers have captured video of this octopus-on-octopus action in the wild for the first time on video.

In a new study, researchers described three cases of cannibalism in the common octopus — Octopus vulgaris — recorded with a camcorder by scuba divers in Ría de Vigo, Spain, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast. In two of the cases, the predators had started to eat the tips of the arms of their prey by the time the divers found them. [See Images of the Cannibalistic Octopus]

And, in one of the cases, the predator had access to more “traditional” prey in the form of mussels, but it still chose to feed on another, smaller octopus.

Although scientists had been aware of cannibalism occurrences among members of O. vulgaris, the previously reported cases were known only from analyses of stomach contents and laboratory observations, the researchers wrote in the study published Sept. 8 in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

However, “this behavior has never been described from direct observations in the wild by scuba diving,” said study author Jorge Hernández-Urcera of the Institute of Marine Research (IIM) in Vigo, Spain.

The researchers documented the first of the three cannibalism cases on Dec. 11, 2012, at a depth of 40 feet (12 meters), on a rocky bottom off the Cíes Islands, which are part of the National Park of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia (NAPAIG). A male octopus weighing about 4.85 pounds (2.2 kilograms) was holding in its grasp a smaller octopus without visible sexual characteristics, which weighed a bit less than a pound (about 400 grams). [See Video of the Cannibalistic Octopus in Action]

“The animal was dead, showing a pale white color and the tips of its arms had been eaten,” the researchers wrote.

The second case was recorded July 13, 2013, on a sandy bottom about 60 feet (18 m) below the surface near the Estelas Islands. A male octopus of about the same weight as the in first case carried an octopus weighing a bit more than a pound (540 grams) inside a ball-shaped sack that it had formed with its arms and web – the skin between its arms that it can spread to capture prey.

The diver who recorded the case realized that “the prey was still alive, because it poked and moved one of its arms between the dorsal pair of arms of the predator,” the researchers wrote. The diver disturbed the predator, which in turn let go of the prey, letting it escape, and therefore the researchers classified this case as “an attempted predation.”

Octopus Cannibalism Caught on Video for First Time