Girl finds megalodon tooth on beach

A girl visiting a North Carolina beach with her family made an unusual and rare discovery — a shark tooth that could be up to three million years old.

Middle-schooler, Avery Fauth was at the beach recently in North Topsail when she found a fossilised tooth from a megalodon, a massive shark that went extinct millions of years ago.

“I’m looking around and I see something buried in the sand. I uncovered it and it keeps coming, and it’s this big tooth, and then I hold it up and I’m screaming for my mum,” Fauth told.

The girl and her family were engaged in a friendly competition to find shark teeth. Her sisters found several teeth, including great white shark teeth, but none approaching the megalodon tooth’s size.

“I was pretty surprised [that she found one]. I’ve been looking for 25 years and I haven’t found anything,” Fauth’s father said. “I was really shocked and excited for her that she found something that big.”

Cannibal hares of North America

We never believed this cute little critter could go at lengths to satiate its hunger until we read this news. According to a research published in Northwestern Naturalist, the snowshoe hare is a meat eater. Michael JL Peers, the lead on this study, observed several hares feeding on carrion carcasses in Yukon, Canada.

The snowshoe hare is probably best known for its fur changing colour with the seasons. It’s brown during the summer, then turns snowy white for winter. The hare’s fur helps it avoid predators, but when those predators are dead, it might just be the hare eating them.

Hares scavenged 12.4 percent of carcasses deployed. In a bizarre twist, the hares also didn’t seem to have any problems chewing down on their own kind!

While this turns the idea of rabbits being complete herbivores on its head, Peers notes that after sharing his findings, he’s heard from people all over the world who have observed this behaviour from both wild and domesticated rabbits.

Peers suggests that the rabbits are likely scavenging for protein during the harsh winter months. Many biologists have long believed that herbivores, like rabbits, wouldn’t have the digestive tracts to process meat, but these acts seem consistent enough to prove otherwise. Because they don’t have the teeth to effectively rip off pieces of flesh, they must rely on gnawing bits off of the carcasses. The hares don’t seem to hunt their own prey (so far) but will become territorial.

Bees living under woman’s eyelid

A Taiwan woman suffering from a swollen eye went to a hospital where doctors found four minuscule bees living under her eyelid.

Hung Chi-ting, the head of the ophthalmology department at Taiwan’s Fooyin University Hospital, said he noticed what looked like insect legs under the woman’s left eyelid and used a microscope to discover she had sweat bees, also known as halictidae, living next to her eye.

The woman, identified by the surname He, said she thinks the insects blew into her eye while visiting a relative’s grave. Sweat bees are known to nest near graves and fallen trees.

Hung said the woman was found to be suffering from bacterial skin infection cellulitis and severe corneal erosion. The insects were removed and He was treated for her infection and injuries. She is expected to make a full recovery, Hung said.

Doctors said the insects were still alive and apparently survived by feeding on the woman’s tears.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 27th, 2019