Straight out of Jurassic Park

Very few people have been killed directly by bird attacks. One of these instances involved a 16 year old Australian boy, Phillip Mclean, who died from an attack by a cassowary in the 20s. The boy and his brother were chasing down the bird and hitting it repeatedly with clubs. Driven to defend itself, the cassowary kicked Phillip's brother who ran away, and then kicked Phillip who fell to the ground. Phillip's neck was sliced open after another kick, and the boy died shortly afterward from hemorrhaging.
150 cassowary attacks on humans have been recorded, and at least one other on a zookeeper has resulted in death of the person.
These flightless birds, coming from 3 extant species, live in northern Australia and parts of New Guinea. Usually they are shy and harmless creatures eating mostly berries. But when provoked, they have a variety of hardcore defenses that could do serious harm to their attackers. They weigh up to 130 pounds, can run 30 mph, are great swimmers, can jump 5 feet high, have a "helmet" to protect their heads and have 5 inch long claws on their 3 toes. Essentially, they are modern-day Velociraptors.

P.I.M.P.

I am ultra-busy with schoolwork and research for the next two weeks, so I'll be taking a brief break from posting. But, enjoy this video of a real man; the elephant seal. (or did I mean Sir David?)

Octopuses, octopi, octopodes

Chances are, you are familiar with the overall structure with these 8-legged sea mollusks; a hard parrot-like beak, practically no internal skeleton, and suction-cup arms make these animals pretty bad ass to begin with. 

The picture above depicts the only octopus with a venom deadly enough to kill humans, the Blue-ringed Octopus, but all are venomous.

You may have also heard that octopuses are smart, and generally they are accepted as the smartest invertebrates around. In fact, many nations deem these animals "honorary vertebrates" and as such are protected by their vertebrate animal rights laws.  However, this is just a general concept... how smart are these creatures? Studies have shown that they posses long- and short- term memory thru maze and problem-solving tests. They also have been known to easily escape aquarium tanks and move to feeder tanks to feast on fish. Some octopuses have boarded fishing boats, opened crab holds, and nom'd on fisherman goodies before jumping back in the ocean.
They also posses some pretty awesome defense mechanisms. They hide with camouflage by changing color with their chromatophore cells, and eject ink to make a cloud to lose predators. The mimic octopus has a remarkable ability to confuse predators by changing structure, movement, and color to look like more dangerous fish.

These octopuses have been known to imitate 15 other fish.
Unfortunately, octopuses have a short life span, which limits their intellectual capacity. Some live only 6 months, while others can live for 5 years. But, males and females die shortly after reproduction. The male implants its sperm packet into the female and will die shortly after, whereas the female, when her eggs have matured, tends to her egg nest for months. She blows air on the eggs to keep enough oxygen in their  environment and guards the nest for the entirety of their development which can take months. After the babies, around 60,000 of them, have hatched, she is very weak and is sometimes attacked and consumed by predators, dies from starvation, or dies from an endocrine-signaled programmed death.

Feelin' crabby ain't so bad

Evolving over 200 million years ago, horseshoe crabs have been pretty successful throughout the test of time. Currently, there are 4 extant species of horseshoe crab, and if you live on the east coast like me, you might have seen a member of the species Limulus polyphemus before (perhaps you've held one at the Baltimore Aquarium). While these animals may look intimidating, they are completely harmless to humans. These chelicerate (which refers to their mouth structure, shared with arachnids) arthropods are the closest living ancestors of the ancient trilobites, and are closely related to spiders, ticks and scorpions. There are a couple of unique characteristics which have allowed these animals, above others, to be so successful. They have a unique ability to re-grow limbs similar to sea-stars, they have a tough exoskeleton like all arthropods, and have special blood. Instead of hemoglobin, horseshoe crabs use copper-containing hemocyanin to carry oxygen. But it is their "amebocytes", specialized blood cells, which make them particularly interesting. These cells contain a special coagulant which forms a clot whenever a bacterial endotoxin is encountered. This ability is exploited by humans in purity testing of medicines by collecting their blood:

Unfortunately, horseshoe crab populations are in decline due to over-harvesting in the 90's for use in fertilizers. This trend could limit our ability for medical testing because alternative methods are much more costly. Their decline has also lead to a downfall in the red knot, which feeds on the horseshoe crabs during a stop made during their long migration.
The horseshoe crab has also been used extensively in vision research.