Head Butting Giraffe Sends Man To Hospital
While giraffes are a very beautiful looking animal it seems that they don’t take well to being crowded as one animal handler in South Africa found out recently.
Apparently the 32-year-old wildlife expert had entered the animal’s enclosure at an animal quarantine center near the rural town of Hammanskraal, which is 30 miles north of South Africa’s capital Pretoria, to conduct a medical procedure when things went wrong.
At some point during the examination the bull giraffe decided he had had enough and head butted the handler into the bars of the enclosure. Thjis was followed by the giraffe crushing him up against the bars which has apparently caused some trauma to the handlers spine.
Mr Wicks, who works for the private ambulance firm Netcare911, said centre staff helped remove the man to safety before contacting paramedics.
He said: “The other workers at the centre saw what happened and managed to get him out of the enclosure. The victim was conscious but sustained serious spinal injuries.
“They were in a remote location so the staff put him into a car to start the journey to the hospital.
“They then called us and we arranged to meet them near the motorway.
“From there he was airlifted to hospital where he remains in a serious but stable condition.”
via The Telegraph
Simple rule – they’re wild animals and as such totally unpredictable, behave accordingly.
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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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