An ACT man has been charged with stealing two livestock trailers from Saleyards Rd, Cooma.
The trailers went missing Sunday night (July 25) but were easily spotted by Monaro police on Monday morning, attached to a prime mover parked off the Monaro Hwy.
A few hours later, police forced entry to the cabin of the parked truck and the 29-year-old driver fled.
The man was pursued on foot through several paddocks before running into a nearby dam — however this strategy turned against him, and he was arrested before being taken to hospital.
The man was not licensed at the time and is set to appear in Cooma Local Court in September.
There’s always one
Emergency services outside Christchurch in New Zealand were called to help a farmer in distress on August 4.
A lone cow had “made” her way into the centre of the rotary milking platform and was failing to pick up the complex art of walking up narrow, steep ladders.
The rescue involved removing the iron sheeting from the shed roof, a vet sedating the young cow and a loader crane hoisting her up.
Ribbon rewind
Local agricultural shows have been hard hit by the COIVD-19 restrictions, with quite a few cancelled over the past 12 months.
But what do you do with the pre-ordered sashes and ribbons, when the event is called off at short notice?
The Sydney Royal Easter Show had 12 kilometres of show ribbons — yes, that's right, 12 kilometres — left after the cancelled 2020 show.
The ribbons were stitched together and made into rugs, which were sold to raise $42,000 for country NSW hospitals.
Sydney show boss Murray Wilton said there were boxes upon boxes of ribbons leftover, with many patrons reaching out to see what the society was going to do with them.
“To leverage what is now a piece of RAS history and use that to support the communities that gives so much to the RAS and the Sydney Royal Easter Show is a great feeling,” Murray said.
“The RASF does a fantastic job in supporting rural and regional NSW and I couldn’t be prouder of our team for pulling this fundraiser together.”
Running multiple initiatives during the Sydney Royal Easter Show, the RASF managed to raise $120,000 thanks to the sale of the RASF Ag Bag, an online show raffle including a truckload of hay and the sale of the 2020 ribbon rugs.
Bird brains
New evidence that cockatoos are smarter than we thought.
For the first time, a team of international scientists have proven that cockatoos learn from each other a unique skill — lifting garbage bin lids to gather food.
The world-first research published recently in Science, confirms that cockatoos spread this novel behaviour through social learning.
Led by Dr Barbara Klump and Dr Lucy Aplin (Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior), along with Dr John Martin (Taronga Conservation Society) and Dr Richard Major (Australian Museum), the team has shown that this behaviour by cockatoos is actually learnt, rather than a result of genetics.
Lead author Dr Klump said social learning was the basis of different regional cultures, and some animals, such as primates and birds, appear to learn socially.
“Children are masters of social learning. From an early age, they copy skills from other children and adults,” she said.
“However, compared to humans, there are few known examples of animals learning from each other.
“Demonstrating that food scavenging behaviour is not due to genetics is a challenge".
However, a few years ago, Dr Major shared a video with senior author Dr Aplin, showing a sulphur-crested cockatoo opening a closed garbage bin.
The cockatoo used its beak and foot to lift the heavy lid and shuffle along the side to flip it over, accessing a rich reward of leftover food.
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