Animal; Heart Attacks
Nov 29, 2022 4:49:54 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 29, 2022 4:49:54 GMT -5
Animal Heart Attacks
Fatal heart attacks, those sudden painful physical events that we humans sometimes suffer and cause sudden death. We all fear them, of course, and many of us try our best to avoid them via diet and exercise. Strangely, although we share many anatomical similarities, especially among mammals, some of us tend to imagine that heart attacks are a malady suffered solely by the human race. Yet, animals are just as prone to suffer cardiac arrest as humans are, and it happens for similar reasons.
For example, sometimes they are caused by congenital defects, or cardio-vascular disease, and at other times, they are suddenly provoked by the intensity of emotions, such as fear or extreme frustration or rage. Two examples of animal heart attacks, one that I read about and the other which I viewed on you-tube, caught my attention because of their unusualness. Let me share them with you.
The first instance involves the seemingly invulnerable, and famously vaunted, king of beasts, the lion, of all animals. Now, you might automatically think that a lion’s heart attack would be from excessive rage. Or that if indeed it had a heart attack from fear, it would be from fear of a rhino, a pack of hyenas who are relentlessly hounding it, or perhaps from fear of a herd of elephants about to trample it under foot, or perhaps at the sight of the gaping jaws of a hippo about to clamp down on its head, or maybe a large crock who is quickly closing in on it while the lion is crossing a river or a lake. Right? But ironically, this lion's heart attack involved a mule. Yes, you heard it right, a mule.
You see, having targeted this mule as a meal, the lion had expected easy pickings as usual. You know, the routine sudden surprise attack from the rear, the clamping of its massive jaws around its throat, and the slow suffocation to death, as usual, followed by leisurely meal, and a long nap afterwards. But unfortunately for this lion, things just didn’t pan out that usual way. Instead, this particular mule put up an unusually furious fight, and during the struggle, it somehow managed to get a death grip on the lion's belly with its front teeth and refused not let go.
Yes, my friend, although kicking is a mule’s primary weapon, mules do defend themselves or sometimes attack other animals with their teeth. When fighting among themselves, if you look closely, you will notice them savagely and furiously biting one another on the back, the rump, or the neck, or whatever other body part is within the reach of their formidable front teeth powered by their powerful jaw muscles.
Now, true, this scenario might seem extremely unusual, since lions have massive jaws and four paws armed with razor-sharp claws capable of quickly shredding an animal’s hide to pieces. And that is exactly what usually occurs during a lion’s hunting efforts. However, sometimes during a life-or-death struggle, the less formidable animal’s body is angled in such a way, that it cannot be effectively reached by those weapons. Thick foliage might be involved or deep water might interfere by making breathing difficult. Or simply the configuration of terrain itself. That seemed to be the case in reference to the mule in this instance who was being attacked on a steep hill somehow contributing to the lion’s ineffectiveness.
But worse yet, despite the lion’s desperate efforts, it was unable to disengage. Now, imagine someone with tremendously powerful jaw muscles ferociously biting your belly, and you can’t get him off nor flee because you are pinned to a surface on your back with your belly fully exposed, and can’t get the leverage needed to extricate yourself from the almost unimaginable agony. The lion, finding himself in that predicament, wound up having a heart attack. Of course if that lion could have spoken it would have probably been screaming for someone to help it. But since it couldn’t, all it could do was roar until its extremely agitated heart finally gave out.
Another unusual example of an animal experiencing cardiac arrest due to the intensity of emotion during a fierce struggle, involves reindeer owned by this USA farmer who enjoyed dressing up as Santa Clause each Christmas. Well, during that particular Christmas season, it just so happened that after dressing up as Santa, and being on his way somewhere, this farmer passed by this doe reindeer at his farm’s deer enclosure, and casually and very tenderly patted it on its rump. Nothing wrong with that, right? Why, he had probably done it numerous of times before in that observing buck’s presence without absolutely no repercussions.
But unfortunately, not all seasons are equal, and this time, it just happened to have been reindeer rutting season. Neither had that doe been just any ordinary doe, mind you. As the farmer revealed later while being interviewed by a rep from the local news media after the debacle, that particular doe was the farmer’s male reindeer’s favorite, and it probably instinctively perceived the farmer’s tender rump-patting, caressing gesture, as an affront to his mating rights. At least that is the way a human sees it since jealousy, with all the complex human motivating factors, seems inconceivable in the case of a male deers and we prefer to think that such complex feeins are reserved for ourselves.
In any case, having observed the farmer’s gesture, the deer immediately went on the attack by attempting to gore the Santa-attired farmer with its antlers. The farmer in turn, went into survival mode and desperately hung on to the enraged buck’s antlers for dear life while frantically yelling out for help as he was pinned to the ground with the potentially lethal antlers hovering just a few inches above his chest.
Luckily for him, his desperate shouting and the furious struggle, during which the farmer was being dragged on the ground at all different angles by the force of the reindeer’s efforts to make him pay, finally caught the attention of a neighbor who immediately called the police. But such was the buck’s fury, that even after others arrived, getting him off the farmer was proving to be futile until he finally keeled over and died from a heart attack as the veterinarian later confirmed. One heart attack from fear and the other one from frustration and anger. Both equally fatal, of course, just as they very often are to us humans. No difference at all.