New carpet auction record?

It hasn't been sold yet, but who knows what it will go for?

A carpet that was commissioned in India 150 years ago to decorate the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina is due to be auctioned in Qatar.

The rug, known as the Pearl Carpet of Baroda, was created using an estimated two million natural seed pearls.

It is decorated with hundreds of precious stones, including diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds.

Bidding is expected to start at about $5m . . .

From the BBC.

Biggest bite yet

A giant fossil sea monster found in the Arctic had a bite that would have been able to crush a 4x4 car, according to its discoverers.

Researchers say the marine reptile, which measured an impressive 15m (50ft) long, had a bite force of about 16 tonnes (35,000lbs).

The creature's partial skull was dug up last summer in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard by a Norwegian-led team.

Dubbed "Predator X", it patrolled the oceans some 147 million years ago.

From the BBC. Go straight to the original press release (in English) at the website for the Naturhistorisk Museum of the University of Oslo.

The big fish gobble up the little fish

Interesting video clip here:

A BBC crew filmed seabirds carefully corralling unwieldy shoals of herring into tightly packed "bait balls" from which the fish are easy to pluck.

But they discovered that passing whales would wait for the birds to complete their hard graft before devouring the ball of fish in a single gulp.

Must have been a shock for the camera crew the first time it happened.

Wild dogs on the attack in Italy

Italian police are hunting a pack of stray dogs which killed a boy aged 10 and mauled a 24-year-old woman in the Ragusa area of southern Sicily.

They caught about 30 strays after the boy was dragged off his bicycle and killed on Sunday but about 20 dogs are believed still to be running wild. . .

It is an offence to kill a dog in Italy and the country lacks properly funded pounds in which to collect strays.

From the BBC. Dogs are formidable predators. I recall reading about African wild dogs' hunting habits, which are apparently not just highly effective but also notably savage.