Tourists in Kazakhstan beat a seal unconscious just so they could take some photos of their children posing with it. The incident was recorded at a beach near the coastal village of Kuryk, which is located on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.

In the video, a group of people can be seen surrounding the seal with sticks and large rocks as it began to come close to the shore. Meanwhile, bystanders began to gather around and record what was happening, but none of them decided to intervene.

“They beat the seal up until it passed out. Then they pulled it out of the water so that children could take pictures and have fun. After that, they threw the motionless body back into the sea. I don’t know if it survived,” an unnamed witness explained to local media.

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Even more disturbing is the fact that this is not an isolated incident. This video hit the web just days after a similar incident on a beach in the city of Aktau, which is just about 43 miles from Kuryk. In a video of that incident, beachgoers can be seen throwing large rocks at a baby seal as it approached them.

The video was shared on Instagram by Kazakh model Yevgeniya Mukasheva who wrote:

“Do people really have a complete lack of brains? How could you throw stones at the defenseless pup and laugh? Have you lost your mind? When will we already understand that it is necessary to value and care for every creature on the planet? What more pain do we need to strike so that we understand that mercy and compassion must be in our minds?”

The actions have been widely condemned by animal rights activists and authorities throughout Asia.

“The way people acted in the video is outrageous and wild,” said Saken Dildakhmet, a spokesperson for Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources.

“Such an attitude can cause great damage to the fauna of the Caspian Sea and adversely affect the behavior of these animals who may become aggressive and attack people. We ask you to show respect to nature. The seal in the clip is young and playful. The seals are mostly very friendly and curious marine mammals. We should admire them,” Dildakhmet added.

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Authorities are now searching for suspects in both of the cases. If anyone is caught, they could face a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

The Caspian seal is one of the smallest members of the earless seal family and is unique because it is found exclusively in the brackish Caspian Sea. They are found along the shorelines and also on the many rocky islands and floating blocks of ice that dot the Caspian Sea. In winter, and cooler parts of the spring and autumn season, these marine mammals populate the Northern Caspian Sea. As the ice melts in the warmer season, they can be found on the mouths of the Volga and Ural Rivers, as well as the southern latitudes of the Caspian where cooler waters can be found due to greater depth.

Evidence suggests the seals are descended from Arctic ringed seals that reached the area from the north during an earlier part of the Quaternary period and became isolated in the landlocked Caspian Sea when continental ice sheets melted. The Caspian seal is endemic to the Caspian Sea and its population has fallen drastically, by over 90 percent since the beginning of the 20th Century, according to regional conservationist group Caspian Seal Project.

Due to increased industrial production in the area, pollution has had an effect on the survival of the Caspian seal. From 1998 to 2000, the concentration of zinc and iron increased dramatically in the tissue of dead, diseased seals. This suggests these elements are causative agents in compromising the Caspian seal’s immune system.

A century ago, their population was estimated at 1.5 million seals. In 2005, 104,000 remained, with an ongoing decline of 3–4% per year.

In 2008, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) officially announced that the Caspian seal was “Endangered” and at risk of extinction due to economic activities around the Caspian Sea and coastal development in the Caspian littoral states of Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

Deforestation in India has led to animals being forced to cross paths with humans more often, and in many cases, these encounters can be ugly, and sometimes even deadly for the elephants.

In one Bishnupur village in India, elephants have begun wandering through the community and the residents became hostile. Elephants can easily damage property or even hurt people in small villages like this, so people aren’t really thinking about the wellbeing of the animal. Elephants were estimated to have caused millions of dollars of property damage to large agricultural operations, and they are often killed in retaliation.

In some photos, residents of the village can be seen tossing firebombs at a mother elephant and her calf to keep them wandering through their crops, causing the panicked animals to flee across the road.

These photos were captured by photographer Biplab Hazra, who is hoping to raise awareness about the struggles that elephants are facing amidst ongoing deforestation.

“This happens because the villagers have to save their crops. There are many elephant corridors in human habitations. I’m trying to show this and spread my photos to increase public awareness on the matter,” Hazra says.

According to government data, 14,000sq km of forests were cleared to accommodate 23,716 industrial projects across India over the last 30 years. Deforestation in the region is mainly caused by environmental degradation by farmers, ranches, loggers, and plantation corporations. In 2009, India ranked 10th worldwide in the amount of forest loss, where world annual deforestation is estimated at 13.7 million hectares each year.

This deforestation pushes many animals from their homes and into danger.

Indian elephants may spend up to 19 hours a day feeding and they can produce about 220 pounds of dung per day while wandering over an area that can cover up to 125 square miles. This helps to disperse germinating seeds, so even though they can sometimes be destructive to villages, humans still like to keep them around. They feed mainly on grasses, but large amounts of tree bark, roots, leaves and small stems are also eaten. Cultivated crops such as bananas, rice and sugarcane are favored foods as well. Since they need to drink at least once a day, these elephants are always close to a source of fresh water.

Elephants are not only a cultural icon in India and throughout Asia, but they also help to keep the forest and grassland habitats healthy.

According to the 2017 census of elephants in India, the country is home to 27,312 elephants, which accounts for 55% of the total world elephant population. The elephant population in Assam has increased from 5,246 in 2002 to 5,719 in 2017, but now also faces serious challenges due to deforestation.

These animals were once much more common throughout Africa and Asia, but elephants have sadly declined significantly during the 20th century, largely due to the illegal ivory trade. Even though some populations are now stable and growing in some select areas, poaching, habitat destruction and conflicts with humans like those depicted in these photos continue to threaten the species, and many others.

Photos: Healthy Food House

In 2016, it was confirmed that an incredible, 400-year-old Greenland shark is the oldest vertebrate animal on the planet that we know of.

This shark was born during a period of time marked by the reign of King James I, was a young shark when the era of colonialism was reaching a peak of intensity in the 1600s, and was considered an adolescent shark as King George II became a ruler.

Around the time the American Revolution occurred in the 1770s, this particular shark would have been an adult, and it continued to live throughout both world wars.

The new study featured on the front cover of the scientific journal Science (Photo: Nick Caloyianis/National Geographic Creative)

Reaching an incomprehensible age of almost 400 years old, this female Greenland shark has set a serious new record for longevity, scientists reported.

This incredible lifespan outpaces the oldest elephant ever observed, Lin Wang, who passed away at the old age of 86. The official record set by humans is held by 122 year old French woman Jeanne Louise Calment, and she passed away in 1997.

“It kicks off the bowhead whale as the oldest vertebrate animal,” said lead author of the research from the University of Copenhagen, Julius Nielsen, continuing to explain that bowhead whales have also been known to live for an incredible 211 years.

A Greenland shark returning to the deep and cold waters of the Uummannaq Fjord in northwestern Greenland. The sharks were part of a tag-and- release program in Norway and Greenland. Photograph: Julius Nielsen/Science

The Greenland shark may hold the title in a certain way, but the official record for the world’s longest-lived animal is Ming, an Icelandic clam given the term “ocean quahog.” It managed to live for 507 years before scientists actually took its life.

The Greenland shark is one of the largest carnivores in the world, without a doubt. It’s grey and fat, with a reported growth rate of just less than one centimeter a year. They’ve always been thought to live for a long time, but people had no idea it was this long.

Credit: Franco Banfi Getty Images

“Fish biologists have tried to determine the age and longevity of Greenland sharks for decades, but without success,” said shark expert from the University of Iceland, Steven Campana. “Given that this shark is the apex predator (king of the food chain) in Arctic waters, it is almost unbelievable that we didn’t know whether the shark lives for 20 years, or for 1000 years.”

He says this research is the first genuinely solid evidence of how long the sharks can live. “It definitely tells us that this creature is extraordinary and it should be considered among the absolute oldest animals in the world,” Neilsen said.

So they applied the technique to the proteins that lie in the center of each lens, and found that the sharks were all of very, very different ages.

Now this part is incredible. In the 1950’s, atomic bomb tests increased the levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere. This is not good in any way and shouldn’t be exciting or cool to learn, but it enabled this measurement to take place.

This spike of carbon-14 entered the marine food web across the entire North Atlantic in the early 1960’s.

So the team found that the eye lens proteins of the two smallest Greenland sharks had the most carbon-14, strongly indicating that they were born after the early 1960’s.

It was noted that the technique was not accurate enough to guarantee exact, pinpointed dates of birth, but this Greenland shark, one of them in the study was certainly 4 centuries old.