Animals to the Rescue!: Amazing True Stories from around the World
HERE COME THE HEROES Heroes come in all shapes and sizes They’re not just people who help others like firefighters teachers and nurses And they’re not always human No one knows when a natural disaster will strike or lives will be threatened Sometimes in an emergency an animal comes to the rescue It may be an animal trained to use its special abilities to save people Or it may be an animal responding courageously or doing what it naturally does which happens to save a life Sometimes animals even rescue other animals Keep reading to discover the stories of some real-life animal heroes and the lives they saved 4
This search and rescue dog is a key member of the South Korean Disaster Relief Team Search teams came from many countries to help locate survivors after the January 12 2010 earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince Haiti 5
Whale of a Lifeguard September 2017 Rarotonga Cook Islands Rarotonga Cook Islands DIVE TIME On one September day in 2017 humpback whale researcher Nan Hauser was at work on her boat with her team in the South Pacific Ocean The researchers were observing the humpback whales behavior and snapping photos of their tails creating a record of each whale they saw July through October is the best time of year for observing humpback whales near the Cook Islands That’s when the whales pass the islands during their more than 4,000-mile 6,437 km meandering migration from Antarctica where they feast on small fish and shrimplike animals called krill to warmer waters where the females give birth and pairs mate However one thing was different about Nan’s daily research routine today A film crew had come along to create a documentary about her work 6 For more than twenty years Nan Hauser has studied both the surface and underwater behavior of humpback whales Like human fingerprints each humpback whale’s tail flukes are unique Scientists keep a photographic catalog to identify humpbacks by their tail shape and markings
Humpback whales don’t have teeth Instead they have baleen rows of soft bristlelike plates that filter the shrimplike krill and other small food out of the seawater When they saw two large adult humpbacks one of the filmmakers suggested Nan get into the water so they could capture a little more underwater footage of her swimming with the whales Nan agreed and the film crew lowered the camera into the water Then Nan slipped overboard carrying her own waterproof video camera to take some closer footage of the whales When she was some distance from the boat the larger of the two humpbacks which Nan guessed to be 50 feet 15 m long and weighing many tons turned and began surging through the water heading straight for her As a longtime humpback researcher Nan knew this was unusual behavior Worse she realized there wasn’t time to swim out of the whale’s way Nan said I was afraid it was going to ram me Instead the whale only bumped her It pushed her back toward her boat Nan was terrified of the whale’s strength But she forced herself to act calmly even using the camera strapped to her hand to photograph the whale Then the situation became much more serious The humpback nudged her onto its chin and rolled her under its giant armlike pectoral fin Nan was trapped underwater wearing only a snorkel and mask She needed to reach the water’s surface to breathe 7
