Image: OÖN
A giant lizard reminiscent of the Loch Ness Monster was sighted by a 12-year-old schoolboy on the Enns in May 2007. An alleged puma who is said to have been up to mischief with a farmer in the Mühlviertel in 1992. giant fish, “>the bathers bite while swimming: bizarre animal stories have repeatedly been the subject of reporting in Austria in recent years.
Image: OÖN
In particular, large reptiles are appearing more and more frequently, says Stephan Weigl, head of the Linz Biology Center: “People get reptiles – such as snakes or iguanas – and suddenly they can’t handle the adult animals any longer. Then they just put the animals down in the great outdoors.”
Safari in Upper Austria: From the kangaroo Paul to the Mühlviertel puma – a look at the OÖN archive
Uninvited exotics
Escaped kangaroos also got lost in the districts in 2015 and 2018, as did a flamingo on the Danube in 2021. The animals are usually escaped or – as Weigl indicated – abandoned animals that are not native .
Exotic species of spiders and scorpions also find their way to Austria as stowaways – such as the Australian giant crab spider called “Kylie”, which was discovered last year at the “Upper Austria Ladies Linz” tournament on the tennis court outside the Design Center. Two years ago, a comb spider found its way into a supermarket in Steyr in a banana box.
Last year, an Upper Austrian brought uninvited souvenirs from her vacation in Croatia: a scorpion several centimeters in size and two young scorpions had nested between her bathing suit and summer dresses. “These animals usually get to us unnoticed with our luggage and then dominate the reporting,” says Weigl.
Source: Nachrichten
