US Cops Ditched Robbery Call for Pokemon Go Hunt

Pokemon Go took much of the world by storm in the mid-2010s, but cost two Los Angeles police officers their jobs after they went off hunting creatures instead of responding to a robbery. Daniel Shih AFP
Pokemon Go took much of the world by storm in the mid-2010s, but cost two Los Angeles police officers their jobs after they went off hunting creatures instead of responding to a robbery. Daniel Shih AFP
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US Cops Ditched Robbery Call for Pokemon Go Hunt

Pokemon Go took much of the world by storm in the mid-2010s, but cost two Los Angeles police officers their jobs after they went off hunting creatures instead of responding to a robbery. Daniel Shih AFP
Pokemon Go took much of the world by storm in the mid-2010s, but cost two Los Angeles police officers their jobs after they went off hunting creatures instead of responding to a robbery. Daniel Shih AFP

Two US police officers who went off to hunt for Pokemon instead of responding to a robbery have been fired.

Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell cruised the streets searching for fantastic creatures in the augmented reality smartphone game, documents show, bagging a relatively rare Snorlax, as well as a difficult-to-trap Togetic -- but no criminals.

In-car recording of their conversation revealed that they had heard the call for help at the Los Angeles department store, but decided instead to drive off, AFP said.

"Officer Mitchell alerted Lozano that 'Snorlax' 'just popped up'," legal documents relating to their dismissal show.

"For approximately the next 20 minutes, the (recording) captured petitioners discussing Pokemon as they drove to different locations where the virtual creatures apparently appeared on their mobile phones."

The Los Angeles police officers snagged the Snorlax and then turned their attention to a Togetic -- which proved to be a little tricky to subdue.

"Holy crap, man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me," Mitchell said, according to the documents, which were published last week.

Both men were charged with multiple counts of misconduct, and admitted failing to respond to the robbery call during the incident in April 2017, but denied they had been playing Pokemon Go.

The pair insisted in disciplinary hearings that they had merely been discussing the game, and challenged Los Angeles city's dismissal.

California's court of appeal, however, did not believe their explanations, and upheld their firings.

Pokemon Go took the mid-2010s by storm, with millions around the world glued to their smartphones in the hunt for fantastical creatures.

In one of the first mainstream adoptions of augmented reality, players would look for round-eyed "pocket monsters" that would appear in the real world, if viewed on a smartphone screen.

Participants would use Pokeballs to capture the creatures, which were inspired by everything from mice to dragons, and then train them in Pokegyms to take part in battles.

Such was the popularity of the game at one point that several military installations felt the need to warn troops about the possible perils of playing on bases, including near runways.

Fans have also been blamed for causing traffic accidents, and at least one illegal border crossing was blamed on someone trying to "Catch 'em all."



Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
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Killer Whales Spotted Grooming Each Other with Seaweed

This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)
This handout frame grab taken from video footage provided by whale rescue group Organization for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA) on June 9, 2025 shows a distressed humpback whale tangled in a rope swimming south of Sydney Harbour. (Photo by Handout and Clay Sweetman / ORRCA / AFP)

Killer whales have been caught on video breaking off pieces of seaweed to rub and groom each other, scientists announced Monday, in what they said is the first evidence of marine mammals making their own tools.

Humans are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has mastered using tools. Chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish for termites, crows create hooked twigs to catch grubs and elephants swat flies with branches.

Tool-use in the world's difficult-to-study oceans is rarer, however sea otters are known to smash open shellfish with rocks, while octopuses can make mobile homes out of coconut shells.

A study published in the journal Current Biology describes a new example of tool use by a critically endangered population of orcas., AFP reported.

Scientists have been monitoring the southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, between Canada's British Columbia and the US state of Washington, for more than 50 years.

Rachel John, a Masters student at Exeter University in the UK, told a press conference that she first noticed "something kind of weird" going on while watching drone camera footage last year.

The researchers went back over old footage and were surprised to find this behavior is quite common, documenting 30 examples over eight days.

One whale would use its teeth to break off a piece of bull kelp, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.

It would then put the kelp between its body and the body of another whale, and they would rub it between them for several minutes.

The pair forms an "S" shape to keep the seaweed positioned between their bodies as they roll around.

Whales are already known to frolic through seaweed in a practice called "kelping".

They are thought to do this partly for fun, partly to use the seaweed to scrub their bodies to remove dead skin.

The international team of researchers called the new behavior "allokelping," which means kelping with another whale.

They found that killer whales with more dead skin were more likely to engage in the activity, cautioning that it was a small sample size.

Whales also tended to pair up with family members or others of a similar age, suggesting the activity has a social element.

The scientists said it was the first known example of a marine mammal manufacturing a tool.

Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University not involved in the study, praised the research but said it "went a bit too far" in some of its claims.

Bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges to trawl for prey could also be considered to be manufacturing tools, she told AFP.

And it could be argued that other whales known to use nets of bubbles or plumes of mud to hunt represent tool-use benefitting multiple individuals, another first claimed in the paper, Mann said.

Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Whale Research and the study's lead author, said it appeared to be just the latest example of socially learned behavior among animals that could be considered "culture".

But the number of southern resident killer whales has dwindled to just 73, meaning we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.

"If they disappear, we're never getting any of that back," he said.

The whales mainly eat Chinook salmon, whose numbers have plummeted due to overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and other forms of human interference.

The orcas and salmon are not alone -- undersea kelp forests have also been devastated as ocean temperatures rise.

Unless something changes, the outlook for southern resident killer whales is "very bleak," Weiss warned.