Bears looking for brunch in the rubbish bins, monkeys mugging tourists in India; wildlife and human encounters do not always go well.
Science journalist Mary Roach looks at the inevitable clashes between nature and us, and the ways communities all over the world are trying to protect people and animals when our worlds collide.
Her new book is called Animal Vegetable Criminal: When Nature Breaks the Law.
A baby grizzly bear searches for food around a trash container in Inonu neighbourhood in Turkey on December 15, 2018. Photo: Huseyin Demirci / Anadolu Agency via AFP
Roach tells Jesse Mulligan she became interested in exploring this topic after reading a book from 1906 about criminal prosecution of animals, even for things like caterpillars eating crops.
But nowadays, 'maul cops' are brought on to crime scenes to try and detect the culprit when humans are suspected to have been killed by animals, she says.
"It's fascinating because they come in and do a lot of things that you would see on those police procedurals.
"What they're doing first of all ... is trying to determine what species was it, was it a mountain lion, a bear, or a human, because sometimes it's been a difficult to tell the difference.
Photo: supplied
"Then they're trying to establish linkage, sometimes from DNA of saliva or blood, between the victim and the exact animal ... and they want to make sure they have the right one because if they don't, the suspect - if you will - is released."
Roach was surprised to hear that about 500 people get killed in India by elephants, she says.
"They're moving through what's called the Elephant Corridor ... They get stuck sometimes in a wooded area and they call them pocketed elephants.
"These elephants they need a lot of food. They often turn to farmers' crops and the villagers get pretty upset understandably, this a whole season's work and their livelihood is here, so somebody sees an elephant and they'll run out - it's usually night time when this happens - with a torch say or firecrackers."
When the elephants disperse from their groups, they panic and get defensive, she says.
"People get trampled, they get knocked over or stepped on and that's typically what's happening in these deaths."
A wildlife researcher is helping set up elephant response teams to herd them as a group and get them moving through with no harm, she says.
"It's obviously a stopgap measure, I mean the answer is to secure enough land for these animals but it's a tough thing, you've got people trying to survive, you've refugees coming in from Bangladesh and Nepal and people going into the woods to cut firewood and build structures, military installations going in because there's tension between India and china.
"So there's a lot of things that take priority over the elephants."
But she says interestingly, generally Hindu farmers don't have anger towards the animal, rather the system, because of the Hindu god Ganesha.
While in India, she also had her own experience of being mugged by a macaque, who are known to cause mayhem there.
"I read a lot of stories about macaques doing things like stealing cellphones or someone's sunglasses and holding it ransom, and if you hold out a fruit or piece of candy, the monkey will drop your cellphone and take the fruit.
"So I thought I'm just curious what that experience is like so I bought a bag of bananas ... and low and behold I hadn't gone too far when a macaque steps out in front of me on the trail, kind of like a bandit waiting for the stage coach, and we're sizing each other up.
"But before I can figure out this one is up to, a second macaque runs out from the side of the path and grabs the bag. I think they might've been working as team or maybe they were competing, I don't know, it seemed pretty slick."
Bears in Aspen, Colorado are known to roam for food and the town has a law in place on rubbish maintenance to prevent accidents, she says.
"Anytime a bear realises there's good eating in a house or in a yard that belongs to humans, they're going to keep coming back and they're going to get bolder and eventually that boldness sometimes morphs to aggression and that's when someone gets hurt, and it's usually the bear."
Typically, if a bear breaks into a house then they just take food and leave but if a dog or human intervenes then someone could get hurt or killed, she says.
As a result, bears are considered a threat to public safety and traps are set up there, she says.
"It is the fault of we, humans, for not attending to these fairly simply measures that would get these bears wild, keep them out of our yards and houses."
