Chris Brown just had a close encounter with some seagulls. Other stars—including Ryan Seacrest, Jessica Alba, and Fabio—have also had angry animal run-ins. We look back at the wildest collisions between illustrious man and lowly beast, from Cleopatra to Leona.
Chris Brown came under aerial attack by some celeb-seeking seagulls while hanging out on Miami Beach a week after the Grammys. Brown took flight, nearly losing his shorts in the process, after some birds he’d been feeding chips rose up to thank him. Clearly the animals just wanted to see Brown perform his breakout hit “Run It.”
As mothers have warned children for generations: “Never go swimming with your BlackBerry.” This week, the Colombian singer Shakira was on a nature tour in Cape Town, South Africa, when she decided to paddle up to a sea lion to get a photo. “I thought to myself how cute they were so I decided to get a bit closer than all of the other tourists and went down to a rock trying to pet them doing a baby talk while taking pictures,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Suddenly, one of them jumped out of the water so fast and impetuously that it got about one foot away from me, looked me in the eye, roared in fury and tried to bite me.” (The 34-year-old “Hips Don’t Lie” singer suspected that the sea lion mistook her BlackBerry for a fish.) Luckily, her brother—whom she calls “Super Tony”—“jumped over me and literally saved my life, taking me away from the beast.” The two escaped with only scratches.
Courtesy of Shakira; Corbis
Like a chic Dr. Dolittle, Paris Hilton has always had a way with small furry creatures. Over the years, she has owned a Chihuahua and a ferret, but in 2006, Hilton was playing with her kinkajou (or, honey bear), Baby Luv, when the raccoonlike creature bit the arm that fed him. Bad move. Though the nip was only superficial—“She was seen by a doctor, who treated the wound, gave her a tetanus shot, cleaned the wound, and applied something to it,” Hilton’s publicist said shortly after the accident—the hotel heiress reportedly broke up with Baby Luv soon after the incident.
Will Binns, Pacific Coast News / Newscom
It turns out Ryan Seacrest is a lot tougher than he looks. While vacationing in Mexico in 2008, the American Idol host was bitten by a shark. Granted, it was just a baby, but still. “I thought it was a stick,” he said on his radio show the next day. “I wasn't sure what had happened. I saw it swim! He took a bite, and he left.” But the scary event did make Seacrest feel special. “There were like 1,000 people in the ocean, and I get bit by the shark!”
This terrible accident was just waiting to happen—and then it did. In 2003, after years of working with exotic animals in his Las Vegas magic act with Siegfried Fischbacher, Roy Horn was severely mauled by a white tiger in front of a live audience. The 600-lb. Montecore nearly took Horn’s life—the attack caused a stroke that ended his career—but a year after the incident, Horn insisted that Montecore was actually trying to save his life. “"He instinctively saw that I needed help,” Horn explained, believing the tiger knew he was having a stroke, “and he helped me." And for his next delusion …
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
Susan Sarandon is evidently such a sex symbol that she makes other female mammals irrationally jealous. In the 1970s, Sarandon was invited to swim with a dolphin named Joe in San Francisco, but Joe’s mate didn’t like the way he was looking at the actress. So she bit Sarandon on the arm. And a few years ago, Jessica Alba had a similar experience with a randy male dolphin while filming a Flipper remake. “I don’t know if anybody knows this but dolphins get excited, even when you are a human being,” Alba told MTV. “And they have long, long [penises]. I didn’t know this until I was being poked by a few of them, which was very rude. I think I learned my lesson. I sort of request female dolphins after that because those are horny little bastards.”
Getty Images (2); Corbis
No, not the face! In 1999, romance novel supermodel Fabio was riding on a roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Virginia when he was struck in the nose by a passing goose that obviously didn’t recognize him. (Or perhaps she did.) While Fabio had a cut on his nose that required stitches, the goose was not as lucky—it died on impact. "This is a testament of the man's strength,” Fabio’s publicist bragged after the accident. “Only a strong man could have survived an onslaught like this." Thankfully, the event was caught on video.
Steve Earley, Virginian-Pilot / AP Photo
An avid equestrian, singer Leona Lewis was thrown by a horse in 2010, but brushed off the incident like a pro. “I had a little accident. I was riding a big Swedish Warmblood horse, a jumper, and, I don’t know, I just came off,” she told the Daily Mail. “Accidents happen. I’ve come off so many times that it’s not really a big deal to me, but when everybody else hears about it they go, ‘Oh no!’ " A few months later, Lewis was back in the saddle again.
Splash News / Newscom
Few felt sorry for chef Gordon Ramsay when he was bitten by a puffin in 2008, while filming a TV segment in Iceland. After “skyfishing” to catch the birds and cook them, a fellow hunter snapped a puffin’s neck while Ramsay pulled its heart out and ate it. Later in the show, while holding a captured bird that was about to be barbecued, the puffin took a bite out of the chef. As one viewer wrote ondon's Telegraph: “I'm delighted Ramsay was bitten, serves the swine right."
Getty Images; Corbis
One of the most legendary tales of the ancient world is Cleopatra’s death by asp. The story has been told so many times—by everyone from Plutarch to Shakespeare—but it may be apocryphal. As Stacy Schiff, who wrote the definitive biography of Egypt’s last queen, noted about the snake-induced suicide, “The asp would appear to be retrofitted to the tale. Even Strabo and Plutarch, the first on the scene, are dubious about it. ‘The truth of the matter,’ announces Plutarch, to centuries of deaf ears, ‘no one knows.’ ”
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
