Coby has only been on Instagram for three years, but he already has over 1.2 million followers. Those are A-list celebrity numbers, but Coby isn’t even human, he’s a cat.

Rebecca Schefkind, Coby’s owner, created his Instagram page in June 2015, as a joke. It didn’t take long for people to notice his beautiful blue eyes, and after his follower count reached 150,000 in just a few months and companies began offering free her free cat food for promotion, Schfkind started taking Coby’s Instagram success seriously. Today, he’s probably the most successful cat on the social network, and according to his fans, the most beautiful as well.

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Every year, more than a million pigeons die while competing in Taiwan’s controversial pigeon sea races, a series of grueling events in which young birds are shipped far out to sea, released in the middle of nowhere and forced to fly home. According to several reports from animal rights organizations, less than 1% of them make it back to land.

The small island of Taiwan hosts more pigeon racing events than any other country in the world. A reported 500,000 Taiwanese race pigeons every year, competing for billions of New Taiwan dollars in prize money. Pigeon racing is such a big business that the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology once introduced an optional course on it, which proved very popular with both young and old pigeon racers. However, important notions taught during this course, like injury prevention and the use of performance enhancing drugs fly out the window during Taiwan’s seasonal sea races.

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Poncho the police dog recently became famous online, after the Madrid Municipal Police shared a video of him on Twitter in which he is performing CPR on a fallen colleague.

Despite being only a training simulation, Poncho’s life-saving skills and quick reactions left a lot of people impressed. As soon as his human partner collapses to the ground and remains seemingly unconscious, Poncho springs into action, running to him and jumping with his front legs on the man’s chest, while also laying his head on the man’s mouth to check his breathing. He doesn’t stop until the collapsed trainer gets up. The video has so far been watched by over 2 million people on Latino social media alone, most of whom can’t stop praising his performance.

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The Luvable Dog Rescue is a canine shelter unlike any other. Located in the idyllic woods of Oregon and featuring cozy, colorful cabins complete with miniature furniture, instead of the usual kennels, this place looks more like a fairy-tale village than a shelter for rescued pit bulls.

The 55-acre wooded sanctuary, near Eugene, in Oregon, currently consists of six beautifully-decorate cottages, each featuring two separate rooms and all the amenities you’d expect to find in a regular home, including furniture, lighting fixtures, artworks and even a TV. It hardly sounds like the perfect place for pit bulls to live in unsupervised, but there’s actually a good reason that these cottages look so much like actual human homes.

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If she wasn’t married, Ruthy Bradshaw would love to legally change her name to Ruthy Doolitle to emphasize her unique talent – communicating with animals, even if they’ve passed away.

The 42-year-old former marketing director from Colchester, Essex, left her old career behind to do what she loves most, work with animals. She offers therapy to anxious pets and counseling to their owners, but her methods are unconventional to say the least. Ruthy calls herself a real-life Dr. Doolitle and claims to be able to communicate with animals, interpreting various signals and making up a voice of them talking back to her, in her head.

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A pregnant cow from Bulgaria has been sentenced to death for “illegally” crossing the border into neighboring Serbia. She apparently didn’t know that Serbia isn’t a member of the European Union and could not return to her home country without the appropriate paperwork…

Penka the cow sealed her fate last month, when she broke away from her herd near the Bulgarian village of Kopilovtsi and crossed the border into Serbia, a non-EU country. The cow’s owner, Ivan Haralampiev, and his sons relentlessly looked for her for two weeks, notifying border patrol, the local police and even the mayors of neighboring villages about her disappearance. Then, one day, Ivan received news that Penka had been located in the village of Bosilegrad, in Serbia, where it was being taken care of by the locals. The relieved owner went to retrieve his cow, but got some really bad news when trying to cross the border back into Bulgaria.

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A Labrador in the Argentinian city of General Roca has become a local attraction and an online sensation for a very peculiar reason – he spent at least three days staring at the blue wall of a bus station and no one can explain why.

The dog, named Chicho by social media users who didn’t know his real name, spends most of his time at a blue bus stop in the Stefenelli neighborhood of General Roca. Whether he is standing on all fours or sitting, he keeps his eyes glued to the blue wall of the station, as if paying attention to something or someone that nobody else can see. In a video that has been doing the rounds on Latino social media, people are trying to distract Chicho or drive him away from the wall, but he keeps wagging his tail and staring at it. So far, no one has been able to explain why.

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A Chinese woman recently made international headlines after discovering that the white ball of fur she bought a year ago wasn’t really a puppy, but a white fox cub.

Last year, the woman, surnamed Wang, bought what she thought was a Japanese Spitz puppy from a pet shop in Jinzhong, China’s Shanxi province. She started realizing that something wasn’t quite right about her cute pet after about three months, when it stopped eating dog food and started to grow an unusually long, fluffy tail. She didn’t pay too much attention to these details, and just continued feeding it chicken and fruit, which it seemed to like. But then things started getting weirder.

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A family in Yunan Province, China, recently had to give up the pet puppy they had bought two years ago after it grew into a 250lbs black bear.

Su Yun, who lives near the city of Kunming, bought the animal two years ago, while on vacation. At the time, she thought she had paid for a Tibetan Mastiff puppy, one of the most highly-regarded dog breeds in China, and didn’t much care that it was sold by a random man on the side of the road. The price was good and the puppy certainly looked like it was going to grow up to be an impressive specimen. Little did she know that the “puppy” would exceed all her expectations, at least in terms of size.

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They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but there’s a dog in Colombia that would certainly argue with that. The clever pooch started paying for biscuits with tree leaves after seeing students pass banknotes to a food stall attendant in exchange for the tasty treats. He decided to try it for himself one day, and after getting the result he wanted, he’s been doing it ever since.

Negro recently became a social media sensation after a teacher at the Diversified Technical Education Institute of Monterrey Casanare, in Colombia, shared some photos and a video of the clever dog paying for treats with tree leaves. Students had apparently been buying the pooch biscuits from an on-campus food stall for a while, and after observing humans handing out money in exchange for the tasty treats, he decided to try it out for himself. Only instead of actual money, he used a much more accessible currency – fallen tree leaves.

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When 69-year-old Dobrgyal started looking after the wild macaques at at scenic spot in China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, their population numbered only 40-50 specimens. Today, 18 years later, that same place is home to over 2,800 Tibetan macaques.

Dobrgyal’s relationship with the Tibetan macaques in Gongbo’gyamda County has been described as a heartwarming love story between man and monkey, and he has come to be known as the Monkeys’ Father. A former forest keeper in the area, the 69-year-old man has been driving 5 km almost every day just to feed the macaques at a popular tourist spot, but also show them affection and make sure they are healthy. On occasions, he has even taken some of the animals home with him and nursed them back to health.

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A 15-year-old dog in in Chongqing’s Yuzhong district has been dubbed the ‘Chinese Hachiko’ for patiently waiting up to 12 hours a day outside a local metro station until his owner returns from work.

Xiongxiong, which translates as ‘Little Bear’, has reportedly been waiting outside the Liziba metro station, in Yuzhong district, every day for the past eight years, ever since his current owner started looking after him. The pooch is well-known by locals who often stop to pet him, but after a recent video of him patiently waiting for his master recently went viral on social media, Xionxiong has become a national celebrity, with people travelling to Chongqing from all over China, just to see him.

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An Oregon woman who allegedly left her horse outside during the winter without adequate care and shelter, causing it pain and suffering, is now being sued by the animal for more than $100,000 in damages.

It’s not every day you hear about horses taking humans to court, but in states like Oregon this sort of thing has been possible ever sing 2014, when the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that animals can be victims of crime and have legally protected rights. Justice, the horse in this particular case, is listed as a plaintiff in the legal action against its former owner, and, just like a human, has a team of lawyers fighting on its behalf.

According to Justice’s legal team at the Animal Legal Defense Fund in Portland, the 8-year-old horse has suffered a great deal of pain and suffering as a result of his former owner’s neglect and is entitled to a substantial amount of money that should go toward his current and future care and medical treatments.

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South Korean ad agency Cheil Worldwide partnered with Molly’s Pet Shop, a popular pet shop chain, to provide stray cats with comfortable shelters on cold winter and spring nights, by recycling old jacket hoods into cozy homes.

Called Hood Houses, the ingenious cat cribs were created to raise awareness about South Korea’s stray cat problem, and also promote positive interaction between people and homeless animals. Last December, Goodwill shops and Molly’s Pet Shop branches started collecting old jacket hoods and other padded clothing, which were then recycled into portable dome homes, fitted with a waterproof roof, a bed as well as bowls for food/water. Over a two-week period, over 2,000 Hood Houses were given away for free to Molly’s Pet Shop customers who bought food for stray cats.

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The world’s most faithful male is a stork. Every year, for the past 16 years, he has flown 14,000 km from his winter home in South Africa to a small village in Croatia, Europe, to be with his handicapped mate, who cannot fly due to an old gunshot wound.

The amazing love story between Klepetan and Malena has made the two storks celebrities in Croatia. Every March, the male stork flies back to the village of Brodski Varos, where Malena is waiting for him. They mate and have new babies each year, which Klepetan then teaches how to fly, before migrating with them to South Africa. The injured female stays behind, as she cannot fly, but she’s always well taken care of during the cold winter.

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