Vets in Plymouth, UK, scrambled to save the life of an alcoholic labrador retriever that had become addicted to booze because its late owner kept leaving his drinks outside overnight.

Coco, a two-year-old Labrador cross, almost lost his life and spent a month in intensive care after becoming addicted to alcohol. Staff at the Woodside Animal Welfare Trust in Plymouth, Devon, rescued Coco and another dog after their owner passed away, but they had no idea about the problems the two canines had. It turned out that they were both alcohol addicts, having gotten hooked on booze over years of enjoying open bottles that their late owner left out in the yard before going to sleep. The addiction was so bad that the other dog passed away during the withdrawal period and Coco himself had to be sedated for four weeks.

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Animal rescuers in Brittany, France were stunned by a wild duck that seemed to lead a perfectly normal life despite having a knife stuck in its neck.

Nicknamed Donald the Duck by the members of the Pinocchio et Sauvageons association, the mallard with a red knife handle sticking out of the left side of his neck had long attracted the attention of people in Saint-Nolff, north-western France. What really stunned those who saw the wild duck was how unaffected he seemed by the wound, swimming alongside other ducks, walking around on its webbed feet and being able to feed normally. However, animal rescuers at Pinocchio et Sauvageons worried that the knife could become a serious problem with time, so they decided to take it out.

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The capuchinbird, an exotic bird found in the jungles of South America, is famous for having one of the most bizarre-sounding mating songs in the entire animal kingdom.

Capuchinbirds have a rather peculiar look. They have light brown plumage that becomes bright orange on the belly, and a bald vulture-like head covered in blue skin. The contrast between its rich plumage and its bare head is striking and makes for an unusual appearance, but you’ll forget all about its weird look when you hear its mating song. Calling the sounds coming out of this bird’s beak during mating season a ‘song’ seems like a bit of a stretch, because it sounds nothing like the melodious chirping of a nightingale or a mockingbird.

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An Indian man has become somewhat of a celebrity in his home state of Uttar Pradesh thanks to his unusual best friend, a wild crane that follows him everywhere he goes.

30-year-old Mohammed Arif, a harvester operator from Mandka village, in Uttar Pradesh, was working in a field in February of last year, when he saw an injured sarus crane in dire need of help. It was bleeding from one leg and seemed in a lot of pain, so the young man picked it up and took it home where he started nursing it back to health. It took a while, but the red-necked crane made a full recovery. Only instead of flying away the moment it was set free, the majestic bird stuck by its benefactor, accompanying him everywhere.

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The Lingcod, a fish native to the North American west coast, usually has brown-red or even greyish skin and white flesh, but about 1 in 5 specimens are actually neon blue both inside and out, and no one really knows why.

Popular both among recreational fishermen and seafood lovers for its delicious meat, the lingcod is a bottom-dwelling fish that can grow up to a size of 152 centimeters. It’s a voracious predator that feeds on virtually anything that moves and fits into its large mouth and has only a couple of species of seals and human fishermen to worry about. The Lingcod is sometimes referred to as ‘smurf cod’ due to the fact that about 20 percent of specimens have neon blue flesh that looks either alien or affected by nuclear radiation. Interestingly, while scientists have theories about this bizarre coloration, we have yet to establish why some lingcod have blue flesh.

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With a nearly perfect 4.9/5.0 stars out of thousands of Google reviews, Gacek, an overweight black-and-white street cat, is the top-rated tourist attraction in the Polish city of Szczecin.

Szczecin, a medieval city in northwestern Poland, close to the border with Germany, has plenty to offer visitors. The Pomeranian Duke’s Castle and Kasprowicza Park are two of its most popular tourist attractions, but when it comes to online reviews, both pale in comparison with the city’s top-rated attraction, a fat cat named Gacek. The tuxedo cat rose to fame in 2020, after local news site wSzczecinie featured the feline in a video that subsequently went viral on social media, and people have been showering Gacek with positive reviews ever since.

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Police in the Chinese city of Chongqing has begun using specially-trained squirrels in their war against drug traffickers.

The Police Dog Brigade of the Criminal Police Detachment in Hechuan District, Chongqing has successfully bred the first batch of drug-sniffing squirrels in China. The breakthrough was part of the country’s national key research and development project, which sought, among others, the creation of new training methods for anti-drug animals. Apparently, scientists have been aware of squirrels’ keen sense of smell for a long time, but rodent training methods were apparently not advanced enough until now.

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A young dog believed to have been abandoned in the Nevada Desert as a puppy was recently rescued after spending at least six months as part of a coyote pack.

The people of Inspirada, a suburban neighborhood of Henderson, Nevada are used to seeing packs of coyotes running through the streets at night, but for the past couple of months, many of them have been reporting something strange. Apparently, a white dog was running with a pack of these wild predators, scavenging for food, playing in the moonlight and running away as soon as someone tried to approach him. Some called him the Coyote Dog, but he became more famous as Ghost, both for his white coat and his ability to disappear as soon as someone tried to catch him.

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A former zoo director in the Mexican city of Chilpancingo has been officially accused of a series of wrongdoings during his time in office, including cooking pigmy goats for a staff party.

José Rubén Nava Noriega is probably a prime candidate for the title of the world’s worst zoo director. During his time managing the local zoo in the city of Chilpancingo, Noriega allegedly sold animals illegally, failed to properly record animal births and deaths, somehow lost several animals, and, probably most shocking of all, he slaughtered and cooked four out of the zoo’s ten pigmy goats for a New Year’s staff feast.

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The Columbia Basin Pigmy Rabbit is the smallest and perhaps the rarest rabbit breed in the world. It is native to just one part of the Washington State Area, and weighs under 500 grams.

There are plenty of tiny domestic rabbit breeds to choose from if you’re looking for an adorable pet rabbit, but the tiniest of them all is actually a wild breed that doesn’t make a great pet. The Columbia Basin Pigmy Rabbit is skittish and nervous, but the main reason why you’ll most likely never own one is its critically endangered status. The breed was declared extinct in the wild in 2001, when the last 14 specimens were scooped up from their native habitat and put into a captive breeding program.

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What looked like a growing oil spill in Michigan’s Mackinac Straits area turned out to be a massive gathering of tens of thousands of ducks and other aquatic birds.

On December 21 of last year, the Mackinac Bridge Authority started receiving calls from concerned divers regarding a possible oil spill in the area. With each passing day, the number of calls regarding the oil spill kept growing, which makes sense, considering that the black mass that had formed on the water appeared to be growing. However, it wasn’t oil, but a record-setting gathering of Redhead ducks. In the beginning, authorities counted around 7,000 of them gathered together under and around Mackinac Bridge. Their number has grown since then, and there are now several tens of thousands of birds making up the “oil spill”.

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Gregorio Romero, an 84-year-old man from Mexico’s Sonora state, owes his life to his pet dog, El Palomo, who led rescuers to him after becoming lost in the desert for a week.

On November 27, Gregorio Romero left his home in Moctezuma to go for a walk, but he didn’t come back. His family wasn’t concerned at first, as the octogenarian sometimes used to visit nearby villages in the area and return a few days later. However, after four days, the man’s niece, Ramona, alerted the authorities about his disappearance, and a search party was put together. They searched the area around Romero’s home, but a week after his disappearance, the octogenarian was nowhere to be found. In the end, it was the man’s faithful pet dog that saved the day.

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Cheetahs are famous for their speed, but they don’t even come close to the world’s faster animal, a falcon that swoops on its unsuspecting prey at speeds of over 300 km per hour.

The peregrine falcon is one of the most efficient predators on Earth, and it owes much of that efficiency to its unrivaled speed. During its characteristic dive, this majestic creature reaches an average speed of 320 km/h, but the highest measured speed of a peregrine falcon is actually 389 km/h (242 mph), which makes it faster than the vast majority of commercially available cars. And it’s obviously much faster than the cheetah’s 64 mph record.

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A Vietnamese man has become famous in his home province of An Giang for taking care of thousands of wild river fish who visit his house every day for food.

Muoi Phuc’s house in Long Kien, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, is a popular attraction for both locals and tourists. People routinely stop by to watch the man feed a school of wild fish that visits him daily. When the 52-year-old man started feeding the fish, it was just a handful of pangasius, but over the last two years, their number grew at a steady pace, and now thousands of fish stop by his riverside home every day for a bite to eat. The fish are free to come and go as they please, and others have tried attracting them by throwing food into the river, but for some reason, they only stop at Muoi Phuc’s house.

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A 26-year-old animal lover from China has been taking care of over 300 wolves at a wildlife rescue station in the country’s Inner Mongolia region.

Ever since he was a child, Wang Nan was fascinated by the unity and bonds of wolves as a species, so when he got a chance to work with his favorite animals as an adult, he jumped at the opportunity. In 2015, he started working at an animal rescue reserve in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, taking care of injured wild wolves, feeding them, breeding them, and slowly earning their trust. Over the years, his pack of wolves grew to around 320 animals, including young pups, who seem to consider him their friend.

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