Every year, flocks of thousands of hungry ducks are released into vast rice paddies to clean the fields of unwanted pests and rice stubble left over from last harvest.

Humanity has witnessed unprecedented technological advancements over the last few decades, but in Thailand, the world’s second largest rice exporter, farmers still use a centuries old solution to keep their rice paddies in optimal condition. Every year, they rely on duck farmers to unleash thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of young, hungry ducks onto their fields, to clean them of pests like cherry snails and apple snails, as well as weeds and leftover rice stubble. Apart from acting as a natural pesticide, the ducks also fertilize the fields with their droppings.

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A Texel lamb named Double Diamond and described by many as “genetically perfect” recently became the world’s most expensive sheep, commanding a price of 350,000 guineas ($490,000) at a Scottish auction.

Texel sheep, originating from the tiny island of Texel, just off the coast of the Netherlands, routinely command five-figure prices at auctions, thanks to their lean meat and wool used for hosiery yarns, but a particularly special specimen just made other Texels look cheap. Double Diamond, am outstanding lamb featuring the best genetics, had sheep breeders in the whole of the UK up in arms trying to somehow get their hands on him. Even before the Scottish National Texel sale in Lanark had started, some breeders had already partnered up to bid a higher price for Double Diamond.

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A dog in China recently made national headlines for being found alive and well after spending over a month trapped under the ruin of his master’s following a landslide.

On July 8, the people of Cangbaotian village, in China’s Guizhou Province had to be hastily evacuated before most of their homes succumbed to a terrible landslide. Only a handful of the 130 buildings in the village were left standing, and despite being unable to retrieve most of their possessions before the evacuation, residents weren’t allowed to return until the area was deemed safe by authorities. Earlier this month, one man who returned to see if anything could be salvaged from his collapsed home was shocked to hear barking coming from under the rubble.

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They say money does not smell, but a lucrative venture thought up by a German circus is proof that money can actually stink. The Krone Circus in Munich is in the business of selling lion poop.

Circus are forbidden from performing during the pandemic, so many of them have been struggling to stay afloat in the last few months. Animal circuses have it even worse, as they have dozens of creatures to feed every day, so many of them have been forced to think outside the box in order to stay solvent. The Krone Circus, in Munich, Germany, has come up with a stinky yet profitable business idea – selling jars of poop from their 26 lions and tigers for 5 euros ($6) a pop.

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Of the roughly 1,300 known species of bat, very few can be described as cute and cuddly, but the tiny Honduran White Bat is definitely one of these rare exceptions.

Also called the Caribbean White Tent-Making Bat, this adorable flying mammal can be found in the tropical forests of Central-American countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and western parts of Panama. It has a distinctive white fur, which is characteristic of only five other known bat species, and is very small for its genus, with the largest recorded individual being under 5 centimetres in length. Because of its white color and generally cute look, as well as the fact that it doesn’t live in caves and doesn’t suck blood, the Honduran White Bat is considered a living, breathing contradiction of bat stereotypes.

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Scientists recently discovered that a species of tiny water beetles can live through being eaten by a frog by somehow surviving a journey through its gut and simply exiting through the butt hole.

Until this week, Regimbartia attenuata was just another species of water beetle, but ever since a study on its astonishing survival skills came out on Monday, it’s been making headlines in mainstream media outlets around the world. And for good reason, as there aren’t many creatures on this Earth that can survive being swallowed alive, journey through their predator’s digestive system, simply crawl out the “back door” and go on with their lives as if they didn’t just pull off a Houdini-like magic trick.

Regimbartia attenuata were the subject of an unusual study carried out by Shinji Sugiura, an associate professor in the department of agrobioscience at Kobe University in Japan. He put the tiny beetles in the same laboratory bin with specimens from five different frog species, and the little bugs managed to crawl out the frogs’ “vents” in the vast majority of experiments.

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The former Seneca Army Depot in upstate New York is home to a rare herd of white-tailed deer, all of which carry a recessive gene for all-white coats.

The Seneca white deer are not albinos, they are a natural variation of the white-tailed deer, which are usually a brown color. These rare deer are leucistic, meaning they lack pigmentation in the fur, but their eyes are the normal brown color. In the wild, the very visible white coat makes these rare creatures easy targets for both human hunters and predators like coyotes, but this particular herd was protected by a 24-mile (39 km) fence erected around the Seneca Army Depot in 1941. They were isolated inside the depot perimeter and since the military commander there forbade soldiers from shooting the white deer, their number grew into the hundreds.

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If you find yourself walking thorough the forest of Rambouillet, just west of Paris, and happen to see an animal resembling a kangaroo, know that your eyes aren’t playing trick on you, the French forest has been home to up to 150 wallabies for over 40 years.

The colony of red-necked Bennett’s wallabies living in Rambouillet Forest can be traced back to a small group of animals that were brought into a zoological reserve in the nearby village of Emance, during the 1970s. A few of them escaped through holes in the fencing, and were never retrieved. They’ve been living in the wild for decades and researchers believe that the woods may now be home to around 150 wallabies. The forest provided them with shelter and sustenance, they had no natural predators to fear, and the climate was apparently very similar to that of their native Tasmania. The biggest threat to the wallabies of Rambouillet are passing cars.

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A homesick camel recently managed to melt the hearts of millions of Chinese people after it was reported that it traveled 100 kilometres through the desert to return to its former owners, eight months after being sold.

Chinese media recently featured the heartwarming story of a loyal camel who allegedly spent days crossing the barren desert of North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to reach its former home after being sold to another farmer eight months prior. The injured animal was spotted walking through the desert earlier this month by another herdsman who took it in and tended to its needs while trying to find its owner. News of the camel’s discovery reached its owner who rushed to retrieve it, but after hearing about the animal’s arduous journey, its former masters wanted it back.

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According to a fascinating new study, the Andean condor spend almost all of their flying time in soaring mode, flapping their wings only 1.3 percent of the time.

Weighing up to about 16 kilograms and with a wingspan of roughly 3.3 meters, the condor is the largest flying bird in the world by combined measurement of weight and wingspan. With that in mind, it’s almost impossible to believe that it can stay airborne for at least five hours and cover a distance of over 100 miles without flapping its enormous wings once. But that was the most interesting finding of a study published by researchers at the University of Swansea after monitoring a group of condors for five years.

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A 50-year-old man from China has been exercising by moving around on all fours and climbing trees like a monkey every day for the past three decades.

Chen Haigang, a fitness enthusiast from China’s Shanxi province, attracts attention whenever he exercises in public, due to the bizarre routine he has been practicing for about 30 years. Instead of the popular tai-chi practiced by many of his countrymen, jogging or simple stretching, Chen acts like a monkey, walking on all fours, crouching his back and dangling his arms, and even imitating the primates’ tree-climbing techniques. He has been doing it for three decades now, ever since he was inspired by a monkey at the zoo, and claims that it’s been keeping him in perfect health ever since.

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Moo, a 7-month-old Dachshund from Florida, has a head that doesn’t quite match the rest of his body. He has the black and brown head of a Dachshund, but below the neck he is all Dalmatian.

One look at Moo and it’s easy to see why many people assume that he is wearing some sort of costume or pajamas the first time they see him. His unique look is not the consequence of some mysterious condition, he was just born like that, and he’s actually a healthy and happy little dog. With over 21,000 followers on Instagram alone, Moo is also on his way to becoming an Instagram influencer.

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An Indian entrepreneur has comes up with an ingenious and ultra expensive way to reunite pet owners with the pets they had to leave behind in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic – an all-pet charter plane to fly the animals back to their owners.

Deepika Singh, a young entrepreneur and cyber security researcher in Mumbai, came up with the idea of an all-pet chartered plane when she was arranging a jet to fly in some relatives from Delhi. Some of them wanted to travel with their pets, but the others refused, so she ended up having to look for another plane for them. She realized that she couldn’t have been the only one to experience this issue, so she devised a plan to reunite pets abandoned during the national lockdown with their owners, without cramming them in cargo shipments.

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Frillback pigeons are one of the most coveted breeds among pigeon fanciers, prized both for its relatively calm temperament and for their unique frills or curls.

Believed to have originated somewhere in Asia Minor, the frillback pigeon is the result of many years of selective breeding. Its distinctive features are the frill or curls on the wing shield feathers, as well as at the end of the foot feathers or muffs. Slightly larger than other pigeon breeds, with long tail and wing feathers, are considered some of the most elegant of fancy pigeon breeds and are very popular at pigeon beauty contests.

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Borzoi hounds typically have longer snouts than most other dog breeds, but one specimen is getting a lot of attention these days for having potentially the world’s longest snout, with a length of 31 centimetres.

Two-year-old Eris is a white Borzoi Sighthound from Richmond, Virginia, who has been getting a lot of attention online for her unusually long snout. Ever sine Eris’ owner, Lily Kambourian, posted a photo of her nose from an angle that really showed how incredibly long it was, people have been fascinated by her schnozzle. Lily says that it was quite obvious that Eris and her siblings had an overbite (a genetic defect) since they were only puppies, but she didn’t care, and she certainly never expected this to become her most popular trait.

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