Owning a vacation home in West Palm Beach’s Ibis Golf and Country Club is a dream come true for most people, but for a couple of residents that dream quickly turned into a nightmare after their properties were taken over by dozens of black vultures.

Earlier this year, New Yorkers Anthony and Siobhan Casimano bought a vacation home in the Ibis Golf and Country Club for 702,000 dollar, but when they decided to vacation there, they were shocked to find it had actually been taken over by dozens, if not hundreds of black vultures. They were practically living in the pool area, had destroyed the property’s screened enclosures and did not appear too happy to share the place with its human owners. They pecked at their car, and vomited when they got too close, as a means of self defense. Despite their best efforts to have the issue resolved, the Casimanos remain unable to drive the vultures away and reclaim their expensive property.

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When you think of possible emotional support animal species, alligator probably isn’t at the top of the list. But that didn’t stop one Pennsylvania man from relying on a hug-loving alligator to keep his depression in check.

65-year-old Joie Henney received approval from his doctor to use an alligator as an emotional support animal, after refusing to go on medication for depression. Named Wally, the unlikely pet reportedly likes to snuggle and loves being hugged and petted. Henney describes the five-foot-long alligator as a big softy, telling reporters that he never bit anyone and is even afraid of cats. Despite being fully aware of the fact that Wally could rip his arm off if he wanted to, the 65-year-old says he isn’t afraid of him at all.

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We’ve seen plants and insects posing as something else entirely in order to confuse their natural predators, but Macrocilix maia, a moth native to Southeastern Asia, takes mimicry to a whole new level by literally painting an entire scene on its wings.

Looking at a Macrocilix maia moth, it’s impossible to ignore the scene painted on its wings – two flies feasting on some brown spots that could be mistaken for fresh bird droppings. It’s a pretty disgusting picture, and apparently we’re not the only ones who think so. Many of this moth’s predators tend to skip on insects feasting on bird droppings, associating them with potential disease, so the natural pattern acts as a defense mechanism for the otherwise helpless insect. And as if this visual representation of flies eating bird droppings wasn’t impressive enough, the moth reportedly also gives off a pungent odour that could be mistaken for actual bird droppings.

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Turritopsis dohrnii, a small species of jellyfish native to the Mediterranean, is commonly known as the “immortal jellyfish, and it literally lives up to its name. Possessing the ability to revert to its a sexually immature stage instead of succumbing to an inevitable death, this tiny creature holds the secret to true biological immortality.

Humans have fantasized about immortality since the beginning of time. We have countless myths and stories about it, but until the mid-1990s we had yet to find any proof that eternal life on this earth was possible. In 1996, researchers published a study about a small species of jellyfish capable of reverting from an adult, solitary individual to its juvenile colonial state, thus cheating death and achieving potential immortality. Just as long as it wasn’t consumed by predators and it could be sustained by its environment, the jellyfish could repeat this cycle indefinitely and live forever. To this day, the immortal jellyfish remains the only known immortal animal.

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Xafi and Auri are two feline sisters taking Instagram with their contrasting neat, silver coats and mesmerizing ocean eyes.

Instagram has no shortage of animal superstars, from the angry-looking Pompous Albert, to Ghost, the singing samoyed, but when it comes to the most beautiful turquoise eyes to get lost in, there’s no competing with Xafi and Auri. The so-called “American Type” Russian Blue Cats share the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen, rivaled only by those of fellow Instagram stars Iris and Abyss.

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Maru, a one-year-old Bullmastiff traveling on train through the Siberian taiga, reportedly jumped off and walked over 200 km trying to return to the owner who had rejected her.

Born at a dog kennel in Novosibirsk, Maru was sold to a family in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, 800 km away, when she was only five months old. However, six months later kennel owner Alla Morozova received a call from the dog’s owners informing her that they were allergic to animals and could no longer look after their pet. The contract stipulated that in the case that the buyers no longer wanted a dog, they should inform Morozova first, so she could make arrangements to retrieve them. She had someone get Maru and accompany her on a train ride back to Novosibirsk, but 200 km into the journey, something went wrong.

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After spending months looking for his lost pet Chihuahua, a desperate Tucson man has announced that he is offering his one bedroom home and the plot of land that comes with it to whoever brings his dog back to him.

Eddie Collins lost his beloved pet, Jenny, back in April and he has spent every day since trying to find her. After searching every place he could think of, plastering posters all over Tucson and visiting dog shelters every day, he decided to increase his chances of finding Jenny by offering his most prized material possession as a reward. Whoever finds Jenny and brings her back, will receive Eddie’s one-bedroom apartment, his workshop and a plot of land in return.

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Chinese facial-recognition startup Megvii has been making news headlines for an app that allows people to track down their lost dogs using photos of their unique noses.

The idea of using AI-powered facial recognition technology to identify pets isn’t new, but what makes Megvii’s solution special is that instead of analyzing several facial features, like the eyes or snout, it focuses solely on dogs’ noses. Apparently, the patterns on a dog’s nose are just as unique as the ones on out fingertips, allowing the company’s app to track down pooches by matching their noses against a database with 95 percent accuracy. Megvii claims that its method is both cheaper and less invasive than inserting identification chips under the animals’ skin.

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Two British backpackers fishing in Australia can consider themselves lucky to be alive after stupidly playing with a tiny blue-ringed octopus, whose painless bite can kill up to 26 adults in minutes.

A viral video posted on a Facebook group for backpackers shows daredevils Ross Saunders and Johnpaul Lennon dangling a blue-ringed octopus and letting it touch their skin, completely oblivious to the fact that a single bite could result in a painful death. The two adventurers had been fishing in Australia when they caught the yellow and blue spotted octopus, only instead of keeping it as far away as possible, they decided to play chicken with it, dangling the creature against their bare arms while laughing.

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We’ve seen animals achieve online fame for their looks, in fact Instagram is full of animal influencers, but this handsome Saanen goat in Malaysia is the first to reach online celebrity status for looking like a Korean pop star.

Ramos, an 11-month-old billy goat at Muhammad Livestock Farm in Perak, Malaysia, went viral last week after his owner posted photos of him on the farm’s Facebook page. People instantly fell in love with his blonde hairdo and goatee, and some social media users even compared his beauty to that of a K-pop star. Ramos’ owner, 21-year-old Ahmad M Fadzir, told local reporters that the handsome goat loves getting photographed and turns to pose for the camera whenever he sees one. That’s what stars do, I suppose…

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A loyal dog in Greece recently melted the hearts of millions around the world after it was reported that it has spent the last 18 months at a roadside shrine where his owner tragically lost his life in a traffic accident.

Nicknamed the “Greek Hachiko” after the legendary Akita Inu who spent years waiting at a train station in Japan for his owner who had passed away, the unnamed white dog has reportedly been living at a roadside shrine near the Greek town of Nafpaktos for the last year and a half. Despite several the efforts of several locals to adopt the dog, he keeps escaping and always returns to the place where his owner lost his life in a car crash.

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You’ve probably seen wood artists carve impressive sculptures out of giant logs, be it with a chainsaw or hammer and chisel, but you probably haven’t seen anything quite like what Spanish artist Gerard Mas is capable of.

By tirelessly chiselling away at logs cut from mature tree trunks then smoothing out his artworks with fine sandpaper, Gerard Mas is able to produce these almost perfect animal sculptures that literally look like photos of living creatures. And as if his works weren’t impressive enough, the dark tones used to expertly recreate the fur of a doberman or the black snout of a German shepherd are achieved only by charring the wood with an open flame. The results are simply breathtaking.

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It’s not unusual for zoo visitors to leave with a stuffed animal as a souvenir, but one Los Angeles teen decided he wanted something better than that, so he stole North America’s oldest-living ring-tailed lemur.

After committing almost three dozen burglaries in the last few years, it’s safe to say that 19-year-old Aquinas Kasbar was used to just taking things that didn’t belong to him. So when he laid eyes on Isaac, a 32-year-old endangered lemur at the Santa Ana Zoo last year and decided he wanted it for a pet, he knew exactly what he had to do. On July 27, 2018 Kasbar reportedly snuck into the zoo after hours and used bolt cutters to cut a hole in the enclosure for lemurs and Capuchin monkeys to get to his prize. Several animals escaped in the chaos, but the teen managed to capture and run away with Isaac.

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If there was such a thing as “fluffy grumpiness” I imagine it would look just like Juno, a beautiful feline blessed with amazing fur and a face that oozes contempt for everyone and everything around him.

From Pompous Albert, “the angriest cat on Instagram, to Bronson, the 33-pound ball of fur, and Coby, whose beautiful blue eyes simply take your breath away, there are plenty of feline Instagram stars, but they all rely on one main feature to attract attention. Albert has that angry look on his face all the time, Bronson is just huge and Coby’s has his incredible blue eyes. Juno is one of the few Instagram cats that has two things going for him, a permanently unimpressed look on his face and a gorgeous silver mane that’s long and thick enough to be shaped into all kinds of hilarious hairstyles.

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The North American hognose snake, aka “puff adder, aka “zombie snake”, has a taste for the dramatic. When threatened, this natural-born artist likes to play dead in the most overacted way imaginable.

The hognose snake got its first nickname, “puff adder”, for its main defense mechanism. To scare away threats, it sucks in air and spreads the skin around its head and neck like a cobra, hissing loudly and pretending to prepare for a vicious snake. But if that doesn’t work, it has another intriguing trick up its sleeve. And that’s where the second nickname, “zombie snake”, comes in. According to the Amphibians and Reptiles of North Carolina, if a predator isn’t impressed by the snake’s threatening display, it “will then feign death by opening its mouth, rolling over on its back, and writhing around. If turned over onto its belly, it will immediately roll again onto its back”.

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