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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Butterfly pupae are easy targets for predators in search of an easy protein-rich meal, and one would think that the flashier the cocoon, the higher the chances of being spotted and eaten , but the Mechanitis polymnia, aka the orange-spotted tiger clearwing and its shiny, gold-like pods are proof that the opposite is true.

The orange-spotted tiger clearwing butterfly lives in the jungles of Central and South America, from Mexico all the way to the Amazon rain-forests. It’s a colorful little thing, with a wingspan of 65 to 75 millimeters, but it’s not exactly the most eye-catching of butterflies. Its pupae however are pure gold, literally. Well, not really literally, but they look just like elaborate gold jewelry hanging on the back of plant leaves, and even on the walls of houses in rural areas. But unlike actual gold jewels, these shiny, metallic-looking chrysalises are not meant to draw attention, but distract predators and even discourage them from getting to close. It’s a natural defense mechanism, and a very effective one at that.

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Peter, a one-year-old cocker spaniel from Sheffield, in the UK, has earned the nickname “Fainting Pete” due to his bizarre habit of suddenly stiffening and falling over whenever he gets to excited or nervous.

Peter’s owners, Emma Clayton and Oliver Broomhead, adopted him from a family who could no longer look take care of him. They were told that the adorable pooch had been “fainting” ever since he learned how to walk, and despite seeing several veterinarians about his bizarre behavior, no one has been able to figure out what’s causing it. The English couple said that it occurs every time Peter sees ducks, enjoys his walks a bit too much or gets scared. Sometime he’ll just freeze and fall over for no apparent reason which lead doctors to believe that he is suffering from a rare neurological condition, although no one can say for sure.

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Sheila, a Golden retriever mix from Buenos Aires, Argentina, has melted the hearts of millions around South America after it was reported that she has been patiently waiting outside a local police station ever since her owner was arrested there, over a year ago.

The loyal dog reportedly showed up outside the police station in 25 de Mayo, a small town in Argentina’s Buenos Aires province, soon after her owner was brought in on charges of assault, last year. Staff there believe that she must have followed the patrol her owner was in, but one thing is for sure, once she arrived, she never left. It didn’t take long for the officers to notice her presence, and some of them started bringing her food to gain her trust. Sheila was cautious at first, but today she depends on the policemen for sustenance, sleeps inside the station at night, and sometimes accompanies her carers on patrols. But she always comes back to the station to wait for her master.

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A Chinese animal lover who took in hundreds of stray dogs over the last two years is struggling to make ends meet despite having a stable job and his own business. He has accumulated a debt of 600,000 yuan ($87,000), but he refuses to give up on his four-legged friends.

Up until two years ago, Zhang Kai, a 41-year-old man from Chengdu, China, had a peaceful, comfortable life. He was the manager of a state-owned company and had just opened his own travel agency. But everything changed when his 13-year-old dog, which he had raised since 2003 suddenly died. The tragic event left a void in his life, and somehow made him pay more attention to the countless strays in his city in need of a home. At first, he took in two of them and raised them in his travel agency office, but before he knew it he was taking care of eight strays. Things just snowballed from there, and today he is struggling to take care of 260 dogs, relying solely on bank loans and donations.

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Brazilian pet shop chain Petz has combined face recognition technology and artificial intelligence to create a groundbreaking platform that allows dogs to buy their favorite products by analyzing their facial expressions.

There’s nothing more disheartening for dog owners that buying a new toy for their pooches only to see them turn their nose up at it. Well, thanks to Pet-Commerce, an online pet-store created by Brazil’s Petz brand, you can avoid such disappointing experiences by allowing the dog to choose his favorite products. All you have to do is hold an internet connected camera to the dog’s face and allow the AI powering Pet-Commerce to analyze its facial expressions as you scroll through the different products listed on the site. Once it detects excitement, it automatically adds the product to your shopping cart and you can finalize the transaction when you’re done.

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