In cultures all across the globe, animals are revered, and even worshipped. In Hinduism, for example, cows are valued for their gentle nature. But not every sacred animal is quite so harmless; crocodiles were worshipped in Ancient Egypt, as they were believed to be living representations of the god Sobek. You may be surprised to learn that the deification of crocodiles is far from ancient history.

In Burkina Faso, just 30 kilometers away from the capital of Ouagadougou, there is a small village of Bazoule, where its people — descendents of Mossis warriors — have chosen the Crocodylus suchus as its totem. Although Bazoule is located in a landlocked country, it does have its own pond, where 150 of these unusually docile creatures reside. Despite the fearsome reputation of crocodiles, the villagers have no problem living alongside them. In fact, the Mossi boldly approach the crocodiles to play; they even sit on and lie next to them.

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Most dog owners who lose their beloved pets try to convey just how much they want the returned in the flyers they post, but one Chinese man just let everyone know that if they find his runaway Husky, they can just keep him, because he’s tired of chasing after him.

Last Sunday, Wang Wei, a property agent from Chongqing, was walking his pet dog named Huazhu when the animal spotted another dog, slipped out of its leash and ran after the other canine. Wang ran after his pet, but lost sight of him at one point and just couldn’t find him after that. So he went home and drafted some unusual flyers that he later posted around the area where he lost Huazhu. They basically said that the dog was sort of a canine escape artist and that he was tired of having to constantly run after him, so whoever found him was welcome to keep him.

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Wallace the Great, an 11-year-old rescued mule from Gloucestershire, recently made history by becoming the first ever mule to win an official horse dressage competition in Britain.

Wallace and his trainer, Christie Mclean, had been turned down from official dressage events several times on grounds that he wasn’t a true horse, but a cross between a horse and a donkey, which technically makes him a totally different species, with different chromosomes. However, earlier this month, British Dressage finally ruled in favor of allowing mules to compete in official dressage competitions alongside horses and ponies, as a testament “to inclusion and diversity in dressage, making the sport more accessible to all.” Wallace the Great finally had a chance to prove that when it came to dressage, mules could be just as good, if not better than purebred horses, and on July 22nd he did just that, winning his first British Dressage competition.

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A new zoo in Cairo’s International Garden municipal park has come under fire for trying to deceive visitors by painting a donkey black and white to make it look like a zebra.

On July 21st, Mahmoud A. Sarhani, a Cairo student who had recently visited the recently opened zoo posted a photo of a strange-looking zebra on his Facebook page. Not only did the animal have usually-long ears, but it also had some strange paint smudges on the side of its head. A closer inspection reveals that this zebra also lacks the characteristic mane of its species, which extends forward past the ears. Apparently, zoo staff painted a common donkey white with black stripes, trimmed its mane to make it look pointy and tried to pass it off as a zebra. Unfortunately, the hot weather caused the paint to smudge which attracted unwanted attention.

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A vegan pet owner from the Gold Coast, in Australia, has been criticized for putting his cat on a diet that matches his beliefs and claiming that she’s actually thriving after switching to veganism.

53-year-old Harry Bolman has been a vegan for the lat 38 years, and after adopting Uma, a five-year-old cat, last year, he decided that the same vegan diet would be perfect for her as well. Bolman has been feeding her vegetables and special vegan cat food, and despite accusations that he is “abusing” and “killing” the feline, he claims that plant-based food is the “healthiest” for cats.

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After falling from an airplane and roaming through the Atacama Desert for 6 days, “Gaspar the miracle dog” was recently rescued and reunited with his owner.

Surviving the harsh Atacame Desert for almost a week is a challenge for any human, let alone a scared dachsund that happened to have fallen out of an airplane at landing. So it’s no wonder that 2-year-old Gaspar has been dubbed a “miracle dog” for defying the odds and making it out alive out of the driest desert on Earth.

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Miracle Milly, a six-year-old Chihuahua from Puerto Rico, was awarded the title of World’s Most Cloned Dog, by the Guinness Book of Records, after scientists in South Korea created a whopping 49 genetically-identical copies of her.

The controversial Sooam Biotech Research Foundation in Seoul, South Korea, has been creating pet clones since 2006, and last year they approached Vanesa Semler, Milly’s owner about the possibility of creating clones of the adorable pooch to try and solve the genetic mystery that made her special. You see, Mily is no ordinary Chihuahua. She’s held the Guinness record for World’s Smallest Living Dog since 2012, and scientists have been wanting to know exactly what made her so tiny. So in August 2017, Sooam researchers started making clones of Miracle Milly, the number of which has currently reached 49.

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A cafe in Istanbul, Turkey, has been accused of animal cruelty after a video of a young lion nervously pacing back and forth in a narrow glass box inside the venue went viral online.

The owner of Mevzoo, an animal cafe in Istanbul’s Beykoz district has been accused of animal cruelty and abuse after videos of Khaleesi, a one-year-old lion, pacing through a glass box built in the center of the cafe and chasing after a small girl were shared on social media. People were outraged that an endangered wild animal was confined to a space less than a meter wide, which was barely enough for it to turn around, and used as entertainment. And feedback kept getting worse after it was revealed that Mevzoo also uses parrots and other rare birds, caged crocodiles and horses to attract customers.

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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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