Beggars in China are stooping to new lows in order to gain sympathy (and money) from impressionable passers-by. Horrific pictures show deliberately mutilated camels that are being used to beg for donations. Apparently, the trick has worked wonders so far – the beggars’ collections have increased because people are quite sympathetic and end up donating generously to help the poor animals.

The latest case was discovered in Fuzhou city, China’s Fujian Province, where two men in ragged clothes were spotted kneeling down and begging, while holding the reins of a camel. When the police approached them, they found that the camel had no hooves, and the wounds indicated that they had been deliberately cut off.

In another incident, Fuzhou Evening News reported the case of a camel found by the roadside. It had been led through the streets by a beggar, and then abandoned. News reports suggest that beggars have been spotted with injured camels in several other cities such as Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Hefei. Read More »

Meet Adam, a rescued black labrador that was recently diagnosed with the most bizarre condition – he’s allergic to humans!

For several months, Adam had suffered from unexplained hair fall and skin inflammation. He was blistered and balding with wounds where he’d bitten and scratched himself. Robin Herman, who chose to rescue Adam despite his condition, tried everything to fix his illness. But she and the rest of the staff at Lucky Dog Retreat Rescue were totally perplexed about his condition, they just couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

“We fed him the best possible food, got him flea free, gave him baths twice a week, special baths from the vet,” she said. Although Adam started to look better with all the care, his skin condition wasn’t going away.

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Bodhi the dog has no time for silly pastimes like chasing squirrels or playing fetch – he’s quite serious about his high flying career as a top New York menswear model. The four-year-old Shiba Inu is well known in fashion circles as ‘Menswear Dog’ – he has landed paid modelling contracts with top brands such as Coach, Todd Snyder and Salvatore Ferragamo. He’s also a social media sensation with over 140,000 followers on Instagram.

Bodhi’s owners – Yena Kim, 27, and Dave Fung, 29 – came up with the idea as a joke; they dressed up their adorable Shiba Inu in a few fancy suits and hats. When they posted photographs on their Facebook page, the response they received was overwhelmingly positive. So they started their own Tumblr page featuring Bodhi dressed according to popular fashion trends.

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Garfi the cat is all set to dethrone Grumpy Cat from his position as the internet’s most sour-faced feline. One look at Garfi’s picture and you’ll know that he really means business. The orange Persian male from Turkey has such a menacing expression that he actually makes Grumpy Cat look happy.

Garfi was introduced to the online world through a Flickr album created by his owner Hulya Ozkok, with her son’s encouragement. The album, with over 50,000 views, contains pictures of Garfi wearing all sorts of cute accessories – bunny ears, Santa hats, oversized reading glasses, and flowery headbands. But none of the props quite manage to hide that glint of anger in his eyes – this is one furious cat!

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Damian Aspinall is a casino-owning millionaire, environmentalist and animal lover who has made it his life’s mission to raise gorillas and release them into the wild. And in order to make that happen, the self-made businessman set up the Aspinall Foundation, through which he has raised over 60 gorillas in England and released them to secure locations in Africa.

Aspinall, who was once known for his party lifestyle and for dating supermodels like Naomi Campbell has now devoted his life to deepening the connection he has always shared with the animal kingdom. Apart from the Aspinall Foundation, he also runs Howletts and Port Lympne wildlife parks in Kent. It is his belief that animals should have as much right to happiness as humans do.

His deep-rooted connection with animals goes all the way back to his childhood – his father John, Aspinall, was a gambler and maverick zoo keeper. So he grew up around his father’s exotic pets, developing an all-consuming passion for wildlife as he got older. “It’s magic crossing the species boundaries, and the greatest thing about being alive,” said the 54-year-old. “You can’t explain it to people who don’t have it.”

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In a bizarre display of love, a Polish veterinary student recently stitched the words ‘I Love You’ on to the skin of a dog that he operated on. The fourth year student at the University of Warmia and Mazury, in Olsztyn, then posted the image on to his girlfriend’s Facebook wall, so she could admire his handiwork. The grisly picture was immediately criticized by the couple’s friends and college mates for being grotesque and unethical.

The girlfriend, who is a member of the student council at the same university, defended the photograph: “What’s so unethical about it? He learnt to sew in order to help and is just showing his skill.” Read More »

Doris Carvalho, an entrepreneur from Tampa, has come up with an original way of combining her two greatest passions – veterinary science and fashion. She recycles dog hair that’s left over from grooming, converting it into high-end designer purses.

Doris loves her new job so much that she hopes to convert it into a business – she’s currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 toward that exact purpose. That’s just enough money to make her first line of 30 purses and pay for marketing.

“These handbags prove that high-end can be made eco-friendly from your pet for you,” she pointed out. “I turn this groomed dog fur that would be garbage anywhere else in the world into these handbags. I sterilize and I use them to make the thread, the yarn. It’s reused, recycled.”

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Devastated by his pet rat’s death, 13-year-old Pepeijn Bruins decided to do something really special for his furry friend. So he turned to Dutch inventors Arjen Beltman and Bart Jansen for help. Soon, Ratjetoe the rat was stuffed and converted into the world’s first radio-controlled ‘ratcopter’.

Bart and Arjen have a special talent for making dead animals fly; previously, we’d written about how they converted a dead ostrich and a cat into weird helicopters. Their last project was a flying jet powered shark. And they’ve done it again, this time helping a young boy overcome his grief over losing his best friend.

“I loved him very much,” said Pepeijn, who had to have the cancer-stricken rat put down. “He always liked to be cuddled and he would run up my clothes and hide. When I learned he had cancer and the vet had to put him to sleep I was very upset. I had seen Bart and Arjen and their flying cat, and I asked my dad if it would be possible to have the rat fly.”

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Martin Tatta, from Argentina, is a self-trained ‘horse whisperer’. The 33-year-old ‘gaucho’ – the Argentinian version of the cowboy -has a remarkable gift for understanding horses – he can get the four-legged beauties to do his bidding with a delicate touch, friendly coaxing, cuddles, and kisses.

“It is something that comes natural to me,” he said. “Nobody taught me, it just came out. There is no struggle with the animal. This is a very soft job, very, very soft.” In fact, Martin is so tender with horses that many people have been reduced to tears while watching him.

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Greg Krueger, from St. James, Minnesota, has spent over 20 years renovating his home – not for his own comfort, but for that of his cats! He’s converted his home into a giant feline playground, with $10,000 worth of elaborate tunnels, platforms, and overhead catwalks.

“I just love trails and paths, and cats, of course,” said 50-year-old Krueger. “And so I’ve just linked those passions together.” His unique home improvement project began years ago, when he made a place for his four pet cats to sit on top of a China cabinet, because they liked to be high up.

Next, he built a kitty-sized staircase to help them get up to the cabinet. And his cats loved it so much that Krueger just decided to keep going. Soon, he had put up over 100 yards of catwalks and bridges through every room in the house, and set it all up so that his cats never have to touch the floor.

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Even though a lot of restaurants are now pet friendly, there aren’t too many places that actually have a separate menu for dogs. So Filipino chef and dog lover Giannina Gonzalez decided to fix that with her unique Whole Pet Kitchen – a small café that caters to dogs as well as humans.

Located in San Juan city, Whole Pet Kitchen is the first pet bakery and dog café in the Philippines. Gonzalez, 29, said that she wanted a job where she knew what went into her dog’s food, and she also wanted a place where she could share a table with her four-legged pet. She started the place in 2011, and it’s been doing pretty ever since.

“We wanted to reach out to a niche market; that’s why the place is small,” she revealed. “When Whole Pet Kitchen was opened, there were so many dog lovers who checked out the place, and now, the café has its own set of regulars who hang out and spend bonding moments with their pets.” The café has two sets of menus – one for pets and one for humans.

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When Indian teenager Bhaskar Shri passed away in a car accident, his loyal dog Tommy refused to leave his graveside for two whole weeks. The sweet old canine reportedly went without food the entire time, guarding the grave in the outskirts of Chennai city through 15 hot days and freezing nights.

Bhaskar was a construction worker who loved dogs dearly – he had adopted Tommy five years ago and the pair of them quickly became inseparable. When Bhaskar became victim to a terrible road collision, Tommy was heartbroken. The dog simply refused to part with his master and mourned by his graveside for 15 days.

Emaciated Tommy was finally rescued a fortnight later by Dawn Williams, an animal rescue officer at the non-profit Blue Cross of India. “I first spotted the brown dog sitting on a fresh grave one evening as I happened to walk past in the first week of August, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it,” she said.

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A Tasmanian farmer-couple recently discovered what might just be the world’s woolliest sheep. They’ve named the super-fluffy creature ‘Shaun’, after popular cartoon character Shaun the Sheep from the British comedy series Wallace and Gromit.

As it turns out, Shaun has never had his coat cut, and it is at least half-a-meter thick now. In fact he appears to have been on the run ever since he escaped the shearers at his former farm on Tasmania’s east coast, at least 25 miles away. It is estimated that Shaun has been wandering across the island for the past six years!

Peter Hazel said that he and his wife Netty found Shaun wandering in scrubland on their property last Sunday. He was actually quite easy to catch, what with 20 kilograms of extra fleece weighing him down. His wool was just all over the place, even falling over his eyes and obstructing his vision.

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Most people aren’t aware of this, but an alarmingly large number of cats die of leukemia every year. To raise awareness about the plight of these suffering cats, Maria Torero has converted her own two-story, eight-room apartment into a feline hospice. The 45-year-old nurse from Lima, Peru, currently has 175 patients residing with her, and spends over $1,500 a month just to care for them.

Maria has been caring for the diseased cats for the past five years now – she brings unwanted strays into her home and nurses them as they slowly succumb to their deadly illness. The mother-of-three doesn’t distinguish between her own children and her cat-patients. In fact, she says that she considers it her duty as a nurse to take in creatures that no one else wants to care for.

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A Belarusian family from the village of Zacherevye, 250 kilometers north of Minsk, is raising an entire family of wolves as pets. It’s been five years since the Selekhs took in a group of young wild wolves, and they’ve got the beasts completely domesticated now. In fact, the pet wolves’ behavior is quite opposite to what people normally expect from them.

Wolves are supposed to be instinctively wild, and follow a strict code of hierarchy within the pack – they are led by an alpha couple. But the Selekh wolves display none of these characteristics. They are quite a joyful lot instead, playing games and entertaining 10-year-old Alisa Selekh. They even take turns giving the girl piggyback rides through the Selekhs’ front garden.

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