Authorities in the African country of Sudan have allegedly sentenced a ram to three years in prison for hitting and killing an old woman.

If humans had to go to prison every time they killed a goat, we would have to build so many more prisons, but when the roles are reversed for a change the poor animal has to answer for its actions. That’s exactly what allegedly happened in Sudan earlier this month – at least according to multiple national news outlets – after a ram in Rumbek East County charged at an elderly woman hitting her in the ribs and causing serious injuries that later proved fatal. It’s unclear what possessed the animal to attack, but once it was identified as the culprit, the ram was taken into custody and sentenced to hard time.

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A dog owner in Eastern China’s Jiangsu province spent the last three years and a whopping 340,000 yuan ($51,156) building a miniature mansion for his 10 pooches.

Mr. Zhou, a 33-year-old businessman who made his money in the crayfish trade, started his pet project in 2019, soon after finishing another, much more modest abode for his dogs. Proud of his achievement at the time, he decided to share a video tour of it on Chinese streaming platform Douyin, hoping to get some positive feedback. However, most of the comments from viewers turned out to be negative, which only motivated the young businessman to start over and this time give the internet and his pets something special. After three years of hard work and hundreds of changes, Zhou finally completed his masterpiece, and this time people were indeed impressed.

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The Indian Runner duck has the most distinctive body type among all the world’s duck breeds. With legs positioned further back on the body than all other duck breeds, they stand upright like penguins and run rather than waddle.

Native to the Asian continent, the Indian Runner duck is a development of the wild mallard. However, its unique evolution is believed to have been determined more by human interference than natural evolution. First encountered by European sailors during the 1800s in Indonesia, where it wasn’t uncommon for farmers to have heards of over 1,000 ducks. It stood out because of its unusual body posture and running ability, which were unusual for European duck breeds. Today, the Indian Runner is found on all the world’s continents, although it is still considered somewhat of an oddity outside of Asia.

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The problem with having fish as pets is that you can’t really take them with you on the go like you can land mammals like cats and dogs. Well, unless you have one of these mobile fish tanks, that is!

It all started with a series of posts on the Facebook Open Society group from members who claimed to have spotted a man walking his pet fish around Taipei in a contraption that looked like a fish tank on wheels. Some of the photos went viral, and people started commenting that the man pushing the fish tank was a popular Taiwanese DIY youtuber called Huang Xiaojie, aka ‘Jerry’. Sure enough, on April 23rd, Jerry released a video showcasing his invention, calling it one of his toughest challenges yet.

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The gumboot chiton, a marine mollusk also known as the Wondering Meatloaf, has teeth made of the hardest biological material known to man.

Magnetite is a geologic mineral commonly found in the earth’s crust, but it’s also somehow produced by the gumboot chiton and synthesized into rows of small teeth hard enough to scrape algae off of rocks. The top of these teeth is layered with magnetite, which makes them literally as strong as steel, but the root is also incredibly tough, thanks to another iron-like material that has never been observed in living creatures before – santabarbaraite. This unique combination makes the chiton’s teeth the hardest biological material in the world.

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The Budapest Short Faced Tumbler is a rare pigeon breed famous for its odd, almost alien-like appearance, with bulging eyes, a minuscule beak, and a triangular head.

When the Poltl brothers, a family of pigeon racing enthusiasts from Budapest, set out to create a new pigeon breed in the early 1900s, they used selective breeding to obtain a high-flying bird with unmatched endurance. They managed to achieve their goal, as the Budapest Short Faced Tumbler could fly for up to 5 hours without breaks, and cover a distance of around 800 kilometers. Endurance was its middle name, but those who saw it for the first time cared less about its flying capabilities and more about its unique look. The small face and beak, in contrast with bulging, frog-like eyes, intrigued or freaked people out, but it also made them pay attention.

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The Joanina Library of the University of Coimbra Alta and Sofia is one of two Portuguese libraries to house colonies of bats as natural deterrents for bugs that would otherwise feed on old books and manuscripts.

As unusual as having a colony of Common pipistrelle bats living behind the bookshelves of one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, the curators of this historical marvel swear that the flying rodents provide an indispensable service – they feast on bugs that would otherwise damage or feed on old books. And with some of these ancient manuscripts being virtually priceless, it’s no wonder that the bats are regarded as helpful guardians.

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Named after the Argentinian family who developed the breed in the middle of the 19th Century, Falabella is widely regarded as the world’s smallest horse breed, with an average height of just 70cm.

The origins of the Falabella breed are shouted in the mists of legend. Some say that their bloodline can be traced back to the Andalusian and Iberian breeds that the Spanish conquistadores brought with them to South America. When the Spanish were driven off, the horses were left to fend for themselves in a harsh, resource-poor environment. As a result, by the mid-19th century, smaller, inbred animals were being observed in the herds of Mapuche, in southern Buenos Aires province. It was these specimens that were specifically bred to create even smaller animals, which eventually led to the creation of the modern Falabella breed we know today.

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The western hook-nosed snake, a small snake endemic to the deserts of the United States and Mexico, is famous for the shape of its snout and for farting to confuse its enemies.

Cobras and rattlesnakes have their deadly venom, constrictors like pythons and Boa have their strong musculature, but the western hook-nosed snake doesn’t have either, so it relies on a more unusual defense mechanism – farting. When threatened, it emits rumbling air bubbles from the cloaca – the common opening for excretion at a snake’s rear end. Known and cloacal popping or defensive flatulence, this strange means of defense is designed to confuse predators long enough for the snakes to escape.

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Ring-necked parakeets are native to the foothills of the Himalayas and temperate regions of North Africa, but for the past century and a half, they’ve also made a home for themselves in London.

No one knows exactly when and how London became a home for feral parakeets. In fact, there are so many urban myths tied to these green exotic birds that it’s hard to settle on just one explanation. Many of the theories going around on the streets of London as well as on the internet involve legendary artists like Jimi Hendrix or Audrey Hepburn, but no one can truly say how the birds came to the English capital. One thing is for sure, though – London’s parakeets are here to stay, they are thriving, and they are expanding, with recent estimates placing their number in the tens of thousands.

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Vaguito, a dog who spends his days on a beach in Punta Negra, Peru, waiting for his fisherman owner to return from his last fishing trip has melted the hearts of millions around the world.

Vaguito’s heartbreaking story was made public by Jolie Mejía, a Peruvian woman who happened to be walking on the coast of Punta Negra, one of the districts of Lima Province, when she noticed a dog staring pointedly at the ocean. The animal looked clean and well-fed, so Jolie assumed that his master would come back to get him. She spent minutes petting the dog and talking to him, but no one came. Eventually, a man walked by, who, noticing the concerned look on the woman’s face, proceeded to tell her the animal’s sad story.

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The workers of several ant species have large, flattened, and slightly concave heads that they use as plugs to block entrance to their colonies’ nests.

The so-called ‘door head ants’ are soldier ants with armored heads that match both the size and the shape of the entrance to their colonies’ nests almost to perfection. They function as living doors, using their heads to plug shut the nest and only allow access to other members of the colony while keeping unwanted guests out. Door head ants can be found in several ant genera, including Cephalotes and Carebara. How these species developed the exact size and shape as the entries to their nests is the result of millions of years of evolution.

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Luo Yingjiu, an 81-year-old man in China’s Hubei Province, has spent the last three decades of his life taking care of sick and disabled animals at the “world’s loneliest zoo”.

It was during the 1980s that Luo Yingjiu started buying animals and taking them home with him. He wasn’t doing it as a pet collector, but as an animal lover sick of seeing all sorts of disabled and visibly sick creatures being kept in cages and sold on the streets. So he bought them and took them home with him, where he did his best to nurse them back to health. The lucky ones that made a full recovery were eventually released back into the wild, but some were in such bad shape that they required constant care and attention, which Luo was more than happy to provide…

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Yakei, a 9-year-old female Japanese macaque at the Takasakiyama natural zoological garden, shocked staff by fighting her way through several strong males to become the first female alpha in the troupe’s 70-year history.

The story of Yakei’s rise to power sounds like the plot of a Hollywood epic. Born into the 677-strong troupe B at the Takasakiyama zoo in Japan’s Oita city, the female inherited the rank just under her mother, as per the rules of macaque society. The higher an individual’s rank, the greater its access to food, mates and resting locations. Last March, Yakei fought her own mother and won, becoming the leader of the other females in her group. For most females, this would have been more than enough, but for Yakei it was only the first step to a much more ambitious goal – leader of the entire troupe.

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The Onagadori (‘honorable fowl’ in Japanese) is a rare chicken breed known for its exceptionally long tail, which can reach over 10 meters, putting even peacocks to shame.

Of the seventeen chicken breeds considered Japanese national treasures, the Onagadori is the only one to have “special” status. Ever since it received this status in 1952, exports of Onagadori birds and eggs were forbidden, so there are very few specimens, if any, found outside of Japan today. The breed is famous for the non-molting, and thus incredibly long tails of roosters, which, if kept in the best conditions with high levels of animal husbandry, can grow for the lifetime of the bird.

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