On the banks of the Ruzizi River in Burundi lurks a monster of almost mythical proportions – Gustave, the man-eating crocodile. He has been around for over 60 years, and has allegedly killed over 300 people.

Since Gustave has consistently evaded capture, his exact size is unknown, but estimates from scientists and eyewitnesses place him somewhere between 18 and 25 feet long (5.5 to 7.5 meters). He weighs more than 2000 lbs (900 kg), or over half the weight of a typical car. He is the largest crocodile ever seen in Africa.  Due to his size, Gustave was initially estimated to be over 100 years old, but further observation revealed that he had a full set of teeth, which meant he was much younger than that. According to the 2004 PBS documentary Capturing the Killer Croc, he “should be nearly toothless,” and was thus estimated to be “probably no older than 60, and likely, still growing”.

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A squirrel that was nearly killed eight years ago by an owl when she was just four weeks old, continues to visit the Greenville County, South Carolina family that rescued, raised and later released her into the wild.

In October 2009 the baby squirrel was left severely injured after being attacked by an owl. She would not have survived for very long in the wild, but fortunately, a wildlife rescue group happened to find her. They rescued her, treated her injuries and eventually placed her in the the care of Brantley Harrison and her family, in Greenville County. The Harrisons were no strangers to rescuing and rehabilitating wild animals, but, for some reason, they formed a very unique bond with this squirrel.

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While most songbirds build small, discreet nests designed to shelter one clutch of eggs, the Social Weavers (Philetairus socius) of southern Africa build communal nests so large that they can pull down mature trees. Each structure can weigh over a ton, and range upwards of 20 feet wide and 10 feet tall, with over a hundred separate nesting chambers. Successive generations refurbish and reuse these compartments, often for more than a century.

Social Weavers utilize several different building materials, starting with a basic structure of woven twigs. They then line the interior with grasses and feathers and construct a 10-inch long, one-inch wide private entrance with downward pointing spiky straws to deter snakes. While a breeding pair will have a private apartment, most chambers house three or four of the birds at a time. The benefits of this lifestyle become clear in the context of the desert where temperatures vary dramatically.

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A poor dog has reportedly “died of a broken heart” after being abandoned by her owner at an airport in Colombia. She spent the last month of her life wandering around the airport in search of her master and eventually stopped eating as a result of severe depression.

The distressed dog, named Nube Viajera (Traveling Cloud) by the veterinarians who rescued her from Palonegro airport, near Bucaramanga, and looked after her until the very end, was only about two years old, but after a month of wandering around sniffing passengers and refusing to accept food and water, she had become so weak that she was barely able to stand. Witnesses said that in the last days of her life, the animal gave up her daily search and crawled into an isolated corner, refusing to accept any food that passengers and airport staff offered her. She was finally taken to a veterinarian clinic after someone alerted the Friends of Animals and Nature Foundation of Bucaramanga, but despite their best efforts, she died within 48 hours of being rescued.

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After being nearly wiped out from New England in the 1800s, wild turkeys are apparently turning the tables on their human oppressors, wreaking havoc on the streets of Boston and other urban areas of Massachusetts. The number of residents attacked by the aggressive birds has increased dramatically in the last year, police say.

Wild turkeys once dominated the forests of the Northeast, but they seem to have taken a liking to cities and towns in Massachusetts, where finding better foraging beside dumpsters and in people’s backyards than in the woods. They’ve become so at home among humans that people have started referring to them as “urban turkeys”. They can be seen strutting their feathers on sidewalks, pecking shiny objects, blocking traffic, chasing after smaller pets and, in rare cases, even attacking people.

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Lindsey Partridge, a horse trainer from Canada, recently tested the pet policy of a hotel in Georgetwon, Kentucky, by trying to check her 5-year-old thoroughbred into her room. Believe it or not, she was successful, and it only cost her $10.

Partridge, from Ontario, Canada, recently traveled to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, to compete in the Retired Racehorse Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover, an annual competition in which retired racehorses compete in various categories. As she approached the town of Georgetown, where she had booked a room for the week, she decided to stop and drop off her luggage, before driving to the contest venue. Little did she know that one of her horses would be joining her in the room as well.

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Photos of extremely muscular pigs bred by a farm in Cambodia have been doing the rounds online, sparking controversy about genetically modified animals.

The Hulk-like pigs are apparently bred by Duroc Cambodia, a pig farm in the Asian country’s Banteay Meanchey province. The company’s Facebook page is littered with photos and videos of these freakishly muscular animals that appear to be the result of some extreme genetic tampering. Some have accused the breeder of using hormones and steroids to turn the pigs into nightmarish monsters, but seeing as Duroc Cambodia is also selling insemination kits to people wanting to grow their own, their unnatural physique is most likely caused by genetic modifications.

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Between deforestation, climate change, and poaching, the number of orangutans living in the wild is dropping at an alarming rate, but one orangutan in particular has made it through all this torment and her story is giving us all hope. Her name is Alba, and she is truly one of a kind. Alba is an albino – currently the only known one in the world.

The five year old ape was rescued in an Indonesian Village by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS). She had been illegally captured and kept in a cage without proper care for a couple of days before rescuers got to her. Researches believe Alba was orphaned at a young age and caught not long after. When they found her she was suffering from a parasitic infection, dehydration, and low body weight. However, she still displays wild behaviors, meaning she can be released in the wild.

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A self-proclaimed veterinarian in Chengdu, China, is currently under investigation for operating an unlicensed “clinic” on the street, and charging around 50 – 100 yuan to remove the vocal chords of noisy dogs.

Why would any dog owner want to remove their pet’s vocal chords, you ask? In this particular case, most of the shady vet’s customers told police officers that they had received complaints from their neighbors that the animals barked too loudly, so they decided to have them devocalized. That’s a gruesome thing in itself, but to have the procedure done by some random guy on the side of the street, with unclean surgical instruments is simply appalling.

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Zhou Yusong is known as the “Guardian of Dogs” in his home city of Zhengzhou, China’s Henan Province. The kindhearted man has spent the last 8 years of his life rescuing stray dogs and offering them a home at  his animal protection center.

It all started in 2008, when Zhou Yusong, when he noticed an injured stray dog by the side of a road in Zhengzhou. It had been hit by a car and was fighting for his life, but everyone just ignored it. Unable to do the same, he picked up the canine and took it to a nearby pet hospital. After saving the animal’s life, he took it to a dog shelter, as he had no way of taking care of it himself, in his small apartment. Shocked by the large number of stray dogs already at the shelter, he became more involved in trying to make their lives easier, and started donating 200 yuan ($30) every month, for the animal’s food and medical treatments.

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Lauren and Will Powers, of Ferndale, Michigan, don’t need to dust their home like the rest of us. Their cat, Cygnus, does it for them just by walking around the place and wagging his incredibly long and fluffy tail.

Cygnus Regulus Powers was recently featured in the 2018 Guinness Book of Records for having the “longest tail on a domestic cat”. The official measurement put his tail at a whopping 44.66 cm (17.58 inches) from the base of his butt to the end of the “meat” of his tail, but it must have been done a while ago, because in June of last year, his owner Will Powers told Love Meow that Cygnus’ tail already measured 18.4 inches (24 inches, if you count the fluff). And considering that the cute Main Coon was only about a year old at the time, his tail must be considerably longer now.

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Harsukh Bhai Dobariya, of Gujarat, India, is very popular with birds. Every day, between 2,500 and 3,000 parrots and sparrows visit his 4-acre farm to feed on tasty millet cobs and build their nests away from predators. Nicknamed “The Birdman”, Dobariya has spent the last 17 years of his life looking out for the birds and transforming his land into a safe ecosystem for them.

It all started in the year 2000, when Harsukh Bhai Dobariya suffered a leg fracture on his property in the Junagadh district of Gujarat, and had to spend most of his time in bed. After a neighbor came to buy some pearl millet from him, he had the idea to hang a millet cob on his balcony, which soon caught the attention of a parrot. The next day, two parrots came to feast on the delicious treat, then three, four, and within a month, there were already 100-150 parrots and sparrows visiting him every day.

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They say you can’t judge a book by its covers, and that definitely applies Shamo, a gray cat at the Rencontrer Mignon animal shelter, in Tokyo, but people are apparently finding it hard to look past her perpetually grumpy face.

Rescued from the city animal care center, over a year ago, so she could have a better chance of being adopted, Shamo has been having trouble finding a forever home mainly due to her permanent scowl. However, her deceptively angry look is apparently just a facade, as her profile page on the shelter website and her Twitter account clearly state that she is a gentle creature with an endearing personality.

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Bai Yan, a kindhearted police dog handler from Hangzhou, recently melted the hearts of millions of Chinese after it was reported that he had spent the last 7 years and around 1 million yuan ($150,000) on a retirement home for police dogs, where his former “comrades in arms” could live out their golden years in peace.

55-year-old Bai has been working as a police dog handler since 2004, during which time he has trained around 30 canines. Spending so much time with the animals, he became very attached to them, and having seen how some retired police dogs ended up, he knew he had to do something about it. The trainer recently told Chinese media that one of the things that convinced him to open a retirement home for police dogs was seeing  an old police dog who had been completely neglected by his new owner lying in the dirt with a chain around its neck and a bowl of spoiled food in front of him. Retired police dogs are usually put up for adoption with the general public, and there is very little vetting of potential owners.

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The Animal Ark is a special wild animal sanctuary, in Maharashtra, India, that takes in orphaned animals whose parents get hunted by villagers for food. It was set up by a local doctor who understood the necessity of hunting, but couldn’t bare to let the young animals starve to death.

One day, during the early 70s, Dr. Prakash Amte and his wife were taking a walk in the Dandarayana forest of Gadchiroli, when they encountered a group of tribal people carrying a dead monkey that they had hunted. They noticed that there was a baby monkey clinging to its dead mother’s body and trying to suckle her breast. It was heartbreaking sight, and Dr. Prakash decided he couldn’t let the hunters kill the baby as well. He asked them what they intended to do with it, and they said they were going to eat it, just like its mother. He knew the tribe killed out of necessity, not for sport, so he offered them rice and clothing in exchange for the baby monkey. They reluctantly accepted, and the small animal became the first member of their big animal family.

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