A caged Siberia tiger has surprised the staff at Primorsky Safari Park, near Vladivostok, Russia, after befriending a goat that had been offered to him as live food. That was months ago, and even though everyone thought the friendship wouldn’t last long, the two are still inseparable.

Up until late November 2015, 3-year-old Amur, one of the last remaining Siberian tigers, had never shown any sign of compassion for the live food, caretakers at Primorsky Safari Park offered him twice a week. He would usually pounce on scared rabbits and goats and kill them with a swift stroke of his paw. But something was different about the goat that was thrown into his enclosure last November. Apparently, no one had taught the goat to be afraid of tigers, so he didn’t just up and run at the sight of Amur. He just stood his ground, which confused the giant feline, who didn’t attack it as he normally did other live prey.

“The tiger was confused and gave up,” explained Dmitry Mezentsev, head of the park. “It happened once before, another goat pushed back and the tiger decided not to eat him, but once he showed weakness—that was it—his predator killed him. The situation now is different and the animals are great friends.”

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A couple of animal shelter workers in the municipality of Navalcamero, near Madrid, Spain, recently came across the most heartwarming sight – a five-month old greyhound helping his blind sister cross the road. The two dogs were apparently moving very slowly through traffic, with the female resting her head on the male’s back. When the two women approached the dogs to help them out, they were visibly nervous, but the male greyhound stuck with his sister instead of running away to safety.

The women quickly realised that the female greyhound was visually impaired because she had thin white films over both eyes. They eventually took the canine pair to the shelter where they work and ran a few health tests, confirming that she was indeed blind. Further tests revealed that the female became blind as a result of a virus, and that her condition might be treatable. It seems that the two pups have been abandoned and have stuck with each other since then, with the male acting as his sister’s guide, never leaving her side and protecting her from danger. Caregivers at the ‘El Refugio’ dog shelter have named the female ‘Blinder’, and her brother ‘Pisper’.

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The kind owners of a cafe in Greece are making headlines for their extraordinary generosity towards dogs. ‘Hot Spot’, located in Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, serves as a coffee place during the day and doubles up as a shelter for dogs at night!

Kindness towards animals is apparently quite common among the Greeks, but the generosity displayed by the management of Hot Spot is being hailed as unprecedented, even by local standards. They began their practice of letting strays spend the night indoors in July, when a waiter took pity on a dog that was stranded outside at around 3 am. Since then, they’ve been opening their doors to the dogs every single night.

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Middle Island, a picturesque outcrop located off the coast of southern Victoria in Australia, is home to a colony of the world’s smallest penguins. Originally known as fairy penguins, these adorable little birds are no taller than a foot and weigh only about 1kg. There used to be hundreds of them at one point, but their population dwindled as they were hunted by foxes. That is, until a chicken farmer came up with an ingenious solution to use dogs as bodyguards for the penguins.  

The problem was first noticed in the year 2000, when the sea’s natural current led to increased sand-build up, encouraging a growth in the fox population. The island is uninhabited by humans, and separated from the mainland by a 30-meter stretch of water. So at low tide, it’s easy for the foxes to cross from the mainland and reach the island, and hunt the adorable penguins.

Soon, the fairy penguin population started dwindling to the point where they were in danger of being completely wiped out “We went from a point where we had about 800 penguins down to where we could only find four,” said Peter Abbott from the Penguin Preservation Project. “In our biggest bird kill, we found 360 birds killed over about two nights. Foxes are thrill killers. They’ll kill anything they can find. The colony really was on its last legs and just one more fox attack would’ve finished it off.”

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Meet Venus, a five-year-old tabby who’s become an internet sensation for her strikingly unusual appearance – half of her face is orange while the other is black!

The divide, right down the center of her face, seems too perfect to be true, so much so that you’ll be tempted to dismiss it as fake. It doesn’t help that her eyes are different of different colors as well, one green and the other blue. But on her website, Venus insists that she is 100 percent natural.

“No makeup at all,” she says. “Not even eyeliner. In the salon where I get my pedicures done Photoshop and spray paint aren’t even allowed.” And she also dismisses the idea that she’s a Chimera – a mythical lion-goat-snake creature. “It’s appalling, but hey, I didn’t invent the English language.”

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A kindhearted man recently melted the hearts of millions after saving two majestic sea turtles from the food market and returning them safely into the ocean.Arron Culling, from New Zealand, recently posted photographs of the rescue operation on Facebook, describing how he and a co-worker purchased the turtles for about US$33, and then released them back into their natural habitat.

“Found these at the local market got them for 50 bucks drove 5km up the road and let them go,” Culling posted along with the photographs, which have now been shared over 85,000 times. He also revealed that these aren’t the first turtles he’s set free – he’s bought and released at least 10 in the past, along with his co-worker.

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Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day by those who believe in superstitions, but for Peter Maximov, a hunter from Chelyabinsk, Russia, November 13th, 2015 was the luckiest day of his hunting career. It was on this faithful day that he brought down a massive 500 kilogram wild boar, in the forests of the Ural Mountains.

36-year-old Maximov, co-founder of “Andreev Hunting Farm”, went hunting in the forest near the village of Shokurov, as he usually does on weekends. He placed some bait in a wild boar foraging area and climbed a hunting tower where he quietly waited for a target to show up. Little did he know he was about to become the envy of every big game hunter in the world. I don’t know what Peter used as lure, but it attracted the biggest wild boar he had ever seen. Regaining his composure after setting eyes on the massive animal, the experienced hunter lined up his target and fired a shot that struck home, but failed to bring it down. The wounded animal ran off deeper into the forest, and Maximov was apparently too scared to go after it himself, so he enlisted the help of a local ranger to help him track it down.

The two men spent a long time getting on the boar’s trail, until they finally found a drop of blood and followed the trail back to the wounded animal, which now laid on the snow, still alive, but seemingly unable to move. Maximov took another shot that he says only managed to anger the animal, which gathered up all its remaining strength and rushed towards them. The two hunters hid behind a tree and fired a third shot that finally brought down the giant boar.

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Despite being allergic to cats, David Teie has actually made it his life’s mission to make music for felines. In fact, he’s raised over $200,000 just to be able to fund his mission!

If you’re wondering how music for cats is any different from human music, Teie explains that they’re worlds apart. “All of the music cats have ever heard was created by humans for humans from an age where they were worshipped as gods to a time where they were worshipped online,” he said in the opening of his Kickstarter video. “Cats have had to listen to music they often didn’t actually like. Until now.”

“This may sound like a gimmick, but it’s real,” he added. “When I invented species specific music in 2009, The New York Times called it the year’s number one idea. Making music for animals has become a mission for my life. I want to bring the beauty and comfort of music to as many species as possible.”

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At age 29, Wang Yan has earned and lost more money than most people would in a lifetime. He used to be a millionaire businessman with a successful steel factory in Changchun, in China’s Jilin province. But now he doesn’t have a penny to his name, having spent his entire fortune rescuing dogs from being butchered!

Yan was compelled to help dogs after he first witnessed their plight in 2012. He was searching for his own missing pet dog when he someone suggested he try searching at a butcher’s shop. His dog wasn’t there, but he hung around for a week and saw how the other dogs were being brutally killed. Deeply disturbed, he vowed to buy every single dog from the butcher, just so he could save them from a horrible death.

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A dog-loving couple from Wyoming have invented a revolutionary new product in canine care – doggy protective sunglasses. The sporty goggles are meant to shield dogs’ eyes from intense sunlight and other harmful effects that can cause eye problems. Priced at $79.95 a pair, ‘Rex Specs’ are made with polycarbonate lenses and a soft foam frame that snugly fits on the muzzle so that dogs can freely open their mouths.

Aiden Doane, 31, and Jesse Emilo, 33, said they got the idea for Rex Specs after their own dogs developed eye ailments because of extensive hiking in the mountains in Jackson, Wyoming. Their German Shepherd got Pannus – an eye inflammation caused by UV rays, while their fair-skinned husky suffered from chronic sunburn around the eyes. The couple realised that protective gear could have prevented the ailments, but they couldn’t find high-quality goggles specially designed for canine use.

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There’s no limit to canines’ devotion to their human masters, and the story of this adopted stray in Russia who traveled a distance of over 300 kilometers to return to the owner who saved her from the jaws of death, mended her broken legs and surrounded her with love, is perfect proof.

26-year-old Nina Baranovska, from Rostov, Russia, says she’ll never forget the day she first laid eyes on her dog Shavi . She was brought to her on a cold January night by a couple of kindhearted animal lovers who had found her lying in landfill on the outskirts of Rostov notorious as a dump site for unwanted pets. Two of her legs were broken, she was almost frozen and all she could do was whine in pain. Her rescuers had noticed a collar trace around her neck, a sign that she had probably been hit by a car and her owners, unwilling to go through the trouble of mending her wounds, simply dumped her at the local landfill to die.

They gently picked up the wounded black mongrel, put her in their car where they gave her warm water and wrapped her in a blanket. They drove for hours seeking the help of veterinarians in Rostov, but no one was willing to treat her for free. Finally, they found a vet who offered to give them a discount. She had many bruises, lacerations and both her hind legs were broken. The doctor who operated on her inserted metal screws into her legs and said that she might one day walk again.

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Every holidays season for the past six decades, Gozzi’s Turkey Farm in Guilford, Connecticut, has been drawing visitors young and old with its host of decorative turkeys dyed in bright hues of purple, orange, yellow and green.

Bill Gozzi, the farm’s third generation owner, says that the tradition of putting live colored turkeys on display for visitors dates back to the 1940’s, shortly after his grandparents opened the place. It was originally a treat for neighborhood kids, but it grew into something more, and soon visitors from far and wide started visiting the farm to see the dyed turkeys during the Holidays. “My grandmother started it years ago as a fun thing for the kids in the neighborhood, and it caught on and just busloads of kids come now,” Gozzi said. “It’s a tradition for a lot of people. I get a lot of people saying, ‘My grandparents brought me here, and now I’m bringing my kids.'”

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I’ve heard of people buying extra pairs of their favorite jeans, but a Louisiana veterinarian has actually gone and gotten himself two extra copies of his favorite dog! Phillip Dupont spent over $100,000 cloning his beloved pet dog Melvin because he simply couldn’t bear to part with him.

Phillip had Melvin cloned about two years ago, and he now has two identical dogs – Ken Gordon, named after his uncle, and Henry Fontenot, named after his friend – with the same traits and characteristics as Melvin. The pups were around for the last year of Melvin’s life, who was nearly 12 when Dupont had to put him down last year, due to his failing health.

Ken and Henry have now replaced Melvin as fixtures at Dupont’s clinic in Lafayette. “They’re maturing into the dog that Melvin was,” said Paula, Phillip’s wife. “I used to tell people that Melvin was the office greeter – my office manager. Ken’s kind of taken his place. Henry has stepped up and is also greeting people. Now they have two dogs meeting people – standing up and putting their paws on my desk.”

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Ever since she left university, Hannah Shaw has dedicated her life and career to rescuing kittens. The 28-year-old now calls herself a “neonatal kitten warrior” who specialises in fostering abandoned newborn cats that would otherwise end up dead at shelters in Washington D.C. In the past eight years, she’s saved at least ‘a few hundred kittens’ from this terrible fate.

Shaw revealed that her passion for animals began at the age of 12, when she decided to quit eating meat. Since then, she’s been involved in several campaigns to protect various species – right from farm animals to big cats in sanctuaries. She started working with kittens, specifically, about eight years ago after she happened to rescue a “teeny tiny kitten” from a tree. She nestled the kitty in her shirt, took her home, named her Coco, and raised her on her own.

The incident compelled Shaw to look more closely at the plight of kittens in her neighborhood. “After rescuing Coco, I started seeing more kittens outside,” she said. “I also started getting calls from people saying they’d found a kitten and were asking me for help. It became a very fast, cumulative thing where I began learning more about kittens while also honing my kitten eyes, so like anytime I was outside and there was a kitten within a thousand feet of me, I’d hone in on her.”

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A Serbian woman recently announced her decision to sell her apartment and all material possessions so she can afford medical treatment for her dog. Tanja Jankovic, 35, from Jagodina city, wrote that her dog Leo is battling a life-threatening disease and she needs all the money she can get to save him.

“Please help me,” she wrote in the forums of a popular Serbian pet site. “A girl who is doing everything to save the life of a dog.” Vets say that the dog is suffering from aortic valve stenosis, which causes the narrowing of the aortic valve. When the valve doesn’t open properly, the heart has to work harder to pump blood through it. The only way to treat the condition is through surgery.

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