The Dutch are using an ingenious, low-cost, totally organic solution to the country’s increasing drone problem – they’re having eagles trained to attack the flying machine as they would their usual prey. Drones are becoming a major problem all over the world – they block airspace and interfere with official operations like emergency air ambulance landings. Despite regulations, drone operators are able to get away with misuse. They’re often hidden from view, making it very difficult for authorities to detect their exact position and take action against them. The Dutch police were looking at tech-based solutions like remotely taking control of drone operating systems, but forcing a drone to autoland could backfire as it could go completely out of control. Thankfully, raptor training company ‘Guard From Above’ came up with a much better idea – to make use of eagles’ natural hunting instincts. Read More »

João Pereira de Souza, a retired bricklayer from Rio de Janeiro, shares a heartwarming bond with a Magellanic penguin native to South America’s Patagonian region. For the past five years, the bird seems to have altered its natural migratory pattern just to be able to visit de Souza several times a year. The unlikely friendship began in 2011, when de Souza found the bird, nicknamed Jinling, soaked in oil on the beach near his house. He brought the penguin home, cleaned him up, and offered him a meal of cool sardines and a shady spot to rest. Since then, Jinling has never stayed away from de Souza for too long. Even though the kindhearted man tried to get the penguin reacquainted with the open sea after he got better, the bird just kept coming back. He even took him out in a boat, far from land and turned him loose in the ocean, but by the time he got back home, Jinling was already waiting for him. Read More »

Having to roam the world in search of company, constantly calling out for a mate but never getting an answer sounds terrifying and sad, which is why so many around the world empathize with ’52’, the loneliest whale in the world. The solitary whale, named after the distinctive 52 hertz frequency of its call, belongs to an unknown, unidentified species. The sound it produces is just above the lowest note on a tuba – clearly that of a whale, but one that no other whale in the world shares or recognizes. So it roams the world’s largest ocean, year after year, desperately calling out for a mate but never finding one. Interestingly, 52 has never actually been seen; only its forlorn love songs have been picked up by navy sonar detectors, but never accompanied by another whale call. This phenomenon is so intriguing that scientists have closely been monitoring the frequency since it was first detected by William Watkins of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1989. He happened to be studying the mating calls of male whales in the North Pacific, when he came across the anomaly of 52. Read More »

After losing a front leg in a terrible accident, a poodle from southwest China’s Sichuan province has learned to walk upright on her hind legs. Barbie the poodle is now a local celebrity in the city of Chengdu, and is slowly becoming a social media sensation as well. According to her owner Chen Mianyang, Barbie was hit by a motorcycle in 2011. “There was blood everywhere and she was screaming like she was dying,” he recalled. Her front left leg needed to be amputated in order to save her life, in a surgery that cost Chen 5,000 yuan ($760). Read More »

A mosque in Istanbul is creating social media buzz with its cat-friendly attitude. Stray cats looking for warmth and shelter on cold winter nights are always welcome at Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi Mosque in the city’s historical Üsküdar district. Photographs of Mustafa Efe, the mosque’s imam (leader), playing with the feline visitors have gone viral online. According to news reports, he started allowing stray cats inside the place of worship last year, to help them escape the cold weather. The imam is apparently well-known for his good humor, diligence, and kindness towards animals. Efe posted a few pictures and videos of the cats on his own Facebook page and one clip actually shows a mother cat carrying her babies in her mouth, one-by-one, into the mosque. “Our mosque’s Friday guests,” the imam wrote. “A surprise awaiting us at the sermon today. The kitty has found the heart of compassion and mercy.” Read More »

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.” Read More »

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’.

Read More »

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. Read More »

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.” Read More »

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.” Read More »

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. Read More »

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. Read More »

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.” Read More »

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. Read More »

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. Read More »