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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What do you get if you mix a bird, a squirrel and a lizard? Well, I think you’ll have a tough time finding a better answer than the Great Eared Nightjar.

Seeing a great eared nightjar for the first time, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a squirrel or even a lizard. The fact is it kind of looks like a combination of animals, or even a real-live version of Toothless, the dragon from DreamWorks Studios’ hit animation “How to Train Your Dragon“. You could say it’s living proof that birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than reptiles.

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A feline lover in California spent several decades and over $100,000 turning his home into the ultimate house for cats.

House of Nekko is a 3,000-square-foot home just north of Santa Barbara. It looks pretty ordinary from the outside, so few know that this is probably the world’s most amazing cat house. Featuring over 300 feet of catwalks, 15 feet of tunnels, 8 bridges, individual feeding spots suspended on the walls giant hamster wheels and giant scratching posts, among other feline attractions, House of Nekko is unlike any other house we’ve ever seen before.

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Klee Kai – literally “little dog” in an Alaskan indigenous dialect – is a fairly new dog breed designed as a smaller version of the popular Alaskan Husky.

The husky is one of the world’s most beloved dog breeds, but it’s no secret that their medium-to-large frame requires a lot of space, making them less-than-ideal apartment pets. Luckily, if you can’t settle for any other dog breed, you’ll be happy to know that there is such a thing as a miniature husky. Developed in the 1970s by an Alaskan breeder, the Klee Kai is a considerably smaller version of the Alaskan Husky that features the same iconic appearance and developed intellect that huskies are famous for.

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A Spanish woman got the shock of her life when she received a $570 fine from a town she visited six months ago, for failing to pick up her dog’s poop from a sidewalk.

The unnamed woman from Paterna, in Spain’s Valencia region, had all but forgotten about that time when she chose not to pick up her Bull terrier’s poop while vacationing in Benalmadena, last August, when she received a fine for it last month. So how did authorities in the seaside town located 650 kilometers away, in the province of Malaga, know about it after all this time? They clearly knew it was her dog, as the notice she received in the mail featured the street that the excrement had been found on and the date, August 26. Little did she know that her “crime” had been discovered thanks to advanced DNA analysis…

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The Japanese Bobtail is a rare car breed whose distinctive feature is the presence of a short, bunny-like tail, instead of the long, flexible tail of most other felines.

No one knows exactly when this unusual cat breed arrived in Japan, but it has been a part of Japanese culture for at least several hundred years, being frequently featured in traditional art and folklore. In the early 1600s, the breed played a major role in preserving Japan’s silkworm production, by taking on rodents, and by the next century, the bobtail was already the dominant cat breed being kept in Japan. No one knows whether it was because of its distinctive tail, which looked like it had been bent and broken, its friendly personality, or its talkative nature, but the Japanese Bobtail became extremely popular in the Japanese country and remains so today. However, it remains extremely rare outside the borders of Japan.

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Because of their slender physique, incredibly long legs and upright pose, Modern Game Bantams are considered by many the fashion models of the poultry world, but few know that they also have a mean streak.

Modern Game chickens take their name from the ‘old English game’, a chicken breed brought to the English Isles in the 1st century by the Romans. Bred exclusively for cock fighting, the old English game grew immensely popular over the century because, well, raising a chicken was relatively affordable, and cockfighting was a “sport” anyone could partake in. However, things changed in 1849, when cock fighting was officially banned in England, by order of the Queen. All of a sudden, the old English game was retired, and a new, modern variant took its place.

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Corvid Cleaning, a Swedish startup specializing in training crows to pick up litter in exchange for food, claims that its program could save communities a fortune in cleaning costs.

According to the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, over a billion cigarette butts are left on Sweden’s streets every year which represents about 62 percent of all litter. Teaching humans not to throw cigarette butts on the street has so far proven impossible, but a Swedish startup claims it can teach crows to pick up after us and save local communities millions of krone in cleaning fees every year. Corvid Cleaning teaches wild crows to do our dirty work through a step-by-step learning process, that involves rewarding the birds with food for every cigarette butt they collect.

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The owner of a severely overweight feline that many have dubbed the world’s fattest cat is facing accusations of animal cruelty for allowing his pet to get so big.

Lyznia the Cat, an Instafamous feline whose adorable face and unenviable figure have earned it over 10,000 followers on the popular social network, recently landed her owner in hot water. After photos of the obese cat started doing the rounds online, her Russian female owner started receiving criticism online for overfeeding her pet and not caring about her wellbeing. However, the woman has since hit back at her critics, saying that Lyznia has been having weight problems ever since she first became pregnant a few years ago.

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Once driven close to extinction, the blue cows of Latvia, a proud symbol of the Baltic country, have been making a comeback over the last couple of decades.

Originally found only on the Baltic coast in the Kurzeme region, cows with light blue or dark ultramarine hides can now be found grazing all over the Latvian countryside. In the Soviet era, they were rendered almost extinct, with only a few specimens surviving the culling. Even back in the year 2000 there were only 18 blue cows in Latvia, but today they number around 1,500. The unique breed is now considered a symbol of national identity.

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The Tamaskan is a relatively new and rare breed of dog created with the specific purpose of mimicking the looks of a grey wolf without any genetic relation to the wild predator.

In the 1980s, a group of British dog breeders set out on a mission to develop a new dog breed with a wolf-like appearance. To that end, they combined German Shepherds, Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, and Samoyeds, and the Tamaskan was one of the breeds they came up with. However, some experts believe that crossing this new breed with the Czechoslovakian Wolfdog made the Tamaskan what it is today. But while the Tamaskan may look like an actual wolf, or at least a close cousin, genetically speaking, there is no relation between the two species. The Tamaskan is all dog.

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In an attempt to increase the daily milk yield of his cows, a farmer in Turkey is experimenting with virtual reality goggles that make the bovines think they are in the middle of a green pasture in summer.

İzzet Koçak’s family has been rearing cattle on a farm in Aksaray, Turkey for three generations, and the business has endured for so long because they have always tried to keep up with the times. Now it’s Izzet’s turn to make sure the family business does well enough to be passed on to the next generation, and he is going all-in on unconventional solutions. After experimenting with soothing music designed to relax the cows, the Turkish farmer is now experimenting with special VR goggles that allegedly make the animals believe that they are grazing in a sunny pasture, instead of a gloomy indoor farm in the middle of winter.

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Lola, a 3-year-old cocker spaniel from Leeds, in the UK, has a head full of stunning blonde hair that often stops people in their tracks asking themselves if she’s wearing a wig.

Cocker spaniels are known for their beautiful curly locks, but Lola’s hair is special, even for this breed. Her lucky owner, 22-year-old Rebecca Dobson, says that because the hair on the dog’s head is so long and such a different color to the hair on her body, people assume it’s either fake or that it’s dyed. But it’s actually all-natural, which many are shocked to hear. Not only does Lola’s hair get a lot of attention from dog lovers every time Rebecca takes her out on walks, but some people apparently ask to take photos of her just so they can show their hairdresser how they’d like their own hair done.

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The Man That Rescues Dogs, an animal shelter in Chonburi, Thailand, cares for over a thousand stray dogs, including a few paralyzed animals that get to run with the pack again, thanks to the care and attention of the staff.

Michael J. Baines is the man behind The Man That Rescues Dogs. The Swedish national moved to Chonburi in 2002 to open his own restaurant, but quickly noticed the large number of stray dogs roaming through the city, many of which could barely survive on the scraps they found every day. In 2011, Baines became attached to one special stray that started coming to his restaurant every day, and soon noticed that his “patron” wasn’t the only one in need of help. Michael started caring for a handful of strays, then for a few dozen, and before he knew it, he was providing food for almost a hundred canines. In 2017, The Man That Rescues Dogs animal shelter was founded, and in the four years since, the staff there not only rescued over 1,000 dogs, but gave a few paralyzed ones their mobility back.

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