Can you spot the not?

What’s wrong with these picture?

Hmm, I could swear I saw a gator amongst all those hypos… Oh wait, I did and apparently so did they. Ouch, I bet he wishes he hadn’t tried to mingle with the wrong crowd.

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The real-life Beast Master

Interacting with some animals seems impossible but this man makes the impossible, possible.

Kevin Richardson is an animal behaviourist that has bonded so much with wild big cats that he isn’t even afraid to sleep with them in the wild. He’s great friends with lions, cheetahs, leopards or hyenas and they all treat him like he’s one of their own. Former student of child psychology, Kevin decided to switch to animals when he decided he could trust a lion over a human every time. He never uses whips, sticks or leashes, just a lot of patience and most importantly respect for the felines.

Although these photos may seem unbelievable, they are very real and Kevin says he can get close to any big cat under a year old and become friends with it, but he feels most safe and comfortable around animals he has known from birth. He has had one accident when a 4-year-old male lion attacked and started biting him, but something about Kevin’s passive reaction made him stop. ever since then Kevin never engages wild animals if he feels there is something wrong.

Known as the Lion Whisperer by most people, Kevin Richardson is a real-life beast master.

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The monkey acrobats

These guys have many tricks up their sleeves.

As everyone knows monkeys are great acrobats, to them it comes naturally, swinging through trees and all, but these guys do tricks that are actually meant for humans, so I have to say I’m pretty amazed to see them pull such things off.

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Swimming with crocs

What’s amazing is that people pay to be close to these man-eaters.

This is Cango Wildlife Ranch in South Africa, a unique endangered animal shelter where people can dive in a pool with crocodiles and get close enough to see their teeth. Anyone over 12 years-old is allowed to dive into the cleverly designed cage that keeps the adrenalin junkies safe from the crushing bite of the crocodiles, but all children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

There is a small opening at about half the height of the cage where crocs can actually get their noses into the cage, close enough for you to touch them, but thankfully it’s to tight for them to open their mouth. Some activists may complain about how the crocodiles are treated but the organizers at The Cango Wildlife Ranch say that no harm comes to the animals and that they just want to show people how magnificent the crocodile is in its natural environment, so they can understand why it is such a perfect predator.

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World’s largest horns

Frankly I can’t imagine how hard it must be for this fella to keep his head up with these things.

This is Lurch, the proud bearer of the world’s largest horns. Lurch is a Watusi bull living in an Animal shelter, whose horns measure 92.25 cm and weigh more than 100 pounds each. He’s quite the attraction in his home state and he’s favorite pass-time is acting as bodyguard for a crippled horse that’s being harassed by fellow horses. He looks amazing doesn’t he?

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Dyed doggies

The latest in puppy fashion.

At some point, as a dog owner you’re not happy with your pet’s look anymore, so having gone through all the hip hairstyles, there’s nowhere to go, that fur die. So you go and turn the poor animal into a walking traffic light or even a rainbow. Well I guess nobody said being “beautiful” and popular was easy. Poor dogs…

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Giant jellyfish threatening Japan

How would you feel swimming next to one of these things on your holiday?

Echizen kurage, as the Japanese call them, are giant jellyfish, over 2 meters in diameter and 200 kg in weight, swimming in the waters of Japan, China and Korea and disturbing their activities. The presence of these giant blobs seriously affected the fishing business in many areas of Japan, because they would get caught in the fishnets and poisoned or simply crushed the fish under their weight. Back in 2005-2006 the problem was so serious that a “jellyfish summit” was organized in hope of finding a solution.

Many scientist claim that the problem got out of hand because of the global warming, the seawater temperature rose and allowed jellyfish to multiply at an abnormally high rate. Others say it’s due to the over-fishing, which let to the increase of plankton, jellyfishes’ main food source. Anyway you put it, it’s man’s fault once again, what a surprise right?

And these bad boys aren’t harmless like the jellyfish from Jellyfish Lake in Palau, they’re needles are highly poisonous and can cause serious damage.

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Chilli, the world’s largest bull

This guy makes a horse feel like a dwarf.

Chilli is a black and white Fresian bull, weighing a whopping 1.25 tons and standing at 6 feet and 6 inches in height. Abandoned by its owner on the doorstep of the sanctuary he lives in today, when he was just 6 days old, back in 1999, Chilli grew up to become the biggest bovine in the world, according to Guinness Book of Records. according to Naomi Clarke, manager of the Ferne animal Sanctuary in Ferne, Somerset, the bull doesn’t eat as much as the other cows and yet he outgrows them by far. He’s also abnormally friendly and gentle.

You could say Chilli had a stroke of luck when he ended up in the shelter, because normally he would have ended up chopped into pieces and on the shelves of a meat market somewhere. Now he’s 9 years old and the proud owner of the title “Largest Bovine in the World“, nice going Chilli.

Who said polar bears were carnivores

Not even polar bears can resist watermelons.

If the rest of the polar bears in the world would learn that one of their brothers ate something other than meat, they’d probably lynch him or at least treat him like a pariah. But come on now, I understand him, after all watermelons are so delicious that no one could resist a taste, he just gave in to temptation.

The Real Snake Eater

For all you gamers out there I’m not talking about Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.

This is Manoharan, a 27 year-old guy that performs one of the most growse-yet-cool stunts I’ve ever seen. He gets thin snakes through his nostrils and pulls them out through his mouth. Snake Manu, as he likes to be called, has already claimed a place in the Guinness Book of Records for another “most worms eaten in 30 seconds”, managing to gobble down 200 live earthworms, each measuring more than 10 cm.

Snake Manu says he started by entertaining his colleagues in school by inserting pieces of chalk through his nose and pulling them out through the nose and when he was 18 he started experimenting with snakes, his first try was with a half-dead water snake.

He says his favorite snakes are the baby cobras, because they are lightning fast and extremely poisonous. he has also used common kraits, sand boas and rat snakes.

He has also started to eat the snakes he inserts through his nose since an incident when a snake go stuck in his trachea and he had to choose between being bit by it or biting it. He chose the latter ( smart choice).

Overweight pets – you gotta luv’em

How cute can these little guys get?!?

I know, I know, these are hardly oddities, but these furry critters caught my eye while I was surfing the web and I couldn’t resist not posting something about them. Although being too fat is as bad for animals as it is for us humans, unlike us they look cute enough to hug to death. But all cuteness aside, if you have an overweight pet, do something about them, start getting them to exercise, they may not understand but you’re doing them a big favor, probably even saving their lives. Overweight pets die prematurely, do to hart complications and in the best cases they lose the use of their limbs.

Whale massacre in Europe

Don’t look at the photos and video if you’re a big animal lover, it’s “a little” hard to take in…

This “bay of blood” set somewhere in the Faroe Islands is where hundreds, sometimes thousands of pilot whales are literally butchered alive by hungry locals. The hunt known as Grindadrap is centuries old and it hasn’t changed much since then, except for the power-boats, radios and echo-sounders which make life a lot easier for the butchers. They round the poor whales into the shore with the power-boats and when they get really close, the locals plunge into the waves and start hooking them to death in a horrific manner. Then they drag the carcasses to shore and start skinning them and splitting the meat and blubber between all the islands’ inhabitants.

The Faroes economy relies only on economic fishing, but that doesn’t give them the right to slaughter 544 Atlantic white sided dolphins in a single day, like they did in 1988.

recently, studies have shown that the meat and blubber of pilot whales contain high amounts of mercury, PCBs, DDT and dieldrin. For what they do every year these animals deserve to get much more than mercury poisoning. Read More »

Shooting fish in a barrel

That’s one big barrel but the saying applies perfectly.

And I don’t mean it in a figurative sense, that dumb-ass is literally shooting tuna-fish with a kind of shotgun. Now I’m not in the fishing business, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the standard way of putting fish to sleep. And by the looks of that last photo, these guys are doing all this for business AND PLEASURE. Some people never cease to amaze me with their cruelty, some shoot fish in a barrel, others smash helpless baby seals’ skulls in, where does it all end?

I hope someone who can actually do something about it sees this atrocity.

World’s most dangerous bird

I know, it looks like something that came out of an ostrich-impregnated turkey, but it’s actually very dangerous.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the Cassowaries are the world’s most dangerous birds, capable of dealing fatal blows. They are very unpredictable, aggressive creatures, especially if wounded or cornered. The Cassowary lives in the rain forests of Australia and New Guinea and are actually pretty shy animals if undisturbed, but if you get to close and it thinks you’re a threat you could receive a bone-breaking kick or get sliced by its dagger-like sharp claws. During WWII, soldiers stationed in New Guinea were warned to stay away from these birds, but some of them still became victims.

The Cassowary is also one of the most difficult animals to keep in the Zoo because of the frequent injuries suffered by Zoo keepers that look after them. I like a bird that can take care of itself, but, unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to help it very much against human cruelty and it is on the endangered species list, along with so many others…

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Albinos of the animal kingdom

Does being completely white make them less cute?

On the contrary, unlike albino humans I think these critters are even cuter than their “custom” colored kin. It’s clear that animals aren’t protected from genetic anomalies any more than people are, but at least most of them are not discriminating. If you’re interested, read more about the albino croc and the albino moose.