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Fur, feathers and scales: offbeat animal stories of 2008
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-09 09:14

PARIS  – A selection of unusual animal goings on in 2008:


An elephant called "Lady" eats her birthday cake at the Zoo of Santa Fe in Colombia.  [Agencies] 
- A polar bear called Debby, said to be the world's oldest, dies at age 42 after thrilling millions of visitors to a Canadian zoo. She had been orphaned as a cub in the Russian north, and raised in captivity.

- A lost baby whale mistakes an Australian yacht for its mother, and tries to suckle on it. It has to be put out of its misery to end its suffering.

- An elephant kicks its heroin habit after a three-year stint at an island rehab centre in southern China. The four-year-old Asian elephant, called Xiguang, had become hooked on the narcotic after animal smugglers captured his group by luring them with bananas laced with heroin.

- Rebels and the government in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have blighted the Nord-Kivu province with months of fighting, cut a deal to allow armed park rangers back into the famed Virunga reserve to care for its long-neglected gorillas.

- In the US state of Arizona a woman jogger runs for a mile with a rabid fox clamped to her arm. On arriving at her car she manages to lock the animal in the trunk, and race to a hospital for treatment.

- An Egyptian donkey is locked up for stealing corn on the cob from a field belonging to an agricultural research institute in the Nile Delta.

- A small kangaroo boxes its way out of its enclosure in a German town and flees, with emergency workers in hot pursuit. Firefighters are finally able to net the 70-centimetre (28-inch) tall wallaby unharmed.

- Snuppy, the first cloned dog, becomes a father after the world's first successful breeding involving only cloned canines.

- Thousands of pets are evacuated from New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Gustav in a bid to avoid the mass heartache of Hurricane Katrina, when thousands of animals -- along with hundreds of humans -- died.

- Sweden's own version of the Loch Ness monster, the Storsjoe or Great Lake monster, is been caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras says.

- Bosnian police impound a pigeon after finding that prisoners used it to smuggle drugs into one of the country's highest security jails.


Picture of two scarlet macaws taken at the El Picacho municipal zoo in the north of Tegucigalpa. [Agencies] 
- A rare 111-year-old New Zealand reptile, Henry the tuatara, a lizard-like creature with links to the age of the dinosaurs, is to become a father for the first time in at least 38 years after regaining an interest in sex.

- A British homeowner decides to reward his family's pet parrot after it saved them from a fire by frantically squawking.

- A young British woman expresses surprise after finding a live baby bat in her bra. Abbie Hawkins, 19, harboured the creature in her bosom for over four hours and had felt a slight twitching but thought it was her mobile phone vibrating.

- A Swiss court orders that a chicken be locked up in a soundproof box every night so its neighbours can get a good night's sleep.

- A stray parrot is reunited with its owner in Japan after repeating his name and address at the local veterinary clinic that took it in.

- A dog is admitted to a veterinary clinic in Austria barely able to stand on his own four paws and reeking of booze. The hungry pooch had stolen and devoured half a kilogram (a pound) of fresh yeast dough -- which had fermented inside his stomach.

- Emergency surgery saved an Australian python that swallowed four golf balls after mistaking them for chicken eggs.