30 Cute, Awe-Inspiring, Interesting, & Disturbing Animal Videos & Stories

First of all, you’ve got to check out this amazing slow-motion full HD video of an eagle owl flying and then landing fight in front of the video camera. Amazing!

We’ve got some more cute and awe-inspiring animal videos for you this week, as always, but we’ve also got a handful of interesting and disturbing videos about animal cruelty and endangered species. Check these videos out and the stories underneath them all.

Cow (or bull) in Queens, NY escapes slaughterhouse and runs through the street. Wonder why? The cow/bull was eventually caught and sent back for slaughter.

A very tired or sick elephant from the Ringling Bros. circus fell from a ramp while being loaded onto a train in California recently, subsequently collapsing and lying on the ground for quite awhile. Some people nearby filmed the elephant — caution: if you are not a fan of dirty language, you may want to mute the video.

Here’s a little more info from the YouTube page:

Sarah, a sick 54-year old Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey elephant, fell down from a ramp and collapsed while being loaded onto a train in Anaheim, CA, after performing at the Honda Center late Sunday, August 7, 2011. Eye witnesses captured the incident on video and notified Animal Defenders International (ADI). Ringling was recently cited by the USDA for violations of the Animal Welfare Act for failing to properly treat Sarah’s chronic medical conditions. ADI has filed a complaint with the USDA, asking for Sarah to be taken off the road to get the veterinary attention she needs. ADI is concerned that Ringling is more interested in keeping the “show on the road” than Sarah’s welfare. ADI believes Sarah should be retired to a sanctuary. (video courtesy of Ashley Zarate) More info here.

Tuna is a good food to avoid if you want to help the many endangered animals of the ocean. Endangered species are caught and killed every day in the hunt for tuna. Greenpeace and Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Mark Fiore tell the story much better than I ever could in the fun but depressing video:

OK, now, on to some cute, positive videos….

A handful of baby Tazmanian devils were recently born at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. The Taronga Conservation Society Australia has the video:

The oh-so-rich Richard Branson (CEO of Virgin Group) recently swam with a bunch of sharks, whale sharks, and got it filmed. He was teaming up with WildAid on this to try to bring more awareness to their endangered status and “promote the conservation of the aggregation of several hundred whale sharks off Isla Mujeres, Mexico.” What amazing creatures! Enjoy.

Completely adorable baby sloths. (Not new, but new to me, and extremely funny/cute.)

Sloth crosses the street (with a little help)… not the fastest thing in the world.

Sloth swimming (no Michael Phelps).

Adorable orphaned baby sloths. A day in the life…

http://youtu.be/BdPnwsWjdQY

Baby sloth sounds.

& shared this sloth yawning previously, but have to share again since we’re on the topic of sloths 😀

Baby geese and their path to adulthood put to some nice music. Too cute.

Here are some more top animal stories of the week:

  1. Dogs have learned how the subway works in Moscow, Russia… use it every day to get to and from the city center. They choose the quietest subway cars, cross streets on the lights, play on people’s sympathy for food, and more. “Experts studying the dogs, who usually choose the quietest carriages at the front and back of the train, say they even work together to make sure they get off at the right stop – after learning to judge the length of time they need to spend on the train…. They jump on the train seconds before the doors shut, risking their tails getting jammed. They do it for fun. And sometimes they fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.”
  2. The UK government justifies slaughterhouse inaction. “Animal Aid released footage showing workers burning pigs with cigarettes, and punching, kicking and beating them around the head. The undercover film also showed improper stunning, leaving animals screaming on the floor, and three seriously injured pigs forced to drag themselves through the slaughterhouse. The horrific investigation was seen by millions of people on Sky News and in several national newspapers…. Despite the many serious breaches of the law, the government has so far refused to prosecute.”
  3. EXPLICIT PHOTOS: The REAL Brooke Hogan And 8 Others Bare All For PETA. “Late last week, Brooke Hogan made headlines by posing nude for a photo exhibit to benefit PETA…. There’s just one problem. Not all of the images that websites claimed to be Hogan were actually of her.”
  4. Victory! The Food Network Stops Promoting Shark Meat. “Threatened sharks just swam a little closer to conservation. After many people signed a petition urging the Food Network to stop featuring shark as food, the media company removed all shark recipes from its popular Web site and issued a statement on the future use of shark at the network.”
  5. Desperate Hunt for a Runaway Cow Resorts to an Animal Psychic and a €10,000 Reward (different cow than in the video above. crazy story.)
  6. PHOTOS: Sea Lion Fatally Shot In Venice (Warning: Graphic) “Animal rights groups Marine Animal Rescue (MAR) and Friends of Animals are offering a $5,000 reward for any information that will lead to the culprit responsible for a fatal sea lion shooting.”
  7. Local Group: ‘Don’t Eat Puppies, Please’. “The San Francisco-based animal rights organization In Defense of Animals wants South Koreans to stop eating animals–at least the adorable ones, anyway.”
  8. Elephant and rhino poaching ‘is driven by China’s economic boom’. “Elephant poaching in Africa and Asia is being fuelled by China’s economic boom, according to a study of the ivory trade…. Authors of the new report found that the number of ivory items on sale in key centres in southern China has more than doubled since 2004, with most traded illegally. The survey comes amid reports of a dramatic rise in rhino poaching across Africa, and a spate of thefts of rhino horns from European museums and auction houses.”
  9. Woman Who Made Her Home A Wild Bear ‘Spa’ Won’t Be Jailed. “A woman who turned her rural Northern California home into a spa for wild bears won’t go to jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of feeding big game…. Gravier, 77, known as the “Bear Woman,” set up a plush hangout for her furry friends at her 40-acre Laytonville property, complete with a kiddie pool and a buffet of cornmeal and peanut butter sandwiches, sometimes laced with glucosamine to ease the arthritis pain in older bears.”
  10. Sri Lankan activists boycott elephant census. “Sri Lanka will begin its first census of wild elephants, despite protests from conservationists that the operation is aimed predominantly at finding the healthiest beasts to use in temples, for tourism and for industrial labour.”
  11. Turtle crisis looms for Great Barrier Reef. “WWF has received numerous reports from aboriginal groups on the north-eastern coast of Australia of large numbers of sick, starving and dead turtles washing up on beaches. The reports come following the loss of sea grasses after Cyclone Yasi and floods hit the area back in February…. The increase in turtle deaths for April may be more than five times higher this year compared to the same time last year.”
  12. Why Martin Luther King’s Son Doesn’t Eat Meat. “We might feel anger by the comparison implicit in invoking racism and animal protection. After all, Nelson Mandela didn’t move the nation of South Africa to secure the rights of mother pigs or egg-laying chickens. Human oppression is wholly different, and maybe you’re right. But we view the contributions of Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King too narrowly if we assume that they cannot stand against all forms of injustice. And make no mistake, there’s a reason King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and his son, Dexter, are committed vegetarians.”
  13. Every Mother’s Nightmare: Bacteria in Recalled Ground Turkey Is Resistant to Antibiotics. “If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night panicked that you won’t make it to the bathroom in time, or heard a scream from your child and sat with them shaking over a garbage can for hours on end, you know how brutal food poisoning can be. It is not something you want anyone, even your worst enemy, to ever to have to go through. Avoid it at all costs. Which makes it doubly maddening that the United States Department of Agriculture has been so irresponsibly slow in identifying the latest deadly antibiotic-resistant Salmonella outbreak, one that was first identified in MARCH.”
  14. America’s First Elephant Sperm Bank Set To Open. “Zoo officials trying to establish North America’s first elephant sperm bank have been slowed by bureaucratic hurdles but hope South African officials will approve shipping frozen elephant semen to the United States in about a month.”
  15. APP rehomes a tiger after cutting down its forest home. “The news from Indonesia today that Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) has moved a tiger from one part of South Sumatra province to another in order to protect it is supposed to prove that company has green stripes. But, as with anything emanating from the APP publicity machine, scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find an altogether different tale.”
  16. Is China opening the door to the tiger and leopard skin trade? “Has China quietly reopened the trade in tiger pelts? The question was posed very publicly on Thursday by the Environmental Investigation Agency, which fears that Beijing may be backtracking on an international pledge to save this critically endangered animal.”
  17. OPPOSE THE PIG PRISON NOW! “Hundreds of people from across the country rallied and then marched through Derby on Saturday (August 13) to protest against plans for a massive ‘pig prison’ that Midland Pig Producers (MPP) want to build next to the nearby village of Foston. Animal Aid Director Andrew Tyler was among the speakers…. If the proposal gets approval, between 25,000 and 30,000 pigs will be confined – without access to the outside – at any one time.”

More stories to share? Drop them in the comments below.

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