Meet Hercules:

From the Snopes website:

The word liger, documented as entering the English language in 1938, describes a real feline, the offspring of a male lion and a female tiger. (The opposite case, the offspring of a male tiger and a female lion, is known as a tigon.

Both ligers and tigons exist in captivity, and the pictures and description reproduced above do correspond to one such example of the former, a liger named Hercules who lives at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species in Myrtle Beach…

Hercules was the result of an accident rather than deliberate breeding. (In the pictures) he is three years old, stands 10 feet tall on his hind legs, and weighs about 1,000 lbs.

If you are not familiar with the video, it’s an action-packed fight between crocodiles, lions, and buffaloes at a South African watering hole — all captured on a tourist’s vacation video.

You might also be interested in reading a story (“You’ve Seen the YouTube Video; Now Try the Documentary“) in the New York Times that provides a backstory to the video and the special program. Key passages:

The documentary dissects the primal behavior of the animals and answers a question that aspiring videographers have asked: how did he get that shot?

The “battle” happened in September 2004, during Mr. Budzinski’s first visit to Africa, at the Kruger National Park in the northeastern corner of South Africa. Mr. Budzinski, who works as a supply manager for Chevron in Houston, was riding in the back of a sport utility vehicle with his wife, two other tourists and a tour guide. The guide, spotting lions sunning themselves by a watering hole near where a herd of buffalo was walking by, decided to see what would happen. Before long the lions attacked the herd, singling out a buffalo calf and overwhelming it by the water’s edge.

In the Reuters video at this link, we learn just how vulnerable these beautiful creatures are and the need for bear rescue centers. The report shows the efforts of a center near Hanoi and how workers are saving animals from traffickers.

An Asiatic Black Bear named Claude is entertaining visitors at a Japanese zoo in a very unique way — he twirls sticks like an acrobat. For hours and hours.

Claude lives in Asa Zoological park in Hiroshima. His obsession with sticks began when he arrived at the zoo six years ago. He stopped the twirling for a few years, but he picked up the trick again. The zoo has 15 sticks available for Claude.

You must watch this cute video:

A beautiful picture of an angry jaguar.

The picture above comes from the new book “Thinkers Of The Jungle” by Gerd Schuster, Willie Smits and Jay Ullal.

As you can see, a male orangutan has used a long pole as a tool to spear and hunt for fish!

The picture was captured in Borneo on the island of Kaha. Conservations use the area to reintroduce and rehabilitate apes into the wild.

A beautiful red kangaroo!

Click here to watch the cute video.