HozNews

A polar bear called Debby, said to be the world’s oldest, died 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 mistook an Australian yacht for its mother, and tried to suckle on it. It had to be put out of its misery to end its suffering.

- Two giant pandas - Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan - made their long-anticipated, groundbreaking trip from China to Taiwan, in the latest sign of fast thawing ties between the two former bitter rivals.

- An elephant kicked 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.

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

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

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

- Thousands of pets were 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, was caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras said.

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

- 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 young British woman expressed 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 ordered that a chicken be locked up in a soundproof box every night so its neighbours can get a good night’s sleep.

- A dog was 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.

- A lucky Australian cat used up one of its lives when it survived a 34-storey plunge from an apartment building window. Voodoo’s fall was apparently broken by some well-placed bushes.