Animals In News

A ring-tailed lemur reacts as a keeper walks through his new enclosure at Taronga Zoo in Sydney West Midland Safari Park is celebrating the birth six lemur babies, including two sets of twins. The tiny ring tailed youngsters - which were barely the size of newborn kittens at birth and weighed no more than 56 grams (about 2 ounces) - are now much less shy and can regularly be seen hitching a lift with Mum around the woodland Twin polar bears are taken for a walk at Dalian Laohutan Ocean Park, Dalian, Liaoning Province, China. An aquarium in China is recruiting 100 pairs of twin children to play with their twin polar bears at a party next week. On the same day the aquarium will also announce the polar bears' names, which have been decided upon by the public. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Augo the flying polar bear cub. The cub used to be afraid of the water but now amuses visitors to Aalborg Zoo in Denmark with his diving skills. The cheeky bear previously delighted onlookers with his infatuation with a blue bucket, which he insisted wearing on his head. This bald eagle may look like it's jet propelled as an aeroplane's engines' exhaust trails seem to be billowing out of the bird's talons as it soars in the air. The extraordinary moment was captured on camera by Pam Mullins close to her home in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. She said: "The eagle was just gliding through the sky and I was panning with my camera trying to get a good shot. As I took the photo I just thought I had taken a normal picture. But when I looked back I realised how extraordinary it looked. I thought my photo had been ruined by the jet trails! I don't know if I would have been able to take the photo if I had tried." Stop thief! A sparrow catches the ankle of a winged intruder trying to steal its dinner. Urs Schmidli photographed the birds squabbling in mid-air combat in his back garden in Switzerland. Surfin' Bird: Surfer Mark Plant narrowly avoids a collision with a cormorant while surfing at Point Sinclair, South Australia. The bird was feeding underwater and popped its head up just as Mark was about to catch the wave. This grebe, sporting what looks like a Beatles mop-top hairdo was captured by photographer Rob Palmer in North East Colorado, America Two Little Owls (Athene noctua) were spotted getting affectionate as they prepared to start their mating season. Wildlife photographer Roy Mangersnes captured the romantic scene outside Lleida, in the Catalonia region of Spain. Blue tits nest in an ashtray outside a cafe at Kylemore Abbey in County Galway, Ireland. The nest - complete with four little chicks - was spotted by cleaning staff. The cafe has now imposed a strict no smoking policy in the area surrounding the nest. A rare white kiwi chick is pictured at New Zealand's Pukaha Mt Bruce national wildlife centre A white peacock is pictured on a warm spring day in a park in Bucharest, Romania A six-month-old albino wallaby named Alberta is pictured with a regular-coloured animal at the Vogelpark in Marlow, Germany Meet Bernie the kangaroo joey, who was resuscitated by wildlife rescuer, Lisa Milligan, after she found him abandoned and apparently lifeless by the side of the road in Melbourne, Australia A female panda named Lin Ping enjoys a birthday cake made of ice and soft drinks to celebrate turning two, at Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand An 18-day-old pygmy hippopotamus makes his first public appearance with its 29-year-old mother Dina at the Bratislava zoo A dog nurses two liger cubs at Xixiakou Wildlife Zoo in Weihai in east China's Shandong province. Four cubs were born to a female tiger and a male lion on May 13. The tiger mother fed the ligers for four days then abandoned them. Zoo workers brought in a dog to nurse them instead, but two died of weakness. A Sumatran tiger named Malea cleans one of her cubs in their enclosure at the zoo in Frankfurt, Germany Baby orangutan Changi, who is almost a year old, plays in his enclosure at the zoo in Krefeld, western Germany Rhesus monkeys sit on a gate of the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, India A monkey cools off in a water tub on a hot afternoon in Jammu, India A giraffe licks its own back at an enclosure at the Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad, India Purple sheep graze next to the M8 motorway in Bathgate, Scotland. The sheep have been dyed purple to raise awareness of Scottish veterans' charity Erskine to mark a new fundraising campaign. Motorists will be able to see the flock on a hillside between junctions 3A and 4 of the M8. A Labrador has become surrogate mother to two baby rabbits. Six-year-old Koa has taken the bunnies under her paw after they were found abandoned. Owner Tina Case, of San Francisco, explains: "A week after Easter, Koa was chasing a lizard outside our sun-room wall. The lizard landed on a pile of dirt where Koa discovered a little nest of wild bunnies... "...My daughters discovered what Koa found: there were three little bunnies. They rushed one of the little rabbits to our neighbour, Dr. Dani Olsen, who is a vet. Unfortunately it did not survive. But the other two little bunnies have thrived under our daughters' care. Koa is like their surrogate mother. They hop all over her and always find their way to the crook of her leg and find warmth and shelter. Koa has never been a mother, so she thinks these are her little puppies. We plan on releasing the wild bunnies back into nature or give them to a nature reserve because they are so tame now." Newborn llama Susanne with mother Evita at Bergzoo Halle in Saxony Anhalt, Germany Tapeko, a bottlenose dolphin, is given an ultrasound scan to confirm that she is pregnant, at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois