ANIMALS

British shorthair cat Berny vom Rosenpavillon sits under a yellow basket during a photocall for the "Heimtiermesse" pet fair in Dresden, Germany, on September 15, 2010. A man stands in front of his fattened sacrificial pig as part of the Hakka Yimin Festival in Hsinchu, Taiwan on August 29, 2010. During the festival, believers worship ancestors who fought for the government against rebels during ancient times to protect their homeland. After their deaths, locals started sacrificing pigs as offerings during the annual Hungry Ghost festival to commemorate their bravery. The sacrifice begins with a competition for the fattest pig in town and the family that offers the fattest pig is believed to receive a great blessing. A two-week-old Malay fish owl waits to be fed at the Jurong Bird Park on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010, at the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. A newly hatched Yangtze alligator is seen at the Chinese Alligator Propagation Research Center in Xuancheng, Anhui province, China on September 14, 2010. An elephant shrew is seen in this black and white handout picture released by The Zoological Society of London on September 21, 2010. Researchers may have discovered a previously unknown species of the giant elephant shrew - a small mammal with a nose like a trunk - in a remote Kenyan forest. They said on Tuesday they captured images of the rat-sized animal on camera-traps in the Boni-Dodori forest along Kenya's northeastern coast while they were researching biodiversity. A helicopter is used by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to gather wild horses in the Conger Mountains near Border in Utah on September 7, 2010. The BLM plans to round-up approximately 480 wild horses for placement in the BLM's adoption program or long-term pastures.   Jasradj, an Indian lion relaxes with his head resting on a large rock in his enclosure on September 15, 2010 at the Zurich zoo. USGS Wildlife Biologist Tony Fischbach lies on the beach observing a tagged walrus near Point Lay, Alaska on September 7th, 2010. Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted. Federal scientists say this massive move to shore by walruses is unusual in the United States. Cattle feed in a meadow in front of the Wilder Kaiser mountain in Going, in the Austrian province of Tyrol, Monday, Sept. 20, 2010. An overall view of a massive fish kill in the Bayou Chaland area of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana is pictured in this handout photograph taken on September 10, 2010. The cause of the fish kill has not yet been determined, but the area they were discovered in was impacted by oil from the BP oil spill. Among the fish dead were pogie fish, redfish, shrimp, crabs and freshwater eels. A Greyhound competes during the Greyhound World Championship in Rabapatona, Hungary on September 4, 2010 An unidentified octopus is seen by NOAA's Little Hercules ROV during the INDEX 2010 Exploration of the Sangihe Talaud Region off Indonesia in July, 2010. A cat eyes a squirrel as it makes its way along a fence in Ormond Beach Florida on Wednesday morning, September 8, 2010. Cat and squirrel parted without incident. A donkey transports ballot boxes to villages unreachable by vehicles in Panjshir province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on September 17, 2010. A newly born kiwi chick is seen at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, New Zealand on September 12, 2010. The endangered New Zealand kiwi bird that survived a being buffeted in its egg during the Christchurch earthquake was hatched safely on September 12 in a boost to conservation efforts, officials said on September 13, 2010. The bird was named "Rickter" after the quake that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale hit the area on September 4. A polar bear walks along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, Canada on August 23, 2010. Bubbles are seen in the eye of a beached gray whale south of Harborview Park in Everett, Washington on Friday morning, July 9, 2010. Volunteers work to keep a stranded gray whale wet near Harborview Park in Everett, Washington Thursday morning July 8, 2010. The whale became stranded and freed itself multiple times and was seen being attacked by Orcas at one point. A four week old Giant Red Kangaroo baby looks up from its mother's pouch at the Zoo in Berlin, August 10, 2010.   A kitten strays onto the pitch during the Super Cup soccer final between Birkirkara and Valletta at Ta' Qali National Stadium outside Valletta, Malta on August 21, 2010. Abandoned puppies roam a village in Tanah Karo near the erupting Mount Sinabung, seen emitting volcanic ash in North Sumatra province on September 15, 2010. More than 20,000 people have fled their homes since the volcano first erupted late August and remain in emergency shelters. Volcanologists said Sinabung's long dormant period had made it highly unpredictable. More than 120 pilot whales, slaughtered on July 23, 2010, are pictured on docks in the harbor of Torshavn, Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark. Every year, herds of pilot whales (Globicephala melaena) pass by the shores of the Faroe Islands. In the past fishermen used spears and harpoons, but today the whale hunting equipment is legally restricted to special knives, ropes, and assessing-poles for measurement. A Faroese man shows his son how to remove teeth from a slaughtered whale's jaw in the harbour of Torshavn, Faroe Islands on July 23, 2010. Silvery gibbon mother "Pam" holds her baby in the enclosure in the zoo Hellabrunn in Munich, Germany on August 20, 2010. The baby gibbon was born in the zoo on June 29, 2010. A five-day-old Asian elephant calf helps his auntie to raise her foot for the keeper at the Melbourne Zoo, on September 15, 2010. The un-named, first-ever male calf to be born at Melbourne Zoo, weighed in at a hefty 142.2kg, much heavier than a normal calf. One of 25 pilot whales that died on September 22, 2010 lies in the sand after the whales beached themselves at Spirits Bay, 320 km (200 mi) northwest of Auckland, New Zealand. In the second mass stranding in the area in two months, the Department of Conservation said a pod of 74 pilot whales were found but rescuers were trying to save almost 50 more stranded on the coast. Another 50 whales were offshore and were continuing to strand themselves, regional manager of the Department of Conservation (DOC) Jonathan Maxwell said. At a dairy, a cow is silhouetted by the sun on August 25, 2010 near Immenstadt im Allgaeu, Germany. The alpine dairy is run by the Beck family in its fourth generation. Each year they produce about 6000 kg of cheese from May to September. The farm is only accessible with a jeep and the nearest street is a one hour walk away. This image provided by NOAA shows a deep-sea Chimera in waters off Indonesia in July, 2010. Chimeras are most closely related to sharks, although their evolutionary lineage branched off from sharks nearly 400 million years ago, and they have remained an isolated group ever since. According to scientists the lateral lines running across this chimera are mechano-receptors that detect pressure waves (like ears). The dotted-looking lines on the frontal portion of the face (near the mouth) are ampullae de lorenzini and detect perturbations in electrical fields generated by living organisms. A surf dog wipes out during the annual Surf City Surf Dog competition at Huntington Beach in California on September 19, 2010. Jeba