Let me take you through this story slowly so that you don't release a lifetime's worth of oxytocin in the next three seconds.

First picture a baby sloth, with a little black Gund-type nose, and paws which are used like human arms to hug things. Got it? The name's Sjakie, born 2 months ago in the Netherlands' Burgers Zoo. In his first days of life, zookeepers heard his teeny sloth squeaks (right now would be a good time to gnaw on stress ball and pretend it's Sjakie) while his mommy was feeding him, and realized he wasn't getting enough milk to sustain his little sloth life.

Providing outside nourishment for Sjakie wasn't the problem. It was his sloth instinct when feeding: "They need to hang on normally to the mother...it's like a reflex," Burgers zoo manager Wineke Schoo told PRI. He wasn't eating without gripping his mother and she wasn't able to give him enough milk to survive.

So it became clear they needed to find something furry, and fast.

"We tried out several ted

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You wash and refill the cat's water bowl twice a day. You've experimented with plastic bowls, ceramic bowls, plain bowls, bowls with cute little fish skeletons painted in the bottom. So why is her water dish the last thing Fluffy wants to drink out of? Why do you find her sitting impatiently at the edge of the sink, or in the bathtub, waiting for you to turn the water on for her – or dipping a paw (which you know just climbed out of the litterbox: yechh) into your drinking glass?

It's tempting to conclude that our cats just like to make us do things for them and/or annoy us, but in case the felines have a logical reason for occasionally sticking their heads into the toilet for a cocktail, we decided to ask some experts.

Turns out, cats have pretty good reasons for this particular picky behavior. According to a recent column by Marc Morrone in Long Island's Newsday, at least in cases where the cat is quaffing from the potty, the other water available to them probably isn't clean enough, o

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Baltimore, like any big city, has it's fair share of outlaws and ruffians. No one knows that more than the men and women who serve the Baltimore Police Department. But one story making the rounds today sheds a bit of unusually cool light upon the more human aspects of being an inner-city cop. And it's making me and a whole lot of other folks smile.



Related: 7 ways to give back to your local animal shelter

The website Modifiedk9 recently ran a story based on a letter they received from Officer Dan Waskiewicz in which he told the site a pretty awesome story. It seems that not too long ago, Officer Waskiewicz responded to a call regarding what he described as "…a vicious dog chasing kids." Upon arriving at the scene he noticed people hollering out of their windows and so he followed the pit bull to see what it was up to.

Officer Waskiewicz, a self-proclaimed dog lover, then went against his partner's judgement and got the dog to approach him.

"The dog came over with it's tail

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By WebVet.com

If you want your children to do better in school -- get them a chinchilla. A new study found a link between a better performance in the classroom and kids who have pets, especially the aforementioned soft rodents.

Surprisingly it was the chinchilla that emerged as the most likely animal to boost a child's cleverness, with 55% of owners reporting an uptick in creativity. If it's just a kid's homework that needs a boost, consider adopting mice or rats as 92% of rodent owners reported a better performance on assignments, compared with 86% and 80% for children owning dogs and cats respectively.

Rescuing and adopting chinchillas | Webvet

The underlying belief is that caring for a pet makes children more responsible. In the Pets at Home study, nearly half of children said that owning and looking after a pet makes them happier, a third claimed to be calmer, while a fifth feel smarter.

However it seems as though most kids still leave dog walking and litter-scoopin...Read More »