This piece is incredibly sad. But it is hopeful also. The expansion of pet-based forensic science teams, the increasing intersection of psychological examinations of pet abuse and how it relates to bad home situations, and the use of animals for therapeutic practice are three wonderful things. A must-read.

With photos so you can identify all!

Stunning.

Hehe.

A very focused blog that ruined/made my evening.

This is superb. As usual, well-researched, well-written, and honest. Absolutely brimming with perfect ideas about how to get food back on track in every way in this country — commercially, politically, and socially. If even a quarter of this stuff happens I would be ecstatic. The ideas in the last section about the president creating a farm section of the White House lawn and the chef posting organic recipes on the White House website are killer. God I love Michael Pollan. Obama claims to have read this. Let's hope it happens.

"Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel. "

"Dolphins can swim and sleep at the same time." Refresh until you die. Looking through these, though, I recommend a grain of salt with each serving. These are the Snapple caps of the internet.

They can flip themselves into the air a bunch of centimeters by snapping their jaws. This video is wonderful.

"It's not your job to right a wrong / Just mark it FAIL and move along." With cute illustrations.

The mayor of La Paz, Bolivia, has instituted a program where in teenagers dress up as zebras and act as crossing guards. This helps solve the problem of dangerous traffic in La Paz. This is great. Absolutely great.

Beautiful, deadly.

Excellent and quirky nature paintings.

The text of this article is pretty incredible, but the picture is the best part. She's all, "YEAH I DID IT! AGAIN! HAHAHA!"

Mike Lee calls for developers to donate to the Madagascar Fauna Group in exchange for a free plushy lemur and membership in "Club Thievey." I've got mine! :-)

Another guide to Hawaiian birds. More thorough, but fewer varieties.

They cry when eating, but "what causes the tears remains a bit of a mystery." This article is full of great lines. Note the onion-and-pepper experiment and the last two paragraphs in particular.

The worst 3D renderings ever rendered. "Why? What is the point? Images like this just scare me. Where's the motive, whats the purpose."

Awwww.

The story behind why the O'Reilly books have animal engravings on them.

"The newest creature was dubbed a 'microshark' by Jan War, operations manager at the natural energy lab. Scientists tentatively identified it as a deep-water catshark and said only two other specimens are known to exist."

Bees project a six-degree "flag" manifold (found also in the mathematics of quarks) in two dimensions to describe where and how to find the food, describing landmarks based on electromagnetic fields and the polarization levels of sunlight.

Webcams, information, photos, etc. Don't miss the article on why you should not feed bread to ducks.

"It's surprising and really exciting to know that there is such sophisticated information being passed along in the calls you can hear almost every day."

The ultimate in cuteness, now on a tshirt! Napoleon Dynamite?

The performance form is alive and well.

"Perhaps, she speculates, bees possess some ability to perceive not only light and magnetism but quarks as well."

Click the cutest kitten, submit your own.

"The most common possum species in Australia, the brushtail possum is a tree-dwelling nocturnal marsupial. Its propensity to nest in roofs and ceilings has been known to surprise Aussie homeowners."

Stunningly photos, and they make superb desktop pictures.

A horse that rides in a car, eats cheeseburgers, fetches a beer, answers the phone, sleeps in bed.

"'The marking on the shell was like the devil wanted us to to know he was down there.'"

What an amazing GIF.

This is incredible. "What are these creatures, that they spin silver lariats for the sheer joy of creation? And what sort of creatures are we, if we cannot appreciate and protect them?"

A list of cats that live in libraries all over the world.

Outlandish and simple.

"The Iranian daily Etemaad says the creature is believed to have grown from larva to an adult frog inside her body."