2009.10.21 : Some Better Animal Pictures, From The Telegraph Animal Pictures of the Week, Part II
Special Cross-Species Love Edition
"Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Newborn baby Tapir and his mother at Berlin Zoo, Germany
Two-month-old Bornean orang utan baby, Ah Meng Junior, hangs on to her mother, Anita at the Singapore Zoo
Two-year-old black Labrador, Bruce, a rescue dog from Dogs Trust, Glasgow, at Central Station in Glasgow, after he qualified as explosives search dog for the British Transport Police
A meerkat soaks up the sun's rays in its compound at Chorzow zoo, Poland
A tiger cub and a pig snoozing together at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand
Five, an African elephant, dips a paint brush as it paints a picture at West Midlands Safari Park in Bewdley [see this video of an oil painting elephant, if you'd like to have to re-examine all your assumptions about the interior lives of animals - Ed]
Three rare golden snub-nosed monkeys, famed for their striking appearance with orange fur and bright blue faces, are seen at the Everland zoo in South Korea
Gorilla infant Kiburi sleeps on her mother Safiri's back, during sunny weather at the zoo, in Duisburg, Germany
Mavrick, a 14-month-old male Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, tries to go eye to eye with Akaasha, a six-month-old female Bengal tiger at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California…
…Mavrick blows a mass of bubbles while checking out Akaasha…
Polar bear Knut plays with a rubber chicken at the Berlin Zoo
Odin, a white Bengal tiger, dives for a piece of meat at the opening of the new Odin's Temple of the Tiger exhibit at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California
A Belfast Zoo employee applies moisturiser to one of the zoo's elephants to improve its dry skin condition
Three giraffes at Sydney's Taronga Zoo eye up a carrot given to them by a visitor…
A baby pelican and a dachshund who have reportedly become friends in Germany
A vicious swan nicknamed 'Mr Asbo' which has been terrifying Cambridge University rowers on the River Cam. ["Just fuck off out of it!" - Mr Asbo / So much for cross-species love - Ed]
A green anaconda suffocates and then eats a common caiman in the Lianos National Park of Venezuela [Ditto - Ed]
Louis, Hedley and Dorothy, a ring-tailed lemur family at the Spring River Zoo in Roswell, New Mexico, examine and nibble upon an old cardboard box that had blown into their cage
A Linne's two-toed sloth and a Malayan flying fox hang around in the Fragile Forest environment at Singapore Zoo
A macaque dives into a private swimming pool, despite the clearly marked 'no diving' sign, in Sri Lanka
Penguins playing with bubbles at the Melbourne Aquarium in Australia
An orangutan anmed Daisy is covered with a sheet as she lays in her enclosure in the zoo in Dresden, Germany
A miniature horse looks over a stable door along with Elsa the St Bernard who lives with the little horses in Scorrier, Cornwall
…Santisak Dulapitak has been training his animals such as this water dragon to appear in advertisements and movies for more than two decades
A two-year-old iguana holds a toy guitar as she poses in a chair during training by her owner on the outskirts of Bangkok
With their own personal shower apparatus at their disposal, Thai elephants are well placed to look after themselves and fellow mammals when the going gets hot, as it did at Dusit zoo in Bangkok…
Alan Smith, with his four-year-old Jack Russell Kody, who doubles as a sled dog, pulling Alan's wheelchair around the streets of Clifton, Nottingham
A fish gasps as it is squeezed firmly in the sharp beak of a kingfisher, in this picture taken by wildlife photographer Ilia Shalamaev, from Israel
Covering 100 metres in 6.13 seconds, Sarah the cheetah set a new speed record for all land mammals in Cincinnati, Ohio
A young cheetah and a gazelle examine each other at the Marwell Zoo in Hampshire. In the wild the Dama gazelle would flee at the first whiff of the lightning fast predator but with a chain link fence the two have become friends, say keepers
Allison the green sea turtle can now swim in a straight line - thanks to her very own shark fin. The turtle lost three of her four flippers in a shark attack in 2005
Sadie the colobus monkey looks after her first baby, named Darby, at Denver Zoo, Colorado [resemblance? - Ed]
A stray monkey eats ice-cream at the national zoological park in New Delhi, India
Lemurs warm themselves in front of an electric heater at a zoo in Japan
Orphaned lamb, Jack Frost, is having to wear a woolly jumper to keep warm during the current cold spell. The lamb was born on January 1 and given to Manor Farm Country Park near Southampton, Hampshire
A highly trained rat sniffs out landmines in Mozambique
Baby golden-headed lion tamarins hold on to their mother as their father looks on in their enclosure in Tropicarium zoo in Budapest, Hungary
Frankie the cat with some of the 35 teddies and plush toys that his owner believes he has stolen from other people's homes in Swindon [Cats! - ed]
A farmer walks with a pig in Changbai, Jilin province, China
A squirrel joined Melissa Brandts' snapshot at Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, Canada. The couple, who were exploring the lake had stopped to take a timed picture of themselves by its picturesque shoreline [The best part is how the auto-focus shifted to the squirrel; classic - Ed]
Three lion cubs feed on the milk of a dog after their mother abandoned them after birth, at the Safari Park in Hefei, China
Eight-month-old orphan elephant Themba, whose name means 'hope' in Xhosa, who has struck up a friendship with a sheep called Albert at the Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa
A newly born Madagascar lemur, Propithecus coronatus, named Tahina, at Besancon Zoo, eastern France…
…Tahina, is one of only 17 Madagascar lemurs living in captivity worldwide
A young elk rescued from a flooding river by a farmer in Inje, Gangwon Province, South Korea. It was adopted by a female dog that breastfeeds and guards him
A mother dog nurses two red panda cubs who were abandoned by their mother soon after they were born, at a zoo in Taiyuan, China
Two little orphaned wallabies become best of friends at Emerald Monbulk Wildlife Shelter, Melbourne, Australia…
…and play-fighting
Leo the Lamb meets one of his new friends, Alice the kitten, at Lort Smith Animal Hospital, Melbourne. The stray lamb turned up unexpectedly at the inner-city animal hospital
Digger the Owl and Spike the duckling have become inseparable, both six-week-old chicks seem quackers for each other
