From the Bronx Zoo Cobra to Ryan Gosling’s dog to snuggling baby pandas, the most famous beasts of 2011.
In March, a female Egyptian cobra escaped from her compartment at the Bronx Zoo and became a national sensation. BronxZoosCobra immediately started tweeting about her life on the lam—which included a trip to the Empire State Building and Magnolia Bakery—until she was captured in the reptile house several days later. As for her future plans, the charismatic cobra recently offered herself up to Kelly Ripa as a replacement for Regis: “I can start Monday. I'm free most mornings. Well, not ‘free’ but available.”
A team of 30 men captured a 21-foot saltwater crocodile in the Philippines in September. Weighing 2340 pounds, Lolong is believed to be the largest crocodile in captivity, but locals are not convinced—they soon began hunting for an even larger creature believed to be responsible for the death of a villager.
Much as George Clooney was often spotted with his beloved pot-bellied pig, Max, Ryan Gosling was seemingly inseparable from his dog, George, this year. The
30-year-old actor took his pet of 11 years to yoga class and the two even shared some airtime on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where Gosling explained why George sports that badass haircut. "He insists on it," the Drive star told Fallon. "Ten years ago I shaved a mohawk just for the summer. And then, every time it started to grow out, he turned into a total jerk. And then, I'd shave it back and he'd turn into a nice guy again."
Once in a blue moon, a fisherman catches a blue lobster. In June, Blair Doucette landed a rare cerulean crustacean off Prince Edward Island and gave it the unlikely name Fluffy. Caused by a genetic mutation that affects one in two million lobsters, Fluffy is perfectly safe to eat but Doucette donated the sea treasure to a local fishing museum.
In October, Ohio zookeeper Terry Thompson opened the cages of his exotic animals before shooting himself, releasing 56 creatures—including 18 tigers, 17 lions and three mountain lions. In the end, all but seven animals were killed by law enforcement. "I'm not going to say who was right or wrong," Leigh Henry of the World Wildlife Foundation said. "I certainly wouldn't judge [law enforcement] for taking the actions that they did, when their primary responsibility was the safety of their community."
Grahm S. Jones
Based on Michael Morpugo’s bestselling 1982 novel, War Horse won five Tony Awards this year—including Best Play—for its moving story of a boy who is
forced to sell his beloved horse to the British cavalry in World War I. Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation will be released on Christmas day and the Daily
Mail already called the film “a cinematic masterpiece that deserves to stand alongside Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and ET as Spielberg’s finest work.”
While David Slater was photographing crested black Macaque monkeys in July, one of the primates grew curious about his cameras. "They were quite mischievous jumping all over my equipment, and it looked like they were already posing for the camera when one hit the button,” Slater told the Telegraph.
"He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn't worked that out yet.” But one image was remarkably clear—and the hirsute artist even said “cheese” for the camera.
Among the heroes who took down Osama bin Laden were canine commandos that supported the Navy SEALS. But even civilian dogs know how to mourn their fallen masters. At the funeral of Navy SEAL John Tumilson—who was shot down in Afghanistan—in August, his Labrador retriever, Hawkeye, laid down by the side of his casket. Hawkeye’s new owner is a friend of Tumilson, who had cared for the dog while he was deployed overseas.
Though the addictive video game was released in 2009, Angry Birds reached critical mass this year, winning Best Game for a Handheld Device at the 2011 Webby Awards. The birds have also laid golden eggs for their developers at Rovio, which turned down a $2.25 billion offer from gaming company Zynga earlier this year.
Two heads may be better than one, but when it comes to cats, having two faces is one too many. In September 1999, Frank and Louie was born with two mouths, two noses and three eyes—and one brain, and was not given long to live. But this year, freaky feline became the longest surviving Janus-faced
cat on record. "The normal life expectancy is one to four days for cats with this condition," Frank and Louie’s owner told a local radio station. "When he was first born, every day was a blessing."
Man’s best friend is now a doctor’s best friend thanks to several studies that show dogs to be enormously effective at detecting cancer with their keen sense of smell. According to Japanese researchers, when canines sniff breath samples to detect colorectal cancer, they are 95 as accurate as a colonoscopy—and they are 98 percent as accurate when evaluating stool samples. The use of dogs to detect cancer early could prove enormously valuable in developing less invasive tests for humans.
In December 2005, a fisherman discovered a baby bottlenose dolphin caught in a crab trap off the coast of Florida. She was rescued and brought to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, but had to have her tail amputated because the netting had cut off the blood flow for too long. Enter Kevin Carroll and a team of researchers who devised a prosthetic tail for Winter and trained her to swim with it, and you have a feel-good Hollywood movie. Dolphin Tale—starring Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr., Morgan Freeman and Winter herself—opened in September and has earned nearly 90 million clams worldwide.
He was once Hollywood’s most bankable star, and in 2011 Rin Tin Tin proved he could sell a few books, too. In the soulful biography, ++Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend, New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean traces Rinty’s story—from being rescued on a World War I battlefield to saving Warner Bros. from bankruptcy to producing heirs that keep his legacy alive today. “If you say to someone you’re writing a book about a dog, it’s just going to sound trivial, or kitschy—nothing of any real seriousness,” Orlean told The Daily Beast in September. “And I knew I had to contend with that. But once I started writing, I knew that anyone beginning the book would know instantly why there was more to it.”
The sight of baby pandas sleeping is like human Kryptonite—we are powerless against it. In January, a photograph of a few cubs cuddling in a crib was downright adorable. But in September, a video of a dozen baby pandas snuggling in a Chinese nursery threatened to break the cute-ometer. All together now…awwwwwww.
