Though humans may be the dominant animals on the planet, we share it with countless other species. We treat some as sources of food and others as sources of companionship, entertainment, or education. Most animals live their lives independent of us, but they dwell in habitats but we shape profoundly. Large scale disasters, such as the recent earthquakes and wildfires, can have a huge impact on animal life. Gathered here is a collection of various animal images that have appeared in the news over the past several weeks.
Animals in the News
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Seba, a baby Red Panda, explores his new home at Taronga Zoo on April 7, 2011, in Sydney, Australia. The Red Panda cub was born at Christmas and is the 45th to be born at the zoo since 1977. #
Peter Hardin/Taronga Zoo via Getty Images -
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Andy Page cries as he sits with his cat, Ellie, placed in a pet carrier, in his demolished apartment in Trenton, Georgia, on Thursday, April 28, 2011, after overnight storms hit the North Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, area. Page has several cats and Ellie was the last one he was looking for. #
AP Photo/Chattanooga Times Free Press, Angela Lewis -
A trained monkey wears a mask during a Topeng Monyet (Monkey Mask) show, a traditional Indonesian street performance, in east Jakarta on April 25, 2011. Karmini, who has four trained monkeys, said his group can collect $10 a day for their performance. #
Reuters/Beawiharta -
Rescued dogs are released from their truck at a shelter in Beijing, China, on Saturday, April 16, 2011. Chinese animal lovers, mobilized by online calls for help, blockaded a truck of hundreds of dogs being shipped off for food in a rare, permitted display of social action amid a broad crackdown on most kinds of activism. #
AP Photo/Capital Animals Welfare Association -
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A girl looks at a great spider crab living in a 20,000-liter basin at the Sea Life aquarium in Timmendorfer Strand, northern Germany, on March 30, 2011. Some species of the marine crabs reach a leg span of three meters and even more. #
Ulrich Perrey/AFP/Getty Images -
Cashmere goats raised for their wool at a farm in Ordos in Inner Mongolia, northwest China, on April 20, 2011. The finest cashmere in the world is said to come from goats from the region of Ordos, also prized for their meat and skin. #
Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images -
A bull tries to escape a running wildfire on April 19, 2011, in Graford, Texas. Dozens of area homes have been destroyed in wildfires fueled by dry conditions, high winds, and low humidity. #
Tom Pennington/Getty Images -
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Skeletons of a 17.6-meter-long sperm whale (left) and 8-meter-long minke whale hang from the ceiling in a room strewn with tsunami wreckage, at the Whale and Ocean Science Museum in Yamada town, Iwate prefecture, on April 16, 2011. #
Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images -
A two-headed African spurred tortoise named Magdalena moves around a small-scale model of an ice hockey rink in her hometown of Zilina, Slovakia, on April 28, 2011, in an effort to predict the winners of the opening match in the ice hockey World Championships. Magdalena accurately predicted that host Slovakia would beat Slovenia. #
Reuters/Radovan Stoklasa -
Live turtles, young giant salamanders, and fish sealed in plastic pouches to be sold as keychains are displayed at a roadside stall in Beijing, China, on Tuesday, April 12, 2011. Each keychain is sold for 10 yuan (USD $ 1.50). The vendor claims a special liquid inside provides oxygen and nutrients for the creatures. #
AP Photo -
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Dead fish float on top of the harbor on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 in Ventura, California. Officials say thousands of anchovies and sardines died in Ventura Harbor after using up all the oxygen in the water. In early March, 175 tons or 2.5 million sardines died in Redondo Beach after running out of oxygen. Officials say they don't know why the fish entered the harbor, but they could have been chased by a sea lion, dolphin, or strong tide. #
AP Photo/Ventura County Star, Stephen Osman -
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Debbie Goebels bandages the bloodied foot of her search dog, Ryka. The dog wounded itself walking through debris during a recovery operation in the aftermath of deadly tornadoes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on April 30, 2011. #
Reuters/Lee Celano -
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Firefighter Andy Bell carries two dogs, Parley (left) and Nellie, that were rescued from an apartment fire on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, in Jacksonville, Illinois. Both dogs survived, and Nellie was given oxygen before being returned to her owner. There were no injuries reported from the fire. #
AP Photo/Jacksonville Courier-Journal, Robert Leistra -
Riders compete on the frozen Yenisei river during the 42nd Ice Derby amateur horse race near the settlement of Novosyolovo, some 250 km (155 miles) south of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on March 19, 2011. The Ice Derby has been held in Novosyolovo at the end of each winter since 1969, drawing participants from the entire region. #
Reuters/Ilya Naymushin -
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A newborn baby pangolin climbs the walls of a cage during a news conference at Thai customs in Bangkok on April 20, 2011. The Thai custom office had discovered 175 pangolins hidden in a truck heading into Bangkok early that morning. Southeast Asian pangolins, or manis javanica, are listed as endangered species in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Some people believe that the animal's meat and blood can enhance sexual virility. #
Reuters/Damir Sagolj -
Workers at the Burgers' Zoo determine the gender of a bat in Arnhem, Holland, on April 28, 2011. The short-tailed bats are counted by gender annually in an effort to keep the male-female ratio equal. #
Freek van den Bergh/AFP/Getty Images -
Spanish fisherman Rafael Marquez, 40, works in a net with Atlantic bluefin tuna caught during the opening of the season for tuna fishing near to the coast of Barbate, Cadiz province, southern Spain, Wednesday, April 27, 2011. The tuna are caught in an elaborate and age-old Andalusian fishing method, called "almadraba", used in Spanish coastal areas close to the Strait of Gibraltar since Phoenician times. #
AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti -
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A Santa Cruz County Animal Services photograph shows Max, a three-year-old cat shot through the head with an arrow, in this photograph released to Reuters on April 12, 2011. Max was recuperating from surgery on Tuesday, apparently little the worse for the wear, authorities said. "According to the owners, the cat had been missing for two days and when they opened their front door, the cat came in," Santa Cruz County Animal Services Manager Todd Stosuy told Reuters. #
Reuters/Santa Cruz County Animal Services -
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Bathers wade in the Pacific Ocean as a dense school of fish approaches the beach in the resort city of Acapulco on March 11, 2011. The fish appeared near the beach around the time the tsunami generated by the earthquake in Japan was expected to reach the coast of Mexico, but it is unknown whether there is any relationship between the two events. #
Reuters/Stringer -
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A cat is stranded on a rock surrounded by rapids at the base of Akron Falls in Akron, New York, on Monday, April 4, 2011. Edit: I Asked the photographer about what happened next, his response: "I was high on a ravine when I photographed the cat. At first I thought the cat was hunting for fish or something. The cat ended up in the water and was swept downstream. I ran down next to the stream as the cat was treading water and I hoped to pull it out but it was on the other side of the river. I lost sight of the cat and then saw it on the other side of the river on top of another rock very close to shore. I could not cross the river as the water was cold and fast so I went down river to a footbridge and walked up on the other side. The cat was not on the rock when I arrived and I did not see it go by me in the river so it's a bit of a mystery as I just really do not know what happened to the cat." #
AP Photo/David Duprey -
Baby orangutan Boo, a nine-month-old orphan, plays with a blanket during a presentation at the Madrid Zoo & Aquarium on April 14, 2011. Boo, the first orangutan born at the zoo, has been adopted by a female orangutan and is bottle fed by one of the keepers, according to the zoo. #
Reuters/Andrea Comas -
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After returning to his farm from a shelter in Fukushima City, Japanese dairy farmer Masakatsu Kosone looks at a cow that died of hunger at his farm in the village of Katsurao in Fukushima prefecture, 25 kilometers west of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant on May 3, 2011. The March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami left thousands of residents dead or missing and obliterated whole towns and villages on the northeast coast. Thousands of farm animals left behind died of hunger in the weeks following the quake as authorities created an exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant. #
Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images -
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A Spotted Drum Juvenile is shown swimming over brain coral in this underwater photograph taken while scuba diving off the Caribbean Island of Bonaire onMonday, April 18, 2011. #
AP Photo/David J. Phillip -
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A golden eagle attacks a chained wolf during the traditional hunting festival of Salburun in the village of Tyup, Kyrgyzstan, some 370 kilometers from Bishkek, on May 1, 2011. #
Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images -
Racka sheep walk during the celebration of the start of the new grazing season on the Great Hungarian Plain in Hortobagy, 200 km (124 miles) east of Budapest, on April 30, 2011. #
Reuters/Laszlo Balogh -
Young Polar Bears Aleut and Gregor play on Wednesday March 23rd, 2011 at the zoo in Nuremberg during their first exploration of their enclosure. The two polar bears were born in December 2010. Aleut and Gregory, are the 29th and 30th Polar Bear cubs born in the 100-year history of the zoo. #
Timm Schamberger/dapd -
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