THIS Chinese monkey trainer was floored when a group of his apprentices turned on him in a vicious revenge attack. Entertainer Lo Wung, 42, taught the group of monkeys some basic taekwondo moves to entertain shopping centre crowds.

But when Wung took a tumble one of his pack turned and decked him with a kung-fu kick to the head. The turncoat gang then swarmed all over their master — with one even grabbing his stick and cracking him over the head with it.

Birthday present from Aileen. One of the strangest things I've ever been given, and it made me laugh out loud when I unwrapped it.
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A Swedish man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife has been cleared, after police decided she was probably killed by an elk. Ingemar Westlund, aged 68, found the dead body of his wife Agneta, 63, by a lake close to the village of Loftahammer in September 2008. He was immediately arrested and held in police custody for 10 days. Now the case has been dropped after forensic analysis found elk hair and saliva on his wife's clothes.

Mr Westlund told Expressen newspaper: "My family and I have been dragged through a nightmare." His wife had last been seen taking the family dog out for a walk in the forest. When she failed to return her husband went out to look for her. Although the murder investigation was dropped five months ago, details have only just emerged and the police plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what happened.

The European elk, or moose, is usually considered to be shy and will normally run away from humans. But Swedish Radio International says the animals can become aggressive after eating fermented fallen apples in gardens.

An ice-skating bear with a touring Russian circus has killed a circus manager and seriously injured a trainer in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

Kyrgyz officials said the bear turned on the manager, 25-year-old Dmitry Potapov, during a rehearsal.

The bear, who had skates on at the time, severely mauled another circus worker who tried to rescue the manager.

Bears on ice are common in Russian circuses. Some are equipped with helmets and sticks and trained to play hockey.

A monkey has pushed a woman off a cliff.

The woman, 60-year-old Zhou Juchang, made the claim after winding up at the bottom of a seven-metre rockface, fracturing her hip and breaking three ribs.

Now she’s suing her travel agent, who organised her trip into China’s Chengdu Wildlife Park.

The monkey allegedly flew into a rage when the woman refused to hand over the bag of monkey food which her tour guide recommended she buy.

A spokesman for the park said the woman’s mistake was showing fear.

“If you show fear a monkey will bully you,” he told London’s Metro.

A pair of rabid rabbits has been caught killing a series of snakes near Cairns.

For three weeks Armando Del Manso believed his dog was responsible for the dead snakes showing up with teeth marks all over them on his East Barron property’s lawn each morning.

But it turns out it was a pair of rampaging rabbits killing the snakes.

And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

Armed with explosives, two men are heading to Mongolia's desert to find the fabled acid-spitting and lightning-throwing Mongolian death worm ... The worm- about 1.5m long- apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances.

If you see a 50-kilogram black panther prowling the wilds of Sydney's west, you are not going mad. Not only does Nathan Rees believe the elusive fanged feline exists, but so do government scientists who want warning signs to be erected to keep children safe from the clutches of the cat's claws.

For the cat it's a purr-fect situation - just add a slightly annoying meow to normal purring and owners can be coaxed into filling their food bowls. The master manipulators have worked out loud meows are too annoying, research has found.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A badger in Germany got so drunk on over-ripe cherries it staggered into the middle of a road and refused to budge, police said on Wednesday.

A motorist called police near the central town of Goslar to report a dead badger on a road -- only for officers to turn up and discover the animal alive and well, but drunk.Police discovered the nocturnal beast had eaten cherries from a nearby tree which had turned to alcohol and given the badger diarrhoea.

Having failed to scare the animal away, officers eventually chased it from the road with a broom.

A zoo in north-west England was evacuated on Sunday after about 30 chimpanzees escaped from their enclosure.

The animals escaped from 'Chimp Island' and found their way into a keeper area where their food is prepared, the zoo said.

More than 5,000 visitors were asked to leave Chester Zoo, near Liverpool, shortly after the break-out as keepers rounded up the chimps.

FIRE crews are investigating whether a cat urinating on a laptop sparked a fire that has destroyed most of a home in a Gold Coast gated community.

The huge carnivorous komodo dragon isn't just the largest living lizard, it also packs the biggest poisonous punch of any creature ... While humans seldom fall victim to komodo dragons, earlier this year a dragon stalked a poacher for several days and then, with a companion, waited for the man, and caught, killed and ate him.

"They're the cleverest of all lizards. They're very smart," said Melbourne University venom researcher Bryan Fry, head of the international team that reports on the lizard's weaponry today in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The biggest surprise of all is that until now researchers didn't even know the komodo dragon - a monitor lizard in a group called the varanidae - was poisonous. "Nobody looked," Dr Fry said.

Researchers have finally caught on to what Alfred Hitchcock knew decades ago; birds know who out of a crowd is their enemy.

While characters in the filmmaker's 1963 horror classic The Birds found out the hard way about vengeful seagulls, real-life biologists at the University of Florida (UF) say the humble mockingbird is no birdbrain when it comes to identifying and remembering the face of a person it deems a threat.

When the white and grey songbirds, common in southeastern US cities and towns, see a human intruder as a threat to their nests, they remember that person and will dive bomb and even physically attack the visitor, while ignoring other people passing by.

• Movie idea: "Black Sheep" meets "28 Days Later" ... but with swine 'flu instead.
• Actually I think I just proposed "I Am Legend" with pigs.
• "I Am Bacon", available soon in Director's Cut and Short Cut versions. (with thanks to @colinmo)
  

Thirsty Northern Territory camels have acquired the knack of turning on taps. The dry desert heat can make anyone thirsty, but the marauding pests - who some estimate now roam the outback in their millions, are causing havoc in their pursuit of a drink. "If there are any taps adjacent to houses they're quite capable of either turning the taps on or knocking the taps off so they get water," said Wayne Wright from Central Australia's MacDonnell Shire Council.

A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers.

Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles.

Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.