Riding Horseback - Ripley`s Believe It or Not!

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AIRBORNE ATTACK A peregrine falcon
CARTWHEELING SPIDER A new species of
STOMACH ARSENAL Benno, a four-year-
old Belgian Malinois dog owned by Larry
Brassfield of Mountain Home, Arkansas,
underwent surgery after swallowing a
bag of 23 live .308 caliber rifle rounds.
After the dog safely vomited four bullets,
a veterinarian carefully removed 17
more from the dog’s stomach, leaving
two in his esophagus, which Benno
“discharged” himself.
WALKING SHARK The epaulette shark
from Australia and Indonesia can walk
on land using its fins. To survive being
out of water, it can live without oxygen
for 60 times longer than humans.
FIVE LEGS A lamb on a farm in Powys,
Wales, was spared from the dinner table
because he was born with five legs. Jake is
able to run and jump like the other lambs,
but thanks to his rare deformity he’s
been kept on as a family pet by farmer
Bethan Lloyd-Davies instead of being
fattened up in readiness for sale to a
slaughterhouse.
spider discovered in Morocco, Cebrennus
rechenbergi, moves across the sand by
performing cartwheels. This enables the
spider to scuttle around at a speed of over
6.5 ft. (2 m) per second—twice as fast as
it would move if it were walking—which
allows it to escape predators more easily.
DIETING DACHSHUND Since being adopted
by Brooke Burton of Columbus, Ohio, in
2013, Dennis the miniature dachshund
has lost more than 75 percent of his body
weight—going from an obese 56 lb. (25 kg)
to a svelte 12 lb. (5.4 kg). He used to be the
size of four or five miniature dachshunds
and was unable to take more than a few
steps without being out of breath. Brooke
put him on a strict diet, and now he is able
to chase squirrels. He lost so much weight
that at first he was tripping over his folds of
excess skin.
FELINE THERAPY Ferray Corporation,
an Internet solutions business in Tokyo,
Japan, has introduced nine rescue cats into
its offices to help employees unwind and
improve productivity.
attacked several model gliders after they
ventured too close to her nest in South Bay,
near Los Angeles, California. The protective
bird, which can fly at speeds of up to
200 mph (320 km/h), grabbed the gliders in
her talons and forced them to land.
DEEP BREATH ​The
spout of air and mucus
expelled from a blue
whale’s blowhole can
rise 50 ft. (15 m) above
the surface of the
water—the height of
a five-story building.
With a single breath,
a blue whale could
inflate 1,250 balloons.
Walking
Tall
www.ripleys.com/books
Animals
Instead of crowing at the crack of dawn
or pecking around a farmyard, this rooster
struts his stuff a different way—walking upright!
Purchased by his former owner on a business
trip to eastern China for 10,000 yuan ($1,521), this
bizarre bird now calls Jinhua, China’s local zoo home. His
strange stance and humanlike walk were not taught, but
are rather the result of his suffering from a cartilage disease
when he was young. After learning to adapt, this rooster is
now cock-of-the-walk!
HEROIC MOTHER Brave
Diwalinen Vankar
saved her 19-year-old
daughter Kanta from
the jaws of a 13 ft.
(4 m) long crocodile
by repeatedly hitting
it over the head with a wooden washing
paddle for 10 minutes until the reptile
finally let go. The mother and daughter had
gone to wash clothes in the Vishwamitri
River in west India when the mugger
crocodile suddenly grabbed Kanta by the
leg and tried to drag her underwater.
BACK HOME Four years after Kelly Booker’s
Shih Tzu dog Lilly vanished from her home
in Denver, Colorado, she was reunited with
the family, having been found wandering
the streets of Elgin, Illinois, 900 miles
(1,450 km) away.
CAT’S REVENGE Searching for his missing
cat, Tiger, Francis Bakvis ventured into
the yard of his house in Clifton Beach,
Queensland, Australia, and found a dead
scrub python with a sinister bulge in its
stomach. When he pulled the dead
reptile onto the lawn, its body split
open to reveal that Tiger was its last
dinner. It appears the 16-year-old
black and gray striped cat had
proved too much for the 11.5 ft.
(3.5 m) long snake to swallow,
and he had caused a fatal
rupture as his revenge.
POOP RECYCLED Three-toed sloths recycle
their own poop. Their poop attracts dungeating moth larvae, which then colonize the
sloth fur in a process that eventually results
in the growth of green algae—which the
sloths eat.
AGILE PIG Amy, a mini pig owned by
Lori Stock, is one of the star performers
at the Family Dog Training Center in Kent,
Washington. By the age of five months,
Amy had already graduated from the
puppy manners class and had moved on
to obedience and agility classes, where
she jumps through hoops, balances on a
teeter-totter, retrieves a dumbbell, and
runs through a play tunnel.
BURNT ALIVE The Spoor spider of the
Namib Desert of southern Africa kills
its ant prey by pinning the ant’s body to
the hot sand, where it burns alive in less
than a minute.
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ithin a horse! It
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At a quick glance, thist the white fur pattern on the horse’s chestnas born in
w
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Vinci, this
an optical illusio
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May 2015 at the
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