Lovesick swan to be reunited with her paddleboat

Petra the swan has a new home and so does her beloved swan-shaped paddleboat.

In 2006, Petra, a black swan, became so attached to the boat — shaped like an outsized white swan — that she refused to leave its side at a lake near a zoo in the German city of Muenster.

Petra and her paddleboat were taken to the zoo.

Zoo officials finally parted bird and boat last week after Petra settled down with a real white swan and the boat was returned to the lake. But the romance was short-lived. The zoo says that, on Saturday, her new beau flew off and sought out the company of other black swans...

--USA Today

Knoxville Zoo displays albino alligator

This white alligator has it made in the shade. Without an alligator's normal dark camouflaging color, the new inhabitant at the Knoxville Zoo would not live long while exposed to predators or the sun.

In an exhibit made to look like the Louisiana bayou with tree stumps and hanging moss, the 12-year-old American alligator spent one recent afternoon basking under a heat lamp beside a warm pool with one claw lazily dipped in the water. If outside, her skin would burn in the sun.

An albino gene makes the alligator's skin white and her eyes pinkish, and the rare find creates a popular exhibit at zoos around the country.

The exhibit in Knoxville — marketed with the slogan "Look in Dem Eyes" in reference to a legend that good luck will follow those who see the animal — will last through Labor Day...

--USA Today

Monkeys, capybaras are zoo's odd couple

They're Japan's odd couple.

Capybaras and squirrel monkeys, unlikely neighbors in the wild, are living in the same enclosure at a zoo outside Tokyo and so far, they're loving it.

The monkeys ride on the capybara's backs and kiss the world's largest rodents, who tolerate their tricks. But in the wild, their paths do not cross -- capybara's live on river banks while the monkeys live in forests.

Keepers at the Tobu zoo said it took the capybaras years to tolerate the monkeys...

--Yahoo! News

Student attacked by giraffe at Lithuanian zoo

Climbing into a giraffe's cage at the local zoo seemed a good idea after a few drinks.

But the prank went wrong when the 1.3 ton animal flew into a rage and attacked the three student trespassers at a zoo in Lithuania on Monday night.

Ruta Greiciute, a 22-year-old student at Kaunas Technology University, was hospitalized with a broken collar bone and nose after the nine-year-old male giraffe, named Solut, attacked her.

The other students survived the incident unscathed...

--USA Today

Monkey flees zoo, attacks bus passenger

MEXICO CITY - A spider monkey that escaped from a Mexico City zoo boarded a bus and attacked a passenger, Red Cross officials said Tuesday. The monkey got on the bus at about 11 p.m. Monday after escaping from the San Juan de Aragon Zoo, Red Cross spokesman Jair Martinez said. Zoo officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The animal sat next to the bus driver for almost an hour as he drove through the city, and scratched and bit a 20-year-old female passenger when she tried to hold it, the Mexican news agency Notimex said...

Yahoo! News