When airport officials in Bangkok decided to X-ray a woman's luggage they were surprised to see a beating heart. It looked like the woman had a cat in her bag but in truth it was an endangered baby tiger. The 2-month-old cub had been drugged and put in her luggage with a number of toy tigers in an attempt to disguise it.

The cub is now in care of the department of national parks, wildlife and plant conservation. The woman, who was bound for Iran, is being interrogated to discover their final destination.

See more: Pictures of the rescued cub at National Geographic

Police know drug users, dealers, and traffickers use elaborate methods of protecting and concealing their illegal goods, but this one is a first in Canada: thirteen black bears, found by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a marijuana plantation in Christina Lake, British Columbia (near the US-Canada border).

The bears were apparently trained to guard two fields of marijuana plants and fed to become docile and trainable, defending the hidden plantation containing over 2300 plants.  The closest past parallel was police finding a two-meter (six-foot) crocodile at a grow-op in 2003.

Read more at WDIV-DT - ClickOnDetroit.com and The Windsor Star.

Urlesque recently held Catfight to find the Internet's most popular cat.

The contestants were from the various famous Lolcats residing on Icanhascheezburger.com. The cats are an internet sensation of various felines in user-captioned pictures meant to entertain people.

The final battle was between Ceiling Cat, the cat god who divinely inspired the lolcat bible and Japanese YouTube star, Maru.

See also: MSN Today features cats in hats

Wolves in Montana and Idaho can breathe easier after a federal judge reinstated their protection this Friday.

Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted northern Rocky Mountain wolves after the population reached 1,200 in the winter, claiming that "all threats to the wolf population [...] have been resolved."

But Judge Molloy wrote "the plain language of the Endangered Species Act does not allow the agency to divide a [population segment] into a smaller taxonomy."

UK animal-lovers are getting a treat with Mongrels, an urban animal puppet comedy by TX Media, now airing on BBC Three.

Subtitled "a puppet show for adults," the show is described by director Adam Miller as "Avenue Q meets Family Guy but with puppet animals."

Each episode features a song; topics include God, lesbians, pedophiles and the middle class. The show is also peppered with in-jokes about celebrities and random humour.

Bonus: Go behind the scenes to learn more about Marion and Nelson from their creators.

The creators of a widely reported video of urban fox-hunting in London's Victoria Park now claim it was a hoax, the Guardian reports.

The group set up a blog, "Urban Fox Hunters", and posted videos on YouTube seeming to depict a hunt. But the foxes shown were not killed – instead, a dog with a fox pelt attached was chased down the streets by the bat-wielding hoaxers.

The media response was intense in the wake of a recent fox attack. Several groups offered significant rewards to identify those in the video.

Bats in eastern parts of the United States and Canada are dying out from a new disease.

White-nose syndrome, named for the white fungi on muzzles and wings, makes bats restless, depleting their reserves of body fat during hibernation. The fungi – first found in February 2006 in a New York cave – are considered the likely cause of the disease.

According to a Wired article, biologist Winifred Frick said: "Yes, we had the empirical observations that cave floors were littered with dead bats. [...] But nobody had quantified the impact to the populations. We didn’t know what those die-offs meant to population viability as a species."

Frick and her colleagues analyzed the last 30 years of population data for the most common and most-studied species of bat in North America, the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). If recent trends continue, the researchers predict a "99 percent chance of regional extinction of little brown myotis within the next 16 years."

The hand-reared tiger, Panjo, who escaped on Monday was found by sniffer dogs today. He's now back at home waiting for the vet to visit.

No wildlife authorities have come to take him away and his owners have repeatedly said they posses the necessary paperwork to keep their four tigers. Regardless, the incident has raised criticism from the NSPCA over whether wild animals should be kept as pets.

Panjo sometimes even sleeps on his owner's bed, but the 140kg tiger is not fully mature and may become less suitable as a pet as he grows.

It's probably been a dream of every fur to have a wild animal as a pet — but for Goosey Fernandes it's become a nightmare since his pet tiger, Panjo, has escaped.

Panjo was being driven to the veterinarian on the back of a bakkie between Groblersdal and Delmas when he escaped.

Although sniffer dogs are being brought in to find the tiger, so far it has been without success.

As reported by the BBC, Scottish brewery BrewDog has created twelve bottles of beer of 55% alcohol content, bottled in stoats and grey squirrels and sold for £500 (US$775, €595).

Its creators claim the animals involved were roadkill, and say the beverage was infused with "nettles, juniper berries, and mead" in a video which combines fursuits and German sausage:

Note: Flayrah does not endorse the production or consumption of the depicted beverages.

The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has released a list of the top 10 species discovered in 2009.

The list is taken from the 20 000 newly discovered species that are found each year and includes such organisms as a plant that eats rats and a fish with vampire fangs. It is a good start if you want to learn about the variety of living things in the world, and how little about them we know, or even if you just want to create a unique fursona.

Squirrels may be small, but are extremely complex creatures.

Squirrels will actively try to deceive people, pretending to hide their nuts when they think they are being watched, but actually keeping them hidden in their mouths. They have different calls for different things and can learn by watching other species, even humans. Physically they have a number of exceptional features, like the ability to jump ten times their body length.