Deforestation has left sloths in the wild almost homeless, but a woman in Costa Rica opened up a rescue centre to make sure the species survives. She has a sloth nursery that has provided us with some super cute sloth footage that helps raise awareness of the struggles faced by this species.

The blue whale is not only the largest animal alive currently, but is likely the largest animal ever to have lived.

Depending on the location, blue whales can grow to be 33 meters (108 feet) and weigh as much as 181 metric tons (200 imperial tons).They can live to be 90 years old and ingest about 3.6 metric tons (4 imperial tons) of krill each day. Blue whale are considered endangered by the IUCN.

This is Ippo, a three-month-old Italian zonkey. She is the result of a union between a male zebra and a female Amiata donkey, which is an endangered breed of donkey native to southern Tuscany. Genetic differences between the zebra and the donkey - donkeys have 62 chromosomes and zebras have between 32 and 46 - mean that hybrids like this are most often the result of a male zebra pairing with a female donkey. So far there have only been three recorded cases of a male donkey siring a zebra hybrid. ...

Wombat droppings are cube-shaped. This prevents them from rolling away when marking their territory. These cube-shaped poop looks like, but doesn't taste like chocolate brownies.

The aye-aye lives in the forests of Madagascar. Despite looking like a very scared rodent, the aye-aye is a kind of lemur with a bushy tail and super-thin, elongated middle fingers that they use to dig grubs out of hollow branches. Aye-ayes also have huge lower incisors to chew through wood and bamboo—and in captivity they’ve been known to chew through concrete cinder blocks ...

The Mandarin duck is a sexually dimorphic species, meaning males and females differ in appearance. The male has a rich, colorful appearance, which includes brown cheeks and a long brown and white crown sweeping back from the top of the head. The chest is dark purple, with black and white strips, and the wings are brown with an iridescent blue-green edge. This striking coloration helps the male attract the less-colorful females, which display brownish-black plumage with white markings around the eyes and along the throat. ...

This is a Palm Cockatoo, also know as the Goliath Cockatoo.

Palms are distinguished by their size, huge beak (second only to the Hyacinth Macaw among psittacines and largest proportionate to size), solid black feather coloration, large open crest, bare red cheeks, and red and black tongue. You have to see their tongues to believe the coloration. It's amazing.

Palm Cockatoos are severely threatened. They are CITES Appendix I birds and are protected in Australia.

As a testament to their rarity, typical prices in the U.S. for Aterrimus Palms are around $8000 and Goliaths around $14,000. Perhaps contributing to their rarity is the fact that, according to both Low and Forshaw, they lay only one egg per clutch.

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