This adorable terrier-looking pup was hanging around a group of cyclists when they took a break, so one of them gave her chicken. Well, you know what happens when you give a dog chicken: She never leaves your side again, even if you’re riding your bike from China to Tibet, covering nearly 40 miles a day and climbing 16,000-foot mountains. The dog, nicknamed Xiaosa, had no choice but to run alongside the bikes for more than 1,000 miles. Because love. And also chicken.

Intrepid Xiaosa followed — or, in many cases, led — the pack of bikes for the next 20 days, climbing 12 mountains and handling whatever crummy weather China dished out. Of the 300 people making the trip, 297 dropped out and resorted to buses or hitchhiking to finish the route. Only four made it the entire way — three cyclists and Xiaosa. (Although to be fair, she caught some rides — on downhills, when the bikes were going too fast for her to keep up.)

The bikers were so impressed with the tough, speedy dog that one of them is adopting her (the one who originally gave her a chicken drumstick, fittingly). He’s taking her back to China with him — but this time, she’s going by air.

A group of chimps watch silently as a loved one is wheeled away to her burial. This is such a moving photograph.

On September 23, 2008, Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late 40s, died of congestive heart failure. A maternal and beloved figure, Dorothy had spent eight years at Cameroon’s Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center, which houses and rehabilitates chimps victimized by habitat loss and the illegal African bushmeat trade.

After a hunter killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park in Cameroon. For the next 25 years she was tethered to the ground by a chain around her neck, taunted, teased, and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for sport. In May 2000 Dorothy—obese from poor diet and lack of exercise—was rescued and relocated along with ten other primates. As her health improved, her deep kindness surfaced. She mothered an orphaned chimp named Bouboule and became a close friend to many others, including Jacky, the group’s alpha male, and Nama, another amusement-park refugee.

Szczupider, who had been a volunteer at the center, told me: “Her presence, and loss, was palpable, and resonated throughout the group. The management at Sanaga-Yong opted to let Dorothy’s chimpanzee family witness her burial, so that perhaps they would understand, in their own capacity, that Dorothy would not return. Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration. But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures.”

Two brown bear cubs from a litter of triplets born at Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire playing with the scales at their first weight check. The 4-lb cubs have been transferred to the children’s zoo, where they delight the visitors. (May 3rd, 1962)

Two brown bear cubs born at Whipsnade Zoo. (1970)

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A scuba diver going out of his way to pull a hook out from the mouth of a puffer fish. So nice of him, and totally cute, too. If you fish, you’re a coward and a scumbag.