The critically-endangered African penguin is going through some bad times lately because of commercial fishing - but science to the rescue! Let this adorable animation teach you about how hand-raising tiny baby penguins can save a species. And then, how can I sign up to be a tiny baby penguin handler? Thanks.

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NOM NOM NOM.

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Here's your heartwarming science story of the day!

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If there's one privilege that Americans take for granted, it's our abundance of hamsters. France is spending $4.2 million on preservation efforts to save the Great Hamster of Alsace (not pictured)—enough money to buy a lot of shredded newspapers and exercise wheels if that was a thing the wild rodents actually needed.

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It's clear where the newly discovered black-tailed antechinus would place in a game of marsupial marry, date, kill: all of the above. The males of the species pleasure multiple female partners in hours-long orgies and then orgasm to death like the champs they are.

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Artist Robert Chew imagines a future in which animals of the African plains are combined with robots to make insanely cool poaching prevention machines. The bad news is that in the future some human beings are still dicks, the good news is that there are will be any exotic animals left to poach at all.

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Now you can create less humans and save more animals with endangered animal condoms. Wait, that sounds like condoms made from endangered animals, which it's not, because would be horrible, for obvious endangered species reasons, and because they wouldn't really work. No, they're condoms that remind you that we need more animals—not people.

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One of the really terrible things we as a species have done is cause other species, both majestic and adorable, to become endangered and sometimes extinct. But now that we're trying to right that wrong, here's our latest little victory: an Asiatic lion cub was born in a zoo in Besancon one week ago.

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While you can still purchase some fairly odd things on Etsy, the Internet's premier site for strange, handcrafted items of all ilk, there are some things you can't get even there. As of this week, shoppers will no longer be able to buy or sell the lynx-and-chinchilla fur jackets of their dreams. That's because Etsy executives have made the very responsible, right-thinking call to ban the sale of items that use or contain parts of endangered animals.

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Enormously unjust rates of incarceration aside, one of the biggest arguments cited in favor of marijuana legalization in this country is that it's safe to use and doesn't have many long-term side effects. Tell that to the fishers that live in the southern Sierra Nevada area, though. According to scientists from U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Integral Ecology Research Center, they're dying out because of the rat poison that local marijuana growers use to protect their crops. Happy now, potheads?

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Japan, we need to have a talk about your luxury dog snack market, because "endangered fin whale" is not an acceptable ingredient for dog treats. That's what one Japanese specialty pet food company has been selling, though, and they're now taking flack over the idea because for the love of all that is good, what kind of money-hungry deviant would do something like that? And Iceland, don't think you're off the hook for saying nuts to the international community and preparing to kill nearly 200 fin whales this year, many of which will be butchered and exported to become important items like "dog treats for the rich and monstrous." Not cool, you guys.

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In a recent survey from across the pond that may dampen the Internet's unwavering devotion for funny felines, scientists have concluded that domestic cats in the United Kingdom are posing a serious threat to local bird populations, which has steadily declined over the years. Conservationists have since been trying to convince obstinate cat owners to be more mindful of their pet's hunting behavior and look into options that would prevent any more birds winding up dead on their doorsteps. If action to protect native bird species isn't taken soon, the U.K. is going to be known as the crazy cat lady of the world.

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In news that would make for a solid first act of a Disney movie if it wasn't already the sad, horrible truth, Kenyan authorities are trying to find a team of poachers who killed an entire family of elephants in Kenya's Tsavo East National Park. In what's being described as the worst incident of poaching in Kenya's long history -- which isn't exactly short on horrific incidents of poaching -- a family of 11 elephants was slaughtered by what police believe to be a 10-person strong gang of poachers who escaped with the elephants' hacked off tusks, which will likely be shipped off to foreign markets to make trinkets, baubles, and pieces of jewelry from the ivory. Because human beings are terrible, that's why.

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Customs agents in Hong Kong busted an ambitious smuggler carrying about $1 million worth of illicit cargo, including dried endangered seahorses and crocodile meat. Though it's an abhorrent crime and we hope the folks behind it are locked up for a good long time, as poachers should be, we can't help but grant the smugglers points for common sense. After all, if you're going to try and smuggle a crocodile into a place, it's really best to do so once someone more capable has already converted the creature into a series of steaks and fillets. Anything else just sounds exceptionally dangerous.

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There are a lot of troubles facing endangered snow leopards in the Himalayan mountains that conservationists and others working to save the big cats can't really control -- habitat loss, poaching,  and Yeti rampages, just to name a few. In the interest of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, though, Nepalese yak herders have decided to do something about one of the dangers to the cats: The herders themselves, who are known to shoot the animals to protect the lives -- or avenge the deaths -- of the yaks they depend on for their livelihoods. To do so, they've pooled their resources and worked with the University of Zurich to create a yak insurance fund that covers the loss of livestock to snow leopards, preserving farmers ability to feed their families and offering less incentive to hunt down snow leopards in the wake of the death of their yak, sheep, or goats.

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Researchers have recognized several new species of Borneo's lemur-like primate, the mind-shatteringly adorable slow loris. Published this week in the American Journal of Primatology, the team

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Aan, an orangutan found in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, is stepping back from death's door and recovering nicely after being found shot more than 100 times with an air rifle. Aan was found earlier this month with 37 pellet wounds to the head and another 67 in the body including pellets lodged in the heart and lung. While the wounds have taken Aan's left eye, the orangutan, who is being cared for in a Borneo rehabilitation center, is now expected to survive.

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