Please enjoy this heartwarming tale of interspecies communication that should serve as a valuable lesson to all of us on how to focus on our similarities rather than the things that set us apart. If that's not enough for you there's a squirrel eating a rose below.

Any animal breakthroughs? Teach your squirrel to paint?

Here you will find a picture of a squirrel with jazz hands.

Science, not persuaded by the commonsense answer of "because they can," has a theory about why squirrels masturbate: It's to avoid squirrel STDs. "A masturbating squirrel gets cleaner genitals in two ways – it scrubs the outside bit and flushes out the inside ones."

Follow this handy guide and you too will be able to speak like the squirrels. [Via]

Try as she might, even someone as skilled at the wacky animal beat as Dara Brown is cannot sell a terrible line like "No word if the squirrel will be getting detention" with any degree of authority. It's just a bad line. Anyway, check out that squirrel! He totally set off that fire alarm!

Here you will find a picture of a squirrel making out with a plastic dinosaur.

Speaking of squirrels, this look at the high number of injured and orphaned squirrels that are the size of a human's palm (!) being brought in to the Empty Cages Collective was sorta heartstring-tugging — particularly the part that points out that "virtually all of these babies lost their parents to the perilous vagaries of animal urban life – cars, the destruction of habitats and rat poison." And there are not one but two photos of baby squirrels being fed by humans!

One of the cool things about the West and the Southwest is that lots of species get pooled and segregated into little genetic pools—at the top of isolated mountains, squirrels that once roamed and mingled now have been separated for ages, like the nine sub-species of Abert's squirrel. Now at Yosemite, the Alpine chipmunk is being forced to ascend uphill as well, into isolated genetic pods. Radical lesbian elitist climate change atheist publication Nature Climate Change reported the details on how "global warming" is forcing the squirrels ever upwards. Climb, chipmunks! Climb for your lives! (Picture: a detail from a photo by Miss Pudding.)

Here you will find a picture of a very happy squirrel. The "nuts" jokes are already provided, but feel free to make your own efforts if you like.

Here you will find a picture of a squirrel hugging a meerkat. Awws all around.