Heroes and misfits: Animals of 2020

This unusual animal was not well known in the Western world before it made headlines as a possible link in the spread of the novel coronavirus. Pangolin scales and meat are in high demand in China. Pangolins look like reptiles, but they're scaly-skinned mammals. When threatened, pangolins roll into balls. They have the cutest way of carrying their offspring. Protection laws were boosted in 2020.

The twins Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan, nicknamed "Pit" and "Paule" by local caretakers, are the first pandas ever born in Germany. The cute cubs made their public debut at the end of January 2020 and celebrated their first birthday on August 31 with a fruit and vegetable cake decorated with carrot "candles" and bamboo shoots. They'll be sent to China within four years.

As cities on lockdown became suddenly deserted in March, social media posts showing how animals were returning to urban areas went viral. Some of them were hoaxes — dolphins were NOT swimming in deserted Venetian canals — but others, such as this gang of goats in north Wales, were true. "Nature is healing, we are the virus" soon turned into a meme mocking absurd aspects of human behavior.

Released just when most of the world shut down, "Tiger King" became a global TV phenomenon. The Netflix true crime documentary miniseries served as a metaphor for the world's surreal politics, and managed to beat our own feeling of captivity. Alongside impressive privately-owned big cats, the true stars of the show were its feuding eccentric characters, Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin.

Rumored to have once belonged to Adolf Hitler, Saturn the alligator escaped from a Berlin zoo amid Allied bombing in 1943. He miraculously survived on his own until he was discovered by British soldiers in 1946 and sent to a Moscow zoo, where the reptile reached the age of 84. After Saturn's death in May, the zoo decided to have the celebrity alligator preserved for its museum.

Kaavan, the pachyderm once dubbed the "world's loneliest elephant" after languishing for years alone in a Pakistani zoo, was sent to a wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia in November. Music icon Cher was closely involved in his rescue. Kaavan became one of the very rare adult elephants to have ever been relocated by plane — an arduous mission that cost about $400,000 (€327,000).

Every day brings its new auction record, but 2020 featured a new type of asset to be sold for absurd sums: racing pigeons. This female race-winning pigeon, called New Kim, was sold in Belgium for a record €1.6 million ($1.9 million) to a Chinese bidder. The age-old hobby of pigeon racing has a strong tradition in Belgium and the Netherlands, but was traditionally associated with working-class men.

Kossi, a talented disease-detection dog, was just one of the sniffer dogs trained to detect COVID-19 at Helsinki airport. The Finnish veterinary researchers behind the pilot project said the dogs had reached an accuracy level of nearly 100%. The instant and pain-free coronavirus testing method is being implemented in other airports worldwide.

Magawa, an African giant pouched rat trained to detect mines, was honored in September with the British veterinary charity PDSA's Gold Medal for "life-saving devotion to duty, in the location and clearance of deadly landmines in Cambodia." Working way faster than humans, the rodent had already detected 39 landmines and 28 unexploded munitions at the time of the award.

An "Only in Germany" story: The country is famous for allowing people to sunbathe naked, known as Freikörperkultur (FKK), or "free body culture." And Berlin has a notorious problem with its wild boar overpopulation. One day at Teufelsee lake, a cheeky boar stole a bag containing a laptop. The owner, a nudist bather, chased the animal in his birthday suit — and the whole world cheered.

Another Berlin thief made headlines in July. This time it was a fox that was found to be stealing shoes from people's homes in a leafy suburb neighborhood called Zehlendorf. As different residents discussed the disappearance of their shoes on a local online platform, the thief was spotted carrying flip-flops. The fox had already managed to collect over 100 shoes.