5 of the Most Inspiring Animal Escapes

by · Cracked.com

The indomitable human spirit can live inside a platypus, too

August 17, 2024

Don't Miss

15 Cool Movie Moments We Got Because The Money Ran Out

Authors
Andrea Meno
Published
03/12/2021

47 Details Movies and TV Shows Got Hilariously Wrong

Authors
Cracked Writers, Brian C. Miller
Published
11/08/2023

7 TV Shows You Should Be Watching Instead

Authors
Shea
Published
07/28/2020

Everyone — okay, almost everyone — likes to house a good cheeseburger before swinging by the zoo. As long as you don’t think about the horror involved in the meatpacking industry and keeping living beings imprisoned as entertainment, they’re tasty and/or cute. Not all animals are content to accept their lot, though, reminding us that the indomitable human spirit can live inside a platypus, too.

Don't Miss

47 Details Movies and TV Shows Got Hilariously Wrong

Authors
Cracked Writers, Brian C. Miller
Published
11/08/2023

13 Historical Figures Who Were the Absolute Worst at What They Did

Authors
Andrea Meno, Andres Diplotti
Published
04/08/2023

46 Crazy Scenes From Comic Books That Would Never Fly on the Big Screen

Authors
Cracked Writers, Jesse
Published
08/18/2024

5 . Penelope the Platypus

In 1947, Penelope was brought to the Bronx Zoo with another platypus, Cecil. Only one other pair had ever mated in captivity, so zookeepers enthusiastically encouraged them to pound down, but Penelope wasn’t a fan of Cecil’s moves, which we can’t ethically describe without a trigger warning. After five years of this, she hatched a plan. She appeared to warm to Cecil and then began behaving as an expectant mother, essentially faking a pregnancy. This got everyone off her back for a good long while, but once it became clear no litter of platy (puppies?) was forthcoming, she just bounced outta there, never to be seen again. Remember her this International Women’s Day.

4 . Ken Allen

“Ken Allen” sounds like the middlingest of stand-up comedians, but he was actually much more entertaining. He was an orangutan at the San Diego Zoo who, in 1985, began making monthly excursions around the grounds to look at the other animals after calmly disassembling the gates of his exhibit. For more than a year, zookeepers couldn’t figure out how he was doing it, and in the meantime, he’d roped the other orangutans into his shenanigans, forming an all-out orangutan revolt (but a very friendly one). They eventually hired expert rock-climbers “to find every finger-, toe- and foothold within the enclosure.” They had to spend $40,000 to fix them, but “in our hearts, we know your dream is finally coming true,” according to the folk song written about him.

3 . Terence the Turkey

Maybe consider a ham this holiday season, because in 2001, a turkey in England named Terence was so opposed to becoming someone’s Christmas dinner that he escaped his farm and walked three miles to a bird sanctuary. “I cannot imagine why he homed in on the sanctuary,” the owner said. “He must have got lost and followed the friendly sounds from all the other birds." That, or he looked into his heart for divine guidance. Come on, guys. This is a Pixar movie.

2 . Emily the Cow

Speaking of divinity, a cow named Emily who escaped a Massachusetts slaughterhouse just before she was to be killed in 1995 became almost a religious figure. For 40 days, townspeople kept her fed while she was on the lam, until a family who ran an organization dedicated to “interfaith peace movements” bought her from her captors and brought her home on Christmas Eve. Despite the obvious Christian overtones, Emily became popular with the Hindu community. She even received blessings from a Hindu priest before her death, and clippings of her hair and traces of her blood were released into a sacred river in India. Our own funerals will almost certainly be nowhere near as solemn.

1 . Cincinnati Freedom

In 2002, after another cow escaped a slaughterhouse by jumping over a six-foot fence and evaded both the police and the SPCA for 11 days in the Cincinnati winter, everyone pretty much decided she’d earned a stay of execution. The problem, then, was what to do with her. The Cincinnati Zoo refused to take her, due to “the possibility that she could not be safely contained.” They genuinely didn’t believe they could cage her. She ended up being bought by an artist who named her Cincinnati Freedom, was awarded the key to the city and lived out her golden years at an animal sanctuary with her BFF, Queenie, another escaped cow. We should all be so lucky.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Flipboard Reddit Scroll down for the next article

VIRAL ON CRACKED

1.

15 Cool Movie Moments We Got Because The Money Ran Out

2.

7 TV Shows You Should Be Watching Instead

3.

51 of the Funniest Tweets from Monday, August 19, 2024

4.

13 Historical Figures Who Were the Absolute Worst at What They Did

5.

The 7 Most Horrifying Things Ever Discovered in a Human Body

SIGN UP FOR.

A WEEKLY
NEWSLETTER OF
JOKES + TRIVIA