It has only been a month and there are already a number of incredibly bizarre animal-related news stories to kick of 2008. It’s like a zodiac year on steroids.

Here are six animals that you'll probably want to steer clear of, no matter how adorable they look on that wall calendars.

There are about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on earth at any given moment. Seriously, that's a real number. For every one of us, there are 1.5 billion bugs.

Selling sex is said to be humankind's oldest profession but it may have deep evolutionary roots, according to a study into our primate cousins which found that male macaques pay for intercourse by using grooming as a currency.