Here are some of the weirdest animal sports from around the world.
Buffalo racing takes place at the annual Kambala festival in India and the sport came to light recently when two Indian buffalo racers, including Srinivas Gowda, recorded faster 100m times than Usain Bolt, albeit with the aid of the buffalo and recorded over a longer distance and adjusted accordingly.
This was overshadowed when Britney Spears claimed to go even faster – doing 100m in 5.97 seconds.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, seems invented for the same YouTube viewership who like watching fail videos.
There are other bull runs around the world but this is the most famous and the most featured in Ernest Hemingway books.
The premise is simple. Runners dressed in honour of San Fermin try to escape bulls on the streets. They do not always manage to do so.
Sesoko Island in Japan’s Okinawa plays host to an annual goat wrestling event in the summer months.
Two billy goats are put into a ring and then they may or may not butt heads depending on how they feel about it.
There is no indication online as to which goat is the actual GOAT.
Elephant polo is the posh sport but with pachyderms replacing the ponies that was invented by a Scot in 1982.
Popular in Nepal, Thailand and parts of India, animal rights campaigners have long sought to end the sport, with the Thailand Elephant Polo Association ending their tournament after the 2018 edition.
The sport will live long in pub quizzes as it is a sport where Scotland were back to back world champions in 2004 and 2005.
Dogs have been surfing in the US since at least the 1920s and they are still going.
The best of them go to the World Dog Surfing Championships, which have been held in California since 2016. There are older tournaments around the US and in Australia
Despite being the subject of many documentaries and magazine articles, there are no films about surfing dogs in the wide world of sporting dog films.
Camel jumping is easy on the camels as they stand there while competitors jump over them – or offer their best attempt to.
The camels are lined up side to side next to a small mound of earth to give the teenagers a chance to get over the top of them.
Confined to just the Zaraniq tribe in Yemen, the winner is whoever clears the most camels, possibly five or six of them.
“Kaninhop” or rabbit jumping is proof that you do not need a horse to impress at show jumping.
Dating back to the first national championships in Sweden in 1987, the sport is now popular across Northern Europe and has spread to the US and Australia.
Thankfully for the rabbits the jumps are scaled down from those the horses take on but that does little to take away from Dobby the rabbit’s world record long and high jumps – 3.01m and 1.06m respectively.
The “Man vs Horse Marathon” is not a marathon as at 22 miles it falls short of the Olympic distance but what it lacks in clicks it makes up for in clops as the humans have to take on a horse.
Supposedly the result of an argument in a pub – between two men, not a man and a horse – the first race took place in Wales in 1980. Similar events have taken place elsewhere and it has become human vs horse marathon since women began competing in 1981.
In 1989, the first human won but they were on a bike and the first human runner did not win until 2004.
Octopus wrestling has fallen out of popularity since its 1960s heyday when it had its own world championships and was featured in Time magazine.
The US West Coast was the centre of the octopus wrestling world, with divers tasked with wrestling the animal to the surface of shallow water.
There were team and solo events with the winner of both being whoever caught the biggest octopus, some of whom were eaten, some returned to the sea and others rehomed in aquariums.
Australians, given half a chance, will race anything from cane roads to crabs to cockroaches. If it moves they will give it a go so that is how they found out how pigs can in fact fly.
Pig Racing Australia’s porkers compete in races over a single 50m lap (which they cover in five seconds) before diving from a platform into a pool, for which they hold a Guinness World Record.
There are several other pig races at fairs around the world while a farmer in China taught his pigs to dive from a 3m platform to keep them fit (and make them taste better) but nowhere else combines the two porcine disciplines.
Camel wrestling is a sport in Turkey where they have a whole camel wrestling festival and have been doing it for thousands of years.
Wrestling happens naturally when they are in heat and looking for a mate but this is purely for sport with the loser determined by a) running away; b) screaming or c) the camel’s collar touching the floor.
To add to the dating confusion there is also a pre-fight beauty parade with camels peacocking down the promenade.
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