Those viral moments of unusual animal behaviour provide valuable insight for researchers as well.
"The most striking thing for me though was calf carrying," he said. "They'll sometimes pick up a dead calf with their trunk and drag it. There have even been cases of a female elephant using tusks to carry her dead calf."
"My favourite is a crow using what looks like a plastic lid as a snowboard on a roof," recalled Prof Ximena Nelson from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.Ximena cites was apparently filmed through the window of a building in a Russian town. The crow stands on a jar lid and slides down a snowy roof. It then flies back up and repeats the exercise. It appears to be having fun.
"Animals playing" - with other species, or with unusual objects - is a popular online genre of video.And while it might be a fun distraction to watch, this fun itself can provide insight into the function of play, which is actually something of a biological enigma. Play has no obvious purpose. As Ximena puts it - "it's not going to provide you with food or babies, at least not directly".
Videos uploaded by rich and lucky wildlife tourists who encounter animals in Antarctica is one example.
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