It was less than a year ago that we introduced you to Yangtze River Number 2, at the time the world’s most expensive dog at $585,500.00 USD.

Now meet a red Tibetan mastiff named Big Splash (“Hong Dong” in Chinese).

An unidentified buyer recently purchased the 11 month old, 3 foot tall, 180 pound dog for a hairy 10 million yuan or about $1.5 million in U.S. dollars.

That works out to:

• $500,000.00 per foot
• $41,666.67 per inch
• $8,333.33 per pound
• $520.33 per ounce of dog.

Trigger (1932 – 1965) was a golden palomino, made famous in American Western films by cowboy star Roy Rogers. Trigger was originally named Golden Cloud.

Golden Cloud made his movie debut as the mount of Maid Marian, played by Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938. When Roy was preparing to make his first movie, he was offered a choice of five rented “movie” horses to ride. He chose Golden Cloud. Roy bought him that same year and renamed him Trigger.

Trigger became the most famous horse in film entertainment, even having his own Dell comic book recounting his exploits.

After Trigger died in 1965, his hide was stretched over a plaster likeness and put on display at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California which was relocated to Branson, Missouri, and closed in late 2009.

In July 2010 at Christies Auction House, New York, television channel RFD-TV rustled up $266,500.00  to purchase Trigger with plans of starting up a Western museum.

Do you have a pet? If you do, the chances are that it’s a dog, a cat, or maybe even an exotic lizard or snake. It’s true. Some people take pet-owning to a whole new level and strive to have the oddest and most unconventional pets imaginable. Among those, is the monkey. But how much do pet monkeys cost to own? And of them, what’s the most expensive pet monkey in the world?

The average pet monkey costs approximately $1000 – $1500. And that doesn’t include the cost of bottles to feed them, diapers to keep your house clean, and tethers for it. And while this may seem like a steep fee for some, it’s nowhere close to the most expensive pet monkey.

Chimpanzees can be a very popular pet due to their intelligence, their ability to use tools, their memory skills, and their ability to laugh. And while chimpanzees may not be common in households, they’re very common among researchers and those who need animals to help them out with certain tasks. If you’re thinking of taking advantage of some of the more educated skills that a chimpanzee has, not to mention their social skills that will keep you companionship for many years, beware. Not only is it illegal to own a monkey as a pet in 21 different states, they also cost about $50,000. This makes them the most expensive pet monkey in the world.

Apart from helping birds fly and stuffing pillows there’s not much use for feathers…..or is there? To some, feathers signify power and rank and you can bet that not just any old feather is used when making such a statement. One such bird, the Huia bird, had feathers that could signify such things and were so beautiful that their feathers alone gave them reason to be revered. And that they were, especially by the Maori people, the people indigenous to New Zealand.

The Maori people are still in and around New Zealand but most of them tend to stay near the North Island, because the weather is warmer there. The Huia bird unfortunately, is already extinct. What this bird was mostly known for was its appearance, particularly the fact that the entire bird was black but had white markings on its feathers at the tip of tail. The Huia bird was also highly regarded as being a sexual bird, although this had nothing to do with its actual mating practices. This fact was oddly enough because the female bird had a long, curved beak while the male bird had a shorter, straighter beak. Because the bird was associated with sexuality however, some of the Maori people also thought that owning some of the bird’s feathers would increase their own sexual prowess.

Even though these birds are currently extinct, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few feathers still left flying around. And, some of those feathers ended up at a private auction in New Zealand, the tail feathers in fact. When the feathers were put up for auction, it was hoped that they would net at least $400 NZ to $500 NZ. But, the tail feathers actually pulled in much more than that, as they sold for $8,400 NZ, which is about $6,800 USD. The buyer was a family that wished to stay anonymous. Now those are some fancy feathers!

Every year at the annual Toronto Royal Agricultural Winter Fair cows are auctioned off and 2009 was no different except for the fact that Missy the Cow was on the chopping block.

Missy is a 3 year old dairy cow and was born in P.E.I but spent the last 2 years of her life in Ponoka, Alta. Missy was purchased by two buyers from the U.S. and Denmark but will remain in Ponoka.

What makes Missy so valuable is her genes and she was sold with with contracts for her embryos, calves and sons of which she may produce up to 75 in here life.

Missy is the world’s first million dollar cow as she fetched a beefy $1.2 million USD.