A jaw-dropping video out of Thailand shows an enormous monitor lizard invading a grocery store and terrifying onlookers. The wild incident reportedly occurred on Monday afternoon at a 7-Eleven in the city of Nakhon Pathom. Much to the horror of shoppers and employees at the store, the six-foot-long lizard decided to venture out from its home in a nearby canal and do a little ‘shopping’ of its own. In the stunning video which was filmed by a bewildered witness, the creature can be seen scratching at a refrigerator unit containing drinks and then clambering up a tall shelf, knocking products to the floor and eliciting screams from the people watching the strange scene unfold before their eyes.
An employee of the store, who was hiding behind a counter alongside the frightened customers, eventually phoned the police, who dispatched an animal control team to wrangle the sizeable reptile. After what one assumes was something of a struggle, the fearsome creature was dragged from the shop and released back into the wild. Remarkably, a survey of the scene afterwards determined that the animal did not wind up getting any food, so its invasion was apparently all for naught. It is believed that the monitor lizard was compelled to search for sustenance in the 7-Eleven due to an inordinately long drought in the country which has left its native wildlife rather hungry.

Genetic researchers have reportedly solved a longstanding mystery surrounding a strange breed of rabbit that walks on its two front feet rather than hopping. The curious creatures, which were first found in France back in the 1930s, are a domesticated species known as ‘sauteur d’Alfort.’ For reasons heretofore unknown, the bunnies are unable to jump and, instead, employ a bizarre method of locomotion wherein they lift themselves up on their front feet and walk. As one might imagine, their odd gait has puzzled scientists for nearly a century, but a new study appears to have determined the cause of their unique way of moving.

In a newly published paper, genetic researchers Miguel Carneiro and Leif Andersson explained how they bred a sauteur d’Alfort with a more traditional New Zealand white rabbit. The resulting slew of offspring, comprised of 52 in total, allowed them to pinpoint a specific genetic mutation that causes a malfunction in the muscle coordination of the creature and prevents it from being able to jump. Faced with that obstacle, the sauteur d’Alfort in turn naturally adopts the unorthodox style of walking as a means of compensating for its otherwise hindered mobility. By solving this mystery, the researchers were also able to, for the first time, identify the specific genes which make jumping possible for rabbits and similar animals which hop as a form of locomotion.