26 Animals Who Ran Afoul of the Law

Your own beloved pet might boast a long history of very good behavior, marred only by the occasional chewed-up shoe or overturned garbage can. But the same can’t be said for all animals.

On this episode of The List Show, Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy is recounting the bizarre and often hilarious stories of 26 critters who ended up on the wrong side of the law. Eight donkeys in India, for example, once spent four days in jail for munching through some pricey saplings, while one mean-spirited ass in Mexico was incarcerated for three days after kicking an unsuspecting man in the chest.

For one parrot in 2015, the cause of arrest wasn’t physical abuse—but verbal abuse. Its owner had reportedly trained the bird to curse at his stepmother, and the problem became so excessive that she eventually called the police. But that parrot is practically endearing compared to the monkey once jailed for ripping buttons off people’s shirts and threatening to throw bricks at kids.

And we haven’t even gotten to the French weevils who went on trial. Find out how that went down—along with other equally riotous tales of animal malfeasance—in the video below.

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