These red-sided garter snakes are battling the cold of their Canadian habitat by huddling together in a den and entering hibernation

Not all snakes hibernate: snakes in tropical climates will keep on slithering through the cold season as their prey remains abundant. However, snakes in colder climates need to preserve energy through a type of hibernation called brumation, which slows down metabolic processes. They will wake to drink, but don’t need food for months.

While it might look like this stoat is performing a rather impressive, gravity-defying circus act by carrying two fish while walking upright, it is actually feeding off the fish as it hangs from a wire

The stoat – also named the short-tailed weasel – is a type of mustelid, and a relative of the otter, ferret and badger. This particular specimen is likely to be a northern stoat, which makes its home in Scandinavia and has a gorgeous white winter coat and a tawny-brown summer coat.

This veined octopus is truly coming out of its shell as it peeks out of the armour it’s built for itself using items from the ocean floor of the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas in the central Indo-Pacific

It’s good to know your weaknesses, but it’s even better to find ingenious ways to cover them up! This octopus is also referred to as the coconut octopus, because it uses coconut shells and seashells to protect itself from danger. It’s one of very few marine animals known to use tools.

These baby opossums are having a great time hanging from a branch, showing-off their natural acrobatic skills

Opossums can hang from almost anything with their prehensile tails; particularly handy for their semiarboreal lifestyle. These cheeky marsupials have a clever trick for staying alive: playing dead. This defence mechanism is involuntary, like fainting, and includes method acting tactics like the excretion of foul odours from the anal glands.