Fantastic furry friends can be found in this week's best animal pictures

This photo shows a keeper carrying a baby puggle in Sydney. The city's Taronga Zoo is celebrating its first successful echidna births in 30 years with three healthy babies, known as puggles, from three different mothers, all hatching within days of each other. Echidnas, or spiny anteaters, are notoriously difficult to breed in human care, but keepers at the zoo are pleased with the progress of the tiny trio and first-time mothers Ganyi, Spike and Pitpa.

Hanover Zoo animal caretaker Klaus Meyer holds a baby gorilla at the Germany zoo on Nov. 23. After the mother rejected her offspring, the caretaker had to jump in as a surrogate mother.

A 2-week-old South American tapir inspects the lens of a photographer in its enclosure at the zoo in Magdeburg, Germany, on Nov. 24.

A monkey eats a watermelon from a van near an ancient temple during the annual "monkey buffet" near Bangkok on Nov. 27. It is a feast fit for a monkey king. On Nov. 27, the central Thai town of Lopburi put on a five-star banquet for its hundreds of macaque inhabitants, sparking a mass simian food fight.

A recently-born unnamed female Masai giraffe calf watches in its enclosure at the Los Angeles zoo in California on Nov. 22. The calf was 130 pounds and just under six feet tall at birth. The Masai giraffes are the largest of the nine subspecies of African giraffes.

A blue-and-yellow macaw is seen in an enclosure at the Giza zoo in Cairo on Nov. 23. Isma'il Pasha, the ruler of Egypt from 1863-1879, built the zoo and planned the opening to coincide with the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869, but was not able to do so in time. On March 1, 1891, the zoo was officially opened for the public covering an area of 80 acres, and in the mid twentieth century, it was considered one of the best zoos in the world.

Tater and Tot, the National Thanksgiving Turkey and its alternate, are shown to members of the media during a press conference held by the National Turkey Federation at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 22 

Gadis, a Sumatran tiger with one of her paws amputated, is seen at the Barumun Nagari Wildlife Sanctuary in Padang Lawas Utara on Nov. 24.