Animals behaving badly amuse the internet

A beaver browses fake trees, a squirrel makes off with holiday decorations and a massive spider chills out in a kitchen. Meet the capricious critters that have caught the internet's attention in viral videos and photos.

GoPro cameras are all about capturing the user's point of view. In this case, the user happens to be a rodent. A squirrel snatched a GoPro in August 2016 and ran up a tree with it, all the while filming its exploits. The camera's rightful owner uploaded the amusing video to YouTube, much to the delight of animal fans across the internet.

A T-Mobile field engineer climbed 125 feet (38 meters) up a cell tower and probably regretted the work assignment immediately upon seeing a writhing group of snakes camped out up there. The image, shared on Twitter in August 2016, spawned a whole series of joke movie titles, including "Snakes on an Array" and "Towering Inserpento."

Humans are animals, too. The Gardner Police Department in Kansas set up a couple of wildlife cameras in a local park in November 2016 in an effort to chase down reports of a mountain lion. The cops didn't find the animal, but they did find a series of people dressed up as wild animals pranking the cameras. The police found the whole thing amusing.

An intrepid beaver caught the internet's attention in November 2016 when employees found it perusing a selection of artificial Christmas trees in a dollar store in Charlotte Hall, Maryland. The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office came in to deal with the lost critter, which was handed over to a wildlife rehabilitator. No doubt the rodent was confused and disappointed by the fake trees.

It's not just squirrels that have a reputation for stealing cameras. In 2012, a San Francisco seagull made off with a tourist's camera and took some lovely flying footage along the way. The seagull can be seen making a getaway at the end of the video. Turns out it was quite the cinematographer. The sunset shots are stunning.

It's one thing to watch Samuel L. Jackson's nutty "Snakes on a Plane" movie. It's another thing to live the experience in real life. Passengers on a November 2016 Aeromexico flight were treated to the frightening sight of a real green snake slithering out from near the overhead luggage bins. A passenger caught it on video and shared it on Twitter.

In December 2016, one particularly strange video went viral. It shows a kangaroo with a pet dog in a headlock followed by a man punching the raging roo just after it lets the dog go. The video quickly pulled in nearly 20 million views. The big, bouncy animals can be very dangerous, but fortunately, all the creatures survived the incident without any serious harm.

What is it with snakes showing up in unexpected places? This non-venomous corn snake popped up in a UK couple's home in November 2016 and took refuge in their vacuum cleaner. A Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals animal collection officer came to snag the snake and assure the concerned couple it wasn't dangerous.

This is a massive Huntsman spider. It's trying to eat a mouse, which is ambitious but not unheard of for the large arachnids. The issue here is that it's doing this in someone's home, on the side of the refrigerator. Of course this happened in Australia and then went viral on Facebook. In case you were wondering, the spider is now named "Hermie."

Squirrel thievery struck again when this industrious rodent ran off with 150 Christmas lightbulbs in just 24 hours during the 2016 holiday season. The lights' owner caught the cute little robber on video and named it the "Bulb Bandit." The squirrel is either confused about the lights or it's decorating for the holidays.

The BBC's "Planet Earth II" wildlife documentary series is a big hit, both on television and online, as fans share some of the most dramatic footage from the show. A November 2016 episode shows a lioness trying to take down a giraffe. In a turning of the tables, the giraffe lands a kick right to the predator's face. Twitter users pretty much took the giraffe's side on this one.