A man made a hasty exit from a zoo after climbing close to a cage to pet a jaguar, but cops were able to track him down – by the finger he left behind.

The shriveled digit from the man’s right hand was found outside the cat cage at the Albuquerque Biological Park in New Mexico a week later. Zoo boss Tom Silva says he won’t press charges because “I think he’s suffered enough.”

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Expect some pretty grumpy prisoners at the St. Joseph County Jail in South Bend, Ind. – officials have banned female visitors from wearing see-through tops, miniskirts, short-shorts and thong underwear.

“We’ve had women flash the men they come in to see,” said jail director Keith Rininger. “I don’t know how to put it delicately, but when men are locked up for a long time and they see their girlfriend or their wife or someone else’s girlfriend, it can cause tension.”

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Five marauding Kansas City high-school seniors grabbed their teacher and taped him to a chair – then laughed about it all the way to the police station.

“The fact that the students continued joking about the event, even after they were handcuffed and being led to jail, shows a distressing lack of respect,” said Platt County prosecutor Eric Zahnd.

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When Max Bergman felt a fuzzy snout licking him as he sunbathed in a Juneau, Alaska, park, “at first I thought it was a dog. I tried to push it away.”

But when he opened his eyes, a frisky bear cub was staring at him. The startled teen played dead and the beast scurried away. Max plans to milk his brush with death for all it’s worth. “The girls will like it,” he said.

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Cash-strapped Germans who can’t afford to have a dog or cat are opting for the ultimate in low-maintenance pets – ants.

“People are realizing that a pet doesn’t have to be a puppy or a kitten or a fish,” says Martin Sebesta, owner of The Ant Store in Berlin. “Ants are much easier to care for than a cat, for example.

“They don’t eat much, they don’t smell, they don’t make any noise and they are fastidiously clean.”