It’s because of her tremendous love for animals. She feel compassion for them, she feel empathy, and also she likes to pose with them on the red carpet because they make everything ‘cuter.’ Except for the half-elephant.

It’s at least the front half, but when she slings it over her shoulder it’s severed insides just kind of dangle in the back. Nothing cute about that.

In her defense though, the little tiny tusks are quite endearing.

Whether or not the preceding sentences even hold a spec of truth is irrelevant right now – it’s irrelevant because right now we just want to tell you about the pet store Hilton stopped in to grab a dog, and they told her to keep on walking.

When Paris Hilton isn’t forcing MTV to find her friends, or possibly rescuing alcoholic African elephants, or making out with a very scrubby guy, she likes to collect animals. Seriously – she’s got entire closets packed full of the things. And we’re talking about rich people closets too – the kind you can stand up in.

Also these closets are big enough to hide in for days while you peep under the door at Katie Sackhoff until one day the maid decides to clean things barefoot so you don’t hear her come in until she swings open the door right when you’re in the middle of a very interesting 2003 Newsweek article you were reading in a magazine you found stuffed under 1 of 10 shoe racks.

That, friends, was a run-on sentence. And this, friends, is a splurb from the New York Post about Hilton’s dog denial:

“Over the weekend, spies said, Paris Hilton was on her way to a photo shoot and “wanted a puppy in the picture with her so it would look cuter.” Hilton waltzed in and tried to buy a Yorkie but was rebuffed by an employee who said it was clearly “an impulse buy.” Hilton, who has a menagerie of neglected animals, went “ballistic,” we’re told. “She started screaming, ‘I love my puppies! I want my baby!’” – but to no avail. The store had no comment.”

If sources are to be believed Hilton walked out of that store without a puppy. In despair she took the most photogenic guy she could find and stuffed him in her purse. After the shoot she set him free, but as he scampered off into the sunset he stopped, turned and said:

“I’m actually homeless because I spent all my money on House of Wax tickets.”

But Hilton was already gone. She needed a taco or something. The homeless man, once again, was left alone.

If sources are to be believed.

And that voice of dissent happens to come from Lindsay Lohan's Dad. Michael Lohan is steadfastly refusing to look at the naked Lindsay Lohan spread out of a sense of vague disgust, you see.

Not disgust that his daughter has become nothing more than a cheap sexual commodity, though – Michael Lohan is annoyed that Lindsay Lohan's naked photoshoot has stepped on the toes of his own naked photoshoot; the forthcoming Michael Lohan Presents Anna Nicole Smith, We Hardly Knew Ye for Total Sudoku magazine.

The statistics surrounding New York magazine's naked Lindsay Lohan photoshoot this week are simply phenomenal. Demand to see what Lindsay Lohan's hooters look like was so high that the New York website crashed. The lack of self-awareness displayed when Lindsay Lohan complained about the pitfalls of the entertainment industry from the front cover of a magazine with her tits out exploded up to 12 supercomputers running complicated logic programs. And it probably turned quite a lot of young men gay, too.

Despite this, allies of the Lindsay Lohan naked photoshoot have been vociferous in their support of Lindsay Lohan's slow slide into grubby erotic thriller-based semi-obscurity. Even Lindsay Lohan's mother loves staring at her naked daughter enough to tell the world about it. As far as Dina Lohan is concerned naked Lindsay is art, not porn.

However, Lindsay Lohan's father Michael Lohan – probably best-known for regularly listing all the drugs that Lindsay Lohan is hooked on – doesn't care if it's art or porn – he just doesn't want to look at the naked Lindsay Lohan photoshoot in case it gives him a funny feeling in his stomach. Or something. Stuff reports:

Michael Lohan is determined not to see the pictures of 21-year-old Lindsay in the new issue of New York magazine, but accepts it was "her decision" to agree to the shoot. He said: "I'm not going to look at the photos – that's my daughter! But Lindsay is an adult, and she knows the direction she wants to take her career. It's her decision." However, Michael did recognise that being asked to recreate Bert Stern's famous 'Last Sitting' photos of Marilyn was a huge honour for Lindsay… "The fact that the photographer Bert Stern who did Marilyn Monroe's pictures would ask Lindsay to re-create them – that's an amazing thing."

To some degree, Michael Lohan does have a point – as much of an honour as it is for Bert Stern to ask his daughter to recreate such iconic photographs, the naked Lindsay Lohan spread does represent the point in Lindsay's career where she's become so desperate to claw back some of her early success that she's prepared to debase herself in public in such an ultimately tragic way.

Plus Michael Lohan is probably just bummed that Scarlett Johansson didn't do the naked photoshoot. Her tits are way nicer.

Read more:

Lohan's dad won't look at nude Monroe pics - Stuff