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Shocked maintenance workers in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park came across an unnerving non-native species: a four-foot-long alligator struggling in the lake on Sunday. The displaced reptile was spotted floating on the water near Duck Island in the Park’s southeastern corner at around 8:30 a.m. The poor beast was moving slowly, apparently cold-shocked in the freezing water.
Good news for the wood stork. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the big bird from the federal list of endangered and threatened species. Forty years ago the wood stork population was down to fewer than 5000 nesting pairs, most of them in south Florida’s Everglades and Big Cypress ecosystems. Today there are twice that number, and the birds have spread to the coastal plains of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
On February 3 a freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, necessitating the evacuation of many of the small town’s 4700 residents. Following a “controlled burn” of toxic fumes to neutralize the burning cargo that fouled local air and water, there were no reported casualties, yet.
Within hours after two huge earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks rocked southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6, rescue teams from around the world began to arrive in the disaster zone. Many first responders have worked nonstop since because that’s what good dogs do.
For the first time in over 40 years a Peruvian Diving-petrel chick has hatched on Chile’s Chañaral Island. The rare seabird once thrived here but was pushed out by invasive species. Now a concerted effort by environmental groups and the Chilean government to make the island habitable again have paid off.
Hunting whales for meat has been losing its mojo in Japan for years, but a Japanese whaling firm is looking to revive the industry. Last month Kyodo Senpaku introduced three whale-meat vending machines in Yokohama aimed at re-whetting the nation’s appetite.
Even in this nation’s snakepit of politics, George Santos stands out as a major creep and prodigious liar. The recently elected GOP congressman from Long Island has embellished or outright lied about his work history, financial status, criminal record, ethnicity, and religion (we would say “allegedly” here but he’s admitted to many of these and other prevarications).
First, the sad: The pigeon that was dyed pink for gender-reveal idiocy didn’t make it. “We are deeply sad to report that Flamingo, our sweet pink pigeon, has passed away,” tweeted New York City’s wildlife rescue Wild Bird Fund. “Despite our best efforts to reduce the fumes coming off the dye, while keeping him calm and stable, he died in the night. We believe his death was caused by inhaling the toxins.”
Zookeepers at Kujukushima Zoo and Botanical Garden in Nagasaki Prefecture have solved a two-year-old mystery: How did a female lar gibbon get pregnant while living in her own enclosure without a male present?
Rice's whale, found only in the Gulf of Mexico and described in 2021, is already critically endangered. Marine biologists are wondering what can be done to save the whales, if anything.
The winner of Britain’s ugly dog contest – a 4-year-old Pug and Chinese Crested cross named Peggy – last week received her prize: a pampering makeover session and professional photo shoot at a grooming salon in Beverley, East Yorkshire.
A startup company in the UK is making dog food with a novel ingredient: larvae of the black soldier fly. Tuggs is the brainchild of Harry Bremner, whose 2021 master’s dissertation-cum-business proposal on dog food was so good, his advisor offered to fund it.
Birders in New York City are out in force in Central Park, braving the coldest temperatures of the winter for the chance to spot Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl that had escaped from the Central Park Zoo. The majestic bird had been sprung from his enclosure on Thursday night, apparently by vandals with cable-cutters.
It probably sounded like a cute idea – what if we paint a pigeon pink for our gender reveal party? But when the idea was realized, the outcome was very bad for the pigeon. Adding stupidity to ignorance, the bird was released somewhere near New York city’s Madison Square Park, where a good Samaritan found the disoriented creature and brought it to the Wild Bird Fund, the city’s go-to for wildlife rescue.
Authorities in the city of Chilpancingo say the local zoo has been selling, trading, and eating some of its animals on the orders of the zoo director, José Rubén Nava Noriega. Nava was replaced last month, following the death of a deer.
A new study tracks the movements of Australia’s endangered northern quoll, a small carnivorous marsupial. Researchers found that the males are losing so much sleep looking for mates that it’s killing them.
Two nonprofits in Georgia, one that helps abused people and one that rescues abused animals, had an idea. What if they got together for mutual support? The results have been promising. Hope for Hooves takes in neglected and abused equines and equine-adjacent creatures: horses, donkeys, llamas, cows, pigs, sheep, goats. The GLM2 Foundation (“God Loves Me Too”) is “dedicated to eradicating the damage caused by sex trafficking and domestic violence by building and providing safe dwelling places and long-term aftercare for women, and their children.” Both groups are in Augusta.
Valentine’s Day isn’t just for sharing chocolate and flowers, it’s also a time for feeding your ex to a meerkat. Zoos are offering exes a chance to name cockroaches and other vermin after their departed partners.
There are 66 known emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica. The most recently discovered group, about 1000 adults with chicks on the West Antarctic coast, gave away their position to satellite cameras — with their guano.
Japan’s endangered Amami rabbit has entered into a strange relationship with a parasitic plant called Balanophora yuwanensis. Researchers at Kobe University recently documented the symbiosis between these odd bedfellows.
