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The usual method to prevent malaria is to attack mosquitoes that spread the disease to humans, but now scientists are enlisting the little pests as allies. The method, still in the proof-of-concept phase, involves genetic engineering to bolster the mosquito’s immune system with mouse genes.
Urban architecture often uses bird-unfriendly materials – spiky wires and nails, e.g., on ledges, statues, and elsewhere – to discourage birds from nesting and pooping on human structures. It mostly works, but now some clever crows and magpies have been removing the anti-bird bits and are using them to build their nests.
Orcas continue to attack yachts in the Mediterranean, sharks still menace bathers in Australia, and humpback whales are terrorizing fishermen off the Canadian coast. Now comes a new marauder, a sea otter who bullies surfers in Santa Cruz.
Nassir the gorilla, a 14-year-old male living at the Toronto Zoo, is distracted – by visitors who show him their smartphone pics and videos. The zoo is concerned that too much screen time is not good for the primate.
Most birds are monogamous(ish) and a few species even mate for life, but divorce is also common, and may even be on the rise. A German-Chinese research team analyzed data on 232 bird species to document the avian discontent.
The panda population in South Korea just went up by two, as beloved mom Ai Bao gives birth to twin girls. Officials at the Everland theme park near Seoul said mother and babes are in good health.
This week the goats returned to Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Charlie, Chico, Cowgirl, and Mallomar launched their summer’s groundskeeping job with a “ribbon chewing” ceremony to open the park’s new compost site, to which the four will be contributing over the next two months.
A mayor in Mexico’s Oaxaca state has married a caiman – a toothly reptile and close cousin to alligators and crocodiles – in a traditional wedding. Victor Hugo Sosa got hitched to one “Alicia Adriana” in the town of San Pedro Huamelula, re-enacting an ancestral ritual believed to bring good fortune.
Perhaps you’ve seen a squirrel, spread-eagled and flat on the ground, motionless. He’s fine, he’s just “splooting,” that weird, limbs akimbo pose assumed by some mammals to beat the heat.
A 28-year-old chimpanzee named Vanilla was saved from a notoriously cruel lab in upstate New York. When introduced to her new digs – a 150-acre sanctuary in Florida – her reaction to seeing the sky and feeling grass are heartwarming.
“It tastes like chicken,” declared the NPR reporter on her visit to UPSIDE Foods facility in Emeryville, California. As well it should: UPSIDE’s “textured chicken product” is made almost entirely from chicken cells, but no chickens were harmed in the making.
The rambunctious orcas off the coast of Spain continue to harass boats, going so far to disturb a couple of entrants in The Ocean Race last week. More concerning, now come reports of killer whales ramming boats off the coast of Scotland, some 2,000 miles from the original attacks.
Scooter is a 7-year-old hairless Chinese Crested dog with some issues: a shock of unruly gray hair (the “crest”), a tongue that’s always hanging out his little maw, and a pair of hind legs facing the wrong way. Because of all that, Scooter has been crowned this year’s World’s Ugliest Dog. Congrats.
The grand prize winner in Audubon’s annual photography contest is remarkable for its banality: a pair of rock pigeons, one of the most common birds on the planet.
Wilson, the 2-year-old Belgian shepherd that helped find four children lost in the Amazon for 40 days, is himself now lost in the rainforest. The Columbian army is desperately searching for the national hero, last seen one month ago.
This week Iceland's government declared there would be no whaling this summer, at least until the end of August. The decision, based on animal welfare concerns, could mean the brutal practice has finally come to an end.
A new species of gliding gecko has been uncovered in northern India. The Mizoram parachute gecko (Gekko mizoramensis), named after the Indian state where it was found, is one of 14 gecko species known to glide between the treetops.
There were puns aplenty when Loki, a 5-year-old Rottweiler from Maryland received her “dogtorate” from the University of Maryland-Baltimore this week. With her new dogree confurred, Loki is now officially a dogtor, as declared on the school’s website.
In Los Angeles, a robust population of an invasive species – the red-crowned parrot – is thriving. For once, the aliens are not a threat to native species; in fact, the LA parrots might end up saving their cousins in the wild, where these birds are threatened.
