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Last month beloved Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco met his end when he smashed into a building on Manhattan's Upper West side, but a toxicology report this week confirms he wasn’t long for this world anyway, as the poor guy was rife with poison.
What next for Ko Muang Phet, a ginormous albino water buffalo that has soared to celebrity status in Thailand? His burgeoning bulk and fame earned him a recent meet-and-greet with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who must be hoping some of that bovine popularity rubs off.
A fossil discovered in Texas four decades ago has sat unexamined in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, until now. The 270-million (ish) year-old amphibian fossil has finally been described and named, Kermitops gratus, after beloved Muppet, Kermit the Frog.
Of all the ways to spend time staring at screens, may we suggest the Netherland's visdeurbel? That’s Dutch for “fish doorbell,” a crowd-sourced system to help migrating fish swim through Utrecht’s canals using an underwater camera and a website.
When vandals chopped down the famous “Sycamore Gap” tree in the UK last September, local horticulturist Rachel Ryver immediately collected young twigs and buds from the felled tree, thinking it was possible to graft genetic copies of the specimen.
In August 2017, a total solar eclipse dazzled and baffled animals across much of the country. Even the US president at the time lost his head (momentarily?), and stared directly at the sun without using ocular protection.
Every year, Shannon Keith writes a letter to every animal-testing facility in the US, asking them to release their animals to the organization she founded in 2010, the Beagle Freedom Project (unconnected to the group in Wisconsin fighting for beagle rights). She rarely gets a response, so when she wrote to a huge testing laboratory in Nowata, Oklahoma, her appeal was ignored.
Next week three animal-rights activists go on trial for sneaking into a beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin, filming the atrocities therein, and running off with three doggos. That was seven years ago, but now the Dane County district attorney is hauling the three before a judge.
Because the spider called daddy longlegs has a particularly salient trait – namely its long legs – biologists never really considered the creature’s eyes, which were assumed to be a standard-issue pair situated at the top of the head. Now researchers have discovered two more sets of peepers, vestigial and useless, on the side.
Last month the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology published an article on the function of stem cells associated with rat testes. Despite the rigors of a peer review and multiple levels of checks, the paper was published with AI-generated illustrations that are downright bizarre.
“Is that a pink elephant bathing in the mighty Olifants river?” Theo Potgieter, a guide and safari operator in Kruger National Park, South Africa, recently asked on Facebook. Rhetorical question. Potgieter had heard reports of a pink elephant living in the national park but hadn't seen the rare creature himself, until now. “A handful of sightings have been reported of this young bull in late 2023,” the guide tells media outlet SWNS, “but to my knowledge, there is no footage."
A zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, had to ask visitors to stop tossing coins into enclosures, mainly because a 36-year-old white alligator named Thibodaux had swallowed about $7 in change. Veterinarians at the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium performed surgery on the gator to remove the coins before they caused him serious health issues.
Hundreds of stray dogs are fleeing the Eastern Siberian town of UIan-Ude, near the Mongolian border, because the local government has decided to kill them. The strays’ saviors are Russian dog-lovers – from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and elsewhere – who make the long trek east and brave sub-zero temperatures to rescue the doomed doggos.
A team of scientists – and a couple of lucky television crews – have “discovered” what is being characterized as the world’s largest snake, a giant anaconda. The team, led by biologist Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland, captured and studied several specimens of the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayima), located in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
When beloved cat Krusty Noodles concluded his earthly existence, owner Kate Swan just couldn’t let go. To keep Krusty’s memory alive, Swan enlisted the services of Beth Beverly, a Pennsylvania taxidermist, who stuffed the dead cat – along with an equally dead mouse in his maw – and mounted it for the wall.
Something funny is going on with our closest relatives – chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas. Like humans, our cousins seem to revel in comedy – slapstick mainly, but comedy nonetheless. The Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior is looking into the fun.
The Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco, who escaped his confines in the Central Park Zoo in February last year, has met a sad end to his legendary life. The magnificent raptor, who became the city’s symbol of defiance and resilience over the course of his twelve months of freedom, was killed when he flew into the side of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
A plan to build a huge wind farm in Washington — the largest ever in the state — will likely end up much smaller than the original proposal to erect hundreds of turbines across 24 miles. That’s because Horse Heaven Hills wind farm would pose a danger to an already-endangered raptor, the ferruginous hawk.
A proposal to build an enormous monkey-breeding warehouse in Bainbridge, Georgia has prompted animal-welfare groups to launch an opposition to the plan. A company called Safer Human Medicine wants to build the country’s largest facility of this type, which would hold up to 30,000 cynomolgus, or long-tailed, macaques bred for experimentation.
