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Birders and other wildlife enthusiasts on Eastern Long Island have been treated to a special sight : a lone American flamingo relaxing in the Hamptons. The gorgeous bird was seen wading, floating, and flying over East Hampton’s Georgica Pond.
A Great Dane named Kevin, the record holder as tallest living dog, died less than two weeks after earning the title. Guinness World Records said Kevin, following an unexpected surgery, had “tragically died just days after his record-breaking achievement was announced to the world.”
It may not sound like much to go from “endangered” to “vulnerable,” but for the Iberian lynx, the change augurs very good news for the species. Though still among the rarest cats in the world, the lynx’s rebound from near-extinction just two decades ago is evidence that conservation works, especially when all stakeholders are included in the effort.
Earlier this year a pair of male lions swam nearly a mile across the Kazinga Channel in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. “Hippos and 16-foot crocodiles inhabit the channel,” as the New York Times recounts the crossing, not to mention that one of the lions is missing a leg.
In April 2019, a pet donkey named Diesel ran off during a hike in the Cache Creek Wilderness, a rugged area northwest of Sacramento. Diesel’s owners, Terrie and Dave Drewry, searched high and low for their pet, literally – on foot, on horseback, and via drone – but for naught.
This week a pair of beluga whales were rescued from an aquarium, the NEMO Dolphinarium, in war-ravaged Kharkiv, Ukraine. Marine mammal specialists from Oceanogràfic de Valencia, Georgia Aquarium, and SeaWorld pulled off the rescue that took weeks to plan.
Five axolotls were recently seized by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as they were being smuggled into the United States. Fortunately for the amphibians, they have been taken in by San Francisco Zoo & Gardens.
Researchers in the Pacific Ocean encountered a rare – and bright – octopus squid, a bioluminescent creature said to have the world’s largest biological lights. A team from the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre plunged a camera into the depths when a deep-sea hooked squid (Taningia danae) mistook the device for a snack.
Hawaii’s birds are seriously imperiled by avian malaria, which spreads, like the more familiar variety of the disease, by mosquitoes. The counterintuitive solution to this dire problem involves releasing millions of mosquitoes into the wild.
Seven Przewalski's Horses – the last true wild horse in the world – have been returned to their native stomping grounds, Kazakhstan’s Golden Steppe. An operation to reintroduce the horses to their natural homeland is the culmination of decades of work by a consortium of zoos and other conservation groups.
Our drugs are making brown trout addicted to meth and female starlings less attractive to potential mates. These are among the disturbing effects documented in a new paper in Nature Sustainability.
The New York Times just dropped a new 6-part podcast called “Animal,” featuring writer Sam Anderson. Backed by the resources of the Times, the production goes out into the world – Iceland, Mexico, Japan – to teach us about animals and our relationship to them.
Envigo, the company that had to put 4000 beagles up for adoption because its breeding facility was shown to be a squalid hellhole, has gotten its comeuppance in the form of a $35 million fine.
A researcher in Brazil investigated why some snakes bite humans and others don’t using a very unusual– not to say totally nuts – methodology: he stepped on them, thousands of times. João Miguel Alves-Nunes of the Butantan Institute published the results of his experiment in Scientific Reports.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced last week that three healthy peregrine falcon chicks have hatched in their aerie, a specially built nesting box atop the Verrazzano Bridge. The fluffy hatchlings were tagged with identifying bands while their mother soared nearby, 700 feet over the Narrows.
Killing rats in New York City is usually a thankless task, but rat-killer extraordinaire Luna just got a good citizen award. Council Member Chi Ossé, presented Luna with a City Council Citation for “being New York's strongest soldier in our war against the rats.”
This week a story on the history of cockroaches, based on new research published in Proceedings of of the National Academy of Sciences, dominated nature writing all over the country.
“Shocking footage,” is how the New Zealand Department of do Conservation describes a video of the 50-year-old man who tried to body slam a couple of orcas swimming near his boat off the coast of Devonport in Auckland.
This week PBS aired a new documentary on heroes of Ukraine, human and animal. “Saving the Animals of Ukraine” documents wartime life and death for animals – in war-torn households, in zoos, in the wild – and the people who save them.
Last month we noted the birth of two groundhogs, offspring of the Punxsutawney prognosticator Phil and his wife Phyllis. Now we know the kits’ genders – boy and girl – and now they have names: Shadow and Sunny, respectively.
