The world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, is known as a voracious hunter with razor-sharp teeth. Now we know what makes those choppers so sharp: they’re laced with iron.
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The world’s largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, is known as a voracious hunter with razor-sharp teeth. Now we know what makes those choppers so sharp: they’re laced with iron.
New York City is about to try a new approach to tackle its persistent rat problem: using birth control on the prolific rodents instead of poison. Last week the City Council passed a bill to dole out birth-control pills to rats in a pilot program covering 10 city blocks in two neighborhoods.
A guiding principle of the Bird Photographer of the Year contest is “celebrating bird life from around the world,” but this year’s overall winner instead focuses on avian death. Patricia Homonylo’s “When Worlds Collide” depicts thousands of dead birds, victims of building collisions, arranged in concentric circles.
A herd of elephants has come to New York City’s Meatpacking District. The Great Elephant Migration is a traveling art installation and fundraiser centered on 100 life-sized elephant sculptures.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the Biden administration, the Department of the Interior, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service – all because of a lizard barely two inches long.
Visitors to the zoo in Shanwei were outraged to learn that a pair of “pandas” on exhibit were in fact dogs that had been dyed to look like China’s iconic bears.
An irrepressibly cute pygmy hippo called Moo Deng has become a global sensation since her birth two months ago in a Thai zoo. The chubby-cheeked baby’s online stardom has attracted crowds to Khao Kheow Open Zoo, which has the zoo operators concerned.
And the winner is … the hoiho, also known as the yellow-eyed penguin. The plucky (and somewhat smelly) bird is the world’s rarest penguin, according to Forest & Bird, the group behind New Zealand’s Bird of the Year competition.
When the population of vultures in India collapsed in the early 2000s, their absence led to the deaths of some 500,000 people, according to new research published in the American Economic Review.
Not too long ago an orangutan in Indonesia was seen self-medicating with a healing plant it uses as a poultice. Now another primate, the African gorilla, has been spotted finding drugs in the jungle.
In places where bat populations have collapsed in the US, infant mortality has gone up. A new study by economist Eyal Frank, appearing in the journal Science, explains the connection.
Remains of a long-necked dinosaur have been discovered at a fossil site 85 miles east of Madrid, in the central city of Cuenca. The new species (Qunkasaura pintiquiniestra) is described in Communications Biology.
Hvaldimir, the friendly beluga whale outfitted with a mysterious Russian harness was found dead this week in the harbor of Stavanger, a city in southwestern Norway. Advocacy groups OneWhale and NOAH believe the beloved whale was shot dead, and the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries says it will conduct an autopsy.
The northern bald ibis had been extinct in Central Europe for four centuries, but a dedicated conservation and research group has reintroduced a small population into the wild. The only problem: the birds have no clue how or where to migrate when seasons change, so the humans are teaching them.
Sphen the gentoo penguin has died in Australia, aged 11. He is mourned by his partner, Magic, along with much of the rest of the world, which had celebrated the unusual union since 2018, when the pair met and fell in love at the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium.
The last elephant in South Africa’s national zoo – a 42-year-old named Charley – has been released in the wild after spending 40 years of his life in captivity.
Spider-gazing researchers in China say that the orb-weaving spider (Araneus ventricosus) entices male fireflies into its web, then it gets freaky. Somehow the spider manipulates its prey into mimicking a female firefly’s flashing light, which lures more amorous males into the deathtrap.
French cinema icon Alain Delon died last week at 88, and he almost brought his beloved dog, Loubo, with him. Delon had wanted the 10-year-old Belgian malinois to be euthanized and buried with him, but fortunately Delon’s surviving family kiboshed the idea.
On the day before her 19th birthday, Ying Ying the panda delivered two cubs, making her the oldest giant panda ever to give birth for the first time. The new arrivals, tiny and pink and as yet unnamed, are also the first pandas born in Hong Kong.
When should we announce the birth of a kangaroo? Technically a baby roo – the Matschie's tree kangaroo – was born in the Bronx Zoo last December, but it would be inaccurate to say the joey had “entered the world,” since she would spend the following several months tucked safely inside mama’s pouch.
