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It’s been five years since the dreaded “murder hornet” was first spotted in the Pacific Northwest. Ever since, teams of assassins from the US and Washington State departments of agriculture have tracked down and killed the invasive species; this week the agencies declared the killer hornet dead and gone.
Lawmakers have passed a bill to formally designate the bald eagle as the national bird of the United States. When President Biden signs off on the bill – which breezed through the Senate and House – it will be official.
The winner of the UK’s ugliest dog contest is Muppet, a 12-year-old Chinese crested pooch from Peterborough. Bev Nicholson, the dog’s proud owner, says Muppet is a “wonky little rescue dog” that is “beautiful inside and out.”
Photographer Milko Marchetti happened upon a squirrel in a public park in Ravenna, Italy, so he snapped a shot of the rodent halfway in (or out) of a hole in a tree. “This photo had an effect on me and made me smile a lot in that moment that I clicked the button,” he says. “I knew I had to enter it into the competition.”
The new animated film “Flow,” about a cat and a motley group of diverse species pitted against the elements, is a visual feast and a surprisingly emotional ride. Surprising because Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis manages to evoke a lot of feeling without anthropomorphizing (or even naming) his cast of characters.
We usually think of pollinators – the yentas of the animal kingdom that “marry” male and female plants by transmitting pollen between them – as flying insects, birds, sometimes bats. Biologists have now identified another unusual matchmaker in the field, the Ethiopian wolf.
The day will come when the albatross named Wisdom, the oldest wild bird in the world (by a staggering amount) no longer completes her annual migration to Midway Atoll, never again takes a mate, builds a nest, or starts a family. Today is not that day.
Last week a retired police dog, a 12-year-old German shepherd named Bear, was out for his first long walk following surgery when was forced out of retirement. Bear had stumbled upon a missing person, alone and in distress in dense undergrowth.
Humane Society International is celebrating a south-of-the-border success this week, as Mexico announces it has enshrined animal protection as a fundamental value in its constitution.
It’s been nearly 40 years since killer whales off the west coast of North America were spotted wearing dead salmon on their heads. No one knows why this whacky trend began or why it ended, but we do know it’s back.
US zoos have paid millions to China for the privilege of housing pandas, with the expectation that China invests the money in panda conservation. A New York Times investigation reveals that the funding has been spent on projects unrelated to pandas, while American zookeepers look the other way.
Five years ago a bottlenose dolphin strayed far from his usual habitat and ended up in the chilly waters off the Danish coast. He hung around, the locals named him Delle, and marine biologists at the University of Southern Denmark began studying the 17-year-old loner.
Last week a 34-year-old Asian elephant named Shanti concluded her 21-month pregnancy and 19-hours of labor with a 314-pound bundle of joy: a baby girl. In announcing the birth the Houston Zoo said the baby elephant, named Kirby, is “a trunk-load to be thankful for.”
Four Los Angeles area residents were arrested last week after they allegedly claimed a bear had caused damage to their luxury vehicles – but the real perp turned out to be a human in a bear costume. The four are charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy, and an arrest warrant has been issued for a fifth suspect.
This week the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing four species of giraffes under the Endangered Species Act. Giraffes live in Africa of course, but under the ESA it would be illegal to import any part of a giraffe into the US; the protections would also boost conservation funding for animals in the wild.
Your turkey did not die well, according to philosopher Peter Singer, and its life was no great shakes either. That’s the gist of Singer’s new book, Consider the Turkey, a short account of the bird’s miserable existence.
A baby red panda named Roxie died last week at the Edinburgh Zoo, apparently from stress induced by fireworks on Bonfire Night. Veterinarians at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland say the three-month-old panda choked on her own vomit while pyrotechnics boomed across the city.
During the holiday season, wine consumption spikes (in some households it skyrockets). But those extra glasses or two don’t have to be mere empty calories, not when you’re drinking Rescue Dog Wines from California.
When we last checked in on Björk, she was raising awareness on the environmental impacts of her country’s salmon farms. This week Iceland’s most famous singer announced her “Immersive Auditory Experience,” an art installation to open this month in France, intended to sound the alarm on biodiversity loss and the collapse of ecosystems.
