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In mammalian social groups males tend to dominate, but among one of our closest relatives – the bonobo – it’s females who have the upper hand. Primatologists believe the ladies get and maintain power with a simple tactic: they work together.
The Trump Administration has been slashing federal funding for scientific research – in the National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, and elsewhere. The slash-and-burn approach to policy making has a lot of downsides, but it might come with a silver lining: the end of animal experimentation.
Wild chimpanzees drum with rhythm, according to a new study by primatologists from the University of St Andrews. Not only that, chimps from either side of Africa have their own distinct beats.
A routine traffic stop in Springfield, Ohio turned into something else when 55-year-old Victoria Vidal was cited for driving with a suspended license. Vidal was asked to exit her car while police officer Austin Branham wrote her up.
Floridians have been in a land war with invasive Burmese pythons for years, but there’s another interloper in the Sunshine State that is probably as bad as the snakes, the Nile monitor. The six-foot predatory lizards hail from the Nile River in Africa, but they’ve found an agreeable habitat in the canals of Palm Beach County.
A group of chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau’s Cantanhez National Park was seen recently sharing a huge piece of fruit containing alcohol. Their little party was being monitored by a research team from the University of Exeter.
A 4-year-old named Juno outran a field of 16 to win the Musselburgh Racecourse Corgi Derby in East Lothian, Scotland. The Easter Sunday event, now in its fourth year, attracts corgis from all over the greater Edinburgh area.
Researchers in Florida have been painstakingly collecting the tears of sea turtles for the past couple years. They believe the tears carry a secret that could explain an enduring mystery: how many animals navigate by tapping into the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
On April 11, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake shook Southern California for a few minutes. No big deal, by California standards, but during the tremors the elephants at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were caught on camera displaying their survival plan, namely by forming a protective circle around their young.
No one was happier to hear the news that scientists had “resurrected” a long-extinct wolf species than the US Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum.
Although the company Colossal Biosciences did not actually clone a dire wolf, which went extinct more than 10,000 years ago, Secretary Burgum was quick to leap on the idea that “de-extinction” can make the Endangered Species List obsolete.
A volcano near Anchorage is expected to erupt soon, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Elevated levels of volcanic gas emissions, increased earthquake activity, and ground deformations all point to the likelihood that Mount Spurr, about 80 miles west of the capital, will blow its stack in the coming weeks or months.
A biotech company in Dallas says it has brought back an extinct animal that last walked the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago. Colossal Biosciences, the startup that’s also trying to resurrect the extinct wooly mammoth and the dodo, announced this week that they’ve brought three dire wolves into the world.
A pair of Galapagos tortoises, the two oldest residents at the Philadelphia Zoo, have become first-time parents to at least four healthy hatchlings. The female, named Mommy, and her mate Abrazzo are both estimated to be about 100 years old.
San Francisco’s beloved albino alligator Claude is about to become YouTube famous with his own live webcam. The 30-year-old currently resides at the California Academy of Sciences, a research institute and natural history museum.
In November 2023, a couple took their pet mini dachshund Valerie on holiday to Kangaroo Island, about eight miles off the coast of Adelaide, Australia. While the dog’s owners, Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock, went fishing, Valerie escaped from her pen and disappeared into the bush.
In December 2023, marine biologists in New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf came upon an unusual sight: an octopus riding on the back of a shark. The team was looking for “workups,” or feeding frenzies, according to University of Auckland professor Rochelle Constantine.
Arachnologists from the University of Western Australia have discovered two new species of trapdoor spiders in northern Australia, a first for the area. The arachnids – Kwonkan fluctellus and K. nemoralis – make their debut in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy.
Last week conservationists in the Pacific Whale Watch Association spotted an orca calf with its mom and more than a dozen other killer whales in the Salish Sea, the waters between Seattle and Vancouver. The mother, known to the whale watchers as “Sedna,” comes from a historic line of orcas rescued from SeaWorld.
It took Guinness World Records several months of counting, but finally it’s official: last fall the German town of Regensburg hosted the largest gathering of dachshunds ever. An estimated 897 of the long-eared, stump-legged wieners paraded through the medieval town while their humans marched alongside, many dressed in festive top hats and lederhosen.
The lowly blobfish, long recognized as the world’s ugliest animal, has resurfaced this week to win a comelier title: Fish of the Year. New Zealand environmental group Mountain to Sea Conservation Trust holds the annual contest to raise awareness for freshwater and marine life.
