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The eastern hellbender, the largest salamander in North America, faces various threats to its existence. One threat turns out to be the eastern hellbender itself, as researchers have observed an increase in cannibalism in the species.
Following in the flight path of Flaco the owl, a peacock escaped from the Bronx Zoo this week and spent the night hanging out in the city, then (unlike Flaco) returned to its confines the following day. As the New York Times reported, rather ominously, “the Fire Department did not confirm reports it had bitten someone.”
Nzou was only two years old when her family was slaughtered by ivory poachers in Zimbabwe. Rescuers tried to reintroduce Nzou to other elephants, but she never fit in. “Her need for a family never faded,” intones Natalie Portman, narrating National Geographic’s new series, Secrets of the Elephants, “So she took matters into her own hands …”
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with MIT and the University of Glasgow, taught a group of domesticated birds to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The birds seem to really enjoy it.
How do you keep elephants and humans apart? In Africa it’s an urgent problem, as human populations grow and encroach on elephants’ wild habitat. Now conservationists are trying out a novel form of deterrence: “technologically generated bee sounds.”
A 2-year-old chihuahua named Pearl has been officially recognized as the world’s shortest dog by Guinness World Records.
Scientists have discovered that the great Pacific garbage patch, the 620,000-square-mile vortex of trash in the ocean, is rife with thriving communities of sea creatures, most of them more naturally at home on the coasts.
Murphy is a 31-year-old bald eagle, flightless due to a wing injury, living the bachelor’s life at the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Missouri. This spring he began sitting on a rock, as one does, in hopes of hatching it.
Australia has a few million too many cats: feral cats, which kill an estimated two billion animals annually; and outdoor house cats, which whack some 83 million native reptiles and 80 million native birds every year. To address the latter carnage, many municipal councils are imposing nighttime curfews on the furry murderers.
The Chester Zoo in England announced the birth of a giant anteater pup this week. The mom, 13-year-old Bliss, and the dad Oso (nine) are first-time parents.
Ya Ya the giant Panda, after twenty years in the Memphis Zoo, is going back to China. This week marked the end of a 20-year loan agreement with the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens, which had loaned Ya Ya to the Tennessee zoo.
When we last checked in on actor James Cromwell, he was super-glueing himself to a Starbucks counter to protest the inflated price of plant-based milk. This week he is attending to a new cause: a baby pig that had fallen (jumped?) off a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse.
Due to climate change and related factors, a dozen or two bird species have expanded their ranges into New York City. Among them: The black vulture, a grim looking fellow with a five-foot wingspan who, in the old days, never strayed this far north.
Zoe, a new-mom orangutan at the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, didn’t know how to breastfeed her newborn. A lactating human zookeeper showed her how. The zookeepers knew Zoe was not was not up to this basic task in 2021 when her first child was born, a baby boy that Zoe would hold at arm’s length, not close enough to feed or bond with. Because Zoe’s own mother had died unexpectedly when she was just nine months old, she never learned these essential skill sets.
The term “Big Five” once described Africa’s trophy animals that resisted easy slaughtering by high end tourists: lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and buffalo. They still exist but generally killing defenseless animals is frowned on (except in Texas). Shooting with a camera is preferred.
Researchers from the University of Western Australia and Japan have plumbed the depths – five miles of depth – to spot and film the deepest fish ever seen. Using a remotely operated submersible in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench not far from Japan, the scientists spied a snailfish at a record-breaking 27,349 feet deep. The species is unknown, but it likely belongs to the genus Pseudoliparis.
Resist the temptation to give a duckling, or any other baby animal, as an Easter present. This week National Geographic raises the alarm (“Why Easter Is Bad for Ducks”), noting that after the holiday, often weeks or months later, there’s an uptick in abandoned adult ducks in local parks and ponds. There’s no official count, but it’s estimated that tens of thousands of domestic ducks are dumped each year throughout the US. Rescue operations like Duck Defenders save as many as 500 abandoned ducks per year in the New York City area alone
Its scientific name (Felis margarita margarita) sounds like a Cinco de Mayo happy-hour special. Its mating cry sounds like a barking dog. Other than that, we don’t know much about the African sand cat, even though it was first described more than 150 years ago.
Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar has been dead for thirty years but at least part of his legacy lives on in the form of voracious hippopotamuses, which the Colombian government now has to deal with.
Researchers from the University of Utah have been studying the rare Colorado checkered whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neotesselatus), in particular how living on a US army base affects the little reptiles. Turns out the lizards stress-eat when they hear loud noises.
