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Mundi is a 41-year-old African savannah elephant who spent 35 years alone in a small enclosure at Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez Zoo. The troubled zoo was closed for good this year, and Mundi was relocated to the comparatively luxurious Elephant Refuge North America in Georgia.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. has announced the arrival of three meerkat pups, born to parents Sadie and Frankie.
The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Fish and Wildlife Service's authorization to kill up to 72 grizzly bears on public land outside of Yellowstone National Park violated federal law. The license to kill had been granted in 2019 as a sop to private grazing operations and would have allowed an unlimited percentage of females to be killed in response to livestock conflict.
There’s one basic rule at Yellowstone National Park: Don’t mess with the wildlife. Do not feed, attempt to ride, pose for selfies, or even approach the animals. And definitely do not try to “help” a bison calf cross a river.
The Oregon Zoo’s condor-breeding program deploys a devious method to monitor conditions in the critically endangered birds’ nests. When an egg is laid, the scientists swap it with a hi-tech fake, a 3D-printed “egg” packed with sensors.
In 2020 the project to reintroduce Tasmanian devils to the Australia mainland – after a 3000-year absence – included a female named Adventurous Lisa. This week the little devil did her part for the cause when she gave birth to three joeys.
Orcas – killer whales – are attacking small boats off the Iberian coast in Europe. There's been at least three apparently coordinated (!) attacks in recent weeks, and scientists believe the aggressive behavior is being taught to, or at least copied by, other pods.
Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk who feathered his nest on Fifth Avenue, has died. He was about 33 years of age and leaves behind his significant other, Octavia.
While birders around the city enjoy the peak spring bird migration, stalking the wilds of Central Park and other green spaces in the five boroughs, tens of thousands of our feathered friends meet their untimely deaths by window collision.
Venture capital firms (including one funded by the CIA) are pouring millions into cloning technology in order to bring back a few long-lost creatures, such as the wooly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. But if and when these animals are revived, they will be fey imitations, look-alikes that lack essential features of the real article.
Balto was a world famous Siberian husky, the lead sled dog in a 1925 mission that delivered life-saving medicine to Nome, Alaska in abominably frigid conditions. Now scientists have analyzed Balto’s DNA to find out what made him so tough.
Great apes in Africa are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching for bushmeat. Now there’s a new and growing threat: their babies are kidnapped and trafficked to supply a global for pets and zoos.
Over 2,500 dogs from more than 200 breeds vied for the coveted title – Best in Show – but only one would prevail. That would be a petit basset griffon Vendéen named Buddy Holly, the first of his kind to take top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
The UK government has allowed animal testing for makeup ingredients to resume despite a ban that’s been in place since 1998. The High Court ruled last week that the Home Office acted legally when it lifted its ban to align with EU chemical rules.
The Scottish wildcat is on the way out. There are now too few wildcats to sustain the population, according to a five-study completed by conservation group NatureScot. A separate study recently declared Felis silvestris “functionally extinct.”
A 3-year-old chestnut colt named Mage won the 149th Kentucky Derby, but there were seven losers – that’s the number of horses that died at Churchill Downs in the runup to the big race.
A bear in the north Italian province of Trentino is in lockdown after mauling a jogger last month on Mount Peller. The jogger didn’t survive the attack; the bear, a 17-year-old female, was captured and about to be killed herself, but has won a reprieve while the courts decide her fate.
The Norwegian authorities responsible for killing Freya the walrus can’t be too happy about a new statue of the beloved visitor just unveiled in Oslo. The statue is titled “For Our Sins,” lest anyone forget the rash decision to euthanize Freya for the crime of sunbathing in public.
The future looks shaky for the lesser prairie-chicken, whose federal protections under the Endangered Species Act are under siege. Last week the House Committee on Natural Resources voted to use the Congressional Review Act to reverse the lesser prairie-chicken's listing under the ESA — the first step toward stripping the species of federal protection.
Researchers studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park have discovered that, as with humans, the meanest chimps enjoy the most success in life. Primate specialists from the University Edinburgh and Duke observed 28 male chimpanzees in the park and found that the greediest, most irascible bullies among them were the most likely to rise in the ranks of social hierarchy
