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All in Animal Welfare
Flooding in central Texas this week has killed at least 80 people with many still missing, and the rain has not yet let up. The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch alert through at least Monday evening.
A 70-year-old Egyptian man traveling on a tourist visa attempted to smuggle more than 100 pounds of undeclared food in his luggage as he entered the country at Dulles International Airport. That was bad, but the man, Hamed Ramadan Bayoumy Aly Marie, made matters much worse when he kicked the dog that had sniffed out his contraband, a 5-year-old beagle named Freddie.
After months of rehabilitation, 17 sea turtles were released this week into the waters off Cape Cod. The loggerhead, green, and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles – all victims of hypothermia and its attendant ailments – had been convalescing at the New England Aquarium’s Sea Turtle Hospital in Quincy, MA.
The pangolin is easy to catch and nice to eat. This week the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed federal protections for several pangolin species in Asia and Africa. Listing under the Endangered Species Act would give law enforcement resources to protect the world's most trafficked mammal.
When we last checked in on the axolotl, the bizarre little amphibian was beset on all sides by threats to its existence. Climate change, pollution, a shrinking habitat, and especially the exotic pet trade have all conspired to bring the creature to the brink of extinction.
Caldwell Cigar Company has just released a new line of smokes they’re calling “Lost & Found Give A F*CK.” It sounds aggressive but they’re not trying to scare aware customers, they’re actually helping out homeless pet owners.
38-year-old dolphin named Allie has given birth at Brookfield Zoo Chicago, her labor lasting a bit over an hour. The new calf weighs an estimated 35 pounds and is nearly four feet long.
The first, and perhaps only, corgi to become a canine cop is based in Weifang, Shandong province in eastern China. The 1 ½ year old short-legged dog named Fuzai will do anything for food treats, for good or ill.
A pair of brown bears – brothers previously stuck in a cage outside an Azerbaijan restaurant for years – have been rescued and shipped to an animal sanctuary on the Isle of Wight.
An ostrich farm in British Columbia is under court order to cull the flock – or wobble, in ostrich-speak – as the birds have come in contact with a strain of the deadly avian flu virus, H5N1.
If a movie has both Bill Murray and a gigantic dog in it, it’s got to be a comedy, right? Definitely not, if we’re talking about “The Friend,” a 2024 film about life, death, and grief. Murray plays Walter, a big-deal writer in New York who commits suicide, leaving behind three ex-wives, a couple of girlfriends, and a great dane called Apollo.
The 40 or so guests came from Phoenix, Chicago, and New York to attend a lavish quinceañera in Houston, Texas toasting a 15-year-old cat named Holly Marie Gonzalez.
Recently the San Diego Humane Society took in the youngest black bear cub the group had ever rescued, an approximately 2-month-old cub that had arrived in April – weak, underweight, and alone.
Cheetahs, the fastest land animal on the planet, are up against multiple existential threats: dwindling habitat, poachers, lethal competition with farmers. This week the Cheetah Conservation Fund founder and executive director, Laurie Marker, sat down with PBS to talk about the big cat's fight for survival.
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.
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.
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.
