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All in Animal Welfare
Last year at this time we reported the virgin birth of zebra sharks at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. Now comes news that an epaulette shark at Brookfield Zoo – also near Chicago – has performed the same trick.
An Asiatic black bear named Na spent the last 20 years in a tiny cage in Vietnam. Now she will get a second life in a large, open habitat in a sanctuary with other bears.
We have been following the charmed life of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who flew the coop in the Central Park Zoo nine months ago and has lived in freedom ever since. This week Flaco took off again, this time to a garden in the Lower East Side and beyond. Wherever he lands next is up to Flaco.
A private golf course in Sedona, Arizona is under siege as dozens of javelinas – the wild pig-like peccaries of the Southwest – have been tearing up the grass in search of tasty grub worms. Seven Canyons Golf Club in the state’s Coconino National Forest has not yet figured out how to deal with the marauding beasts.
A sheep named Sugar, who had escaped from an Australian farm five years ago, was spotted living in a mob of wild kangaroos at a reservoir 20 miles from Melbourne.
Among the 6,400 extant species of mammals, it was long believed that only humans and four species of toothed whales experience menopause. Now wildlife biologists have observed “the change” in chimpanzees, and the discovery is challenging a long-accepted hypothesis for why it happens at all.
The depth of human tragedy attendant to the Hamas-Israeli war leaves little emotional bandwidth for animal welfare, but animals – dogs, cats, and other pets – still need care. Animal rescue goes on, within and near Gaza, even under extremely dangerous and stressful conditions.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has taken nearly two dozen animal species off of the endangered list, and that’s bad news because it means there’s no hope for them. The animals – one mammal, 10 types of birds, two species of fish, and eight types of mussels – are too far gone to warrant protection.
Nearly a thousand birds were killed in a single night in Chicago this month, as they flew into the side of a single building, the McCormick Place Lakeside Center. It was both horrifying and frustrating, because the tragedy could have been prevented with some fairly simple precautions.
A bear in Tennessee had an awful August and September as he spent the entire time with a plastic jug stuck on his head. Finally, on October 3, rescue angels were able to tranq the little bear and remove the thing, which turned out to be part of an automatic pet feeder.
Commander, Joe Biden’s 2-year-old German shepherd, has been removed from the White House after biting a Secret Service agent, at least the eleventh such incident since Biden took office in 2021. Commander may now join Major, another biting shepherd, who was exiled to Delaware last year to live with the president’s friends.
When the US government came within a few hours of shutting down last weekend, alarmed citizens across the republic wondered if the shutdown would cancel a crucial government function: Fat Bear Week.
The mighty bald eagle, which had not been seen in Gotham for about a hundred years, has found purchase on Staten Island, where at least four adults and a dozen offspring now call home.
A research team in southern Thailand has discovered a new species of tarantula with a dazzling feature they describe as “a blue-violet hue resembling the color of electrical sparks.”
Researchers from the University of Tokyo think they can decipher the emotional states of chickens based on the birds’ vocalizations. It sounds borderline silly, but the scientists are quite serious.
The Clydesdale horse – featured in Budweiser commercials since forever – will no longer have their tails lopped off, according to the brewer. The move to discontinue “tail docking” comes as the company faced pressure from animal-rights activists and veterinary groups to end the cruel practice.
It’s been a year since African cheetahs were brought to India in an attempt to reintroduce the species that had been extinct on the subcontinent for 70 years. So far the project is going … not great.
In 1996 severe flooding around Brisbane, Australia swept six young bull sharks into a landlocked (mostly) freshwater lake on a golf course. The floodwaters receded but the sharks were trapped in the 51-acre lake off the 14th hole. Incredibly, the sharks lived there for 17 years.
The ferruginous pygmy owl, found in the American Southwest and northern Mexico, once again enjoys the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Last month the US Fish and Wildlife Service restored the status of the little hooters after it lost those protections 17 years ago.
The bulldog breed known as the American bully XL could be exiled forever from the UK, after a number of attacks, including the fatal mauling of a 10-year-old boy. Home Secretary Suella Braverman says she is seeking “urgent advice” on whether to ban the breed.
