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Since 2018, Elon Musk's medical-device company Neuralink has killed about 1,500 animals – monkeys, pigs, and sheep – in its attempt to develop a brain-computer interface. Now the US Department of Agriculture is investigating the company for possible animal-welfare violations.
Winners of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are in and we think they are in fact funny. The comic possibilities of wildlife tend to fall into set categories. There are the photos of slapstick in progress – a 3-month-old lion cub falling out of a tree, for example, which happens to be this year’s overall winner. “It was probably his first time in a tree and his descent didn't go so well,” said photographer Jennifer Hadley.
After more than two decades of incarceration in an Albanian restaurant, Mark the bear has been freed. The animal welfare group Four Paws negotiated the release of the last so-called “restaurant bear” in Albania, and he is now on his way to a bear sanctuary in Arbesbach, Austria.
For decades kids and their families have flocked to Griffith Park Pony Rides of Los Angeles without knowing they have engaged in animal torture. But the fun ends on December 21. Badgered by animal rights zealots, the city’s elders have ordered the park to shut – just in time for the holidays!
Animals that organize in social groups occasionally experience friction, as when competing for food, living space, mates. When conflicts arise between two group members, a third-party intervention can smooth things over to the benefit of all. Pigs appear to be pretty good at conflict mediation.
A lot of people in Utah are reporting wildlife sightings, especially of cougars that stray into town. The state’s Division of Wildlife Resources is getting so many calls that this week it asked everyone to relax: you needn’t report it every time you see a big cat.
Evolutionary biologists have something called the “island rule,” which posits that organisms that evolve on islands will, over time, become smaller than their mainland counterparts. A new dwarf dinosaur species discovered in western Romania – which long, long ago featured tropical islands – supports the theory.
We’ve known for some time that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite can infect the brains of rodents, forcing them via mind control into fatal encounters with predators. Now scientists have observed that wolves infected with T. gondii are also altering their behavior, in their case by taking more risks.
Turkeys don’t stand a chance this time of year, but one flock of gobblers is taking back what’s theirs (America) starting with one New England town. The human inhabitants of Woburn, Massachusetts, population 41,000, have been under attack by an obnoxious group of five wild turkeys, a thuggish gang led by a tom named Kevin.
The white ibis has a bad rap in Australia, where it is called “bin chicken” for its propensity to root through garbage. (Also “tip turkey,” “dumpster chook,” and “rubbish raptor.”) Now the bird is winning over its critics because it has developed a particular skill set: draining the hated cane toad of its poison.
The situation is going from bad to worse for Florida’s shrinking manatee population: the gentle aquatic mammals are dying by the hundreds, mostly from starvation. A coalition of conservation groups are now petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the manatee as an endangered species, as it once was, with the hope of improving the creature’s habitat.
ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire, England has introduced a new giraffe to the world, six-foot-tall Wilfred, born on Remembrance Day (Veterans’ Day, across the pond). The new arrival is named after World War I poet Wilfred Owen.
Christie’s was about to auction off a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in Hong Kong this month, looking to fetch between $15 million and $25 million, but canceled the sale when doubts were raised about how much of the fossilized bones were really old and how the critter was described in marketing materials.
The king of England has banned foie gras from all royal residences. Not a surprising development since, as the Prince of Wales, Charles had kiboshed foie gras from his properties.
Italian media went a little bit berserk last week when two hikers in South Tyrol called for help. The 23-year-old women had encountered a pack of seven or eight creatures approaching them “threateningly” before moving away and watching them from a distance.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University have been watching the mating rituals of the false widow spider (Steatoda grossa). They find that the female spins her web, douses it with pheromones to attract males, then tweaks the composition of her come-hither chemicals as necessary to elicit the desired sexual response.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claim that global food-delivery giant HelloFresh uses coconut milk obtained by monkey labor in Thailand. The animal-rights group this week posted its third report on Thailand’s coconut industry, “in which chained monkeys are forced to spend long hours climbing tall trees and picking heavy coconuts.”
Turns out humans aren’t the only animals who like to bop to a beat. Researchers in Japan played some jams for rats and found that they too like to groove when the song is right. “Rats displayed innate — that is, without any training or prior exposure to music — beat synchronization most distinctly within 120-140 bpm (beats per minute), to which humans also exhibit the clearest beat synchronization,” explained Hirokazu Takahashi from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.
The National Park Service’s Halloween-night message started with a couple of “toad-ally terrifying” bad puns, then it got serious. “As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking,” the agency posted on Facebook.
