This week Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo announced the arrival of its newest resident, a five-foot-seven, 108-pound female giraffe. Her mother is 8-year-old Zola, the father is Jawara, 14.
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This week Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo announced the arrival of its newest resident, a five-foot-seven, 108-pound female giraffe. Her mother is 8-year-old Zola, the father is Jawara, 14.
A dog in Caseville, Michigan happened upon a Fitbit in her owner’s bedroom. Being a dog, she sized up the wireless fitness tracker and decided the device was edible.
This week Wired questions the ethics of the next big thing in food production, insect farming. The nascent industry already slaughters trillions of insects each year, and the practice is expected to expand exponentially. But we don’t even know if the bugs feel pain.
The US Defense Department is funding experiments on ferrets to determine if exposure to radio frequency waves could be the cause of “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious suite of symptoms that affected hundreds of government personnel in recent years.
This week the American Kennel Club crowned the French Bulldog as the most popular dog breed in America, a surprising elevation downgrading the Labrador Retriever to second place. The AKC’s ranking is based on its registration statistics.
Researchers in the UK have spent hours watching great apes – gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, and chimps – spinning on ropes and vines, apparently internationally inducing dizziness. Of course this inspired a study, “Great Apes Reach Momentary Altered Mental States By Spinning,” published in the journal Primates.
The European woodcock spends a lot of time on the forest floor, and so much of its plumage is mottled brown, beige, and black – perfect camouflage for foraging in the leaf litter. But underneath this unassuming bird is a flashy secret: tailfeathers that are whiter than any ever measured.
An African serval cat tested positive for cocaine after escaping a traffic stop in Hamilton County, Ohio, and is now recuperating at the Cincinnati Zoo. The big cat bolted after its owner was pulled over by police in January; it leapt into a tree, where he was rescued by Cincinnati Animal CARE.
The Endangered Species Act turns fifty this year and it has had a pretty good run. Thank Richard Nixon who launched the ESA (along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act).
There’s a class of chemicals used to manufacture all kinds of consumer products that, in humans, are linked to cancers, reduced immune function, and other ailments. A new study reveals that the nasty pollutants are causing problems in nonhumans as well, and they’re everywhere.
Researchers in Tanzania's Ukaguru Mountains have stumbled upon a new frog species notable for its silence. The Ukaguru spiny-throated reed frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis) does not croak, sing, or ribbit.
The Daurian redstart, a migratory songbird living throughout much of Asia, has learned to avoid its cheeky nemesis, the cuckoo, by moving closer to human developments. The cuckoo, a notorious “brood parasite,” lays its eggs in other birds’ nests so that it doesn’t have to expend resources on raising its young.
A student from Southern Illinois University Carbondale may have accidentally discovered a way to track the invasive Burmese pythons plaguing south Florida. Graduate student Kelly Crandall was examining how human activities influence the movements of raccoons and possums in and around Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Key Largo. Crandall and her colleagues captured 30 possums and raccoons, fitted them with GPS collars, and set them loose.
The nature program BBC Earth uses cleverly disguised camera-drones to get up close to wildlife without disturbing it. In one segment they deployed a fake sea turtle and pufferfish, each equipped with hidden cameras, to spy on juvenile dolphins frolicking in the surf off the South Africa coast.
The Prague Zoo has announced the arrival of a brand new Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla), the first birth of the critically endangered species in captivity in Europe. The newborn had a rough start but is doing well, according to the zoo.
Last week, officials said they believed that the chemicals let loose in the Ohio train derailment had killed 3,500 aquatic animals. This week, they say the number of dead was more than 43,700 animals, all within a 5-mile area of the disaster.
This week the Central Park Zoo suspended its attempts to capture Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that had been sprung from his confines at the zoo by vandals earlier this month.
Herds of wild pigs – dubbed “super pigs” for their size, intelligence, and hardiness – have been spotted within 10 miles of the US border and North Dakota. Invasive pigs have had a foothold in Canada since the 1980s, when farmers began breeding domestic pigs with wild boars imported from Europe. But there wasn’t much of a demand for the new breed of Canadian bacon and the Frankenpigs were turned loose.
Shocked maintenance workers in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park came across an unnerving non-native species: a four-foot-long alligator struggling in the lake on Sunday. The displaced reptile was spotted floating on the water near Duck Island in the Park’s southeastern corner at around 8:30 a.m. The poor beast was moving slowly, apparently cold-shocked in the freezing water.
Good news for the wood stork. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the big bird from the federal list of endangered and threatened species. Forty years ago the wood stork population was down to fewer than 5000 nesting pairs, most of them in south Florida’s Everglades and Big Cypress ecosystems. Today there are twice that number, and the birds have spread to the coastal plains of Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
