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Murphy is a 31-year-old bald eagle, flightless due to a wing injury, living the bachelor’s life at the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Missouri. This spring he began sitting on a rock, as one does, in hopes of hatching it.
Australia has a few million too many cats: feral cats, which kill an estimated two billion animals annually; and outdoor house cats, which whack some 83 million native reptiles and 80 million native birds every year. To address the latter carnage, many municipal councils are imposing nighttime curfews on the furry murderers.
The Chester Zoo in England announced the birth of a giant anteater pup this week. The mom, 13-year-old Bliss, and the dad Oso (nine) are first-time parents.
Ya Ya the giant Panda, after twenty years in the Memphis Zoo, is going back to China. This week marked the end of a 20-year loan agreement with the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens, which had loaned Ya Ya to the Tennessee zoo.
When we last checked in on actor James Cromwell, he was super-glueing himself to a Starbucks counter to protest the inflated price of plant-based milk. This week he is attending to a new cause: a baby pig that had fallen (jumped?) off a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse.
Due to climate change and related factors, a dozen or two bird species have expanded their ranges into New York City. Among them: The black vulture, a grim looking fellow with a five-foot wingspan who, in the old days, never strayed this far north.
Zoe, a new-mom orangutan at the Metro Richmond Zoo in Virginia, didn’t know how to breastfeed her newborn. A lactating human zookeeper showed her how. The zookeepers knew Zoe was not was not up to this basic task in 2021 when her first child was born, a baby boy that Zoe would hold at arm’s length, not close enough to feed or bond with. Because Zoe’s own mother had died unexpectedly when she was just nine months old, she never learned these essential skill sets.
The term “Big Five” once described Africa’s trophy animals that resisted easy slaughtering by high end tourists: lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and buffalo. They still exist but generally killing defenseless animals is frowned on (except in Texas). Shooting with a camera is preferred.
Researchers from the University of Western Australia and Japan have plumbed the depths – five miles of depth – to spot and film the deepest fish ever seen. Using a remotely operated submersible in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench not far from Japan, the scientists spied a snailfish at a record-breaking 27,349 feet deep. The species is unknown, but it likely belongs to the genus Pseudoliparis.
Resist the temptation to give a duckling, or any other baby animal, as an Easter present. This week National Geographic raises the alarm (“Why Easter Is Bad for Ducks”), noting that after the holiday, often weeks or months later, there’s an uptick in abandoned adult ducks in local parks and ponds. There’s no official count, but it’s estimated that tens of thousands of domestic ducks are dumped each year throughout the US. Rescue operations like Duck Defenders save as many as 500 abandoned ducks per year in the New York City area alone
Its scientific name (Felis margarita margarita) sounds like a Cinco de Mayo happy-hour special. Its mating cry sounds like a barking dog. Other than that, we don’t know much about the African sand cat, even though it was first described more than 150 years ago.
Cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar has been dead for thirty years but at least part of his legacy lives on in the form of voracious hippopotamuses, which the Colombian government now has to deal with.
Researchers from the University of Utah have been studying the rare Colorado checkered whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neotesselatus), in particular how living on a US army base affects the little reptiles. Turns out the lizards stress-eat when they hear loud noises.
A young female osprey made a shocking transatlantic journey from Scotland to Barbados recently, becoming the first UK osprey ever observed in the Americas. The intrepid bird had been tagged last summer in Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park in Renfrewshire.
The York Police Department in York, Maine had to retire their comfort dog, Yukon the husky, after only five months on the job. Yukon called it quits after suffering from seizures brought on by stress.
The Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy, is world-renowned for its marble mines, with about 160 active quarries in the Massa Carrara and Lucca regions. The quarries, many of them decommissioned, are also home to the endangered Italian alpine newt (Ichthyosaura alpestris apuana), whose recent discovery here has mobilized the locals.
The National Park Service in Kula, Hawaii, announced this week that they will soon be releasing millions of mosquitoes in Haleakalā Park in an effort to combat the avian malaria that is endangering forest birds.
It’s been a banner week for zoo escapes. First up, a young male zebra named Sero busted out of his enclosure at the Children's Grand Park Zoo in Korea. Sero was born at the zoo in 2021 but apparently wondered about the outside world that supplied all the gawking hordes and went on the lam.
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.
