Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk who feathered his nest on Fifth Avenue, has died. He was about 33 years of age and leaves behind his significant other, Octavia.
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Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk who feathered his nest on Fifth Avenue, has died. He was about 33 years of age and leaves behind his significant other, Octavia.
While birders around the city enjoy the peak spring bird migration, stalking the wilds of Central Park and other green spaces in the five boroughs, tens of thousands of our feathered friends meet their untimely deaths by window collision.
Venture capital firms (including one funded by the CIA) are pouring millions into cloning technology in order to bring back a few long-lost creatures, such as the wooly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. But if and when these animals are revived, they will be fey imitations, look-alikes that lack essential features of the real article.
Balto was a world famous Siberian husky, the lead sled dog in a 1925 mission that delivered life-saving medicine to Nome, Alaska in abominably frigid conditions. Now scientists have analyzed Balto’s DNA to find out what made him so tough.
Great apes in Africa are threatened by habitat destruction and poaching for bushmeat. Now there’s a new and growing threat: their babies are kidnapped and trafficked to supply a global for pets and zoos.
Over 2,500 dogs from more than 200 breeds vied for the coveted title – Best in Show – but only one would prevail. That would be a petit basset griffon Vendéen named Buddy Holly, the first of his kind to take top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
The UK government has allowed animal testing for makeup ingredients to resume despite a ban that’s been in place since 1998. The High Court ruled last week that the Home Office acted legally when it lifted its ban to align with EU chemical rules.
The Scottish wildcat is on the way out. There are now too few wildcats to sustain the population, according to a five-study completed by conservation group NatureScot. A separate study recently declared Felis silvestris “functionally extinct.”
A 3-year-old chestnut colt named Mage won the 149th Kentucky Derby, but there were seven losers – that’s the number of horses that died at Churchill Downs in the runup to the big race.
A bear in the north Italian province of Trentino is in lockdown after mauling a jogger last month on Mount Peller. The jogger didn’t survive the attack; the bear, a 17-year-old female, was captured and about to be killed herself, but has won a reprieve while the courts decide her fate.
The Norwegian authorities responsible for killing Freya the walrus can’t be too happy about a new statue of the beloved visitor just unveiled in Oslo. The statue is titled “For Our Sins,” lest anyone forget the rash decision to euthanize Freya for the crime of sunbathing in public.
The future looks shaky for the lesser prairie-chicken, whose federal protections under the Endangered Species Act are under siege. Last week the House Committee on Natural Resources voted to use the Congressional Review Act to reverse the lesser prairie-chicken's listing under the ESA — the first step toward stripping the species of federal protection.
Researchers studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park have discovered that, as with humans, the meanest chimps enjoy the most success in life. Primate specialists from the University Edinburgh and Duke observed 28 male chimpanzees in the park and found that the greediest, most irascible bullies among them were the most likely to rise in the ranks of social hierarchy
The eastern hellbender, the largest salamander in North America, faces various threats to its existence. One threat turns out to be the eastern hellbender itself, as researchers have observed an increase in cannibalism in the species.
Following in the flight path of Flaco the owl, a peacock escaped from the Bronx Zoo this week and spent the night hanging out in the city, then (unlike Flaco) returned to its confines the following day. As the New York Times reported, rather ominously, “the Fire Department did not confirm reports it had bitten someone.”
Nzou was only two years old when her family was slaughtered by ivory poachers in Zimbabwe. Rescuers tried to reintroduce Nzou to other elephants, but she never fit in. “Her need for a family never faded,” intones Natalie Portman, narrating National Geographic’s new series, Secrets of the Elephants, “So she took matters into her own hands …”
Researchers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with MIT and the University of Glasgow, taught a group of domesticated birds to call one another on tablets and smartphones. The birds seem to really enjoy it.
How do you keep elephants and humans apart? In Africa it’s an urgent problem, as human populations grow and encroach on elephants’ wild habitat. Now conservationists are trying out a novel form of deterrence: “technologically generated bee sounds.”
A 2-year-old chihuahua named Pearl has been officially recognized as the world’s shortest dog by Guinness World Records.
Scientists have discovered that the great Pacific garbage patch, the 620,000-square-mile vortex of trash in the ocean, is rife with thriving communities of sea creatures, most of them more naturally at home on the coasts.
