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A poppy farm in Slovakia has been taken over by a bevy of swans. Dozens of the big birds “do not intend to leave this area at all,” Baltics News reports, “because the birds have turned into ‘drug addicts.’”
The Wag Brigade, a team of therapy animals (mostly dogs) that comforts stressed out travelers at San Francisco International Airport, has just hired its first cat, one Duke Ellington Morris.
The northern snakehead, an invasive fish from Asia that has been eating its way through the Eastern Seaboard since it first appeared in Maryland two decades ago, was spotted for the first time in Louisiana this week.
The Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota has announced that their red-wolf pair, brought together only last October, have whelped a litter – four boys and two girls.
he covid lockdown restricted the movement of humans – by a lot – but let loose animals expand their travel habits, also by a lot. A new study in the journal Science has the numbers.
The decades-long endeavor to save the bearded vulture population in eastern Spain has hit a speedbump: the planned construction of a large wind farm. The Foundation for the Conservation of Bearded Vultures has put its project on pause while it assesses the impacts of the proposed farm.
Molecular biologists have discovered that thousands of air-quality monitoring stations around the world have been recording more than just air pollution and dust, they are also collecting biodiversity data. Their findings are published in Current Biology.
The desert cat, so elusive in the wild, just increased its population by three, as triplet kittens have arrived at the North Carolina Zoo. Zookeepers don’t know the sex of the new arrivals yet, but they are “small enough to fit into the palm of your hand,” according to the zoo’s press release. “The kittens were born to first-time mother Sahara, 3, and father Cosmo, 9.”
Last month a popular stretch of a Waikiki beach was closed to visitors while a newborn monk seal was nursing. The pup has now weaned, so authorities relocated the six-week-old pup and mom to a more secluded spot.
A deep-ocean survey in the Pacific has revealed about 5,000 previously unknown species, but all of them are about to be disturbed – at least – by several mining projects under review for the area.
The friendly beluga whale known as Hvaldimir — a combo of the Norwegian word for whale (hval) and Vladimir (as in Putin) — has been charming crowds as he swims south down the coast of Norway, where he was first spotted by fishermen in 2019.
Wyoming’s Bear River State Park announced the arrival of a white bison this week, an event that occurs only once in ten million births.
In January we lauded Spike, the 23-year-old chihuahua recognized by Guinness Records as the world’s oldest dog. Now we learn that Spike is a mere puppy compared to Bobi, a Portuguese breed of livestock guardian dog known as the Rafeiro do Alentejo, who clocks in at a whopping 31 years old.
Mundi is a 41-year-old African savannah elephant who spent 35 years alone in a small enclosure at Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez Zoo. The troubled zoo was closed for good this year, and Mundi was relocated to the comparatively luxurious Elephant Refuge North America in Georgia.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. has announced the arrival of three meerkat pups, born to parents Sadie and Frankie.
The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Fish and Wildlife Service's authorization to kill up to 72 grizzly bears on public land outside of Yellowstone National Park violated federal law. The license to kill had been granted in 2019 as a sop to private grazing operations and would have allowed an unlimited percentage of females to be killed in response to livestock conflict.
There’s one basic rule at Yellowstone National Park: Don’t mess with the wildlife. Do not feed, attempt to ride, pose for selfies, or even approach the animals. And definitely do not try to “help” a bison calf cross a river.
The Oregon Zoo’s condor-breeding program deploys a devious method to monitor conditions in the critically endangered birds’ nests. When an egg is laid, the scientists swap it with a hi-tech fake, a 3D-printed “egg” packed with sensors.
In 2020 the project to reintroduce Tasmanian devils to the Australia mainland – after a 3000-year absence – included a female named Adventurous Lisa. This week the little devil did her part for the cause when she gave birth to three joeys.
Orcas – killer whales – are attacking small boats off the Iberian coast in Europe. There's been at least three apparently coordinated (!) attacks in recent weeks, and scientists believe the aggressive behavior is being taught to, or at least copied by, other pods.
