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South Korea’s parliament this week passed a bill to ban the trade in dog meat. The legislation banning the breeding, selling, and slaughtering of dogs for their meat will come into effect in 2027, ending the centuries-old practice of doggie dining.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that great apes and chimpanzees can recognize mates they hadn't seen for years — in some cases for more than two decades — evidence of the longest-lasting nonhuman memory ever recorded.
A brave soul on Australia's NSW Central Coast recently captured a very large funnel-web spider, the world’s most venomous arachnid. The spider, the largest male of its kind ever seen, has been donated to the Australian Reptile Park, which will now put the ginormous creeper they’ve named Hercules to work saving lives.
A new breed of dog – the Lancashire heeler – has joined the 200 other official breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club. The new guy is a “sturdy little dog with a short, weather-resistant coat of black and tan or liver and tan, they are affectionate with their owners, always happy, talkative and always ready for a walk,” according to the AKC website.
Amateur ornithologist John Murillo happened upon one of the rarest sights in the birding world: a half female, half male green honeycreeper. The brilliant little bird was spotted at a bird-feeding station in a nature reserve near Manizales, Colombia.
It’s been a rough few years for the Florida manatee, which has suffered shocking population decline along the Sunshine State’s Atlantic coast, due mostly to i poor malnutrition. But 2023 showed a modest but encouraging improvement in both the mortality rate and the health of the seagrass on which these gentle creatures feed.
A pair of male black swans at the Melbourne Zoo have hooked up and appear to be ready to commit. After they built a nest together (with very tasteful decor), zoo caretakers deployed a 3D printer to create a clutch of faux eggs for the boys to bond over.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to enlist shotgun-wielding assassins to kill more than a half million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. The object: to save the habitat for the invasive birds’ endangered cousins, the northern spotted owl.
This week the Colorado Parks and Wildlife released five gray wolves in the wild, the first phase in the state’s program to establish a permanent, self-sustaining wolf population. The project was set in motion by a 2020 voter referendum demanding the reintroduction of the wolves, which had been eradicated from the state nearly a century ago.
On the coast of southern Tasmania, a 1,300-pound southern elephant seal has been plopping his prodigious girth on beaches, in driveways, on the road, and on front lawns. The 3-year-old, dubbed Neil the Seal by the locals, has a special fondness for traffic cones, which he plays with and gnaws on like a toddler with a pram toy.
New Jersey Transit commuters were delayed last week when a bull was spotted pacing near the passenger platform at Newark Penn Station. The longhorn steer had escaped from a local slaughterhouse.
For weeks, bears in eastern Russia’s Amur region were having a hard time bedding down for the winter, as warm weather has kept the region unfit for hibernation. In a normal year, the bears will tuck in by the end of October, but the temperature didn’t drop until this week, so it’s time to say goodnight at last.
In September, eight African painted dogs were born in South Bend, Indiana’s Potawatomi Zoo, but the zookeepers saw right away that the mother wasn’t interested in her new brood. Fearing for the survival of the new pups, the zoo brought in a surrogate mom, a heroic golden retriever named Kassy.
The ten finalists in CNN’s Hero of the Year 2023 honors are involved in literacy projects, reef-building, children of incarcerated parents, and the like, described by Anderson Cooper as “Inspiring people who are making the world a better place.”
The problem with goldfish is that “they can eat anything and everything.” That’s according to Christine Boston, an aquatic research biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The voracious fish, which are in fact a kind of East Asian carp, are living large in the Great Lakes, to the detriment of everything else.
A very rare white alligator was born this month at Gatorland, an alligator-themed park in Orlando, Florida. The gator is a girl, born along with a normal-colored twin brother.
When it comes to power naps, the chinstrap penguin is king. Researchers in Antarctica have determined that the species will doze off for four seconds per nap, up to 10,000 times a day. Their study appears in the journal Science.
We have noticed rare lobsters before. An even rarer specimen – a half-red, half-blue, bi-gendered creature – has wandered into a Maine lobsterman’s pot.
Jonathan the giant tortoise turned 191 years old (or so) this week, reaffirming his title as the oldest-living land animal. He’s been living large on St. Helena, a British territory in the South Atlantic, sharing the grounds with the island governor at Plantation House since the Victorian era. (And the ghost of Napoleon who died here just 51 years of age in 1851).
In August a mysterious canine illness broke out in Oregon, affecting at least 200 dogs. Since then, the respiratory ailment has spread to 14 states, and vets still don’t know what’s causing it.
