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A 34-year-old elephant named Ali at Florida’s Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens has just undergone an intense, drawn out dental procedure to remove his tusk. Ali was once part of the menagerie at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, California; he was donated to the Florida zoo in 1997.
Here’s an idea for getting humans involved in helping other species: sell them attractive bracelets that come with the ability to track a real animal in the wild using an app. That idea has been realized by Fahlo, the brainchild of co-founders Carter Forbes and D.J. Gunter.
A doglike, headless robot named “Aurora” has been hired to work at Fairbanks International Airport in Alaska. Her job: to spook the migratory birds and other wildlife that can disrupt operations on and near the tarmac.
Prognosticating rodent Punxsutawney Phil may not have seen this one coming: last week he and wife, Phyllis, became new parents, to at least two baby groundhogs. The births surprised a member of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, who discovered the arrivals only when he came to feed the parents fruit and vegetables.
Angus, a corn snake who went missing from his Spennymoor, UK home last year, recently turned up on a surprised neighbor’s roof. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reckons Angus had been dropped from the sky by a helpful (or terrified) crow.
The zookeepers at London Zoo are gushing like new parents, because in a way they are. “To say we’re happy about this new arrival would be a huge understatement,” says primate section manager Kathryn Sanders. “We’ve all been walking around grinning from ear to ear.”
Researchers at the Einstein Center for Neuroscience in Berlin noticed a strange clicking sound coming from the aquariums where they kept tiny fish from Myanmar, Danionella cerebrum. Their investigation revealed a very loud noise coming from a very small fish.
Last month beloved Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco met his end when he smashed into a building on Manhattan's Upper West side, but a toxicology report this week confirms he wasn’t long for this world anyway, as the poor guy was rife with poison.
What next for Ko Muang Phet, a ginormous albino water buffalo that has soared to celebrity status in Thailand? His burgeoning bulk and fame earned him a recent meet-and-greet with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who must be hoping some of that bovine popularity rubs off.
A fossil discovered in Texas four decades ago has sat unexamined in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, until now. The 270-million (ish) year-old amphibian fossil has finally been described and named, Kermitops gratus, after beloved Muppet, Kermit the Frog.
Of all the ways to spend time staring at screens, may we suggest the Netherland's visdeurbel? That’s Dutch for “fish doorbell,” a crowd-sourced system to help migrating fish swim through Utrecht’s canals using an underwater camera and a website.
When vandals chopped down the famous “Sycamore Gap” tree in the UK last September, local horticulturist Rachel Ryver immediately collected young twigs and buds from the felled tree, thinking it was possible to graft genetic copies of the specimen.
In August 2017, a total solar eclipse dazzled and baffled animals across much of the country. Even the US president at the time lost his head (momentarily?), and stared directly at the sun without using ocular protection.
Every year, Shannon Keith writes a letter to every animal-testing facility in the US, asking them to release their animals to the organization she founded in 2010, the Beagle Freedom Project (unconnected to the group in Wisconsin fighting for beagle rights). She rarely gets a response, so when she wrote to a huge testing laboratory in Nowata, Oklahoma, her appeal was ignored.
Next week three animal-rights activists go on trial for sneaking into a beagle-breeding facility in Wisconsin, filming the atrocities therein, and running off with three doggos. That was seven years ago, but now the Dane County district attorney is hauling the three before a judge.
Because the spider called daddy longlegs has a particularly salient trait – namely its long legs – biologists never really considered the creature’s eyes, which were assumed to be a standard-issue pair situated at the top of the head. Now researchers have discovered two more sets of peepers, vestigial and useless, on the side.
Last month the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology published an article on the function of stem cells associated with rat testes. Despite the rigors of a peer review and multiple levels of checks, the paper was published with AI-generated illustrations that are downright bizarre.
“Is that a pink elephant bathing in the mighty Olifants river?” Theo Potgieter, a guide and safari operator in Kruger National Park, South Africa, recently asked on Facebook. Rhetorical question. Potgieter had heard reports of a pink elephant living in the national park but hadn't seen the rare creature himself, until now. “A handful of sightings have been reported of this young bull in late 2023,” the guide tells media outlet SWNS, “but to my knowledge, there is no footage."
A zoo in Omaha, Nebraska, had to ask visitors to stop tossing coins into enclosures, mainly because a 36-year-old white alligator named Thibodaux had swallowed about $7 in change. Veterinarians at the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium performed surgery on the gator to remove the coins before they caused him serious health issues.
