animals

Factory farming is on the ballot in Switzerland, which could become the first country in the world to ban the agricultural practice linked to a host of environmental harms from animal cruelty to the climate crisis. 

It turns out that humans aren’t the only animals who pound out beats to express themselves.  A new study published in Animal Behavior Tuesday found that male chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest use “individual drumming ‘signatures’” when they drum on the buttress roots of trees, so much so that researchers could compare different chimps to […]

Rodents make up about 40 percent of all mammal species and most of the non-flying mammals on Earth. They evolved at least 178 million years ago and were the first mammals to scurry around underfoot of the dinosaurs, until all but the birds disappeared 66 million years ago, according to Nature. In a new study, […]

The effects of climate change are outpacing poaching as the No. 1 threat to wildlife. In Zimbabwe, officials are now moving more than 2,500 wild animals from a reserve in the southern part of the country further north due to an ongoing drought. Rangers are relying on trucks, cranes and even helicopters to move the animals from the drought-stricken area.

Weighing just 0.035 pounds (16 grams), it’s understandable why the Subantarctic rayadito has only just been discovered. Scientists recently discovered the species on the Diego Ramírez Islands, off the southern tip of South America.

With the world experiencing more extreme weather due to climate change, landscapes are being altered and ecosystems are having to respond quickly. So which species are going to struggle and which are going to fare relatively well as extended droughts, heavy rains and floods reshape the world’s terrain? In a new study, biologists Christie Le […]

Extreme heat in Kases last month killed so many cattle that carcases were dumped in landfills or buried in unlined graves, Reuters reports. Normally processed as pet food or fertilizer, the 2,117 cows that died from heat exhaustion the weekend of June 11 overwhelmed standard operating procedures. Burying cattle in unlined pits is a risky option and last resort because of the potential for waste to seep into groundwater.

Humans share 98.7 percent of their DNA with two species of endangered great apes: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Bonobos — which can only be found in forested regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), south of the Congo River — differ from chimpanzees in appearance and behavior. They are usually smaller, and their societal groups are led by females and are generally more peaceful.