André Mendonça pops open the spring-loaded door on the shoebox-sized trap and peeks inside. Two bulging, black eyes glare back at him. He pulls the trap off the tree limb and shakes the stunned, sopping wet creature into a clear plastic bag. “One more!” he says excitedly. The animal, a gracile mouse opossum (Gracilinanus agilis), […]
Category: News
Is the end of ‘house of horror’ bear bile factories in sight?
If we grant bears any modicum of intelligence or emotional experience, if we grant them the capacity to suffer pain or mental anguish, then bear bile farming – which houses bears in tiny cages for the breadth of their life in order to repeatedly extract their bile – poses a whole slew of ethical questions. […]
Being more colorful found to be disadvantage for female plover
A team of researchers working in Australia has found that bright coloring on female birds appears to be a reproductive disadvantage. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the team describes how they tested predation of red-capped plover eggs and discovered that enhanced coloring by the parent tending the nest, made […]
Colorful New ‘Dwarf Dragons’ Found in South America
Attention Game of Thrones: Three new species of “dwarf dragon” have been discovered in Peru and Ecuador, a new study says. Due to political unrest in Ecuador, it took nearly a decade for scientists to identify the reptiles, which are commonly called wood lizards. They are the Alto Tambo wood lizard (Enyalioides altotambo), rough-scaled wood […]
Texas man who won hunting auction to be allowed to import black rhino trophy
The US government will allow a Texas man to import the trophy of an endangered black rhinoceros if he kills one in Africa as part of a conservation fundraiser. The US Fish and Wildlife Service said on Thursday that importing a carcass from Namibia meets criteria under the Endangered Species Act of benefiting conservation. Corey […]
Halloween in the Amazon: baby bird dresses up like killer caterpillar
“Mama, I wanna be a toxic caterpillar,” says the little bird. “Okay,” mamma answers, “but first you gotta study your Batesian mimicry.” Meet the cinereous mourner (Laniocera hypopyrra), an ash-colored, Amazonian bird that looks rather hum-drum compared to many other birds found in the region (hence it’s name ‘cinereous’ which comes from the Latin meaning […]
Stalking the sweet-singing, reclusive wood thrush
The wood thrush’s song is one of the most beautiful among eastern birds, and its flute-like warble is one of the reasons Vitek Jirinec picked this species to study. “It’s a charismatic species,” he said. “Even the lay public knows about wood thrushes because of their beautiful song. Oftentimes its song is described as the […]
RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch confirms many species still declining
The number of backyard researchers in the world’s biggest citizen science survey was up this year, but participants found populations of many bird species continued to decline. More than 585,000 people took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. The survey took place over a January weekend, as it has for the past 36 […]