The pintail could be the latest addition to wildfowl conservation priorities after new figures from WWT and others show numbers have fallen by more than half since 2006. The findings are published in Waterbirds in the UK, the annual report of the Wetland Bird Survey, which counts all waterbirds on the UK’s major wetlands. Pintail […]
Category: News
Secret language of penguins decoded (video)
African penguins communicate feelings such as hunger, anger and loneliness through six distinctive vocal calls, according to scientists who have observed the birds’ behaviour in captivity. The calls of the “jackass” penguin were identified by researchers at the University of Turin, Italy. Four are exclusive to adults and two are exclusive to juveniles and chicks. […]
Over a million pangolins slaughtered in the last decade
All pangolins now threatened with extinction, and two considered Critically Endangered. One of the world’s most bizarre animal groups is now at risk of complete eradication, according to an update of the IUCN Red List. Pangolins, which look and behave similarly to (scaly) anteaters yet are unrelated, are being illegally consumed out of existence due […]
Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus: Feathered Herbivorous Dinosaur Discovered
Dr Pascal Godefroit, a paleontologist with the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, and his colleagues have discovered the fossilized remains of a feathered plant-eating dinosaur that lived in the lake-dotted lowlands of Jurassic Siberia, between 169 and 144 million years ago. Previously only carnivorous dinosaurs were known to have had feathers so […]
Wading birds declining in the UK (Photos)
The magical wildlife spectacle of hundreds of thousands of wading birds converging on British estuaries could be under threat as research shows big declines in some of the most familiar species. Results from the Wetland Bird Survey reveals that ringed plovers, oystercatchers, redshank and dunlin are among the eight most abundant species overwintering on UK […]
87 new bird species considered threatened with extinction
Scientists have added 361 new bird species to the IUCN Red List following a major taxonomic review of non-passerine birds, i.e. non-perching or non-songbirds. Worryingly, 87 of these new birds are threatened with extinction, a percentage nearly double the overall threatened percentage for all birds, which currently sits at 13 percent. Many of these new […]
Tuco-Tuco: Four New Species of Gopher-Like Mammal Discovered in Bolivia
A multinational group of scientists headed by Dr Scott Gardner of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has described four new species of burrowing rodents from the South American genus Ctenomys. Commonly called tuco-tucos, these rodents are members of the family Octodontidae, although they are sometimes classified in their own family – Ctenomyidae. Their name is derived from […]
Monkeys use field scientists as human shields against predators
If you’re monkey—say a samango monkey in South Africa—probably the last thing you want is to be torn apart and eaten by a leopard or a caracal. In fact, you probably spend a lot of time and energy working to avoid such a grisly fate. Well, now there’s a simpler way: just stick close to […]