Every November, hundreds of hunters descend on four designated wilderness areas in southern Ohio in pursuit of the elusive ruffed grouse. But not this year. Dispersed across an enormous range from the southern Appalachian mountains to Alaska, the ruffed grouse is one of the most popular game birds in North America. But for the first […]
Tag: hunting
New Trump rule allows hunters to bait bears in Alaska with doughnuts, bacon and more
A new Trump administration rule allows hunters to bait bears on federal lands in Alaska with bacon, doughnuts, meat scraps or other human foods typically used to help kill the trophy animals at close range. Opponents say the practice will cause bears to be more aggressive around humans, and allege that the rule change is […]
Why do cats stalk and pounce, rather than chase?
Hunting consumes a huge amount of energy and it is much more calorie-efficient for cats to sit, wait, stalk and pounce rather than travel long distances over difficult terrain. Why do cats stalk and pounce? Feline energy expenditure has been the subject of research by scientists from the University of California. They developed a high-tech […]
Copper boom fueling energy transition puts Earth’s wildlands at risk
In the high Andes of Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, you can still find the vicuña, a shy, elusive camelid, revered by Indigenous people. It has reasons to be cautious of humans. Long-prized for its fine wool, European colonists hunted it relentlessly. Flocks in the millions were reduced to 6,000 individuals by the 1960s. Indigenous-driven […]
“I was dragged into the murk. I clawed at the sand in hope of grabbing a rock to hit it with and pry my leg out from its jaws”
We were in the Jardines de la Reina archipelago off the south coast of Cuba, looking for the mysterious ‘Reina’ – a giant hammerhead that locals said had been spotted around the area. Interested to see if ‘Reina’ was indeed just one large female or in fact many different sharks, I decided to head into […]
Sharks have a deadly secret sixth – and possibly – seventh sense to locate prey — and it’s more terrifying than you think
Sharks have all the senses humans have – along with additional senses that enable them to detect electrical signals and vibrations in the water. Small pores on a shark’s snout, known as ‘ampullae of Lorenzini’, can detect the tiny electrical currents in the water given off by living animals and inanimate objects, such as camera […]
“He was grabbed by its powerful forelimbs. In the ensuing ‘embrace’ he suffered multiple puncture wounds from its razor-sharp foreclaws”
At first, being hugged to death by a giant anteater doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go. It’s up there with being caressed by kittens, nuzzled by lambs or tickled by baby goats. But there’s a catch. You may have seen videos of anteaters standing on their hind legs, arms outstretched as if inviting you […]
“That puzzled us quite a bit.” Scientists found another astonishing thing about narwhals after X-raying their tusks
An international team of researchers has solved the mystery of how narwhal tusks acquire their twisted structure. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Communications. Narwhals are often called the ‘unicorns of the seas’, and not without reason. Back in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the narwhal tusk was often sold as a unicorn horn. The mythical […]