Mammals
Why Some Kitties Meow and Others Roar
Members of the cat family (Felidae) are nearly all lone creatures and use meows and roars to communicate to potential mates over long distances. (Lions are the exceptions; they're the only social kitty species.) Scientists have wondered why some calls are high pitched—like your housecat's meow—or d...
September 27, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Florida Panthers Helped by Texas Cats
Call them panthers, mountain lions, cougars or pumas, the Americas' largest cat species has been dwindling in eastern North America for hundreds of years. They were extirpated from everywhere but some shrinking habitat in Florida between Naples and Miami. And even there, the panthers were not doing...
September 24, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hares Can Get Pregnant While Pregnant
The idea that you could conceive a second pregnancy while already pregnant is definitely weird (and probably creepy for any woman in her last trimester). This is all but impossible in humans, but what about other species? Aristotle suggested more than two thousand years ago that the hare—the rabbit...
September 23, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Wildebeest Migration Threatened
The annual wildebeest migration through Tanzania and Kenya is one of the world's greatest animal wonders. Some 1.2 million animals loop through the Serengeti and Masai Mara reserves, following the rain and the grass. Photographer Suzi Eszterhas documented the migration over a period of several year...
September 03, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Sport of Camel Jumping
In the deserts of Yemen, Zaraniq tribesmen compete to leap camels in a single bound
September 2010 |
By Brandon Springer
Thinking Like a Chimpanzee
Tetsuro Matsuzawa has spent 30 years studying our closest primate relative to better understand the human mind
September 2010 |
By Jon Cohen
Catnip's Effect on Big (and Little) Cats
Though we may call catnip "kitty crack," the herb is non-addictive and isn't even a drug (so it's perfectly safe to give to your kitty, big or small). But how does it work? And why doesn't it have any effect on humans?Catnip comes from plants of the Nepeta genus. These plants are a type of mint and...
August 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Monkeynomics Can Tell Us About Us
A couple of years ago, the magazine profiled Yale psychologist and primate researcher Laurie Santos and her work studying a colony of rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico (read "Thinking Like a Monkey").She has built a growing and impressive list of publications ...
August 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rising Seas Endanger Wetland Wildlife
For scientists in a remote corner of coastal North Carolina, ignoring global warming is not an option
August 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
Koalas and Kangaroos Have South American Roots
Many of the poster animals of Australia—kangaroos, koalas, wombats and wallabies, to name a few—are marsupials, animals best known for carrying around their young in a pouch. Marsupials can also be found in the Americas; in the United States, the Virginia opossum is the only one, but there are doze...
July 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
On the Trail of Elephants in Mali and Kenya
Most of us use our GPS to navigate the freeways and city streets. But in Mali and Kenya, zoologist Iain Douglas-Hamilton has put global positioning to a far more interesting use—tracking elephants.Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, has weathered droughts, floods and even rhino attacks...
July 26, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
50 Years of Chimpanzee Discoveries at Gombe
Fifty years ago today, Jane Goodall arrived at Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in Tanzania and began documenting the lives of the chimpanzees that lived there. When Goodall ended her fieldwork to advocate for the chimps and the environment in general, other researchers too...
July 14, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Animal Hybrids: Ligers and Tigons and Pizzly Bears, Oh My!
Let's face it. Centaurs, chimeras, griffins, the Little Mermaid, the Thunder Cats and all those cool hybrid creatures from Avatar: The Last Airbender are just legends and fantasies. And Peter Parker remains the only human, as of yet, to gain super-powers from a radioactive spider. Sigh.But human fa...
July 07, 2010 |
By Brandon Springer
Is That Man a Bonobo or a Chimp?
Bonobos and chimpanzees may look alike, but behaviorally they are very different. Chimps are aggressive and warlike, and males dominate. Bonobos are more peaceful and tolerant and females rule. These two primate species are our closest living relatives (we share nearly 99 percent of our DNA), and h...
June 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dolphins Are Efficient Eaters
If you had to catch all of your food, would you go after anything and everything that came across your path? Or would you wait for the bigger payoff? Squirrels and bunnies or deer and bear?Dolphins go for the marine version of option B, preferring to eat only high-energy fish, according to a new st...
June 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir
I once told a friend about bonobos—"they're like chimpanzees," I said, "but they're peaceful and have sex all the time"—and he thought I was making them up. My computer doesn't think they exist either; it suggests alternative spellings including "bonbons" and "bongos." Bonobos are our closest livin...
May 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
For Wildebeests, Danger Ahead
Africa's wildebeest migration pits a million thundering animals against a gantlet of perils, even—some experts fear—climate change
May 2010 |
By Robert M. Poole
Famous Animal Gravesites Around the World
It's not just Kentucky Derby winners that are buried with great honor
April 28, 2010 |
By Robin T. Reid
The Animals, Vegetables and Minerals of the States
Wisconsin legislators last week voted on a new state symbol; the official state microbe is now Lactococcus lactis, the bacterium used to make cheddar, Colby and Monterey Jack cheeses. As far as I can tell, Wisconsin will be the first state to declare an official state microbe. Plenty of states have...
April 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Cute Quolls Taught to Dislike Toads
The northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus) is an adorable little nocturnal marsupial about the size of a cat. It lives in northern Australia and eats fruit, insects, lizards, small mammals and toads. But the quoll's toad-loving habits are driving the species towards extinction.Cane toads (Bufo marinu...
April 14, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
