Mammals
How Many Ugandan Mountain Gorillas?
Mountain gorillas are rare and endangered, and they have the misfortune to live in a part of the world wracked by human violence. In the magazine in 2007, we focused on the gorillas of Congo and Rwanda, giving little attention to the 350 living in neighboring Uganda. But the Ugandan gorillas may no...
January 22, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The White House’s First Celebrity Dog
Bo, the Obama’s First Pooch, has a legacy to live up to in Laddie Boy, the family pet of President Harding
January 22, 2009 |
By Diane Tedeschi
Picture of the Week—Baby Gorilla
Did you hear? A western lowland gorilla named Mandara gave birth last Saturday at Smithsonian’s National Zoo. The little one (gender to be determined) is Mandara’s sixth baby and marks the seventh successful gorilla birth at the zoo since 1991.Our sister blog Around the Mall has all the details. Yo...
January 16, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Happens When You Remove the Cats From a Rabbit-Laden Island?
Australians of European descent might be forgiven for thinking they could turn the continent into another Europe. Admittedly, there are regions that appear familiar to residents of the northern hemisphere. The rolling fields just west of the Blue Mountains, a bit more than an hour from Sydney, for ...
January 13, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Some Whispering Bats Might Need a New Name
These whispering bats never really whispered. Their echolocations were thought to be about 70 decibels, about the level of sound coming from regular speaking. But when two scientists measured the calls from a couple of species—the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) and the long-legged bat (M...
December 15, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Primatologist’s Prison Sentence Commuted
Dutch-born primatologist and Amazon adventurer Marc van Roosmalen was convicted last year in Brazil of illegal wildlife trafficking and theft of government property. (We told his story in a February article, Trials of a Primatologist.) He was sentenced to 14 years and 3 months in prison but was fre...
December 03, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Mountain Gorilla Rangers Negotiate Safe Passage in Congo
One of the first Smithsonian articles I worked on was last year’s Guerrillas in Their Midst, about the endangered mountain gorillas of Rwanda and Congo. Though the animals in Rwanda appeared to be doing well and supporting a thriving tourism business, the story in Virunga National Park in Congo was...
November 25, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
When Will There Be Herds of Mammoths?
With the announcement that the woolly mammoth genome has been sequenced, it seems natural to ask when we will finally see live mammoths. Since Jurassic Park, we've been tantalized by “promising” research that could some day soon lead to resurrecting long-extinct creatures. We even featured one of t...
November 19, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Sabertooth Cat: More Like a Lion or a House Cat?
It is difficult to figure out the behaviors of an animal that lived thousands—or millions—of years ago when all you have are its fossilized bones
November 18, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
And the Next Species Predicted to Be Lost to Climate Change is…
…the antilopine wallaroo, a type of kangaroo that lives in wet, tropical areas of Australia.Two researchers at James Cook University (reporting in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology) used computer models and field observations to predict how the geographic ranges of four kangaroo species would c...
November 17, 2008 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Things Are Looking Up for Niger’s Wild Giraffes
Wild giraffes are making a comeback despite having to compete for resources with some of the world's poorest people
November 2008 |
By Jennifer Margulis
True to Form
An exact replica represents a particular North Atlantic whale
September 2008 |
By Owen Edwards
A Wildlife Mystery in Vietnam
The discovery of the saola alerted scientists to the strange diversity of Southeast Asia's threatened forests
August 2008 |
By Richard Stone
On the Evolutionary Gold Mine Down Under
What the platypus and other Australian species reveal about genetics
August 01, 2008 |
By Dina Modianot-Fox
The Great Human Migration
Why humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world
July 2008 |
By Guy Gugliotta
Who's Laughing Now?
Long maligned as nasty scavengers, hyenas turn out to be protective parents and accomplished hunters
May 2008 |
By Steve Kemper
Muskrat Love
An annual festival on Maryland’s Eastern Shore celebrates an unlikely mascot
April 21, 2008 |
By Abigail Tucker
Befriending Luna the Killer Whale
How a popular Smithsonian story about a stranded orca led to a new documentary about humanity’s link to wild animals
April 14, 2008 |
By Kenneth R. Fletcher
Return of the Beasts
Elephant seals descend on California beaches for breeding season
March 17, 2008 |
By Andrew Curry
