Animals

Playing Outside Enhances Kids’ Love of Nature and Animals

Exposure to the great outdoors could also influence kids' ideas about the importance of conservation

Papa Mongooses Learn Not to Try So Hard When Raising Babies

If father mongooses push themselves to extremes raising young, then they won't work as hard the next time around

Offshore Wind Farms Offer Seals a Smorgasbord of Fish

Wind farms could intentionally be fashioned into artificial reefs to further increase their value to wildlife

Spider Silk is a Fine-Tuned Alert System

Web fibers can send a wide range of messages

The equivalent caloric amount of chicken, pork or eggs would represent an order of magnitude less greenhouse gas emissions than what was required to produce this beef.

Raising Beef Uses Ten Times More Resources Than Poultry, Dairy, Eggs or Pork

If you want to help the planet but can’t bring yourself to give up meat entirely, eliminating beef from your diet is the next-best thing

Suburban Skunks are on the Rise

Grand Rapids, Michigan, is basically enveloped in a cloud of stink

In Microgravity, Some Snakes Tie Themselves in Knots, Others Attack Themselves

Some animals just don't know how to deal when gravity goes away

Researchers are Tracking House Cats with Tiny Harnesses

GPS measurements and collar cameras will tell them where, exactly, kitty goes all day

Borneo Has Lost 30 Percent of Its Forest in the Past 40 Years

Borneo's tropical forests have fallen at twice the rate as the rest of the world's felled rainforests

Baby Turtles Coordinate Hatching By Talking to One Another Through Their Egg Shells

A number of turtle species make sounds, but this is the first evidence that babies do so before they've even hatched

Elusive Indus River dolphins.

Why Freshwater Dolphins Are Some of the World’s Most Endangered Mammals

In Pakistan, dams and drainage has reduced the endangered Indus River dolphin’s range by 80 percent

Tiger skins confiscated in Yunnan, China.

China Finally Came Clean About Its Shady Tiger Skin Trade

Whether or not this will improve the situation for tigers, however, remains to be seen

A Deadly Fungus Is Wiping Out Frogs and Toads—But Some Can Develop Resistance

Scientists hope it might be possible to develop a vaccine to the fungus, based on the frog and toad's immunity

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Watch the Unnerving Gait of This 410 Million-Year-Old Arachnid

Working from well-preserved fossils, paleontologists reproduced the trigonotarbids' walk

Finger coral's fatness and indiscretion when it comes to algal partners gives it an edge in warming waters.

Fat Corals Fare Best As Climate Changes

Corals with significant energy reserves that welcome all types of symbiotic algae species won’t easily die if hit with multiple bleaching events

Is this the face of a cold-blooded man-eater?

14 Fun Facts About Piranhas

They're not cute and cuddly, but they may be misunderstood, and scientists are rewriting the fish’s fearsome stereotype

A group of Chilean devil rays basking in shallow waters around an underwater mountain near the Azores.

Chilean Devil Rays Found to Be Among the Deepest-Diving Animals in the Ocean

The surface-dwelling marine creatures regularly dive more than one mile deep, scientists find

UNESCO Just Announced the 1000th World Heritage Site

Botswana's lush Okavango Delta claims the slot

Great Spotted Cuckoo

Cuckoos Don't Sneak Into Other Birds' Nests—They Barge Right In

Cuckoos don't just make other bird's raise their young, they lay their eggs while the other bird is in the nest

Harry Rossoll, who drew a popular "Smokey Says" newspaper cartoon in the mid-1940s, modeled his sketches after the campaign hat he wore as a member of the United States Forest Service.

Before Pharrell, Smokey Bear Donned This Now-Trendy Hat As a Symbol of Fire Safety

This is the story of Smokey Bear's hat, and how it was lost—twice—before finally joining the collections at the Smithsonian

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