Category archives for Animals
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Vampire bats can identify other bats by their voices—just like people, a new study says.
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Ancient water below Canadian gold mines may offer new clues about evolution—and new life forms here on Earth.
“The Woman With the iPad” Disrupts Epic Mountain Gorilla Trek
Posted by Guest Blogger on May 16, 2013 
By Doris Schaffer After flying to Uganda, making my way to Rwanda, and actually trekking twice to visit mountain gorillas, I thought I’d be writing a travelogue describing the lush country of a thousand hills and the difficulty of getting to the gorilla habitats. I was certain I’d be explaining that mountain gorillas are endangered…
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The top 10 stories on our radar today: Scientists have created stem cells from cloned human embryos, 1.5-billion-year-old water has been found in a deep Canadian mine, and…
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Without hard proof, many great adventures from the past stand the risk of being ignored and ultimately forgotten.
Photographer and lizard expert Neil Losin sets the stage for this year’s BioBlitz, a 24-hour exploration of the wilderness outside of New Orleans.
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The London Zoo recently put out a call to collectors that doubled as the animal version of a personals ad. The zoo was looking for females of the Mangarahara cichlid, a species of fish so rare that none are thought to exist in the wild, and one that is in critical danger of going extinct…
The top 10 stories on our radar today: The citizens of a small town in Alaska have become America’s first refugees displaced by climate change, a new species of pit viper has been discovered in Honduras, and…
The top 10 headlines on our radar today: A new planet has been discovered thanks to Einstein’s relativity theory, new research suggests that humans’ middle ear bones evolved early, and…
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The greater wax moth evolved to hear better than any animal on Earth—all to avoid their nemesis, the bat, a new study says.
Female spiders are usually thought of as femme fatales—but male spiders of some species also eat their mates, a new study says.
The top 10 stories on our radar today: Researchers have pinpointed the bacteria responsible for mass deaths in the 6th century, the UN suggests people should eat more bugs, and…
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Part 2… A breath-taking collection of wild bird photographs that will make you dream and fill you with wonder. How can we imagine a world without the freedom and color of birds in the wild? The most diverse, most beautiful places on earth to see wild birds are all threatened by mining, agriculture and the…
We were unable to post the “Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week” last month due to work in the field and limited internet access. Here are the first 25 of a collection of 50 wild bird photographs submitted to the Wild Bird Trust in April… Absolutely stunning photography that gets ever closer to…
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Bass fishing in the American Southeast may have just gotten a little bit more complicated. According to a release filed this week, biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) would like to name a new species of black bass, the Choctaw bass, or Micropterus haiaka. In 2007, FWC scientists found an unusual DNA…
The top 10 headlines on our radar today: Astronauts are dealing with a dangerous leak on the International Space Station, stunning timelapses of Earth show how the planet has changed in the last few decades, and…
Once a Smelly Nuisance, Mexicali’s Wastewater Now Brings Life to the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 9, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. If there is one place that transforms wastewater from trouble-maker to life-saver it’s the site of Las Arenitas sewage treatment plant in the Mexican state of Baja California. There, nasty urban wastewater that once made a smelly health hazard of the New River near…
The top 10 stories on our radar today: Scientists discover that a moth has the best hearing in the animal kingdom, geologists study the mystery behind Earth’s ‘eternal flames,’ and…
Dead or Alive: The Promise of Tourism for Shark Conservation
Posted by IZILWANE on May 8, 2013 When many people hear the words shark and tourism in the same sentence, the first thing they think of is how to avoid these creatures of the deep. The second thing is the ubiquitous image of a small diver in a shark cage, coming face-to-face with a great white in a caricature of what these…
Extreme size differences among animal sexes might give a matchmaker pause, but make good evolutionary sense, according to an author of a new book.
Explore the wilderness with us… This week we share the “golden wilderness”! The rich colors and textures of the wild can never be replaced or surpassed. Within the next 10-15 years we will see the last-remaining wilderness area on earth dominated by the demands of growing human populations and undermined by accelerated climate change. When…
The top 10 news stories on our radar today: A new dome-skulled dinosaur has been found in Canada, scientists have discovered what’s been dubbed a potential “Brazilian Atlantis,” and…
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Finding tadpoles of the Príncipe Giant Treefrog will help identify what types of habitat this endemic species relies on, but after many years of searching for them, finding these elusive tadpoles has also become a matter of personal pride.
Posted by Fishing for shad on the Potomac River at Fletcher’s Boathouse is a spring tradition for many Washington-area anglers, including me. As a food source for larger fish, birds of prey, and other animals, shad provide a great example of the interconnectedness of nature—which for decades hasn’t received enough attention from fisheries managers. Although we’ve made…
The top 10 news stories on our radar today: A volcano in the Philippines has erupted and taken the lives of at least five people, NASA telescopes caught a glimpse of the most powerful star explosion ever seen, and…
