Category Archives: Animals

‘The most exclusive guest’: rare yellow-billed loon lands in Las Vegas fountain

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Bird – one of the 10 rarest in the US – caused the fountain display at the Bellagio hotel and casino to be switched off

A rare yellow-billed loon – a bird more common to the high Arctic tundra in the summer that strays south of Canadian border in only small numbers – has caused a fountain display in Las Vegas, Nevada, to be switched off.

The yellow-billed loon, with a similarly haunting call to the smaller, more abundant common loon, was spotted in the fountains of the Bellagio hotel and casino, causing hotel management to call off the propulsive displays of water.

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‘Haven’t seen anything like it’: shock as great white shark washes up on NSW beach

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Four-metre shark euthanised after becoming beached on shore at Kingscliff on Tweed Coast

A great white shark washed up on to a beach on the New South Wales north coast, shocking locals and attracting a crowd of beachgoers.

The 4m shark was seen swimming close to shore near Kingscliff beach on the Tweed Coast on Monday morning, with lifeguards tracking its progress until it was beached.

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Guinea pig abandoned at London tube station with note asking for new owner

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RSPCA take in young rodent after Canning Town staff discover cage in alleyway

A guinea pig has been found abandoned outside an east London tube station, with a note reading: “I need a new owner.”

Staff at Canning Town station discovered the animal, which has been named DiscoPig, alone inside a cage with the piece of paper taped to it.

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Single orca seen killing great white shark off South African coast

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Attack on juvenile is thought to be first known time a lone orca has hunted down a great white

It is a smash and grab that has stunned scientists: in less than two minutes, a killer whale attacked and consumed a great white shark before swimming off with the victim’s liver in its mouth.

Experts say the event off the coast of Mossel Bay in South Africa offers new insights into the predatory behaviour of orcas.

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Pigs don’t fly: Louisiana piglet rescued after being thrown in Mardi Gras

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Lieutenant governor ‘pardons’ animal and Republican local politician adopts it after it’s saved in New Orleans

A piglet that was rescued after being tossed like a football near a Mardi Gras event in New Orleans was “pardoned” on Wednesday and has found a permanent home with a Louisiana lawmaker.

The weeks-old pig – dubbed Earl “Piglet” Long, a play on the name of the 45th governor of Louisiana – was ceremoniously pardoned by the lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser, on the Louisiana capitol steps.

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‘Joyful madness’: ANU scientist wins global prize for ‘dancing his PhD’ about kangaroos

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Four-minute video features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer and a bunch of friends from Canberra

The former Canberra scientist Dr Weliton Menário Costa said it “felt like winning Eurovision” when he learned he had won the global “Dance Your PhD” competition, for his quirky interpretive take on kangaroo behaviour.

His four-minute video titled Kangaroo Time features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer, and a bunch of friends Costa acquired from his time studying at the Australian National University.

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Flaco, New York City’s beloved owl, dies after striking building

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The bird escaped last year after vandals damaged his enclosure at Central Park Zoo

The Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco, which escaped New York City’s Central Park Zoo last year, has died after crashing into a building in Manhattan, officials said late on Friday.

Flaco went down after striking a building on West 89th Street and people reported the injured owl to the Wild Bird Fund (WBF), a statement from the Central Park Zoo said. WBF staffers soon found Flaco unresponsive and pronounced him dead at the scene.

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‘It was a big cat’: claimed Cumbrian leopard sighting fails to convince experts

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Research from the Royal Agricultural University suggests possible big cat presence in the UK, but others say evidence is flimsy

When you think of four-legged British wildlife, the first animal that comes to mind may not be a black leopard.

Yet that is exactly what Sharon Larkin-Snowden insists she has seen roaming the Cumbrian countryside over the past few months. The 52-year-old part-time construction worker was first told about alleged sightings of the so-called Beast of Cumbria in November, when local farmers noticed “unusual activity” on their land. But it wasn’t until later in the month that she claims to have had her own sighting.

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Cape Town hit by ‘unimaginable’ stench from 19,000 cattle on live export ship

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Animal welfare groups say smell from the build-up of faeces and ammonia on the ship are indicative of the conditions animals endure

Authorities in Cape Town have launched an investigation after a foul stench swept over the South African city.

Officials inspected sewage facilities for leaks and an environmental health team was activated before the source of the smell was discovered: a ship docked in the harbour carrying 19,000 live cattle from Brazil to Iraq.

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Hindu nationalists go to court over lion named after Muslim emperor in India

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Controversy in West Bengal centres around Akbar and Sita, named for a Hindu deity, being placed in the same enclosure

An Indian Hindu nationalist organisation has launched a court petition to stop two lions named after a Hindu deity and a 16th-century Muslim emperor from sharing a zoo enclosure.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a prominent rightwing Hindu organisation, went to court in the state of West Bengal after reports a lioness named Sita had been put with a lion called Akbar.

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British Columbia bids to stop spread of fatal ‘zombie deer disease’

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Chronic wasting disease, which affects deer and other cervids, confirmed in Canada but experts divided over risk to humans

The Canadian province of British Columbia has released a strategy to combat the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) as the virus continues to move across North America.

Officials in the westernmost province this week ordered the testing of any road-killed deer, moose, elk and caribou after two cases were confirmed at the end of January. Both cases – in a mule deer and a white-tailed deer – were found in the Kootenay district. The province also placed restrictions on the movement and disposal of deer in the area.

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Polar bears risk starvation as they face longer ice-free periods in the Arctic

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Bears use ice to access food, but study of animals in Canada shows them struggling to adapt to more time on land amid climate crisis

Polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay risk starvation as the climate crisis lengthens periods without Arctic Sea ice, despite the creatures’ willingness to expand their diets.

Polar bears use the ice that stretches across the ocean surface in the Arctic during colder months to help them access their main source of prey – fatty ringed and bearded seals.

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Airport K9 sniffs out mummified monkeys at Boston airport

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Passenger returning from the DRC said luggage contained dried fish, but inspection revealed four dead monkeys

A US customs and border protection dog has caused a stir at Boston’s often bustling airport after sniffing out something unusual in luggage from a traveler returning from Africa: mummified monkeys.

The passenger returning from a visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported that the luggage contained dried fish. But an inspection at Boston Logan Airport revealed four dead monkeys whose bodies were dehydrated, agents said. The traveler said he brought the monkeys into the US for his own consumption, customs and border patrol spokesperson Ryan Bissette said Sunday.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Fluffy the alligator snapping turtle with ‘nasty bite’ found in Cumbrian tarn

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Dinosaur-like creature that can cut through bone rescued from Urswick Tarn, near Ulverston

It’s been named Fluffy, but its spiky appearance and “nasty bite” means only the brave – or the foolish – would attempt to offer this particular turtle a cuddle.

The dinosaur-like creature, an alligator snapping turtle that can cut bones and is native to swamps and rivers in southern parts of the US, was rescued from a tarn in Cumbria on Monday.

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Sydney’s 90m-year-old climbing galaxias fish may have been wiped out by school building works

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The species can climb waterfalls and reaches back to Gondwanaland – but there are fears polluted runoff has proven fatal

A “miracle fish” may have been snuffed out in its Sydney habitat by bungled construction work at a nearby government high school, local environmentalists fear.

The climbing galaxias (Galaxias brevipinnis) belongs to a species line reaching back to Gondwanaland. It was only identified in the Manly Dam region in Sydney’s north – the fish’s most northerly known location in Australia – in 1998.

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Global shark bite deaths doubled in 2023, with Australia high on the list

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Study finds ‘unprovoked’ attacks were more common for surfers than swimmers

Australia is home to a disproportionate number of deadly shark attacks, with isolated areas carrying a greater risk of fatalities, international research has found.

The 10 fatal attacks globally in 2023 doubled the five in the previous year, with four of last year’s deaths occurring in Australia.

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‘It’s scratching, dude’: US Coast Guard inspectors rescue stowaway dog from shipping container

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During a routine day at the Port of Houston, four marine inspectors heard barking from amid 10,000 containers

It was just another routine day of inspecting shipping containers at the Port of Houston for US Coast Guard officer Ryan McMahon when he and his team thought they heard barking coming from inside one of the thousands of containers that surrounded them.

“Oh, it’s scratching, dude,” one of the inspectors said on a video they recorded Wednesday morning as the team looked up at the container, stacked about 25ft (8 metres) in the air.

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Raccoon plunges parts of Toronto into darkness after mishap at power utility

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Mammal ‘made contact with equipment’, disrupting a subway line and shutting off water in latest escapade of city’s ‘trash pandas’

A lone Toronto raccoon was able to cut power to nearly 7,000 people in the city’s downtown core on Thursday night, highlighting the fraught coexistence between residents of Canada’s largest urban centre and the divisive “trash pandas”.

Hydro One, Ontario’s power utility, said a raccoon “made contact with equipment” at a downtown station on Thursday night, plunging swaths of the city in darkness. The loss of power also temporarily disrupted service on a key subway line and shut off water. Toronto’s fire service said the power outage also left residents trapped inside elevators.

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Warm weather forces moose and wolf count to pause in remote Michigan park

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Researchers have conducted an annual survey of the animals’ population every year since 1958, except in 2021 due to Covid-19

A stretch of unusually warm weather has forced federal officials to temporarily halt researchers’ annual count of wolves and moose in remote Isle Royale national park for the first time in more than six decades.

Isle Royale is a 134,000-acre island situated in far western Lake Superior between Grand Marias, Minnesota, and Thunder Bay, Canada. The Michigan park is a wildlife biologist’s dream – it offers a rare opportunity to observe wolves and moose without human influence.

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Greater glider put on path to extinction by NSW environmental watchdog, experts say

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Ecologists condemn watchdog decision, accusing it of making reckless changes to allow easier logging of state forests containing glider habitat

NSW’s environmental watchdog has put the endangered greater glider on a fast track to extinction by watering down logging protections, experts say.

Ecologists from WWF-Australia and Wilderness Australia have condemned the watchdog, accusing it of making reckless changes so Forestry Corporation can more easily log state forests.

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