Category Archives: Animals

A rare parasite is killing California sea otters – is cat poop runoff to blame?

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The bodies of four furry swimmers tested positive for a strain of toxoplasmosis first seen in mountain lions

Scientist Melissa Miller was seeing something in California sea otters that she had not seen before: an unusually severe form of toxoplasmosis, which officials have confirmed has killed at least four of the animals.

“We wanted to get the word out. We’re seeing something we haven’t seen before, we want people to know about it and we want people working on marine mammals to be aware of these weird findings,” said Miller, a wildlife veterinarian specialist with the California department of fish and wildlife (DFW). “Take extra precautions.”

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Two tigers briefly missing after Georgia zoo damaged by tornado

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The Pine Mountain Animal Safari lost two of its big cats after it sustained weather damage, but found them a few hours later

Two tigers briefly went missing from a Georgia zoo after a tornado struck the state on Saturday night and damaged the facility’s infrastructure.

In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, the Troup county’s sheriff’s office announced that it received a report from the Pine Mountain Animal Safari that a “tiger … is unaccounted for inside the park”.

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‘Spectacular’ spiny crayfish samples rec amid Lismore floods key to mapping species

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Australia Museum says 20-year-old collection will help understand and conserve threatened animals, which are sensitive to climate change

As floods devastated Lismore, a group of ecologists waited anxiously for a break in the weather so they could move an important scientific collection of “spectacular” spiny crayfish to a new home at the Australian Museum.

The samples of the crayfish were collected more than 20 years ago from deep within the rainforests of north-eastern NSW and southern Queensland by Dr Jason Coughran, a freshwater ecologist.

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Pets could be gene-edited under new English law, says RSPCA

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Act opens door to technology being used to create cats and dogs with extreme features, says charity

Pets could be subjected to gene editing under a new government act, the RSPCA has warned.

The animal charity has said that the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act applies to all vertebrate animals, not only farmed animals, and that it could lead to cats and dogs being gene-edited to include extreme features.

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Escaped cow that tore through Brooklyn finds home at sanctuary

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Canarsie cow to meet fellow celebrity escapees at rescue center where animals live on vast pasture: ‘She’ll be ecstatic’

It’s been one hell of a week for the Canarsie cow, a black angus calf who started this week on her way to a slaughterhouse and will end it settling into her new home on a New Jersey farm.

After she escaped a truck hauling her from a Pennsylvania farm to certain death at Saba Live Poultry in Canarsie, Brooklyn, she went on a rampage through the streets. Slaughterhouse employees and workers at a nearby pizza shop tried to catch up with her, in a chase that lasted several minutes.

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A team of vets, four ‘kumki’ and one tranquilliser dart: the plan to capture Kerala’s marauding elephant

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Known as ‘Rice Tusker’ for his insatiable hunger, the 30-year-old pachyderm has been terrorising the Indian region for years

The trail of destruction left by an elephant in Kerala could finally come to an end on Sunday as a crack team of experts plan to capture him.

The team of 71 vets, forest officers and field workers have identified a specific spot among the wooded hills in Idukki district where Arikompan – which means the Rice Tusker, because of his love for rice – comes every couple of days to cool off in water.

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Zebra captured after three hours on the run in Seoul

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Animal, which is thought to have broken out of its zoo enclosure, was tranquillised after being on the loose in South Korean capital

A young zebra walked, trotted and galloped for hours through the busy streets of Seoul before emergency workers tranquillised the animal and brought it back to a zoo.

The zebra – a male named Sero who was born in the zoo in 2021 – was in a stable condition and being examined by veterinarians on Thursday evening, said Choi Ye-ra, an official at the Children’s Grand Park in South Korea’s capital.

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Burrowing badgers halt train services in the Netherlands

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Dutch authorities try to tempt out animals, which dig setts under quiet and raised train embankments

Leaves on the tracks, signal failures and strikes can all cause train delay headaches, but commuters in the Netherlands are facing railway havoc caused by badgers burrowing under the lines, with authorities struggling to tempt the protected animals out.

In the densely populated country, there is limited natural space for the country’s 7,000 badgers. They often dig out their homes, or setts, under relatively “quiet” train embankments, which are ideally situated away from people and also slightly raised, which prevents the sett from flooding.

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World’s biggest single eradication operation aims to remove mice from island

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Invasive house mice threaten endangered seabirds and wildlife on Marion Island in Indian Ocean

Non-native house mice are to be removed from Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean to protect the wandering albatross and other endangered seabirds, in the world’s largest eradication programme of its kind.

Mice accidentally introduced on to the remote island by 19th-century seal hunters have thrived in warmer and drier conditions over the past 30 years, devastating the island’s invertebrates and plants, and then devouring the chicks and even adults of ground- and burrow-nesting seabirds.

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Fate of 1,000 trafficked lab monkeys at center of US investigation in limbo

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Long-tailed macaques at risk of being killed, or laundered or re-trafficked if returned to Cambodia, animal welfare groups say

More than a thousand Cambodian monkeys at the center of a US government investigation into wildlife trafficking are at risk of being killed or returned to their country of origin, laundered and re-trafficked, animal welfare groups say.

The monkeys’ plight first came to light last year when the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asked the animal rights organization Peta about finding a sanctuary for 360 monkeys. Born Free USA, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) later joined the discussions and the number of monkeys increased to over 1,000 as talks progressed.

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Rare 6ft shark washed up then decapitated on Hampshire beach

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Historian Dan Snow pleads for person to come forward who removed head from animal washed up on Lepe beach

An appeal has been launched to recover the head of a rare smalltooth sand tiger shark after the fish was washed up on a Hampshire beach.

The 2 metre (6ft) long shark was initially found on Lepe beach on Friday.

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Knock, knock, who’s there? Alligator bites Florida man after he opens door

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Scot Hollingsworth of Daytona Beach said he heard a noise and after opening door was bitten by 9ft alligator on the thigh

A Florida man answering a knock at his front door was promptly bitten by a 9ft long alligator when he opened it to see who was there.

Scot Hollingsworth, of Daytona Beach, told local TV station WKMG that he was watching TV with his wife when he heard a bump at the door and got up to investigate.

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Breeding birds in captivity may alter their wing shapes and reduce post-release survival chances

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Research into critically endangered orange-bellied parrot finds 1mm difference in length of one feather is enough to reduce survival rate by 2.7 times

Breeding in captivity can alter birds’ wing shapes, reducing their chances of surviving migratory flights when they are released to the wild, new research suggests.

A study of the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot has found that in captive-bred birds, those with altered wing shapes had a survival rate 2.7 times lower than those born with wings close to an ideal “wild type” wing.

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‘Send a chopper’: zebra almost bites farmer’s arm off in Ohio

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Stallion zebra, which was behaving ‘erratically’, shot dead by police after attacking Ronald Clifton, 72

A midwestern farmer called emergency services, shouting: “Come before it gets me again!” after he was attacked by his pet zebra at a farm in Circleville, Ohio.

The zebra, which bit Ronald Clifton, 72, on the arm, partially severing it, was the only stallion in a small herd of four or five mares.

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Toronto dog owners bite back after city posts ‘no barking’ sign at pooch park

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City called off its dogs and said it would review its sign approval process after canine owners called the prohibition ‘lunacy’

Officials in Canada’s most populous city have their tails between their legs after they were forced to call off an effort to stop dogs barking in local parks.

Inhabitants of Toronto are grudgingly accustomed to a daily soundtrack of city life: gridlocked traffic, rumbling trucks, heavy machinery and noisy neighbours.

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‘Alligators don’t make good pets, y’all’: Texas zoo rescues reptile stolen as egg

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Woman who did not have a permit to keep alligator as a pet confessed to taking an egg from zoo near Austin 20 years ago

A Texas zoo said it had taken back an 8ft alligator which was stolen as an egg more than 20 years ago, then kept as a backyard pet.

In an Instagram post accompanying footage of three agents gingerly lifting the alligator into a truck and releasing it into a zoo enclosure, the state parks and wildlife department said: “Alligators don’t make good pets, y’all.”

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HelloFresh drops Thai coconut milk after Peta monkey labour campaign

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Thai government rejects Peta’s claims, saying the practice of using monkeys to harvest is rarely used in industry

The meal kit provider HelloFresh has said it will no longer sell coconut milk sourced from Thailand, after campaigning by an animal rights group that accused coconut farms in the country of using monkey labour.

The company confirmed to Axios that it does not tolerate “any form of animal abuse in our supply chain” and “out of an abundance of caution” will not be placing orders for coconut milk from Thailand. HelloFresh has not yet responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

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Beloved California mountain lion P-22 laid to rest in tribal burial

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Mountain lion or cougar, who made his home in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park, was put down in December after illness and injury

Tribal leaders, scientists and conservation advocates buried southern California’s most famous mountain lion Saturday in the mountains where the big cat once roamed.

After making his home in the urban Griffith Park – home of the Hollywood sign – for the past decade, P-22 became a symbol for California’s endangered mountain lions and their decreasing genetic diversity. The mountain lion’s name comes from being the 22nd puma in a National Park Service study.

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Florence and her cubs give hope that west African lion can come roaring back

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National park in Senegal shows off three surprise new recruits in fight to save critically endangered species from extinction

A lioness in one of the world’s rarest lion populations has given birth to three cubs, new video footage shows, raising hopes that the critically endangered big cat can be saved from extinction.

In contrast to their southern cousins, west African lions have almost completely disappeared. Scientists believe between 120 and 374 remain in the wild, their historic range reduced to four populations clinging on in Nigeria, Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso.

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Last of Iran’s endangered Asiatic cheetah cubs in captivity dies

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Authorities announce death of cub named Pirouz from kidney failure at veterinary hospital in Tehran

The last survivor of three critically endangered Asiatic cheetah cubs born in captivity in Iran has died in hospital from kidney failure.

Pirouz, who was admitted to the Central veterinary hospital due to kidney failure last Thursday, died after undergoing dialysis, the official IRNA news agency said.

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