Category Archives: Animals

We are running out of time to reach deal to save natural world, says UN talks chair

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Warning comes amid fears of further delays to Kunming summit, which aims to agree on curbing destruction of ecosystems

The world is running out of time to reach an ambitious deal to stem the destruction of the natural world, the co-chair of negotiations for a crucial UN wildlife summit has warned, amid fears of a third delay to the talks.

Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, in October for Cop15, the biggest biodiversity summit in a decade, to reach a hoped-for Paris-style agreement on preventing wildlife extinctions and the human-driven destruction of the planet’s ecosystems.

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The pig whisperer: the Dutch farmer who wants to end factory farming

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A unique ‘pig toilet’ and a diet of organic leftovers are part of former vet Kees Scheepens’ plans to put animal welfare and sustainability first

“Oma, hoi! Hier! Hallooo,” Dr Kees Scheepens, a Dutch farmer known as the “pig whisperer”, is calling his two oldest pigs for some apricot snacks.

Oma or “granny”, a seven-year-old sow, lives with a Berkshire boar called Borough, who’s nine, off a quiet lane in the town of Oirschot, in the south of the Netherlands, on a farm called Hemelrijken – Dutch for “the realms of heaven”.

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‘Alice the rat was so special’: readers on their brilliant, beloved pet tattoos

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During the pandemic, every pet became an emotional support animal – and many people decided they wanted to commemorate them indelibly and incredibly

Alice was a double rex rat we adopted from the local RSPCA. She was such a special girl and we had a great bond, so she was the natural choice for my first tattoo. Sadly, Alice died earlier this year, so I’m getting a second tattoo in tribute in a couple of weeks, on the spot where she loved to sit.
Sarah, student, Greater Manchester

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Excited, pursuing bear: Florida officials seek unusual urban visitor

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Sightings of black bear continue but state wildlife officials unsuccessful in attempts to trap and relocate it

In a summer’s tale to enthrall inhabitants of the south-western Florida city of Naples, a black bear seen wandering around downtown eluded wildlife officials – even as sightings of the animal continued.

Police said the bear was first spotted in the city on Friday, near 12th Avenue South and 6th Street South. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to trap the bear in hopes of relocating it, the Naples Daily News reported.

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Magawa the mine-sniffing rat in Cambodia retires – video

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Magawa, an African giant pouched rat is retiring from his job sniffing out landmines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia after five years. 'Although still in good health, he has reached a retirement age and is clearly starting to slow down. It is time,' said Apopo, the Belgian nonprofit that trained him

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Frightened terns abandon 3,000 eggs after drone illegally crashes on beach

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Departure marks one of the largest-scale abandonments of eggs ever at coastal site north of San Diego

About 3,000 elegant tern eggs were abandoned at a southern California nesting island after a drone crashed and scared off the birds, a newspaper reported Friday.

Two drones were flown illegally over the Bolsa Chica ecological reserve in Huntington Beach in May and one of them went down in the wetlands, the Orange County Register said.

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Escaped elephants wreak havoc in south-west China – video report

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A herd of 15 elephants have caused destruction in south-west China, including eating fields of corn and smashing up barns, after escaping from Xishuangbanna nature reserve in Yunnan province. On Tuesday, Yunnan authorities said the herd was 12 miles from the provincial capital of Kunming, home to millions of people

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Hundreds of fishing fleets that go ‘dark’ suspected of illegal hunting, study finds

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Vessels primarily from China switch off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in possible illegal fishing

Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.

Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.

Related: Cat and mouse on the high seas: on the trail of China's vast squid fleet

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Escaped elephants leave 500km trail of destruction in China

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Wild herd has wrecked barns and munched its way through fields of crops after absconding from nature reserve in April

A herd of 15 elephants have caused destruction in south-western China, including eating whole fields of corn and smashing up barns, after escaping from a nature reserve in April.

Measures taken to keep migrating #elephants away from residential zones in #Yunnan.
#云南 #野象“旅行团”近日一路北迁，有关部门采取措施全力防范象群迁徙带来的公共安全隐患，确保人象安全。
by 吴歌 via CGTN pic.twitter.com/DDfH26nY2b

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‘A kind of rat with thorns’: the comic book busting myths about the Madras hedgehog

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The elusive nocturnal creature is rarely seen in Tamil Nadu. One ecologist has made it his mission to spread the word through colourful adventures

The brightly coloured panels of Brawin Kumar’s comic book tell the story of how two children rescue a hedgehog from an unlicensed medicine man. The mother hedgehog is delighted to be reunited with her little one, as she has lost most of her offspring to road traffic.

Kumar, an Indian researcher and ecologist, came up with the idea of writing the book in Tamil to create awareness among children who live in and around the Madras hedgehog’s habitat. Many of those children will never have seen the nocturnal creature, which, unlike the British hedgehog, aestivates (lies in a state of torpor or dormancy) in the summer instead of hibernating in the winter.

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Australian scientist discovers ‘chocolate frog’ in New Guinea swamps

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Litoria mira has been declared a new species, despite looking very similar to the Australian green tree frog

An Australian scientist has discovered a new species of frog, the “chocolate frog”, in rainforest swamps of New Guinea.

Steve Richards, a frog specialist at the South Australian Museum, first found the spotted the cocoa-coloured creature in 2016 in incredibly challenging habitat.

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‘Accidental meat’: should carnivores embrace eating roadkill?

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My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?

Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.

Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: “Look, there’s an ’ole in the sky,” as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out.

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Sex-mad and spectacular: 17 incredible facts about cicadas

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Once every 17 years, trillions of cicadas emerge from beneath the ground in the US. They taste like tinned asparagus, are sometimes attracted to power tools – and can number 1.3m an acre

Brood X is upon us. Across the US billions, if not trillions of cicadas have emerged from below the ground, a biblical plague that occurs every 17 years. Gene Kritsky wouldn’t miss it. “This is special,” he says. An entomologist at Mount St Joseph University in Cincinnati, Kritsky has studied periodical cicadas for nearly 40 years. Brood X, the subject of three of his books, holds a particular place in his heart. In the middle of back-to-back interviews during his busiest professional period since 2004 (“It happens, every 17 years”), he found time to share his favourite facts with us.

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‘You care for birds, and they heal you’: film profiles world of a Black falconer

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A new documentary, The Falconer, follows Rodney Stotts, who found fulfillment in working with raptors and inner-city kids

Falconry is a profession with roots in the ancient Middle East and medieval Europe but one of its practitioners is making some history of his own.

Related: I'm a falconer - and there's nothing like watching a bird you trained in action

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‘A huge surprise’ as giant river otter feared extinct in Argentina pops up

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Conservationists thrilled at the sighting of the wild predator, last seen in the country in the 1980s

“It was a huge surprise,” said Sebastián Di Martino, director of conservation at Fundación Rewilding Argentina. “I was incredulous. An incredible feeling of so much happiness. I didn’t know if I should try to follow it or rush back to our station to tell the others.”

The cause of the excitement was the sighting, last week, of a wild giant river otter – an animal feared extinct in the country due to habitat loss and hunting – on the Bermejo River in Impenetrable national park, in north-east Argentina’s Chaco province. The last sighting of a giant otter in the wild in Argentina was in the 1980s. On the Bermejo, none have been seen for more than a century.

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Startup’s bug idea – to put cricket tortillas and chips on the menu

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Company founded by three Spanish friends hopes to tap into demand for new sources of protein

There are no gargantuan mastiffs or shepherds on quad bikes watching over the hundreds of thousands of newborn animals that tumble and crawl around an unlikely farm among the wind turbines, motorways and patchwork fields of this corner of Castilla-La Mancha, in central Spain.

Nor are there any fences to pen them in. Plastic tubs, shelves and the insulated walls of a unit on a windswept industrial estate do the job perfectly well. But whatever Origen Farms lacks in land, tradition and rural romance, it aims to make up for in innovation, enthusiasm and resilience.

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Big cats seized by US authorities from Tiger King zoo in Oklahoma

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Animal park that featured in 2020 Netflix series investigated in possible violation of Endangered Species Act

US authorities have seized 68 big cats from an Oklahoma animal park that featured in the 2020 Netflix series Tiger King, the Department of Justice has said.

In an affidavit of more than 50 pages, prosecutors said they believed a jaguar, seven lions, 46 tigers and 15 lion-tiger hybrids owned by Jeffrey Lowe and his wife, Lauren Lowe, had been sold, purchased or transported, which would be a violation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

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Climate crisis behind drastic drop in Arctic wildlife populations – report

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Native shorebirds and caribou among species at risk as survival strategies are upended

A drastic drop in caribou and shorebird populations is a reflection of the dire changes unfolding on the Arctic tundra, according to a new report from the Arctic Council.

The terrestrial Arctic spans approximately 2.7m sq miles (7m sq km), marked by extreme cold, drought, strong winds and seasonal darkness. Species living in this environment have adapted to thrive in the harsh conditions. But the climate crisis has upended such survival strategies, according to the State of the Arctic Terrestrial Biodiversity report, published by the council’s Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (Caff) working group.

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