Animals

A pair of fuzzy alpaca.

Why the Alpaca Has No Humps

The camel cousin evolved fluff instead of fat because it was able to linger in an evolutionary slow lane, suggest newly sequenced genomes

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Gorgeous Portraits of Spineless Sea Creatures

In a new book, San Francisco-based photographer Susan Middleton captures the curious gestures and expressions of marine invertebrates

In Australia, Curiosity® Really Will Kill Feral Cats

Don't feel too bad for the cats, though: they kill millions of birds and little mammals every day

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This Photographer Set Out on a Quest to Rediscover the World's Lost Species of Frogs

Some of the subjects are new to science, others haven't been seen in 15 to 160 years

A critically endangered black rhino in Namibia.

In an Effort to Stop Poaching, Namibia Will Remove All of Its Rhinos’ Horns

That extreme measure will likely not be enough to stop the killing, however, so the country is also bolstering its anti-poaching patrols

An Australian banded stilt in Victoria.

These Extreme Desert Nomads Set Records for Migrating Birds

Australian banded stilts use mysterious cues to know when to head toward ephemeral lakes in the country’s otherwise dry interior

Meerkats at the London zoo

Watch Adorable Meerkat And Otter Live Streams, Help Combat Poaching

Google and the London Zoo have teamed up to offer live streams of animals in an effort to test conservation tech

Zooplankton and Krill "Pee" Helps Determine Ocean Chemistry

Tiny marine life's expelled ammonia fuels important chemical reactions

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Here's What Happens When a Hawk And a Drone Fight

This raptor was not ok with a quadcopter fronting on its turf

The Park Service Wants to Cull 900 of Yellowstone's 4,900 Buffalo

The Park Service will be killing bison that stray from the park

Many of the Same Brain Regions Are Activated When Mothers Look at Their Pets or Their Children

It seems that maternal attachment does not discriminate between species

There are more than 400 species of mantis shrimp, including some with claws that can strike with the speed of a bullet and crack glass. But it’s the animal's vision, sensitive to polarized light, that is helping scientists build a compact camera that can see cancer.

A Mantis Shrimp Inspires a New Camera for Detecting Cancer

The mantis shrimp's eyes, which can see differences in polarized light, are informing researchers building a tiny, easy-to-use camera that can spot cancer

Cheetahs taking it easy in the Kalahari desert, Botswana.

Cheetahs Spend 90 Percent of Their Days Sitting Around

When human presence forces cheetahs to expend more energy, however, it put the animals' survival at risk

An endangered green sea turtle in Hawaii that has contracted fibropapillomatosis.

Pollution From Hawaii Is Giving Sea Turtles Gross, Deadly Tumors

Nitrogen runoff gets into the turtles' food and causes tumors on their faces, flippers and organs

Crabby Tenants Defend Corals From Marauding Predators

A diversity of coral guard-crabs is needed to fend off attacks by hungry snails and giant spiky sea stars

Thousands of walruses gathered at a beach in Point Lay, Alaska.

35,000 Walruses Are Crowding Onto One Alaskan Beach

Some animals have already been killed on the beach, most likely by stampedes

Wildlife Around the World Has Declined by About 50 Percent Since 1970

Fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles are disappearing quickly

A bobtail squid hides on the ocean floor.

Research Into How Squid Camouflage Leads to An Ultra-Sharp Display for Televisions and Smartphones

Researchers at Rice University have created pixels 40 times smaller than those found in today's LCD displays

More than two years after his death, the tortoise Lonesome George has been stuffed and put on display in New York.

Lonesome George, the Last Tortoise of His Kind, Is on Posthumous Display in NYC

Driven to extinction by overhunting, the world's last Pinta Island tortoise is now a taxidermy display at New York's American Museum of Natural History

The Namib desert beetle gathers water from fog that condenses on its bumpy back—which inspired one company to design a self-filling water bottle.

Five Wild Ways to Get a Drink in the Desert

The moisture farmers of Tatooine could take a few tips from these projects for harvesting water out of thin air

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