Titled “The Moment,” the picture shows a Tibetan fox about to pounce on an almost comically startled-looking marmot. The image earned the Chinese photographer Yongqing Bao the wildlife photographer of the year award at the Natural History Museum in London. One of 19 photographs honored by the museum, the picture spread widely online after the […]
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CreditCreditVideo by Lena Mucha For The New York Times HAMBURG, Germany — If Elvis had one advantage over his competitors, it was his long legs. Well, relatively long. His slightly extended snout and slender body also helped him swallow the 80-yard stretch of sandy track in just over eight seconds. “Sensational!” the timekeeper called as […]
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Murder mysteries, however else they might differ, rely on one major, shared belief: that murder matters, and is worth looking into. Whoever did the killing, whoever was killed, the investigation moves forward because the people inside the story and those outside of it, following along as the clues unfold, agree that the murder has moral […]
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TripAdvisor will no longer sell tickets to attractions that breed, import or capture whales, dolphins, porpoises and other cetaceans for public display, the company announced on Wednesday. The move will ban sales to attractions and events at parks and aquariums worldwide, including SeaWorld, which has locations in Florida and California, Loro Parque in Spain and […]
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Snowball, the pig in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” uses this catchy adage to summarize his view that people are enemies and animals are friends: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” Bizarrely, the Trump administration appears to have been persuaded, announcing a policy that will harm human health to protect animals used in laboratory experiments. The […]
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Thursday was a tough day to own a Eurasian lynx. Responding to what it called a recent surge in animals gone wild, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation moved on Thursday to label an array of exotic animals “dangerous.” Officials proposed set of regulations that they said were meant to clarify and codify longstanding […]
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WE ARE THE WEATHERSaving the Planet Begins at BreakfastBy Jonathan Safran Foer Jonathan Safran Foer’s second book of nonfiction is an eye-opening collection of mostly short essays expressing both despair and hope over the climate crisis, especially around individual choice. It’s a wide-ranging book — there are tributes to grandparents and sons, as well as […]
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The Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday that it would move away from requiring the testing of potentially harmful chemicals on animals, a decision that was hailed by animal rights groups but criticized by environmentalists and researchers who said the practice was necessary to rigorously safeguard human health. The E.P.A. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the […]
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The average shock from an electric eel lasts about two-thousandths of a second. The pain isn’t searing — unlike, say, sticking your finger in a wall socket — but isn’t pleasant: a brief muscle contraction, then numbness. For scientists who study the animal, the pain comes with the professional territory. “I remember the first time […]
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The Old Farmer’s Almanac has been published in some form or another since 1792, but the target audience seems to have expanded beyond old farmers. If it only catered to that demographic, then your retired realtor granddad wouldn’t have a copy in his bathroom magazine rack, and it wouldn’t have to write articles that describe […]
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BEIJING — Garlic was dead, and there was nothing Huang Yu could do. So on a cold winter day, he buried his cat’s body in a park close to his home. Hours later, still heartbroken, the 22-year-old businessman recalled an article he had read on dog cloning in China. What if someday he could bring […]
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More than half a billion years ago, in what is today southern China, a worm resembling an ear of wheat moved along a stretch of sediment underwater, paused, and left a detailed imprint of its undercarriage in the wet earth. Then it moved a little further and died. Its body, seven inches long and segmented, […]
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I’ve never lived with a dog with testes or ovaries. My pups all came from shelters, whose policies have often been to desex a dog before adoption if possible. I never knew Pumpernickel as a fertile young thing or Finnegan: The Virile Version. This is by design, and the design had its desired effect. I […]
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It’s tough for marine biologists to study deep sea creatures in their natural habitat. Jellyfish and squid that live a mile or two underwater dwell beyond the range of scuba-diving scientists, who must rely on submarines to explore the near complete darkness at those depths. Once in a while, detritus samplers and other collection tools […]
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ImageWhen the last male white northern rhino died last year, his daughter and granddaughter, Najin and Fatu, were the only two of their kind left. CreditTony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images With a handful of oocytes and a collection of frozen sperm, an international team of scientists is racing against the clock to ensure that the […]
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For a sea otter, a bad infection with the Toxoplasma parasite may feel a bit like drowning. “The brain is no longer able to function and tell the body how to swim,” said Dr. Karen Shapiro, a veterinarian and pathologist at the University of California, Davis. The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, enters the otter orally and […]
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In southwest Florida, any sighting of the state’s iconic panther — on your porch, lounging in the backyard, advancing toward you on a trail — might go viral. But on Monday afternoon, the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission took to social media to crowdsource a different kind of video: panthers that seem to have […]
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Poaching destabilizes nations, disrupts ecosystems and threatens biodiversity. A recent study suggests still another consequence: Some types of poaching may also accelerate climate change. Forest elephants — the smaller, endangered relatives of African savanna elephants — promote the growth of large trees that excel at storing carbon, according to research published in the journal Nature […]
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The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday withdrew its support for the continued use of so-called cyanide bombs to protect livestock from predators, reversing course amid strong opposition to the practice. The E.P.A. administrator, Andrew R. Wheeler, said he was withdrawing an interim reauthorization for the use of M-44 devices, which are used to kill […]
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Endangered species come on lists. But lists obscure relationships. What can it mean that a few mussels, some snails we’ve never heard of, obscure crayfish in marginal headwaters and some island-confined songbirds are vanishing? Some 1,650 species of animals and plants in the United States are listed under federal law as endangered or threatened. But […]
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