Tag: Endangered and Extinct Species

Facing Extinction, but Available for Selfies in Japan’s Animal Cafes

In Japan, it’s possible to enjoy a coffee while an owl perches on your head, or to sit at a bar where live penguins stare out at you from behind a plexiglass wall. The country’s exotic animal cafes are popular with locals as well as visitors seeking novelty, cuteness and selfies. Customers can even buy […]

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Sunflower Sea Stars Are Set to Get Protection Under the Endangered Species Act

Sunflower sea stars, huge starfish that until recently thrived in waters up and down the west coast of North America, are threatened with extinction and should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials said Wednesday. The starfish have been devastated by a wasting syndrome that has been linked to the effects of climate […]

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Horseshoe Crabs Are in Trouble. How Much Longer Can We Rely on Their Blood to Test Our Drugs?

Sanofi Pasteur, Pfizer and Roche-Genentech, sharing Lilly’s concerns about the depletion of horseshoe crabs, are also making the long transition to using rFC. A green light from U.S.P. would save drug makers “weeks of laboratory validation tests and documentation for every new product and subsequent F.D.A. regulatory review and approval,” according to Ned Mozier, a […]

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How Climate Change Is Spreading Malaria in Africa

Ticks that transmit Lyme disease, for example, are dramatically expanding their range in the northern United States. Bats are also on the move, and with them diseases that they transmit, such as rabies. In the Northeast, lobsters are dying of a fungal disease linked to warming, and fish are migrating north or into deeper waters in […]

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These Extinct Elephants Were Neanderthals’ ‘Biggest Calorie Bombs’

In his 1931 book, “How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes,” the American satirist Will Cuppy noted that Neanderthals had fires, caves, marrow bones, mosquitoes, love and arthritis. “What more can you ask?” he mused. If you answered “bush meat block parties,” you might be on to something. That is essentially the conclusion of […]

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They Outlasted the Dinosaurs. Can They Survive Us?

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. The American caviar rush began on the lower Delaware estuary, a landscape today crowded with chemical plants, container ports and the sprawl of Philadelphia. But this was the 1870s, when nature edged up to the city’s limits, […]

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