The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on…
Asian elephants have long been described as forest “cleaners” by the Orang Asli people of Peninsular Malaysia who have lived alongside the giant mammals for tens of thousands of years.…
JAKARTA — Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of local individuals in an effort to survive and find a future home range,…
If you stress out a rattlesnake, make sure it has a friend around. Much like humans, stressed snakes are calmed by a companion's presence, according to new research. Stress can…
In 2013, scientists found octopuses doing something unusual at Dorado Outcrop, a small seamount off the west coast of Costa Rica. While most octopuses are known to be solitary animals,…
Beatboxing became popular in the 1980s, when Doug E. Fresh performed the style around the New York City hip-hop scene. However, the seeds of this vocal technique, which involves making…
SIBAGANDING, Indonesia — After Abdulrahman Manik's father passed away in 2019, the young man inherited a duty to protect wild monkeys here in the north of Sumatra Island. Years later,…
KATHMANDU — Two rhino calves captured from the wild after being separated from their mothers in recent years have been released back into nature by Nepali officials. The greater one-horned…
KATHMANDU — As the crowing of a rooster signals the break of dawn in Taplejung in eastern Nepal, two men grab their slingshots and head out to work. They know…
Chimpanzees tend to sleep more on the ground than previously thought, a behavior that has implications for their conservation and could help explain how and when early humans abandoned trees…
Like many beekeepers living in the vicinity of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Alejandro Oliveros López has a wildlife problem. To keep ants at bay and provide water to their bees,…
As mass coral bleaching events grow in frequency and intensity, scientists are finding out more about how corals, which make up the physical foundation of reefs, respond during times of…
On the evening of March 15, 2016, two large jaguars walked along a narrow lakeshore trail in Venezuela’s Llanos ecosystem, a vast mosaic of seasonally flooded lowland savannas, forests, pastures…
Damselfish can be fastidious farmers. They prune and cultivate small patches of algae, often no more than half a square meter (5 square feet) in area, ensuring they have a…
“Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like a brain of a crocodile” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos. In science, reptiles have been considered to be…
KATHMANDU — During his regular patrol in the forests of Dadeldhura district in Nepal’s westernmost tip in 2020, forester Bishnu Prasad Acharya heard something strange from a temple priest. “He…
The dents and dings on the surfaces of rocks used by chimpanzees to crack open nuts preserve a history of how the animals used the tools and how those patterns…
Some primates spend their entire lives in trees. They avoid the ground, where preferred food is scarce and predators lurk. But deforestation and climate change are threatening their homes in…
KATHMANDU — On the afternoon of Oct. 28, a wild male elephant attacked and killed a woman herding her sheep at a pasture in the town of Amlekhgunj, in the…
Electric wire fences set up to keep marauding elephants out of farms and villages in Indonesia’s Aceh province worked well — at least at first. When the elephants realized the…
In her new book, Karen Bakker relates a story from Brazilian researcher Rafael José de Menezes Bastos that crystallizes how differently some humans process and respond to the sounds around…
Gorillas and chimpanzees living in a remote part of the Congo Basin hang out together and some, like humans, even establish “relationships with benefits,” a new study reveals. Observations of…
Bonobos, sometimes referred to as the "hippies" of the ape kingdom, have long been known for their relatively peaceful relations within core family groups. But there’s been less consensus about…
In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…
"Nature, red in tooth and claw.” According to Alfred Tennyson's poem, “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” that line describes "Creation's final law." Scholars say it captures the sometimes ruthless nature of ……
Raptors are famous for their ability to home in on prey and attack with precision. But how does this work when they hunt animals that flock, school or swarm, forming…
There are moments in researchers’ lives when they realize the significance of something they hadn’t paid much thought to in the past. For primatologist Catherine Hobaiter and her team, one…
In 2018, marine scientist Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons received an unusual stingray video from a colleague. It showed a mangrove whipray (Urogymnus granulatus) gliding over a reef in the Gili Islands of…
Frogs usually land on their feet, but one group of tiny toadlets from Brazil are so small they can’t stick a landing. Pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus spp.) are teensy, about the…
When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…
