A team of amateur spelunkers has discovered caves filled with well preserved fossils of giant flat-faced kangaroos, marsupial lions, wombats, Tasmanian tigers, and other megafauna that lived in Western Australia during the Pleistocene era. Some paleontologists are calling it "the find of the century."
The coyote, erstwhile symbol of the American West, has been quietly moving east for decades. While the sprawling suburbs of the Northeast have been ecologically hospitable, the coyote has faced a much chillier human reception because of ignorance and misconceptions. A Q&A helps sort fact from fiction.
An examination of 18,000 Australian snakes preserved in museum collections around the world shows that certain species may be slithering unnoticed toward extinction due to a lack of basic understanding of snake ecology. The finding, say the researchers, warrants an urgent call for increased funding for snake research and conservation.
Great white sharks are among the planet's most feared animals. But some experts think bull sharks, which can thrive in freshwater areas as well as the ocean, may be a greater threat to people. Are they responsible for some of the most widely publicized shark attacks?
Some "endocrine-disrupting" chemicals in the environment are known to disturb normal sexual reproduction and development in animals. A new study shows that the impact appears to be greater in fish, which are susceptible to damage from many more common household pollutants than previously thought.
Kirtland's warbler, an endangered species that breeds only in northern Michigan, is on the rebound according to a recent census that counted more than 1,000 breeding pairs. But while scientists have learned a great deal in the last two decades about how to manage the population, human changes to the habitat mean the bird will probably never be removed from the Endangered Species List.
July 26, 2002—Earlier this week the largest invertebrate on Earth, an animal that has never before been seen in its native habitat, washed up on the chilly eastern shores of Tasmania, Australia. The giant squid, an adult female, bore the marks of a torrid sexual affair.
Dogs have served in the U.S. military every war this century, acting as trackers, scouts, mine sniffers, and other roles. The Vietnam Dog Handler Association is pushing for a national memorial that will recognize the heroic service of these canine soldiers. This is the third in the National Geographic News special series The Dog Days of Summer.
There are only about 1,000 greater adjutant storks left in the world, and more than 80 percent of them are in the Indian state of Assam. For the past several years, baby storks there have been falling out of their nests, plunging to their deaths. Local wildlife lovers, fearing for the species, have developed a simple solution to stem the death toll: safety nets.
Regions of the Chesapeake Bay can be notorious hotbeds for the sea nettle, Chrysaora quinuecirrha—a jellyfish with a veil of transparent stinging tentacles. Now researchers are tracking sea nettles in the Chesapeake and posting a "nowcast" map every Friday that shows the likelihood of close encounters.
The jury may be out on whether you can teach old dogs new tricks. But experience suggests a special breed of pooches can teach old bears new tricks—in this case, a healthy fear of humans.
Each year huge shoals of sardines migrate up to the waters along the coast of South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province. The shoals, which can be several miles long, are pursued by sharks, dolphins, and other predators that herd them in close to shore, where huge crowds gather to watch "The Greatest Shoal on Earth."
In its never-ending war against drug smugglers, the U.S. Customs Service employs amazingly effective "detector dogs." These canine officers, recruited from pounds and animal shelters, keep billions of dollars worth of drugs off the streets. For them, the job is just a game, but smugglers often come up on the losing end. This article is the first in our series The Dog Days of Summer.
Maryland wildlife officials who recently found an invasive northern snakehead fish in a pond in Crofton, Maryland, have now captured eight juveniles of the species. The troubling development means the voracious air-breathing and land-crawling predator is multiplying.
For several years scientists have been trying to figure out the cause of a rise in physical abnormalities among frogs in many locations. Pesticides and parasites have been the competing hypotheses offered to explain the phenomenon. Now, a new study says it's the combination of these two factors that has disturbed normal development of frogs, leading many to have extra or missing limbs.
