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topic: Animal Behavior
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Hold my ointment: Wild orangutan observed healing wound with medicinal plant
- Researchers observed a wild orangutan in Sumatra treating a facial wound with a plant known for its healing properties, marking the first documented case of such behavior in a wild animal.
- The adult male Sumatran orangutan was observed chewing on the plant Fibraurea tinctoria, which has pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory effects, and rubbing the resultant ointment on the wound, which later healed without infection.
- This finding supports the idea that orangutans might self-medicate, demonstrating their cognitive abilities and drawing parallels to human practices.
- Conservationists have welcomed the finding, highlighting its significance for understanding forest biodiversity and the urgency of protecting orangutan habitat amid declining populations and persistent threats.
Ridiculously rare photo catches Asian caracal swimming a river in India
- A tourist took a surprising photo of a caracal, a medium-sized cat, fording a river in India.
- What makes the photo doubly unusual is that India’s caracals aren’t known for swimming — and the cat was supposed to be extinct in the region.
- Once an important species culturally in India, caracals are now endangered, according to the IUCN Red List.
- The cat is also imperiled because it often occurs outside protected areas, inhabiting less-valued grasslands.
Chimps are lifelong learners, study on tool use shows
- A recent study assessed wild chimpanzees’ use of sticks as a tool, monitoring how chimps of different ages gripped and manipulated the implement to retrieve food from tricky places.
- The study found that older chimps were more adept at choosing the right grip for the task at hand, indicating that chimpanzees, like humans, refine tool-use skills well into adulthood.
- The researchers say this continued development of skills is critical for chimpanzees’ survival in a changing climate, and that it highlights the importance of conservation interventions aimed at supporting the preservation of chimpanzee cultures.
Flocking together may create birds of a feather, study finds
- Surveys of several sites, including Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, show that the lesser necklaced laughingthrush may be physically mimicking a larger species, the greater necklaced laughingthrush, for benefit.
- Findings suggest the benefits for the smaller bird include no longer needing to be vigilant for predators when foraging for food, as the bigger bird does this job.
- Previous reports show the lesser necklaced laughingthrush is already known for vocal mimicry, where it produces the call of another bird.
- Mimicry among various species potentially serves as an evolutionary strategy for protection and foraging benefits.
Bioacoustics and AI help scientists listen in on elusive Australian cockatoos
- Researchers in Australia have deployed acoustic recorders and artificial intelligence to study, monitor and protect eastern pink cockatoos (Lophochroa leadbeateri leadbeateri).
- The technology led scientists at the Queensland University of Technology to a previously unknown breeding hollow of the birds.
- Pink cockatoos, with eastern and western subspecies, are endemic to Australia and hard to monitor because they live in remote arid and semiarid ecosystems.
- With the research, scientists say they hope to understand more about where the birds live and how they react to changes in rainfall and temperature.
Jane Goodall at 90: On fame, hope, and empathy
- Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday is today, April 3, 2024. To mark the occasion, Goodall sat down with Mongabay Founder and CEO Rhett Ayers Butler at his home in California.
- In the conversation, Goodall delves into the evolving consciousness regarding environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity, while stressing the importance of fostering hope amidst the doom and gloom often associated with these issues.
- “I’ve come to think of humanity as being at the mouth of a very long very dark tunnel and right at the end there’s a little star shining. And that’s hope,” she said. “However, it’s futile to just sit and wonder when that star will come to us. We must gird our loins, roll up our sleeves, and navigate around all obstacles that lie between us and the star.”
- The conversation also touches upon the transformative power of youth engagement in environmental activism. Goodall highlights the influence young people can have on older generations, emphasizing the importance of voting in elections as a means to support candidates who prioritize environmental concerns.
Cerrado mammals change their habits to escape humans, study shows
- A study that observed five species of mammals in northeast São Paulo state reveals that most animals change their routines to escape contact with humans, usually by adopting nocturnal habits.
- For the giant anteater, the biggest disturbance factor is the presence of dogs that roam free in rural areas and end up hunting and scaring wildlife away.
- Despite the adaptation attempts, animals do not evolve at the same pace as habitat destruction, which can lead to the animals’ extinction.
Smaller population estimate underscores urgency of saving Cao-vit gibbon
- A recent survey based on “vocal fingerprinting” puts the total population of Cao-vit gibbons at just 74 individuals, down from previous estimates of 120.
- Researchers say the lower number represents more precise data, not an actual decline in gibbon numbers.
- However, habitat loss and hunting, along with a slow rate of reproduction, have pushed Cao-vit gibbons to the edge of extinction.
- Reforestation and establishing protected forest corridors are key to increasing population numbers, while inbreeding remains a concern for the small population.
Nepal’s release of endangered crocs into historical habitat raises concerns
- Nepal recently released 25 critically endangered gharials into a tributary of the Mahakali River to reintroduce them to historical habitats, but concerns have arisen over transparency and timing of the process.
- Gharials are released into the Chaudhar river, part of the Terai Arc Landscape, to augment dwindling populations, although previous translocations have yielded mixed results.
- Researchers highlight challenges faced by gharials, including migration obstacles due to dams and barrages, and they advocate for better timing of releases to optimize adaptation and survival.
- Issues such as lack of publicized government studies, potential influence of reciprocal gifts in translocation decisions and denial of budget-related motives are raised amid efforts to conserve gharials.
No joking: Great apes can be silly and playfully tease each other, finds study
- Cracking a good joke is no laughing matter, but the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor have so far been studied mostly in humans, with our great ape cousins going largely overlooked.
- Now, a new study reports playful teasing behavior — a precursor to joking — in small groups of chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.
- The study is the first to define playful teasing as a distinct behavior separate from play in great apes and describe its various forms.
- The findings suggest that the cognitive requirements for joking and playful teasing evolved at least 13 million years ago in ancestors common to humans and great apes.
For threatened Andean condors, garbage dump offers a buffet of risks & rewards
- In a 17-year study, Chilean researchers observed that Andean condors (Vultur gryphus) use landfills as supplemental food sources when natural food is scarce.
- The researchers found that females and juveniles lower in the pecking order are more likely to scavenge in landfills than older males.
- While this food subsidy could help Andean condors when times are tight, it may also put them at an increased risk of poisoning.
Male dominance isn’t the default in primate societies, new study shows
- A recent study challenges the notion that it’s a man’s world when it comes to primate social groups.
- The study found that while a majority of species (58%) exhibited male-biased power structures, female- or co-dominant structures were identified in every major primate group.
- The pattern held true for apes as well; all five gibbon species studied were classified as non-male-dominant, as were bonobos among the great apes.
- Experts say that long-held beliefs in male power as the default among primates could have developed due to chance (the earliest studied primate species happen to have male-dominant structures), or due to “who’s been doing the research and publishing.”
Dholes latest wild canids likely making comeback in Nepal, study shows
- Dholes and Himalayan wolves were extensively persecuted across rural Nepal for preying on livestock, leading to their decline in the region.
- But recent observations suggest a resurgence of both species, possibly due to the reclaiming of their former territories: Himalayan wolves may have followed yak herders from Tibet, while dholes are believed to be recolonizing areas they had been locally extirpated from.
- Camera trap surveys and literature reviews indicate the recolonization of areas like the Annapurna Conservation Area and the Tinjure–Milke–Jaljale forests by dholes.
- Despite some optimism among conservationists, challenges such as competition with other predators, habitat fragmentation and human-wildlife conflict persist, requiring further studies and monitoring efforts.
Turning bat caves into sanctuaries: Interview with Mexican ecologist Rodrigo Medellín
- A hundred experts from Mexico, the United States and Canada worked together for the past two years to release the first report on the state of the 154 bat species that live in North America.
- The researchers concluded that the main threats that bats face in the region are the loss and disturbance of habitat, climate change impacts, wind farms, and the fungal disease white-nose syndrome.
- Mexico is home to 142 species of bats, whose protection researchers say hinges on protecting their habitat, including at least 15 caves that they propose designating as bat sanctuaries.
- Rodrigo Medellín, a Mexican researcher who helped coordinate the report, spoke with Mongabay Latam last July about why bats are so important for both nature and humans.
Rare snow leopard sighting in Nepal’s ‘home of tiger’ puzzles conservationists
- Residents of Urlabari town in Nepal’s plains were surprised to spot a snow leopard (Panthera uncia), a species known to live in the mountains.
- Local authorities, including veterinarians, captured the snow leopard, which had sustained injuries, and treated it at the Central Zoo in Kathmandu.
- Conservationists and researchers speculate on the reasons for the snow leopard’s presence in the plains, considering possibilities such as climate change, escape from illegal captivity or disorientation during dispersal.
Mexico’s first black-and-white hawk-eagle nest is a treasure trove for researchers
- The black-and-white hawk-eagle is a little-researched and poorly known species in Mexico, where scientists have described it as a “ghost” because of the sheer scarcity of sightings.
- In 2020, researchers in the country’s Lacandon Jungle found a nest used by a breeding pair — the first known black-and-white hawk-eagle nest in Mexico — and monitored its nesting and parenting behavior over the next three years.
- The main threat to the species is the loss of its lowland forest habitat, which in this part of Mexico is driven largely by the clearing of forest to make way for livestock pasture.
Bonobos and chimps recall friends and family even after years apart: Study
- An experiment with bonobos and chimpanzees suggests the great apes remember their friends and family even after years apart.
- Louise, a bonobo who participated in the study, recognized a sister she had last seen 26 years ago, in what is now evidence of the “longest-lasting nonhuman social memory” on the scientific record.
- Laura Simone Lewis and her colleagues designed an experiment to track eye movement (used as an indicator of recognition) when the animals were faced with two photos side by side — one of a former group mate and the other of a stranger from their species.
- The team found that the kind of relationship shared by two individuals also influences recognition; if they had a more positive relationship as group mates, the bonobo or chimp directed more attention to that individual.
Long-term wildlife impacts at Chornobyl, Fukushima may yield ‘a new ecology’
- The world’s worst nuclear power plant accidents to date, at Chornobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, and Fukushima, Japan in 2011, and the human exclusion zones created around them have given scientists a unique opportunity to study the effects on wildlife of radiation and of reduced pressure from people.
- Chornobyl disaster findings regarding the impacts on exclusion zone organisms vary: Some point to a resurgence of the studied wildlife in the absence of humans, while others indicate radiation negatively impacting certain animal populations.
- Fukushima radiation impacts are statistically harder to detect. But scientists have made similar observation to Chornobyl: Some, but not all, species appear to thrive from reduced human pressure.
- Radioactive contamination moves in ecosystem-specific ways, depending on factors such as water flow. A combination of radioactive contamination and reduced human activity in nuclear exclusion zones may be giving rise to “a new ecology,” with nature overall neither suffering nor thriving, simply different in the impacted areas.
Coordinated community response saves manatees stranded in Colombia
- Environmental agencies, NGOs and local fishing communities have joined forces to create a network to respond to emergencies involving stranded Antillean manatees.
- Cattle ranching and marsh draining for agriculture, along with climate variability, have caused water levels to decrease, which in turn increases these endangered manatees’ risk of becoming stranded.
- A community-based monitoring program is providing unprecedented data on Antillean manatee habitat sites, and the goal now is to learn more about the behavior and current state of the region’s largest aquatic mammal.
Bringing the forgotten small wildcats of Latin America into the light
- There are 17 species of wild felines in Latin America, five of which are so little-studied that they’ve been confused for each other or other species.
- Lack of funding and awareness has hampered efforts to study them as well as measures to conserve the cats and their habitats.
- The main threats that these cats face are habitat loss due to deforestation and the expansion of the agricultural frontier; they’re also at risk from illegal wildlife trafficking, hunting, mining, and the illegal pet trade.
- Mongabay Latam reports on the current situation of five of the most threatened small feline species in Latin America: the Andean mountain cat, the güiña, the tigrillo, the tirica, and the margay.
Study on evolution of same-sex animal behaviors underscores stigmas in research
- A new study tracing the evolution of same-sex sexual behavior in mammals, using phylogenetic analyses, suggests these behaviors may have evolved in part to strengthen social bonding and relationships.
- Same-sex sexual behavior was observed in 261 species, which constitutes 4% of all mammal species; the research adds to a growing list of some 1,500 animal species in which same-sex sexual behavior is documented.
- Interest in this research is expanding after a long history of stigma within the field that led some earlier scientists to withhold evidence of same-sex sexual behavior among animals; at the time, such behavior was considered an error in the research findings — or “perverted.”
- Researchers also note that stigmas have long prevented scientists from investigating same-sex sexual behaviors in animals or receiving funding to carry out such studies.
Robotic insect reveals evolutionary secrets of the fastest flapping fliers
- Insects have been incredibly successful in developing ways of flying, with an ultra-fast flapping mode that scientists thought had evolved multiple times over history.
- Now, researchers have genetically traced that mode back to a common ancestor, a major breakthrough in understanding insect flight evolution.
- To confirm their findings, the researchers built a moth-sized robot that mimicked the various ways insects take to the sky.
No animals harmed as wildlife specimen collection goes digital in 3D
- Conservationist and photographer Scott Trageser has developed a 3D scanning system that could potentially reshape how animals are studied in the wild.
- The system uses an array of cameras that work in sync to rapidly capture photos of animals in the wild, yielding a virtual 3D specimen viewable on smartphone or with a VR/AR headset.
- The noninvasive methodology will enable scientists to conduct research without euthanizing animals; digital specimens also have the advantage of not degrading over time.
- However, the high cost and technical skills required to assemble and operate the system, in addition to its inability to gather internal morphological data, are hurdles to its widespread use.
How wild elephants solve puzzles may help humans resolve wildlife conflicts
- Animal cognition scientists designed an open-air experiment to test wild elephants’ problem-solving abilities for the first time.
- They observed that Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand could figure out how to work doors that opened in three different ways: push, pull, and slide.
- Five out of 44 animals succeeded in opening all three doors, eight opened two doors, and another 11 opened one door.
- The study captured “individual variation in the problem-solving ability of wild elephants,” Lisa P. Barrett, an expert in animal cognition, told Mongabay. “If we know something about ‘problem individuals’ who are learning and spreading problematic behaviors, such as crop raiding, we may be able to design targeted intervention efforts that mitigate human-elephant conflict.”
Congo Basin’s elephants boost carbon capture, but need salt-licks to survive
- Forest elephants’ browsing habits play a vital role in shaping their habitat, allowing large, carbon-dense tree species to thrive.
- The elephants frequent muddy, mineral-rich clearings called baïs which are a unique feature of the Congo Basin rainforest.
- Researchers are studying elephants and baïs in neighboring Republic of Congo and Central African Republic to better understand the relationship between forests, clearings, and the pachyderms that knit them together.
Asian elephants’ picky diet helps shape their forest home, study shows
- A new study based on close observations of the foraging behavior of Asian elephants in a Malaysian forest highlights the “profound” impact of the giant herbivores on plant and tree diversity.
- The findings suggest that by selectively feeding on their preferred food plants, such as grasses, palms, liana vines and fast-growing trees, elephants are can shape the structure of their rainforest home.
- The researchers call for more conservation focus on elephants given their important influence on forest ecosystem health and globally important processes like carbon sequestration.
- The team also suggests the findings could be applied to practical conservation solutions aiming to restore wildlife corridors and improve the condition of reserves for megafauna species.
Migrating orangutan males imitate locals to learn about food: Study
- Male orangutans that resettle to a new area appear to be imitating the behavior of a local individual in an effort to survive and find a future home range, a new study says.
- The researchers have dubbed the behavior learning skill as “peering” and describe it as when migrant male orangutans intensively observe over a period of time a certain local they have chosen as a role model.
- The scientists analyzed data of hundreds of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans in research stations in Aceh and Central Kalimantan.
- Indonesia is home to the world’s three orangutan species: Sumatran, Tapanuli (P. tapanuliensis) and Bornean orangutans.
Rattlesnakes can calm down their friends, study shows
- Research reveals that rattlesnakes, like humans, experience stress reduction when in the presence of a companion snake, a phenomenon known as social buffering.
- Stress can lead to hormonal changes, affecting the nervous system, immune response and behavior.
- The study examined 25 wild Southern Pacific rattlesnakes in different scenarios, measuring their heart rate to assess stress levels and social buffering.
- By controlling small mammal populations, rattlesnakes maintain ecosystem balance and also reduce rodent and tick-borne diseases. Yet, they often face threats from humans.
Deep-sea expedition reveals rare octo-nurseries off Costa Rica
- A scientific expedition in June found two new deep-sea octopus nurseries on two different low-temperature hydrothermal vent sites off the west coast of Costa Rica — two of only three known deep-sea octopus nurseries in the world.
- On a previous expedition in 2013, scientists had found a group of brooding octopuses at one of these vents, but didn’t detect any babies. But in June 2023, scientists did find octopus babies.
- Researchers theorize that the brooding octopus are attracted to the rocks, warmth, or microbes at these sites.
Orangutan ‘beatboxing’ offers clues about human language, study says
- Researchers have discovered that orangutans possess vocal abilities similar to beatboxing, where they can produce two different sounds simultaneously.
- The study suggests that these vocal abilities in orangutans may have existed in ancient, extinct relatives of humans and could have influenced the development of human speech.
- The vocal control and coordination abilities of wild great apes, including orangutans, have been underestimated compared to the focus on vocal abilities in birds.
- Further research is needed to understand how orangutans develop their beatboxing-like calls and to explore the connections between bird vocalizations, great ape vocalizations, and human speech.
Sumatra’s young primate whisperer brings bullhorn to macaque conservation
- Abdulrahman Manik, also known as Detim, has spent years saving monkeys from marginal lives on the sides of roads, where they forage for food and risk being struck by passing vehicles.
- Manik’s father had originally planned to poison the monkeys on his farm, until he had a dream that told him to take a different approach.
- Throughout Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, many see the long-tailed macaque as a pest, but in 2022 the species’ conservation status worsened from vulnerable to endangered.
Low-key return for rescued rhino calves to Nepal’s Chitwan National Park
- Two of three rhino calves rescued from the wild have been returned to Nepal’s Chitwan National Park in what officials say was a “low-key and low-cost” release.
- The two female greater one-horned rhinos had been cared for at a facility on the outskirts of the park after being abandoned by their mothers.
- Officials had debated whether to move them to other parks with smaller rhino populations or to gift them to foreign countries as part of Nepal’s “rhino diplomacy.”
- A third rhino calf, rescued last October following a tiger attack, is also expected to be released back into Chitwan once she’s deemed old enough and ready to take care of herself.
After Sri Lanka, Nepal debates exporting its ‘problematic’ monkeys
- Some officials in Nepal are calling for mimicking a plan by Sri Lanka — now suspended — to export large numbers of rhesus macaques.
- The monkeys are seen as pests by farmers whose crops they eat, and exporting them would address this problem while also generating foreign revenue, proponents say.
- However, a previous attempt to export a small number of macaques was scrapped on the grounds that it violated Nepali laws and international wildlife trade regulations.
- Conservationists also say that exporting the monkeys won’t address the root causes of human-macaque conflicts, including a government forestry program that’s seen the animals’ preferred fruit trees replaced with non-native species.
Ground-nesting chimps hold lessons for conservation — and for human evolution
- Eastern chimpanzees in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo frequently build nests and sleep overnight on the ground even in areas where predators are present, a recent study finds.
- The ability of these relatively small-bodied apes to sleep on the ground without fire or fortifications suggests that other hominids, including early humans, could have moved from the safety of trees earlier than thought.
- The study also found that chimpanzees were not deterred from ground nesting when they shared space with humans — as long as those humans were not hunting.
- This, the researchers say, suggests chimpanzee conservation and human use of forests can coexist.
In Calakmul, water troughs offer possible solution to human-wildlife conflict
- Beekeepers near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve are working with conservationists to provide water troughs for wild animals in an effort to reduce conflicts with farmers and livestock.
- More than 70 species, including Baird’s tapir, jaguars (Panthera onca), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and coatis (genus Nasua), have used the troughs as climate change exacerbates water shortages in the biosphere during the dry season.
- Conservationists caution that such projects must be implemented carefully so as not to introduce pathogens into the wild or create “predator traps” where wild carnivores’ prey congregate around artificial water sources.
Reef ruckus: Fish fights erupt after mass coral bleaching, study finds
- An international team of researchers studied the behavioral changes among butterflyfish on a series of reefs in the Indo-Pacific before and after the 2016 global mass coral bleaching event.
- They found that following the bleaching event, fish behaved more aggressively toward one another in their newly degraded reef home.
- The energetic toll of encounters involving fighting and chasing one another could have implications for the long-term survival of reef fish species, the study authors conclude.
- Given rates of ocean warming and predictions for more frequent and intense coral bleaching over the longer term, it’s unclear whether reef fish have the capacity to adapt their behavior to their rapidly changing environments.
When nature gives them a chance to collab, jaguars aren’t so solitary after all
- A collaborative study has documented male jaguars engaging in cooperative behavior and forming multiyear partnerships in prey-rich areas in Venezuala’s Llanos and Brazil’s Pantanal.
- Though these partnerships remain rare, evidence of this and other cooperative behaviors challenges the notion that all felids, except for lions and cheetahs, are strictly solitary.
- The research reinforces the value of long-term studies using data from multiple sources to give a fuller understanding of a species’ ecology and behavior.
Invasive rats topple ecological domino that affects reef fish behavior
- A recent study reveals that the presence of invasive rats on islands can lead to behavioral changes in fish living on coral reefs offshore. A team of scientists found that damselfish have larger territories that they defend less aggressively on reefs near rat-infested islands.
- Rats and other rodents often tag along on ships. For hundreds of years, they’ve colonized islands around the world, where they feast on seabird chicks and eggs, decimating local populations.
- Seabirds deposit nutrient-rich guano on islands, some of which flows out to reefs and fertilizes the growth of algae.
- Smaller seabird numbers on rat-infested islands mean that fewer nutrients end up on reefs, and the algae there has lower nutritional value than off rat-free, seabird-rich islands. The study’s authors concluded that damselfish were less aggressive near islands with rats because it wasn’t worth the energy to defend a less valuable resource.
Understanding reptile intelligence can aid conservation and safeguard ecosystems (commentary)
- Reptile intelligence has long been considered inferior to that of birds and mammals. But recent studies in reptile cognition show reptiles have a profound understanding of their environment.
- Reptiles’ understanding of their surroundings and their evolution of learning can play a part in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provisioning, especially on agricultural lands.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
The tiger in the snow: Cameras capture abundance of life in a Himalayan refuge
- Camera traps have captured tigers roaming at an elevation of 3,165 meters (10,384 feet) in eastern Nepal’s lower Himalayas — the highest they’ve ever been recorded in the country.
- Experts suggest a range of factors for this, including a growing tiger population that’s crowding some of the big cats out of the lowland plains and further uphill.
- Another set of camera trap images were captured in Dadeldhura district in western Nepal, which a previous study identified as a climate refugium, where temperatures remain relatively stable, allowing species to persist during regional and global climate changes.
- Other large mammals have also been recorded on camera trap here, including many that, like tigers, were previously thought to be confined to lower-elevation habitats.
Chimpanzee nut cracking leaves telltale marks on stones, providing clues to human evolution
- Groups of chimpanzees in West Africa use stone tools in distinctly different ways to crack open nuts.
- Researchers used 3D scans to trace wear patterns on the tools, called “hammerstones” and “anvils.”
- The different tool uses may help archaeologists identify signs of early stone tool technology in human ancestors more than 3 million years ago.
Some tree-dwelling primates may adapt more easily to life on the ground, massive study shows
- As deforestation and climate change alter rainforest habitats, monkeys and lemurs that normally live in trees are risking encounters with predators to spend time on the ground.
- Species with diverse diets, smaller body masses, and larger group sizes may adjust to terrestrial life more successfully than others.
- The huge international study drew from more than 150,000 hours of observations of 47 species in Madagascar and Central and South America.
In Nepal, officials defend detusking to reduce human-elephant conflict
- Conservation officials in Nepal recently cut off the tusks of a young bull elephant that had attacked and killed a woman in the buffer zone of Parsa National Park.
- Proponents of detusking say the practice helps make the animals less aggressive, while critics say the effects are little-understood and detusking should be a last resort in tackling human-wildlife conflict.
- A study on African elephants shows that detusked elephants don’t appear to be at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing food, while another shows that detusked matriarch elephants command smaller herds and may be considered less reproductively fit by males.
- Back in Nepal, officials say the practice works, noting that the recently detusked male hasn’t been seen in the area since then.
Video: Life in the awe-and-terror-inspiring vicinity of the Sumatran elephant
- Villagers living on the forest’s edge in Indonesia often marvel at the intelligence of elephants, even as they struggle to keep the animals from trampling their farms and homes.
- Sumatra has lost around half its rainforest since the turn of the century, driving the forest-dwelling creatures into increasing contact with humans.
- Watch our short film Indonesians on the front lines of human-elephant conflict in northwestern Sumatra.
Tuning in to the world of nonhuman sound: Q&A with author Karen Bakker
- “The Sounds of Life” is a new book by University of British Columbia geography professor Karen Bakker that explores our understanding of nonhuman sound.
- Through the stories she has gathered from around the world, Bakker reveals how new technology has given us “a planetary hearing aid,” both to better understand how nonhuman life uses sound and the ways in which these sounds can help monitor and protect species.
- Bakker also investigates the role of traditional knowledge and deep listening to help researchers tune in to the sounds around us.
- Mongabay spoke with Karen Bakker in September.
Study highlights ‘friends with benefits’ relation between gorillas and chimps
- A new long-term study points to lasting social relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild.
- The study showed that individuals from both species actively seek out each other in a variety of contexts.
- The benefits of these interactions go beyond protection from predators, and include learning social skills and finding fruiting trees.
- But these social interactions also provide the potential for transmission of deadly diseases like Ebola, which pose as big a threat to the long-term survival of gorillas and chimps as hunting and habitat destruction.
Easygoing bonobos accepting of outsiders, study says
- Bonobos are well known for their peaceable relations within family groups, but there’s less scientific consensus about how much tolerance they extend to individuals outside of their core groups.
- A recent study set out to examine this question by observing members of habituated bonobo communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and comparing their behavior to observations of chimpanzee groups in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
- The researchers found that, compared to chimpanzees, bonobos maintain strong and distinct core groups, but also exhibit frequent and peaceable between-group interactions.
- The findings give conservationists a better understanding of bonobo social behavior, which in turn can inform conservation actions.
Catfished: New species described from DRC after mistaken identity
- Scientists recently identified a new species of air-breathing catfish, Clarias monsembulai, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Salonga National Park — the first new species of catfish in the Clarias genus to be described in 42 years.
- It was named after Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula, who collected samples of the species in 2006 and 2010 without realizing at the time that the fish was unknown to science.
- Experts say that species discoveries are very common in Salonga National Park due to the region’s rich biodiversity as well as the limited amount of research being done there.
- However, the area also faces numerous threats, including poaching and the possibility of fossil fuel extraction.
Examining cooperation in nature: Q&A with author Kristin Ohlson
- In her new book, “Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World,” author Kristin Ohlson explores the science behind collaboration in nature.
- Her work examines research revealing that cooperation between species, and not just competition, contributes to the development and diversification of life.
- Mongabay spoke with Ohlson prior to the book’s publication.
Seeing through the swarm: How hawks hunt bat prey
- How do hawks and raptors hunt prey that flock, school or swarm? A new study suggests that rather than homing in on one animal, they aim toward a fixed point in space within a swarm.
- Researchers observed Swainson’s hawks and other raptors hunting amid swarms of nearly a million Mexican free-tailed bats as they left their roosting cave in the Chihuahuan desert in New Mexico, U.S.
- The researchers positioned high-definition video cameras around the mouth of the cave, allowing them to reconstruct in 3D the trajectories of the hawks’ attacks on the bats from the 2D video recordings.
- This study offers an explanation of how large groups of prey that appear confusing to human eyes because of their erratic movements don’t necessarily result in a confusion effect in predators.
Chimps digging wells shows learned behavior that may help amid climate change
- A recent study using camera traps and direct observation documented well-digging behavior in a group of chimpanzees in Uganda, initiated by a female that had immigrated into the group.
- Researchers were surprised to observe this behavior in this rainforest-dwelling population as water tends to be easily accessible in this habitat.
- The findings suggest this learned behavior may be helpful for the conservation of this group, as the chimps have picked up an adaptive measure that could help them survive a drought.
Stingrays can ‘talk’ when they get riled up, new study suggests
- A new paper provides the first evidence that wild stingray species produce short, loud clicking sounds.
- While scientists still need to learn how and why stingrays make these noises, they speculate that the clicking sounds are a distress or defense signal.
- The paper documents three instances of this behavior in mangrove whiprays and cowtail stingrays, two species threatened with extinction.
Pumpkin toadlets can’t jump: The frog that gave up balance for size
- Pumpkin toadlets are very bad at jumping, often losing balance mid-air and crash landing awkwardly.
- Researchers have determined that this is due to the size of their inner ear canals, the area of the body that regulates balance and orientation: their semicircular ear canals are the smallest recorded in vertebrates.
- The toadlets live in the leaf litter of Brazil’s Atlantic forest, where being small enough to burrow is an advantage.
- But the frogs are so small that the balancing mechanisms in their ears can’t respond to quick movements, resulting in some ungraceful antics.
With sea ice melting, glacial ice could be a lifeline for polar bears
- Scientists recently discovered a new subpopulation of polar bears living in southeast Greenland that is genetically and behaviorally distinct.
- While most polar bears depend upon sea ice for survival, the polar bears in Southeast Greenland use pieces of glacial ice as habitat and hunting platforms.
- Large numbers of polar bears are expected to decline as climate change accelerates, but small populations may persist in places like this, where the pace of melting is expected to be slower, experts say.
World is losing ‘magical’ tradition of human-animal mutualism, study warns
- Honey gatherers working with birds to find wild bees’ nests; fishers working with dolphins to trap fish — these are examples of what’s known as mutualism, a practice that’s fast dying out, a new study warns.
- This human-wildlife cooperation was once much more widespread, but is being lost as younger generations in the often Indigenous communities that have long practiced it now eschew it for formal education and farming.
- In losing these age-old practices, conservationists say, we may be losing more than just the material benefits, “but in fact important aspects of the reverence and deep connection with nature.”
Noise pollution spooks whales the way predators would, study finds
- Whales appear to react to human-made noise in the ocean, such as naval sonar, in a similar way to which they respond to the sounds of their predators like killer whales, according to recent research.
- The authors of the study played the sounds of sonar and killer whales when whales from four species were present.
- The whales responded by breaking off their feeding forays, leading scientists to conclude that noise pollution in the ocean could leave them weaker and more vulnerable to predation.
- The researchers also suggest that marine mammals in the Arctic may be especially at risk as climate change alters their environment in ways that may make them more vulnerable.
Ecotours aimed at saving monkeys are likely stressing them out, study finds
- A recent study reveals that tourist boats approaching troops of proboscis monkeys in Malaysian Borneo cause the animals stress, even when the boats travel at slow speeds.
- The research reveals something of a universal response, closely tracking similar findings from ecotourism operations focused on other animals such as birds and whales.
- Wildlife tourism is increasingly seen as a way to raise awareness around conservation issues and provide local communities with a source of income that’s contingent on the protection of ecosystems.
- Scientists say this type of research can form the basis for guidelines aimed at minimizing the effects of ecotourism on animals, especially as its role in conservation grows.
Spotted hyenas adapt to climate change in famed Tanzanian park
- Spotted hyenas seem to be adapting to changing rainfall patterns affecting their preferred prey in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.
- In the past decade, migratory herds have been arriving later than previously at hyena clan territories in the middle of the Serengeti, forcing lactating females to “commute” further from their dens to find a meal.
- But researchers have observed no change in how much time they spend with their cubs at these dens, suggesting they’re having no trouble locating prey further from home.
- Hyenas are known for their robust and flexible foraging behavior, but researchers caution that in places other than the Serengeti, they may face additional challenges, such as fragmented habitat and intensifying human activity.
Release the cats: Training native species to fear invasive predators
- Invasive predators, like cats and foxes, have wreaked havoc on native species across Australia, leading conservationists to build fenced-in havens.
- But now researchers are finding that some animals in these havens have lost all fear not only of invasive predators but native ones as well.
- To combat this, researchers are trying a new strategy: release a few predators back into these havens to select for predator-savvy animals to aid long-term species conservation.
- Early efforts to date have shown some success, but scientists say much longer studies are needed.
As tiger numbers in Nepal and India grow, their freedom to roam shrinks
- Nepal is one of the few countries on track to double its tiger population this year from a 2010 baseline.
- But a growing sense of “animal nationalism” threatens to mar this success, with local media playing up the tigers’ travels across the border into India.
- The big cats, which don’t recognize political boundaries, have always roamed a wide range in this region, yet even this behavior is under threat as key corridors are restricted or cut off entirely by infrastructure projects by both countries.
- Conservationists have called for keeping nationalism out of planning and implementation of conservation efforts, for the sake of this iconic species.
What’s popping? Humpbacks off South Africa, new acoustic study finds
- Researchers recently recorded humpback whales making popping sounds like a gunshot at the Vema Seamount off the coast of South Africa.
- It’s not currently known why humpbacks make these sounds, but researchers suspect it has to do with mating or feeding.
- The Vema Seamount is an important feeding ground for humpbacks and other species, leading experts to call for the region to be protected.
Human disturbance is pitting wolverines against an unlikely competitor: Coyotes
- New research finds that when coyotes and wolverines come into contact, the rarer wolverines lose out.
- Human impacts, such as roads and fossil fuel infrastructure, are pushing both of these predators into closer contact, harming wolverine populations.
- Researchers suggest improving landscape management to take into account wolverines’ needs.
Why are Florida manatees showing up in Cuba and Mexico?
- Over the last 15 years, Florida manatees have started appearing in distant parts of Cuba and Mexico, surprising researchers who have long believed the animals wouldn’t cross large bodies of water to reach other suitable habitats.
- The sightings have several still-unproven explanations, including that degraded habitats on the Florida coast are forcing the animals to move elsewhere in the region.
- Others say cell phone technology is allowing people to capture manatee behavior that has always existed.
Côte d’Ivoire’s chimp habitats are shrinking, but there’s hope in their numbers
- Despite a decade of uncontrolled poaching, researchers have found what they describe as a “healthy” population of 200 chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire’s Comoé National Park.
- With the help of camera-trap footage, researchers found that the Comoé chimps display unique types of behaviors not found in other chimp populations in West Africa.
- Like elsewhere in West Africa, the chimps’ habitat remains under pressure from farming and herding.
‘Resilient’ leatherback turtles can survive fishing rope entanglements. Mostly
- Leatherback turtles are highly vulnerable to getting entangled in lobster pot fishing gear off the coast of Massachusetts.
- A new study now shows that they can largely survive these entanglements — if they’re reached by rescuers in time, and their injuries are treatable.
- However, researchers say the lobster fishery must move toward a ropeless model to ensure that leatherbacks, and other marine animals, can survive over the long term.
The ocean is a cacophony of fish talk, study shows. We just can’t hear it
- Advances in evolutionary understanding have given researchers a deeper appreciation of a very sonorous underwater world.
- From finding a mate to defending their territory, fish employ a variety of innovative mechanisms to produce sounds, like vibrating their swim bladders or snapping their tendons.
- Researcher Aaron Rice says fish are much more dependent on sound for communication than we realize, given that sound production has evolved independently several times.
- The findings mean marine noise pollution presents a big potential threat to the health of marine and freshwater ecosystems.
‘Studying a ghost’: In Cape Town, urban caracals give researchers lots to ponder
- Researchers have spent years trapping and tracking the elusive caracal on the edges of the South African city of Cape Town to better understand the needs of these wild cats.
- Urban caracals have adapted their behavior in a number of ways to survive on the margins of the city, including hunting more during the day.
- Although highly adaptable, urban caracals face many challenges, including ingesting rat poison.
- Researchers recommend more greenways to allow the animals to survive in these heavily modified environments.
Researchers puzzle over sea-crossing migration of crimson rose butterflies
- A recently observed migration of a large swarm of crimson rose butterflies from India to Sri Lanka has highlighted how little we still know about this natural phenomenon.
- Unlike the better-known migration of the monarch butterfly in North America, the movements of the crimson rose are meandering and dispersed, often triggered by the start of rains following a long dry spell.
- Researchers have called for more studies to be done to better understand the phenomenon, including through contributions from citizen scientists in both Sri Lanka and India.
Marauding monkeys on an Indonesian island point to environmental pressures
- Beachgoers and residents on the Indonesian island of Batam have complained about packs of monkeys terrorizing them in search of food.
- Conservationists say the problem is that the long-tailed macaques are being squeezed out of their natural habitat by deforestation, and have become accustomed to being given food by humans.
- Visitors to Batam’s Mirota Beach often flout the “no feeding” signs, which encourages the monkeys; food waste in trash cans outside homes also draws the animals into residential areas.
- Human-primate conflicts area common in other parts of Indonesia, including in Bali’s Monkey Forest, at the foot of Java’s Mount Semeru after a recent eruption, and in Sumatra and Borneo, where orangutans are losing their forest homes.
The chimp doctor will see you now: Medicating apes boost the case for conservation
- Researchers in Gabon’s Loango National Park observed chimps applying insects to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of other individuals.
- Researchers identified 76 instances of this behavior being repeated on 22 different chimps.
- Experts say these findings could help guide conservation efforts for not just these endangered great apes, but also their entire ecosystem.
In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
- Research has shown that culture exists in myriad animal species, allowing information to be shared between generations, leading to occurrences of tool use and potentially affecting animals’ adaptability to changes to their environment.
- In a new paper, scientists propose a stepwise process to account for and protect animal culture in conservation efforts.
- They advocate an approach to conservation that integrates culture with conventional considerations such as genetic diversity, rather than using it as a “stand-alone” tool.
More trees means healthier bees, new study on air pollution shows
- Scientists analyzed levels of chemical pollutants in native jataí bees across eight landscapes in Brazil’s São Paulo state.
- They found that in landscapes with more vegetation, the bees had fewer pollutants, at lower levels, indicating that the plants act as a filter and protective barrier
- The findings add to the growing scientific evidence about the importance of afforestation in urban areas, including creating ecological corridors to connect separate landscapes.
- Air pollution is the world’s top driver of illness and death from chronic noncommunicable diseases.
How wildlife crossings in Canada are inspiring safer roads for global species
- The stretch of Trans-Canada highway that runs through Banff National Park was once incredibly dangerous for animals and motorists alike, but today the park has more wildlife crossing structures than anywhere else in the world and the data to support their effectiveness.
- The crossing structures at Banff inspired a project on I-90 in the U.S. state of Washington with its own location-specific twists.
- Tribal efforts also led to a Banff-informed development project on US-93 in the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana that respects local people and wildlife.
- Lessons from Banff are informing projects beyond North America: In Costa Rica, emerging crossing structure projects protect jaguars and canopy-dwelling creatures.
Bobcat caught on camera trap | Candid Animal Cam
- Every month, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Geneticists have identified new groups of tiger sharks to protect
- New genetic studies revealed at least two distinct groups of tiger sharks in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific ocean basins, plus a third smaller population near Hawaii.
- These results are a mild surprise, due to the versatility and long swimming ranges of tiger sharks.
- Fisheries managers should take precautions to protect these distinct genetic populations, researchers urge.
Some hummingbird females display male coloring to avoid being harassed
- Hummingbirds with brightly colored feathers typical of males are harassed by other birds less frequently than those with drab female-colored feathers.
- Male coloring in one species of hummingbird gives a social advantage to females displaying that color pattern.
- This study is the first to show these behaviors in action with live hummingbirds.
Carnivores avoid rush hour by taking to roads at night
- Large carnivores avoid people by steering clear of roads during the day, but they often travel by road at night.
- Avoiding humans is a higher priority than avoiding other carnivore species.
- Humans may also be altering predator-prey relationships by making large carnivores more nocturnal.
Honey bees find food more easily in cities, thanks to abundant urban gardens
- In London, western honey bees travel shorter distances to find their meals in metropolitan areas than in agricultural ones.
- A rich supply of gardens and decorative flowers provides ample nectar close to urban hives.
- Adding native flowers and similar foraging hotspots near open fields would help support bees in intensively farmed areas.
Hungry like the maned wolf pup: Clips give rare glimpse of elusive canine
- New camera-trap clips show three maned wolf pups nursing and eating regurgitated food from their mother.
- This is the first time this behavior has been observed and documented in wild maned wolves, experts say.
- Wild maned wolves have recently recolonized Iberá National Park in Argentina, thanks to conservation efforts.
Critically endangered Sunda pangolin caught on camera trap | Candid Animal Cam
- Every month, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Scientists look to chimps’ past to gauge their future under climate change
- In a new study, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees rode out periods of global change over the past 120,000 years, revealing insights into how they might be affected by future climate change.
- The team identified important long-term, resilient chimpanzee habitat in the Upper and Lower Guinean forests of West and Central Africa, and the Albertine Rift in East Africa that had been previously overlooked.
- The authors stress the vital role of understanding the past in predicting how future climate changes will affect wildlife abundance and distribution.
The secret lives of common hippos | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Studies debunk ‘nature is healing’ narrative from 2020 lockdowns
- Several new studies have tried to tally up the costs and benefits to the environment as a result of lockdowns around the world last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- One study showed that emissions of indirect greenhouse gases like CO and NO2 decreased significantly, but one of its authors says this likely won’t have much of an impact over the long term.
- Another study debunks the media hype behind the “animals are reclaiming the cities” trend last year, attributing the increased sightings to the fact that people forced to stay at home finally had time to start noticing the wildlife around them.
- In India, researchers concluded there were more negatives than positives for the environment, including a surge in the use of plastic packaging and PPE, as people shopped online and masked up.
For male chimps looking to mate, an entourage is the way to go, study finds
- A recent study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park found that males who create strong ties to alpha males, or who form large networks or alliances with other males, were more likely to father offspring.
- Researchers say the social bonds formed between males provided access to mating opportunities which they would not have been able to access without allies.
- While further studies are necessary, experts say the findings could help understand optimal group sizes and thus the necessary range for wild populations.
What sets crab-eating raccoons apart from other carnivores? | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Loss of forests turns up the heat, literally, on giant anteaters
- A new study shows that giant anteaters, which are relatively poor at regulating their own body temperature, need forest patches as thermal shelters.
- It found that giant anteaters living in less forested habitats tended to travel farther to access forest fragments as a refuge from extreme temperatures.
- Researchers highlight the importance of understanding the spatial requirement of animals to guide management strategies and suggest conservation efforts focused on protecting forest patches within anteaters’ home ranges to help them regulate their body temperature.
The most widespread pig species on Earth: wild boar | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
For sea snakes, underwater sex is a washout more often than not
- A sea snake’s senses of sight and smell are greatly diminished underwater, and the added challenge of trying to stay buoyant makes underwater mating no easy feat.
- A new study has identified several distinct features unique to adult male turtelheaded sea snakes thought to help improve their chances of coupling with a female underwater, most notably a high concentration of touch receptors in key spots along the body.
- A previous study found 20 of 31 male turtleheaded snakes lost contact with the female during courtship, often then attempting to mate with nearby objects such as a diver’s fin or sea cucumber.
One of South America’s most abundant felids: Geoffroy’s cat | Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
For manta rays, parasitic hitchhikers can be a pain in the rear, study finds
- A new study has found that 13 species closely associate with reef manta rays and oceanic manta rays in the Maldives.
- The associations between the manta rays and these other species are not always mutually beneficial, with the “hitchhiking” species usually gaining more benefits than they give to the manta rays.
- The study is based on more than 76,5000 sightings of the two manta ray species over a 30-year period.
As humans close in on their habitat, crocodiles in the Philippines snap back
- In mangrove-rich Palawan, residents are advised to steer clear of crocodile habitats as the hatching season makes the reptiles more aggressive.
- There are two crocodile species in the Philippines: the endemic Philippine crocodile and the bigger and more aggressive saltwater crocodile, found throughout Asia and the Pacific.
- Crocodile attacks on humans have increased in recent years, which experts attribute to the encroachment of houses within crocodile habitats, particularly mangrove swamps.
- To minimize the risk to lives, both human and crocodile, NGOs say Palawan should implement its crocodile conservation program, which includes, among other things, relocating residents away from crocodile habitats.
The only species of bear in South America: the spectacled bear | Candid Animal Cam
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How many times a day does a waterbuck need to drink? Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Marbled cat: Candid Animal Cam meets the mini clouded leopard
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
How many members can a giant river otter family have? Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Did you know that spix’s night monkeys only weigh around 1 kg?
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Did you know how many insects a Giant Anteater can eat in a day? Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
With baby animals, patience pays: Photographer describes new book of intimate portraits
- Suzi Eszterhas was recently named Outstanding Nature Photographer of the Year by the North American Nature Photography Association, only the second woman to receive this honor in 24 years.
- Her book “New On Earth: Baby Animals in the Wild” now in bookstores showcases her specialty: photographing newborn and young wildlife.
- Her secret is speed and great patience: she travels at a moment’s notice to capture newborn animals on camera, but can wait weeks for cautious parents to relax enough with Eszterhas nearby for truly candid, natural scenes to happen.
- She spoke with Mongabay during a May 2021 interview.
Female putty-nosed monkeys get their males to run defense against predators
- A new study found that female putty-nosed monkeys use alarm calls to recruit males to be their “hired guns” when a predator is detected, only stopping their vocalizations once males have been enlisted to ward off the threat.
- Recruited males will vocalize their participation with a “pyow” call, which may aid their reproductive chances in the future, according to the study.
- The researchers also observed that male putty-nosed monkeys emitted a newly described “kek” call when responding to a simulation of a leopard moving along the forest floor.
- The researchers say that this study, as well as related studies, can aid conservation efforts for the putty-nosed monkey, a near-threatened species, and broaden our understanding of communicative and cognitive capacities of non-human primate species.
Did you know that a group of warthogs is called a sounder? Candid Animal Cam
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Did you know that northern tamanduas may eat up to 9,000 insects per day? Candid Animal Cam
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
From penguins to sharks to whales, swimming in circles is a surprisingly common trait
- Many marine animals are intentionally swimming in circles consecutively at a relatively constant speed more than twice, according to a new study using data from movement trackers.
- The researchers say the behavior is surprising in part because swimming in a straight line is known to be the most efficient way to move about.
- They found some of the animals swim in circles during different activities, including foraging, courtship, navigation and even possibly geomagnetic observations.
Unrelated adoptions by bonobos may point to altruistic traits, study says
- Two wild bonobos in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were observed to adopt infants from different social groups, according to a new study.
- These are said to be the first recorded cases of great apes adopting unrelated individuals.
- While the researchers do not know why these bonobos chose to adopt unrelated infants, they speculate that it could be to strengthen current and future alliances within their own groups as well as with other social groups.
Did you know that stump-tailed macaques can go bald?
- Every two weeks, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Pig nest-building promotes tree diversity in tropical forest: Study
- New research from a tropical forest in Malaysia reveals that wild pigs, better known for their destructive tendencies on farms and in ecosystems, may actually help encourage tree diversity in forests.
- Expectant mother pigs will build nests amid clumps of saplings, which are usually from a set of tree species common to the forest.
- When the sow kills these saplings for the nest, she’s effectively providing a check on any one species becoming dominant in the forest.
- The research demonstrates the benefits that pigs can bring to forest health, but they also note that pig populations that grow too numerous could — and do, in places — keep the forest from regenerating.
How fast does a white-tailed deer run? Candid Animal Cam spots fawns
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Male superb lyrebirds found to trick females into mating via masterful mimicry
- Male superb lyrebirds can mimic the sounds of an entire multispecies flock during courtship and mating.
- The study suggests that males use the flock mimicry to deceive females into believing there is a predator nearby and thus preventing them from breaking off courtship or leaving before copulation, thereby increasing their chances of successfully mating.
- Researchers say the elaboration of this mimetic song could be driven by male deception and sexual conflict, rather than females’ preferences for male extravagance and male-male competition, which are the most common explanations for sexual selection.
Forest patches amid agriculture are key to orangutan survival: Study
- A recent study highlights the importance of small fragments of forest amid landscapes dominated by agriculture for the survival of orangutans in Southeast Asia.
- The research, drawing on several decades of ground and aerial surveys in Borneo, found that orangutans are adapting to the presence of oil palm plantations — if they have access to nearby patches of forest.
- The authors say agricultural plantations could serve as corridors allowing for better connectivity and gene flow within the broader orangutan population.
Why do zebras have stripes? Candid Animal Cam visits the Serengeti
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Here goes nothing: Male spiders found giving females silk-wrapped zilch
- Researchers describe how a South American spider species, Paradossenus longipes, uses silk-wrapped nuptial gifts in its courtship rituals.
- While other gift-wrapping spiders give potential mates edible prey or inedible leftovers, P. longipes surprised scientists by sometimes presenting females with empty gifts.
- The discovery of empty nuptial gifts in spiders raises questions about how the behavior evolved and the role it plays in sexual selection and mating success.
Where does the name of the crab-eating fox come from?
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
The queen sets the tone: Deciphering the dialects of naked mole-rats
- Naked mole-rats have their own dialects that differ between colonies of the rodents, researchers have found.
- The virtually blind animals communicate underground through squeaks, grunts and chirps, and have an “accent” that is determined by the queen of each colony.
- This shared dialect “strengthens cohesion and a sense of belonging among the naked mole-rats of a specific colony,” says Alison Barker, lead author of the new study.
- The finding has important implications for the understanding of our own history, by potentially shedding light into how human linguistic culture evolved.
What does a great argus pheasant sound like? Candid Animal Cam listens to birds
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Well, hello there: Glass frogs ‘wave’ to communicate near noisy waterfalls
- A researcher discovered that an obscure species of nocturnal glass frog, Sachatamia orejuela, uses visual signaling as well as acoustical calls to communicate within their environment.
- Other frog species are known to communicate visually, although they are unrelated to S. orejuela and are found on different continents.
- A recent paper on the discovery also provides the first known description of the acoustical call of S. orejuela, endemic to Ecuador and Colombia.
Pet trade relies on ‘disposable’ wild chameleons from Madagascar
- Despite being difficult to keep alive and healthy, chameleons are among the most popular reptiles in the exotic pet trade.
- Each year hundreds of thousands of these slow-moving reptiles are taken from the wild, both legally and illegally, many of them from threatened species living in the forests of Madagascar.
- Observers say the international trade in chameleons must be changed to avoid harming wild populations and improve the well-being of animals during transit and captivity.
- They also point to the need to make the trade fairer and more transparent, so local people can benefit from it.
How endangered are monk seals? Candid Animal Cam meets these underwater mammals
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Why do Eurasian badgers live with foxes? Candid Animal Cam spots badgers
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
What is a white-faced capuchin? Candid Animal Cam meets monkeys
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
What is a white-lipped peccary? Candid Animal Cam is in South America
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
How are jaguars different from leopards? Candid Animal Cam is in the Americas
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
The Amazon’s short-eared dog was thought to be a scavenger. Now there’s video
- After installing a camera trap near a dead armadillo, a biologist unexpectedly recorded video of the elusive short-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) scavenging on the carcass, and subsequently published a field report about the incident.
- While there was previous anecdotal evidence that short-eared dogs scavenge, this field report provides the first published documentation of this behavior, according to its author.
- In general, very little is known about the short-eared dog, including information about the species’ biology and ecology, although researchers are working to fill these gaps.
What is a tayra? Candid Animal Cam is in the Americas
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
What makes chimps unique? Candid Animal Cam meets our close relatives
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
A warming Arctic is changing animal migrations, decades of tracking shows
- The newly launched Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) includes 28 years of terrestrial and marine animal tracking studies on more than 96 species across the Arctic, Arctic marine, and subarctic (including boreal forests and taiga).
- “The Arctic is undergoing some of the most rapid climate change on the planet,” one author said. The resulting warmer winters, earlier spring snowmelt, and the loss of ice are affecting animal movement.
- Researchers conducted their first case studies using the AAMA and found large-scale patterns in the way caribou, moose, wolves, golden eagles, and bears are responding to climate change. The findings were published in the journal Science.
- In their analyses, researchers found that the northernmost herds of caribou have begun giving birth earlier in the spring. After mild winters, immature golden eagles arrived earlier in the spring to breeding grounds than adult birds.
Are wolves related to dogs? Candid Animal Cam meets the largest member of the dog family
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
A chameleon not seen in a century reappears in a Madagascar garden
- Researchers recently rediscovered the Voeltzkow’s chameleon (Furcifer voeltzkowi) in an untamed hotel garden in northwestern Madagascar, after the species was “lost” for more than 100 years.
- The female chameleons were found to change color and pattern when interacting with males or when being handled by humans.
- While the species still needs to be officially evaluated by the IUCN, the researchers suggest that it should be considered an endangered species.
How do red-fronted lemurs behave? Candid Animal Cam is in Madagascar
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Why do wombats poop cubes? Candid Animal Cam is in Australia
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Armed and dangerous, ‘murder lorises’ use their venom against each other
- A study released Oct. 19 in the journal Current Biology reveals that slow lorises use their venom not only against other species, but also against each other — a behavior that is extremely rare among animals.
- Over eight years and hundreds of capture events, 20% of all Javan lorises surveyed had fresh wounds from other lorises. Both males and females having and using weapons within the same species is also rare.
- Although it is illegal to capture, sell or own lorises in all of their range countries, they are still caught for their use in traditional Asian medicine and for the pet trade.
- The trade of lorises involves pulling their teeth and subjecting them to situations that violate animal welfare criteria. Lorises lead rich and complex lives in the forest and because they are primates, isolation from their kin can be psychologically distressing. Also, they can kill you.
What is the Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine? Candid Animal Cam heads to Mesoamerica
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
Meet the red fox found in the Northern Hemisphere on Candid Animal Cam
- Every Tuesday, Mongabay brings you a new episode of Candid Animal Cam, our show featuring animals caught on camera traps around the world and hosted by Romi Castagnino, our writer and conservation scientist.
In search of the ‘forest ghost,’ South America’s cryptic giant armadillo
- Since 2010, the Giant Armadillo Project has been dedicated to researching the world’s largest armadillo, an animal that, despite its size and range across almost every country in South America, is one of the world’s least recognized animals.
- The researchers have made key findings since then, among them: the burrows that the giant armadillo digs, which can be up to 5 meters (16 feet) long, serve as shelter from extreme temperatures for at least 70 other species, including birds, reptiles and mammals.
- The species is categorized as vulnerable, with the advance of agribusiness — and the attendant deforestation and road construction that come with it — the main threat to the giant armadillo.
Podcast: Singing and whistling cetaceans of southern Africa revealed by bioacoustics
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re taking a look at two examples of how bioacoustics studies have discovered things we never knew before about marine life.
- Dr. Tess Gridley joins us to talk about the recent discovery of singing humpback whales in South Africa’s False Bay. Gridley plays us some of the recordings she and her team made documenting humpback songs in False Bay for the first time ever, and discusses the African Bioacoustics Community’s upcoming conference, which she hopes will help inspire even more bioacoustic research focused on African wildlife.
- We’re also joined by Sasha Dines, a PhD student at the University of Stellenbosch who is studying humpback dolphins. Dines’ work is focused on determining whether or not Indian Ocean humpback dolphins make signature whistle calls, which could be used to monitor the dolphins’ via passive acoustic monitoring arrays. She plays us some whistle calls of a humpback dolphin named Herme, and explains how bioacoustic monitoring could help improve not just monitoring but also conservation efforts for these endangered dolphins.
Narwhals beware: Killer whales are on the rise in the Arctic
- Climate change has led to dramatic ice loss in the Arctic, allowing killer whales to access parts of the Canadian Arctic they previously couldn’t.
- A new study found that a population of 136 to 190 killer whales spent the warmer summer months in Canada’s northern Baffin Island region between 2009 and 2018, and preyed on as many as 1,504 narwhals each season.
- While the overall narwhal population isn’t in immediate danger, a steady influx of killer whales could lead to ecosystem transformation through a top-down trophic cascade, according to the study.
Sea turtles often lose their way, but always reach their destination
- A new study found that green sea turtles rely on a “crude map” to navigate the ocean, often going several hundred kilometers off course before successfully arriving at their destination.
- Using GPS tracking devices, the research team tracked the migrations of female green turtles from nesting grounds on Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean to foraging grounds on isolated oceanic islands.
- Green turtles demonstrate a particularly high fidelity to foraging grounds, which made them an ideal species to study.
- The researchers say they hope their findings will help inform conservation efforts to protect green turtles, which are an endangered species.
Deer droppings help researchers understand sambar antler development
- The sambar is the most widespread deer species in the Asian region, but there are very few studies on their reproduction and antler development cycles.
- A new Sri Lankan study focusing on testosterone levels in sambar droppings sheds light on the link between hormone levels in males with the development cycle of their antlers, though it doesn’t show clear seasonality like in deer in temperate regions.
- The sambar population in Horton Plains National Park in central Sri Lanka is unique in the formation of herds, which can grow to up to 20 individuals, in contrast to the much smaller herds found elsewhere.
- Sambar deer are a flagship species for the conservation of Horton Plains National Park, a unique habitat of montane wet grassland.
Podcast: Animals have culture, too, and for some it’s crucial to their survival and conservation
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we explore animal culture and social learning with author Carl Safina and whale researcher Hal Whitehead.
- Carl Safina examines the capacity of several animal species for social learning and transmitting knowledge across generations in his new book, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. Safina appears on the Mongabay Newscast today to explain how sperm whales, scarlet macaws, and chimpanzees are equipped to live in the world they live in as much by what they learn from other individuals in their social groups as by their genetic inheritance.
- Hal Whitehead, a professor at Canada’s Dalhousie University, was one of the first scientists to examine the complex social lives of sperm whales and the distinctive calls known as codas that they use to establish their group and personal identities. He appears on the podcast today to play us some recordings of sperm whale codas and tell us about sperm whale culture and social learning.
Baby humpback whales bulk up in Hawaii ahead of migration [VIDEO]
- New video reveals baby humpback whales nursing in Hawaii, a sight rarely seen by humans.
- A team of researchers used non-invasive suction cups to outfit seven baby humpback whales with special tags for recording data on nursing as well as other whale behaviors.
- During their time in Hawaii, the whale calves must drink enough milk to fatten up for a one to two-month migration back to Alaska.
- The researchers hope to understand the needs of mother whales and their calves during their time in the tropical breeding grounds and for their long migration.
Mug shots and public pics join the dots of whale sharks’ Southeast Asian trips
- A study blending old and new techniques has recorded young whale sharks returning to the same spot in the Philippines after visiting Malaysia and Indonesia.
- Scientists recorded the second-biggest aggregation of whale sharks in the Philippines in Honda Bay in the province of Palawan.
- Compared to other whale shark groups in the Philippines, the one in Honda Bay is made up mostly of juvenile males that feed on small fish and krill.
- The discovery underscores the need for stronger collaboration between the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, all part of the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape Project under the Coral Triangle Initiative.
Spiny lobsters raise an undersea racket that can be heard miles away
- European spiny lobsters can create a sound that might, under the right conditions, be detectable up to 3 kilometers, nearly 2 miles, away.
- Researchers used underwater microphones to determine how loud lobsters are, and found that the larger the lobster, the louder the sound.
- Spiny lobsters were overharvested in the 1970s, and though populations have rebounded, there is still a need to monitor population levels.
- The study suggests that lobsters may be a candidate for acoustic monitoring.
‘Hummingbird’ spy creature films millions of monarchs taking flight
- An animatronic “hummingbird” equipped with a camera has been used to film a sea of monarch butterflies taking flight in their wintering grounds in Mexico.
- The “spy creature” technology is the latest by John Downer Productions, a pioneer in wildlife filming, and is featured in the PBS NATURE series “Spy in the Wild.”
- The series also makes use of other spy creatures to infiltrate groups of orangutans, meerkats, egrets, tortoises, sloths, cobras and hippos.
Audio: How to be an ethical wildlife photographer, and why it’s necessary
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we discuss how to take photographs of wild animals without harassing, exploiting, or harming them — in other words, today we’re taking a look at ethical wildlife photography.
- We welcome to the program environmental journalist Annie Roth and internationally renowned, award-winning wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas.
- Ethical wildlife photography is “kind of a win-win,” Eszterhas says, “because, number one, we’re treating the animals with kindness and respect and we’re not affecting their lives in a very negative way. And number two, we’re getting very unique gifts out of it, we’re getting these incredible images that we wouldn’t be able to get without it.”
Flamingos form lasting friendships, a new study finds
- Flamingos, like humans, form social bonds that can last for years and appear to be important for survival in the wild, a new study shows.
- Researchers studying the bird’s social interactions at a captive center in the U.K. found they tended to make long-standing friendships rather than loose, random connections.
- In addition to the friends they tend to “hang out” with, flamingos also actively avoid some individuals.
- The findings could prove useful in managed breeding programs, to ensure that bonded flamingos aren’t separated from each other.
Ring-tailed lemurs ‘stink flirt’ (it’s not as bad as it sounds)
- During the mating season, male ring-tailed lemurs rub secretions from glands on their wrists onto their tails and wave them at female lemurs.
- These chemical secretions, identified by researchers at the University of Tokyo, have emerged as the first pheromone candidates to be identified in a primate.
- Pheromones, chemical compounds that animals secrete, can signal more than sexual availability; they can also communicate danger or mark trails.
- For the ring-tailed lemur secretions be recognized as real sex pheromones, the scientists will have to show that they are used to communicate only within the species and that they influence mating behavior.
Hanging with Romi: Get to know our camera trap expert and host of Candid Animal Cam
- Romina Castagnino is the host of our new video series that features camera trap footage of wildlife behavior
- Candid Animal Cam episodes are published every Tuesday and they share a wide variety of facts and footage of fascinating animals like tapirs and spectacled bears
- Trained as a conservation biologist, Romi has used camera traps extensively in her wildlife studies and shares this knowledge in each episode
- Teachers and parents with students at home are invited to view these videos with kids, and to use the links provided to learn more about each animal, every Tuesday
For nesting hawksbill turtles, this Philippine community is a sanctuary
- For centuries, hawksbill sea turtles have returned to a shoreline in the eastern Philippines to lay their eggs, even as the human community has expanded along the same stretch of beach.
- Hawksbill sea turtles’ low survival rates in the wild are caused by natural predators and, recently, exacerbated by rising sea levels. Another key threat is poaching for their meat and shells.
- Despite the lack of financial support, locals continue to look after the eggs, coming up with their own ways to protect them until the hatchlings are ready to be released back into the sea.
Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
- A new study presents evidence of territoriality among western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo.
- Camera trap images revealed that groups avoided one another and also stayed away from the central area of each other’s home ranges — evidence that the species may be more territorial than previously thought.
- An estimated 80% of western lowland gorillas live outside of protected areas, where shrinking territory due to forest loss and habitat fragmentation is a big problem.
- This new information on their territoriality, combined with their shrinking habitat, means gorillas may experience increased competition for food as well as for the limited space.
For tiger moms, the work-life balance struggle is real, study finds
- For the first time ever, scientists were able to document the behavior of a GPS-collared Amur tiger in the wild for the four months before and four months after the birth of her cubs.
- The study, published in the journal Mammal Research, reveals that the new tiger mom made time for her cubs by abandoning defense of her territory, traveling more rapidly from kills, making fewer but larger kills, and resting less.
- The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), sometimes referred to as the Siberian tiger, is currently listed as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List.
- Poaching is now the biggest threat to the wild Amur tigers, as tiger parts continue to be in high demand throughout Asia for use as ornaments, in traditional medicine, and as a status symbol.
Study investigates impact of road deaths on giant anteater population in Cerrado
- For three years, the Bandeiras e Rodovias (Anteaters and Highways) project by the Institute for the Conservation of Wild Animals (ICAS) has investigated the impact of highway collisions on the health and population of the largest insectivorous mammal in the world: the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla).
- Between January 2017 and December 2019, researchers tracked 44 anteaters by GPS, interviewed truck drivers, and monitored 92,364 kilometers (57,392 miles) of highways. During this period they recorded the deaths of 725 giant anteaters, a slow-moving nocturnal species with non-reflective eyes and poor hearing.
- The study is especially relevant because it was conducted in the Cerrado, Brazil’s grain-growing heartland that’s served by a large truck fleet and marked by significant loss of habitat for corn and soybean plantations. The findings indicate that the impact of the highways has cut the growth rate of the anteater population in half, which could speed up its demise.
- The researchers warn that the possible extinction of the giant anteater could have wide-reaching ramifications, including on agriculture, since the species plays an important role in controlling insects and pests, thereby saving farmers from having to spend on pest control products that, among other things, contaminate the soil.
Beaked whales’ stealth behavior gives clues to mystery of mass stranding
- A new study suggests that beaked whales have evolved stealthy and synchronized behavior to evade predators such as killer whales.
- They dive in synch to maximize their foraging time together and minimize their time at the surface, where killer whales can more easily target them.
- And even though they depend on echolocation to communicate and forage, they go into silent mode in depths that killer whales typically hunt in.
- Predator avoidance is such a strong driver of their behavior that researchers say any hint of danger —even a naval sonar — could trigger an intense stress response, and possibly explain why beaked whales are prone to mass stranding.
Key cetacean site in Philippines sees drop in dolphin, whale sightings
- A recent survey has confirmed a declining trend in sightings of dolphins and whales in the Tañon Strait in the central Philippines, a waterway declared an Important Marine Mammal Area by the IUCN.
- The strait is a migratory route for at least 11 cetacean species, including the vulnerable Gray’s spinner dolphin and the endangered false killer whale, but four surveys carried out since 1999 have shown a sharp decline in population and species sightings.
- One bright spot in the latest survey was the sighting of rose-bellied dwarf spinner dolphins, only the second time that the species has ever been spotted in Philippine waters.
- The strait is one of the country’s busiest sea lanes, encountering heavy fishing and tourism activities, which researchers say may be a factor for the downward trend. They call for further collaboration to enact stringent measures on fishing and tourism activities to protect the area.
Answers in excrement: Fecal analysis yields insight about wild primates
- Wildlife researchers can obtain information from fecal samples on animals’ reproductive status, parentage, genetic relationships, and presence of parasites or viruses, such as Zika.
- Scientists studying wild primates in South America in the 1990s developed techniques to help them understand how hormones, steroids and other compounds related to the animals’ reproductive behaviors.
- More recently, scientists are testing whether fecal sampling can help identify parasites carrying diseases such as Zika virus or detect changes in the microbiome that could improve its contributions to host energy balances and nutrition and help them survive nutritionally stressful periods.
- Fecal sampling is a noninvasive method of capturing this information but getting and keeping the equipment and materials needed to process the samples is challenging.
Deforestation clips howler monkey calls, study finds
- In a recent study, scientists report that howler monkeys in Costa Rica make longer calls in forest interiors and near naturally occurring forest edges, such as those along rivers, than near human-created edges.
- The researchers believe that the longer howls serve as a way for male monkeys to protect their groups’ access to higher-quality food resources.
- The team’s findings indicate that this behavioral change in response to deforestation supports the protection of standing forest and reforestation along human-created forest edges.
Tool use in puffins may point to ‘underestimated’ intelligence in seabirds
- A camera trap in Iceland captured video of an Atlantic puffin using a stick to scratch itself.
- The discovery, along with a similar observation in Wales in 2014, is the first evidence of tool use in seabirds.
- The findings suggest that seabirds like puffins may be more intelligent or possess greater problem-solving skills than once thought.
Our most popular nature and environment stories
- In 2019, Mongabay celebrated its 20th year, publishing 4,871 articles, over 750 videos, and 26 podcast episodes.
- Mongabay continued to see strong growth in terms of readership in 2019, with pageviews increasing 34% to 102 million and monthly active users climbing 50% to 4.3 million. Video views rose 50% to 39 million.
- Below is a list of our most popular stories published in 2019.
Audio: The best animal calls featured on the Mongabay Newscast in 2019
- This is our last episode of 2019, so we took a look back at the bioacoustic recordings we featured here on the Mongabay Newscast over the past year and today we will be playing some of our favorites for you.
- As regular listeners to the Mongabay Newscast already know, bioacoustics is the study of how animals use and perceive sound, and how their acoustical adaptations reflect their behaviors and their relationships with their habitats and surroundings. Bioacoustics is still a fairly young field of study, but it is currently being used to study everything from how wildlife populations respond to the impacts of climate change to how entire ecosystems are impacted by human activities.
- On today’s episode, we listen to recordings of stitchbirds in New Zealand, river dolphins in Brazil, humpback whales in the Pacific, right whales in the Atlantic, and gibbons in Indonesia.
Female golden rocket frogs know a good father when they hear him
- Female golden rocket frogs prefer males with longer call lengths featuring more pulses, which correlates to their parental care abilities, researchers have found.
- Male removal experiments in Kaieteur National Park in Guyana revealed that hatching success is four times higher in clutches with attentive fathers than those without a father present.
- By honestly advertising their parental care abilities, male frogs can inform females of their potential to protect their eggs and tadpoles from desiccation and predation.
A Philippine conservation park juggles funding needs with animal welfare
- The Mari-it Wildlife and Conservation Park on the island of Panay is home to at least 62 threatened animals that are endemic to the Philippines.
- Its funding dried up in 2014, and after struggling to get by on scant resources from the local government, the park decided in June this year to open its gates to tourists.
- Since then, however, it has had to deal with numerous instances of rowdy tourists taunting the animals, highlighting the need for better management mechanisms to protect the animals under its care while still finding a way to stay financially secure.
Canaries in the coal mine? North Atlantic right whale use of key habitat changing rapidly
- A team of researchers with the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Syracuse University recently published the results of a six-year study that focused on the North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in Massachusetts Bay, which, together with Cape Cod Bay, comprises one of seven areas in the Gulf of Maine that the whales use during seasonal congregations.
- The team used an automated detection algorithm to determine the presence of right whale “up‐calls” in 47,000 hours of recordings made with 19 bioacoustic recording devices deployed across 4,000 square kilometers (about 1,544 square miles) of Massachusetts Bay.
- The number of whales present during the peak season increased every year of the study except for 2009-2010, “when acoustic presence was unusually low,” according to the study. But the researchers also detected an increased presence of right whales during parts of what should be their off‐season, from late summer to early fall. That could have serious implications for efforts to conserve the species.
Amazon primates face barriers in responding to climate change
- Climate change will make the current ranges of most Amazon primates uninhabitable in the coming decades, forcing them to move.
- But primates face barriers to dispersal, such as rivers and deforestation, which can limit their ability to migrate.
- If species aren’t able to find new habitats, the populations, as well as the habitat they support, will suffer.
Moon and Earth’s magnetic field guide European eels on their epic migration
- European eels use an electromagnetic “sixth sense” to navigate during their long migration, two new studies propose.
- The electrical “shadow” of a new moon may help eels cross the continental shelf of Europe to shore. Then, in the brackish waters of an estuary, young eels can imprint on the unique magnetic signature to navigate upstream.
- Piecing together the eels’ directional cues could help fisheries managers create more effective conservation plans for this critically endangered species.
It takes a school, and a community, to save this rare Philippine hornbill
- The rufous-headed hornbill, known locally as dulungan, is a critically endangered bird found only on the Philippine islands of Panay and Negros.
- The species is threatened by poaching and habitat loss, but a grassroots conservation campaign over the past decade has sought to put the community in Panay front and center of efforts to save the bird.
- The campaign has focused on schools; by raising awareness and understanding of the species among children, conservationists hope the message ripples out through the community.
- Researchers have also emphasized the need to further studies into the dulungan, given how little is known about it, including its flight range and the fruit species it prefers to eat.
Audio: How listening to individual gibbons can benefit conservation
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Dena Clink, a scientist studying individuality and variation within Bornean gibbon calls. She’s here to play us some of the recordings of gibbons that she’s made in the course of her research.
- We’ve heard a wide variety of bioacoustic recordings here on the Mongabay Newscast, but they’re usually used to study wildlife at the population level, or even to study whole ecosystems. It turns out that studying how calls vary from gibbon to gibbon can not only help us learn about their behaviors but also to better protect them in the wild.
- On today’s episode, Dena Clink, a post-doctoral researcher with the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, tells us why it’s important to study the calls of individual gibbons, how she’s going about studying individuality and variation in gibbon calls, and how that can help inform conservation strategies for the primates.
Female gorillas recognize and respond to contagious disease
- An infectious skin disease causing bright red facial lesions affects how female gorillas decide to change social groups, researchers have shown.
- Decade-long observations of nearly 600 gorillas in the Republic of the Congo revealed females are more likely to leave groups with severely diseased females or an infected silverback male.
- By reducing contact with sick individuals, females can decrease the risk of being contaminated and prevent further spread of the infection in the population.
This toad from central Africa impersonates a deadly viper to avoid predators
- The Congolese giant toad (Sclerophrys channingi) is the first toad found to mimic a harmful snake, in this case the highly venomous Gaboon viper (Bitis gabonica), which has longer fangs and produces more venom than any other known snake species.
- A team of researchers who spent ten years in the field observing the Congolese giant toad and its mimicry behavior published their findings in the Journal of Natural History this week.
- The triangular shape of the toad’s body, its particularly smooth skin for a toad, and its patterns of colors cause the amphibian to look like the viper’s head. In other words, the two are visually similar enough that any predators looking for a meal might certainly be wise to skip right past the Congolese giant toad rather than risk a lethal bite from a Gaboon viper. But just for a little extra insurance, the Congolese giant toad goes even further than mere visual mimicry.
Amazon’s male white bellbird has the loudest recorded call
- The call of the male white bellbird (Procnias albus) is the loudest bird call recorded in the world.
- The bellbird’s call can reach 125 decibels, almost as loud as a very loud rock concert, and more than 9 decibels higher than the loudest recorded call of the screaming piha (Lipaugus vociferans), which held the previous record of being the world’s loudest bird.
- The male could be producing its chainsaw-like calls to attract a potential mate, the researchers say, but why the female sits so close to the male when it screams, risking hearing damage, is unclear.
Why is Europe rewilding with water buffalo?
- Conservationists have released 18 water buffalo onto Ermakov Island in the Danube, in the first ever such rewilding project in Ukraine.
- The water buffalo were gifted by a German-born naturalist-cum-farmer, Michel Jacobs, who has taken on a mission of saving the Carpathian’s distinct water buffalo.
- Researchers believe the water buffalo will bring new richness and diversity to the Danube by acting as ecosystem engineers.
These rare pigs can dig it. With a tool, that is. And moonwalk too
- A viral video shows a family of Visayan warty pigs (Sus cebifrons) using a piece of tree bark or branch to build a nest at a zoo in Paris.
- Tool use has been widely reported among vertebrates, particularly primates, but this is the first published study and first recorded video of pigs using tools.
- The study suggests that using a stick is a socially learned behavior, and expands the possibility of tool use and social learning among pig species.
- There are limited studies on the Visayan warty pig, a critically endangered species in its native Philippines, due to its dwindling population in the wild.
As climate crisis deepens, wildlife adapts, maybe with lessons for us
- Shifts in the timing of lifecycle events, like reproduction or migration, are widely thought to be the most common response of wildlife to global warming.
- In recent years, pikas have been observed modifying their foraging habits in ways that may be behavioral adaptations to a changing climate.
- A long-term study in Kutai National Park on the island of Borneo in Indonesia has shown how extreme weather, brought by the intensifying El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, is affecting the behavior, habitat requirements, feeding ecology and birth intervals of orangutans.
- Researchers have discovered that African penguins, may be falling into a sort of “ecological trap,” one that humans created through overfishing and climate change.
Audio: Humpback whales across the Pacific Ocean are singing the same song
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Jim Darling, a marine biologist who is here to play us some recordings of remarkably similar humpback whale songs from around the world.
- Darling and colleagues found that North Pacific humpback whale songs can be incredibly similar to each other — nearly identical, in fact. That means that our view of the whales as living in distinct groups might very well be wrong. And that view dictates a lot of the conservation measures we’ve designed to protect imperiled populations of humpbacks.
- Darling joins us today to talk about his humpback research and play us some of those recordings so you can hear the similarity for yourself.
Manta rays are social creatures who are choosy about their friends
- Researchers have found evidence of structured social relationships among wild, free-ranging reef manta rays. The rays appear to actively choose other individuals to socialize with, according to a study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology last week.
- The researchers say that certain social groups were regularly seen together at specific cleaning stations, where the rays are cleaned by cleaner wrasse and other small fish, suggesting that they may be using those sites as meet-up points. Some rays were observed returning frequently to certain cleaning stations despite the close proximity of several other sites.
- Reef manta rays are listed as Vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List, which reports that the ray’s numbers are believed to have declined by as much as 30 percent globally over the last 75 years. The researchers hope that by revealing the social lives of manta rays, they can help build public support for protection measures around the world.
Audio: The superb lyrebird’s song, dance and incredible vocal mimicry
- On this special show, we replay one of our favorite Field Notes episodes, featuring recordings of a songbird known for its own ability to replay sounds, including elaborate vocal displays and amazing mimicry of other species’ songs and even of trees blowing in the wind.
- Male superb lyrebirds are extravagantly feathered creatures who clear patches of forest floor to prepare a stage on which they dance and sing their complex songs in order to attract a mate.
- Female superb lyrebirds also sing plus they mimic other species as well as sounds from their environment, such as the creaking of trees in the wind.
- Anastasia Dalziell discussed her study detailing findings on the vocal mimicry of male superb lyrebirds and the dances the birds use to accompany specific songs. She also discussed a previous study of hers looking at the mimetic vocal displays of female superb lyrebirds, which she said “highlights the hidden complexity of female vocalizations” in songbirds.
World’s largest frog moves heavy rocks to build nests, study finds
- The goliath frog, the world’s largest known frog species, sometimes moves large stones and rocks weighing more than half its weight to create dammed ponds on sandy riverbanks to serve as nesting sites, a new study has found.
- Digging out a large nest that is more than a meter wide by moving large rocks requires a lot of physical strength, which could be a potential explanation for why goliath frogs are among the largest frogs in the world, researchers say.
- The goliath frog is endangered, yet there’s still a lot that researchers do not understand about the frog’s behavior.
Tests show multi-rotor UAVs can improve cetacean behavioral studies
- Researchers assessing the utility of small, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to survey and study humpback whales found that video data collected from a UAV improved upon data recorded by an expert observer from a research vessel, a standard technique.
- The observer mischaracterized certain behaviors, primarily socializing and nurturing, as other activities, such as traveling or resting, that the aerial viewpoint of the UAV captured clearly, even when the animals were below the surface.
- The whales did not show changes in behavior when the UAV approached or remained present at 30 meters above them.
- Their results suggest that small UAVs add value to cetacean behavioral research as a non-invasive research tool that can capture information that is otherwise difficult to detect from the angle and distance of a ship or shore observer.
Audio: Listen to the first-ever recordings of right whales breaking into song
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Jessica Crance, a research biologist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who recently discovered right whales singing for the first time ever.
- Gunshot calls made by right whales are exactly what their name suggests they are — loud, concussive bursts of noise. Perhaps that doesn’t sound terribly musical, but the critically endangered eastern population of North Pacific right whales appears to use gunshot calls in a repeating pattern — the first instance ever recorded of a right whale population breaking into song.
- Jessica Crance led the research team at NOAA that documented North Pacific right whales breaking into song in the Bering Sea. On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Crance will play recordings of two different right whale song types and discuss what we know about why the critically endangered whales might be singing in the first place.
Recreational divers help researchers track movements of rare stingray
- The smalleye stingray, thought to be widely distributed across the Indo-West Pacific, is rarely seen and is listed as “data deficient” on the IUCN Red List.
- By compiling photographs and videos of the stingrays taken opportunistically by both research teams and recreational divers over the last 15 years off the coast of Mozambique, the only place the giant rays are regularly spotted, researchers have created a photographic database of the animals.
- This database is now helping researchers gain some of the first insights into this elusive species. For example, researchers found that a female stingray had made a 400-kilometer (250-mile) round trip to birth her pups.
Primates lose ground to surging commodity production in their habitats
- “Forest risk” commodities, such as beef, palm oil, and fossil fuels, led to a significant proportion of the 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles) of forest that was cleared between 2001 and 2017 — an area almost the size of Mexico.
- A previous study found that 60 percent of primates face extinction and 75 percent of species’ numbers are declining.
- The authors say that addressing the loss of primate habitat due to the production of commodities is possible, though it will require a global effort to “green” the international trade in these commodities.
Leopards get a $20m boost from Panthera pact with Saudi prince
- Big-cat conservation group Panthera has signed an agreement with Saudi prince and culture minister Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammad bin Farhan Al Saud in which the latter’s royal commission has pledged $20 million to the protection of leopards around the world, including the Arabian leopard, over the next decade.
- The funds will support a survey of the animals in Saudi Arabia and a captive-breeding program.
- The coalition also hopes to reintroduce the Arabian leopard into the governorate of Al-Ula, which Bader heads and which the kingdom’s leaders believe could jump-start the local tourism sector.
Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.
Tiny tracking tags help decode how echolocating bats navigate
- Although navigation in echolocating bats has been studied for a long time, questions remain on how bats differentiate among echoes from different objects.
- Researchers designed a small, lightweight tag that can capture movement and sound information in three dimensions to create a map of a bat’s sensory environment.
- The data helped researchers pinpoint the movements of bats during flight and while catching prey, as well as how echoes from various objects differ.
- One-third of bat species are threatened with extinction or lack basic ecological data, so such information can help scientists and wildlife managers understand bats’ foraging behavior and develop better measures for their conservation.
In a first, chimps found bashing tortoises against trees to get at the meat
- For the first time, researchers have observed chimpanzees in Gabon vigorously smashing forest hinge-back tortoises against tree trunks to try and crack open their shells and extract meat out of them.
- It was usually adult male chimps that were successful at cracking open tortoise shells. One female and two adolescents were seen trying too, but they were unsuccessful, following which an adult male finished the job, sharing the meat with them.
- In an unexpected observation, a adult male chimp cracked open a tortoise, ate half of its meat, then stored the remainder in a tree fork. He came back for it the next day, suggesting that chimpanzees plan for the future.
For migrating songbirds, ‘baby shark’ is more than just an annoying tune
- Researchers who opportunistically examined the stomach contents of tiger sharks in the northern Gulf of Mexico over eight years found that the sharks had been eating land-dwelling songbirds.
- The months during which the researchers encountered tiger sharks with birds in their guts coincided with the peak timings for coastal bird sightings for 11 species of songbirds, suggesting that the shark-bird interactions could be linked to the annual migration of these terrestrial birds.
- Surprisingly, most of the recorded shark-bird interactions occurred during the fall, when the migrating songbirds are about to start crossing the Gulf of Mexico and are presumably well-rested.
- The researchers speculate that unpredictable storms could be forcing the migratory birds to the water, making them easy prey, especially for baby tiger sharks that are yet to learn how to forage.
The health of penguin chicks points scientists to changes in the ocean
- A recent closure of commercial fishing around South Africa’s Robben Island gave scientists the chance to understand how fluctuations in prey fish populations affect endangered African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) absent pressure from humans.
- The researchers found that the more fish were available, the better the condition of the penguin chicks that rely on their parents for food.
- This link between prey abundance in the sea and the condition of penguin chicks on land could serve as an indicator of changes in the ecosystem.
Social media enables the illegal wildlife pet trade in Malaysia
- Conservationists say that prosecuting wildlife traffickers in Malaysia for trading in protected species isn’t easy, as traders have several loopholes to aid their efforts.
- One wildlife trafficker known as Kejora Pets has been operating in Peninsular Malaysia for years, selling “cute” pets to individuals through social media.
- Malaysia’s wildlife act doesn’t address the posting of protected animals for sale on social media, and operators like Kejora Pets appear to avoid ever being in possession of protected animals, allowing them to skirt statutes aimed at catching illicit traders.
- Proposed changes to Malaysia’s wildlife act could offer some relief to besieged populations of protected species by making it easier to prosecute online trafficking of protected animals.
’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.
Hippos poop a lot of silica, and that’s critical for Africa’s rivers and lakes
- By chomping on large amounts of silica-rich grass at night, then defecating into the Mara River during the day, hippos help move silicon from land to the water — something that’s vital for the health of the river and lakes further downstream, a new study has found.
- Researchers analyzed samples of soil, water, grass and hippo feces from various points along the Mara River, and found that hippos alone were likely contributing more than 76 percent of the silicon being transported along the river.
- If the Mara River’s hippos decline in number, it could lead to a reduction in the amount of silicon that makes its way to the lakes. This in turn could result in algal blooms that can use up the oxygen in the lakes downstream and kill the fish.
Killer whale vs. great white? No contest — the shark always flees
- Both the great white shark and the killer whale or orca are fearsome top predators. But of the two massive animals, the killer whale may be the more formidable one, a new study has found.
- Researchers monitoring white sharks, lion seals and orcas around California’s Southeast Farallon Island have found that every time orcas pass through the area, the great white sharks vanish and don’t return to their hunting grounds until the next season.
- The researchers aren’t sure why the sharks move away as soon as orcas arrive. It could be because orcas may be targeting white sharks as prey, or the killer whales could be bullying their competition out of the way to gain access to the island’s elephant seals.
Bird flu in Namibia’s penguins wanes, after killing nearly 500
- More than 450 African penguins, an IUCN-listed endangered animal, have died in an outbreak of bird flu on three islands off the coast of Namibia.
- The virus, H5N8, is thought to have been introduced to the colonies, which hold 96 percent of Namibia’s penguins, by another bird traveling from South Africa, where a similar outbreak occurred in 2018.
- The disease appears to be abating, and researchers are hopeful that the country’s penguins will recover.
- However, they continue to face threats from food shortages caused by overfishing and climate change.
Community buy-in stamps out elephant poaching in Zambian park
- No elephants were poached in Zambia’s North Luangwa National Park in 2018, and the surrounding area had a 50 percent decrease in poached carcasses found.
- The North Luangwa Conservation Programme, a partnership between the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the country’s Department of Parks and Wildlife, has been around since the late 1980s and has focused its efforts on community involvement in stopping poachers from going after elephants, rhinos and other wildlife in the park.
- Staff of the program say the participation of the communities living near the park’s borders is critical to protecting the elephants of North Luangwa.
- The broader Luangwa ecosystem is home to more than 63 percent of Zambia’s elephants.
Rise in crocodile sightings linked to habitat degradation in Indonesia
- The capture of a saltwater crocodile by Indonesian villagers last February was the latest in a series of increasingly frequent — and occasionally deadly — sightings of the reptiles near human settlements.
- The animal was eventually released by the local conservation agency into an unsettled area.
- Conservation officials say the destruction of the crocodiles’ habitat by blast fishing and conversion of coastal areas into farms may be driving the animals out of the wild and closer to villages.
- Officials have called on villagers not to harm the animals if they catch them, given that they’re a protected species under Indonesian law.
Swelling amount of plastic in the ocean confirmed by new study
- A new study used log books from 60 years of plankton research to document the increase in the amount of plastic in the ocean.
- The study’s authors tabulated the entanglements of the continuous plankton recorder, a sampling device that’s towed behind ships, revealing a significant increase in plastic in the ocean since the 1990s.
- Scientists have long suspected such a trend but have been unable to demonstrate it with data until now.
Audio: Tool-using, ground-nesting chimp culture discovered in DR Congo
- On today’s episode, we talk to primatologist Cleve Hicks, who recently led a research team that discovered a new tool-using chimp culture in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Hicks and team spent 12 years documenting the behaviors of a group of chimps in the Bili-Uéré region of northern DRC, and their findings include an entirely new chimpanzee tool kit featuring four different kinds of tools. The chimps also build ground nests, which is highly unusual for any group of chimps — but especially for chimps living around dangerous predators like lions and leopards.
- And the Eastern chimps’ novel use of tools and ground nesting aren’t even the most interesting behavioral quirks they displayed, Hicks says.
Scientists urge overhaul of the world’s parks to protect biodiversity
- A team of scientists argues that we should evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas based on the outcomes for biodiversity, not simple the area of land or ocean they protect.
- In a paper published April 11 in the journal Science, they outline the weaknesses of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, which set goals of protecting 17 percent of the earth’s surface and 10 percent of its oceans by 2020.
- They propose monitoring the outcomes of protected areas that measure changes in biodiversity in comparison to agreed-upon “reference” levels and then using those figures to determine how well they are performing.
Hunting pumas to save deer could backfire, new research suggests
- A new study finds that the age of individual pumas near Jackson, Wyoming, had the greatest influence over the prey they chose to hunt.
- Older mountain lions went after elk, among the largest prey species in the study area, while the younger cats hunted small animals like raccoons as well as mule deer.
- The research calls into question the validity of recent wildlife management plans in the western United States to grow mule deer populations by culling mountain lions, the authors say.
Unusual lizard lays eggs, then births a live baby — in the same pregnancy
- In a lab at the University of Sydney, a female yellow-bellied three-toed skink first laid eggs, then gave birth to a live baby, all part of the same pregnancy.
- This is the first time biologists have observed both egg-laying and live-bearing in a single litter of a vertebrate animal, researchers say in a new study.
- While the three-toed skink is known to have a dual mode of reproduction — some populations lay eggs, while others give birth to live babies — what mode the skink follows seems to be influenced by genetics and not environmental conditions, previous research has found.
- But the latest study suggests that individuals may be able to “switch” between reproductive modes depending on the situation, researchers say.
Those kicks were fast as lightning: Kangaroo rats evade deadly snake strikes
- A research team has shown that desert kangaroo rats fend off predatory rattlesnakes through a combination of speedy reaction times, powerful near-vertical leaps, and mid-air, ninja-style kicks.
- Locating snakes through radio tracking and filming snake-kangaroo rat interactions with high-speed video cameras enabled the team to analyze strike and reaction speed, distance and angle the rats moved to avoid being bitten, and aspects of the impressive maneuverability displayed by most kangaroo rats in the recordings.
- About 81 percent of recorded snake strikes were accurate, yet the snake actually bit the kangaroo rat in just 47 percent of the strikes and latched on long enough in just 22 percent of strikes to actually kill and eat the kangaroo rat.
- The slowed-down videos demonstrate the importance of kangaroo rats’ physical features, including long tails and powerful legs, and mid-air maneuverability in escaping predation.
Crab season to be cut short in California to protect whales and turtles
- A settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will close California’s Dungeness crab fishery three months early in 2019 to reduce the chances that whales and other sea life will become entangled in fishing gear.
- The crabbing season in 2020 and 2021 will also be shuttered early in places where high concentrations of whales come to feed in the spring, such as Monterey Bay.
- Conservationists applauded the changes, saying that they will save animals’ lives.
- The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations was also involved in hammering out the settlement, and its representative said that the new rules, while “challenging,” would help the industry move toward a “resilient, prosperous, and protective fishery.”
Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Widespread tool-using chimp culture discovered in Democratic Republic of Congo
- Researchers spent 12 years documenting the behaviors exhibited by a population of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) whose range extends across more than 50,000 square kilometers (over 19,300 square miles) of northern Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The paper published this month in the journal Folia Primatologica detailing the team’s findings includes a description of an entirely new chimpanzee tool kit featuring four different kinds of tools: a long ant probe, a short probe, a thin wand, and a digging stick.
- These tools are used to harvest five different food types, including a variety of driver and ponerine ant species as well as honey from the nests of ground-dwelling and arboreal bees. And they’re not the only evidence of unique behaviors discovered among this chimp population.
Tapirs could be key in helping degraded rainforests bounce back
- A new study has found that lowland tapirs spend more time in degraded forests than in pristine Amazon rainforest.
- They also defecate and deposit three times more seeds in these degraded areas.
- The results indicate that tapirs may help human-affected forests recover and grow back.
Sea otters leave behind unique archaeological traces, study finds
- Sea otters are the only marine mammals known to use stone tools. Now, a new study has found that by striking shells on rocks, sea otters leave behind distinct archaeological signatures.
- These marks can be used to trace sea otters in locations where they are now extinct.
- The study also found clear damage patterns on mussel shells left around the stationary rocks. These shell break patterns provide a new way to distinguish the evidence of sea otter food consumption from that of humans, researchers say.
Audio: What underwater sounds can tell us about Indian Ocean humpback dolphins
- On today’s episode, we speak with marine biologist Isha Bopardikar, an independent researcher who is using bioacoustics to study humpback dolphins off the west coast of India.
- Last month, Mongabay’s India bureau published an article with the headline “What underwater sounds tell us about marine life.” As Mongabay contributor Sejal Mehta notes in the piece, the world beneath the ocean’s surface is a noisy place, with animals sounding off for a number of purposes. Now, of course, humanity is interjecting more and more frequently, intruding on the underwater soundscape.
- As Isha Bopardikar tells Mehta in the Mongabay India piece, in order to understand how marine animals use the underwater space and how human activities affect their behavior, we need hard data. That’s where her current work off the west coast of India comes in. In this Fields Notes segment, Bopardikar plays for us some of her dolphin recordings and explains how they are informing her research.
Possible vaquita death accompanies announcement that only 10 are left
- The environmental organization Sea Shepherd said it found a dead vaquita in a gillnet on March 12.
- One day later, scientists from the group CIRVA announced that around 10 — as many as 22 or as few as six — vaquitas survive in the Gulf of California.
- Despite a ban on gillnets used catch totoaba, a fish prized for its swim bladders used in traditional Chinese medicine, vaquita numbers have continued to decline.
New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.
Wildlife conservation strategies must take animals’ social lives into account: Researchers
- In a paper published in Science last month, an international team of researchers argues that the growing body of evidence on the importance of social learning and animal cultures must be taken more fully into account in order to improve wildlife conservation efforts.
- “Animal culture” consists of information and behaviors shared amongst members of a wildlife community, such as a flock of migratory birds, a herd of elephants, or a pod of whales. For whooping cranes to retain knowledge of migration routes across generations, for instance, this knowledge must be passed between members of the flock through what scientists call “social learning.”
- Despite the mounting evidence of the far-reaching implications of social learning for the preservation of wildlife, however, international policy forums that devise large-scale conservation strategies “have so far not engaged substantially with the challenges and opportunities presented by this new scientific perspective,” the researchers note.
Proximity to towns stretches giraffe home ranges
- A recent study found that female giraffes that live close to towns have larger home ranges than those living further afield.
- The study’s authors believe that large human settlements reduce giraffes’ access to food and water.
- The team cites the importance of understanding the size of the area that giraffe populations need to survive to address the precipitous decline in the animal’s numbers across Africa in the past 30 years.
Video: scientists capture giant spider eating an opossum
- For the first time, researchers have documented a giant spider eating an opossum in the Amazon rainforest.
- Writing in the February 28th issue of the journal Amphibian & Reptile Conservation, a team of scientists describe several rarely observed cases of invertebrates eating various vertebrates, including frogs, lizards, snakes, and even a mammal — a mouse opossum.
- The mouse opossum incident occurred in 2016 in the Peruvian Amazon and was captured on film by biology students.
- The sighting was the first of a mygalomorph spider — a group of large spiders that includes tarantulas — preying on an opossum.
Indigenous hunters vital to robust food webs in Australia
- A new study has found that the removal of indigenous hunters from a food web in the Australian desert contributed to the local extinction of mammal species.
- The Martu people had subsisted in the deserts of western Australia for millennia before the government resettled them to make space for a missile test range in the 1950s.
- A team of researchers modeled the effects of this loss, revealing that the hunting fires used by the Martu helped maintain a diverse landscape that supported a variety of mammals and kept invasive species in check.
We know why zebras got their stripes, but how do they work?
- Scientists have long wondered why zebras wear striped coats and a 2014 study might have finally supplied the answer: biting flies like glossinids (tsetse flies) and tabanids (horseflies) appear to be the “evolutionary driver” of the zebra’s stripes.
- Finding the answer to how zebras got their stripes led to another question: How exactly do stripes help zebras avoid biting insects?
- Tim Caro, a professor of wildlife biology at the University of California, Davis in the US, and Martin How, a researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK, led a new study to examine how stripes might deter biting flies as they attempt to land on zebras.
Blue whales remember best times and places to find prey
- A new study demonstrates that blue whales in the northern Pacific Ocean use their memories, instead of cues in the environment, to guide them to the best feeding spots.
- The researchers used 10 years of data to discern the movements of 60 blue whales.
- They compared the whales’ locations with spots with high concentrations of prey over the same period.
- The whales’ reliance on memory could make them vulnerable to changes in the ocean brought about by climate change.
The odor side of otters: Tech reveals species’ adaptations to human activity
- Recent studies of an elusive otter species living in the highly modified mangroves and reclaimed lands on the coast of Goa, India offer new insights into otter behavior that could inform future conservation efforts.
- Researchers have studied these adaptable otters with camera traps, ground GPS surveys, and satellite images; they’re now testing drone photogrammetry to improve the accuracy of their habitat mapping.
- Using data gathered over a period of time, the researchers aim to pinpoint changes in the landscape and, in combination with the behavioral data gathered by the camera traps, understand how otters are reacting to these changes.
Why are more female than male Magellanic penguins stranded in South America every year?
- Thousands of Magellanic penguins become stranded every year along the coast of South America, from northern Argentina all the way down to southern Brazil, and are unable to make it back to their breeding grounds in Patagonia 1,000 miles or more away.
- Scientists have observed that the penguins that get left behind are three times as likely to be female as male. But, due to a dearth of data on the penguins’ migratory habits, it could not be determined why there was such a gender-based discrepancy to the strandings.
- New research published this month in the journal Current Biology sheds new light on the situation, however, finding that, among other behavioral differences, female Magellanic penguins are likely to venture farther north than their male counterparts — and that by doing so, they’re more likely to run into the kinds of trouble that can leave them stranded.
Why are fewer monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico?
- Fewer and fewer monarch butterflies are reaching their overwintering grounds in Mexico every year, and new research might shed light on why.
- A 2016 study found that the monarch population in Mexican overwintering colonies has declined by approximately 80 percent over the past two decades. Pinpointing the causes of this decline has proven difficult, however.
- A study published in the journal Animal Migration last month suggests a possible cause: The monarchs are simply finding places other than Mexico to spend the winter months, and possibly even giving up their migratory ways altogether, in order to survive.
Flashing lights ward off livestock-hunting pumas in northern Chile
- A new paper reports that Foxlights, a brand of portable, intermittently flashing lights, kept pumas away from herds of alpacas and llamas during a recent calving season in northern Chile.
- Herds without the lights nearby lost seven animals during the four-month study period.
- The research used a “crossover” design, in which the herds without the lights at the beginning of the experiment had them installed halfway through, removing the possibility that the herds were protected by their locations and not the lights themselves.
Indonesia confiscated some 200 pet cockatoos. What happened to them?
- As Indonesia cracks down on the illegal wildlife trade, it is struggling to deal with the influx of animals confiscated from traffickers.
- Birds are among the most trafficked creatures. Due to a lack of rehabilitation centers, where they would slowly be prepared for life in the wild, many birds are released prematurely.
- That seems to have been the case with a group of cockatoos that were handed into the state after the infamous “water bottle bust” of 2015, in which a smuggler was caught with 23 yellow-crested cockatoos stuffed into plastic water bottles in his luggage.
Audio: The best wildlife calls featured on the Mongabay Newscast in 2018
- The Mongabay Newscast featured a lot of big names in conservation and environmental science in 2018, from E.O. Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy to David Suzuki and Sylvia Earle. (We even had a rock star, Grammy-winning guitarist James Valentine of Maroon 5, on the podcast to discuss why he’s doing his part to help stop illegal logging).
- We strive to make scientific research accessible to everyone by having these luminaries of the field on the show to explain their work and share their thoughts on the latest trends. Another way we provide our listeners with an up-close look at what’s going on in the conservation science world is through our Field Notes segments, which feature recordings of wildlife calls captured by research scientists in the field.
- The growing fields of bioacoustics and soundscape ecology are shedding light on animal behavior, how wildlife react to human pressures on their habitat, and how ecosystems evolve and change over time. Here are the very best Field Notes we featured on the Mongabay Newscast in 2018 so you can dive into this exciting new method of examining the natural world and the creatures with whom we share planet Earth.
The true story of how 96 endangered sea turtle hatchlings survived a New York City beach
- It was a Thursday, so there probably wouldn’t have been too big of a crowd, but luckily there were at least a few beachgoers out at West Beach, near the western tip of the Rockaway Peninsula, when a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle — a member of a critically endangered species — crawled on shore and started building a nest. Even more luckily, a couple of those beachgoers had the presence of mind to report it to a 24-hour marine wildlife rescue hotline.
- Those calls likely saved the lives of 96 sea turtle hatchlings, all of whom successfully made the trek back out to the ocean a couple months later.
- While human activities are the primary reason Kemp’s Ridleys face an uncertain future — harvesting of adults and eggs, destruction of their coastal nesting habitats, and entanglement in fishing gear are the chief threats to the species — in this case, human intervention was crucial to the turtles’ survival.
Shorebirds can no longer count on the Arctic as a safe haven for rearing their young
- A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it is now helping drive rapid declines in their numbers.
- After studying data from 38,191 nests found across all seven continents and belonging to 237 populations of 111 different species, an international team led by researchers with the Milner Centre for Evolution at the UK’s University of Bath determined that shorebirds worldwide have experienced a drastic increase in nest predation over the past seven decades.
- The data suggests that nest predation rates have doubled in the North Temperate Zone, which includes Europe and most of Asia and North America. In the Arctic, which migratory shorebirds are used to using as something of a refuge, rates of daily nest predation have tripled.
Pumas engineer their environment, providing habitat for other species
- A new study finds that mountain lions in the western United States change their surroundings and as a result are “ecosystem engineers.”
- A team of scientists tracked 18 lion kills in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming and identified 215 species of beetles living in, on and off the carcasses — that is, the kills provided habitat as well as food for scavengers.
- The work demonstrates the critical role mountain lions play in providing resources to other species in the ecosystems in which they live.
‘Drifters of opportunity’: Seabirds track energy in tidal currents
- A recent study used location data from GPS-tagged seabirds called razorbills to track currents in the Irish Sea.
- When a team of biologists compared the movements of resting birds on the surface of the water with a mathematical model that lays out the currents, they found that the birds provided solid information on the speed and direction of the flow of water.
- The researchers suggest that similar research using data from resting seabirds could help identify areas for the harvest of renewable tidal energy.
These 4,000-year-old termite mounds are visible from space and still in use
- Some 200 million conical termite mounds rise from the ground in northeastern Brazil, each about 2 to 4 meters high and about 9 meters wide, visible on Google Earth.
- Researchers dated the soil from 11 of these mounds and found that the piles are up to about 4,000 years old, making them almost as ancient as the pyramids of Giza.
- The mounds are still inhabited by the termite species, Syntermes dirus, that first made them.
- The mounds themselves lack any definite internal architecture, but there are extensive networks of underground tunnels that the termites use to safely access fallen leaves on the forest floor.
Bear-human conflict risks pinpointed amid resurgent bear population
- New research maps out the potential risk “hotspots” for black bear-human conflict based on an analysis of conditions that led to nearly 400 bear deaths between 1997 and 2013.
- The study area covered the Lake Tahoe Basin and the Great Basin Desert in western Nevada.
- The methods used to predict risks based on environmental variables could help wildlife managers identify and mitigate human-carnivore conflict in other parts of the world, the authors write.
Whales not enough sustenance for polar bears in fast-changing climate
- Scientists believe that whale carcasses may have helped polar bears survive past upswings in temperatures that melted the sea ice from which they usually hunt seals.
- As the current changing climate threatens to make the Arctic ice-free during the summer, this strategy may help some populations of polar bears to survive.
- But according to new study, whale carcasses won’t provide enough food for most bear populations because there are fewer whales than there once were, and human settlements, industry and shipping could affect the bears’ access to any carcasses that do wash ashore.
These Asian monkeys can’t taste the sweetness of natural sugars
- Asian leaf-eating monkeys cannot taste natural sugars and show no preference for foods flavored with sugars, a new study has found.
- While these monkeys have the sweet-taste receptor genes needed to taste natural sugars, when the researchers expressed these genes in single cells, the cells did not show any response to maltose, sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose or sorbitol.
- The researchers also conducted a behavior test using sugar-flavored and non-sugar-flavored jellies, and found that colobine monkeys like the silvery lutung and the hanuman langur ate all of the jellies without preferring one over the other. On the other hand, Japanese macaques preferred sucrose and maltose-flavored jellies over bland ones.
- This lack of preference for sugary foods, along with a previously known inability to taste bitterness, means these monkeys are less likely to face competition from other species for food sources.
The secret life of the southern naked-tailed armadillo
- The southern naked-tailed armadillo spends 99.25 percent of its time underground. If by chance you locate one above ground, it can dig away in a matter of seconds.
- The air of mystery surrounding this species led Desbiez and his team to seek out any information they could about its day-to-day activities and its natural history in Brazil’s Pantanal region.
- Unlike other species that Desbiez studies, such as the giant armadillo and the giant anteater, the southern naked-tailed armadillo is rated as being of Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
Madagascar: Where young whale sharks party
- Whale sharks don’t need help being spectacular. The world’s biggest fish is impressive in nearly every aspect, growing as long as 12 meters (40 feet) and weighing up to 21 tons.
- A new study in the journal Endangered Species Research used photo-identification techniques based on the sharks’ distinctive spots to discover a new hotspot for juvenile whale sharks around the tiny island of Nosy Be, in northwest Madagascar.
- This is a rare bit of good news for a species that, like many other sharks, is struggling to survive in oceans increasingly subject to the negative impacts of human activity.
Predatory coral bring down jellyfish by working together
- For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that corals can work cooperatively to capture jellyfish.
- The team observed the bright orange Astroides calycularis, which lives on sea walls and caves in the Mediterranean Sea, snagging mauve stinger jellyfish that became trapped by ocean currents.
- Coral polyps first grab onto a jellyfish’s bell, and then others will begin ingesting the jellyfish’s arms in a process that takes just a few minutes.
A ‘perfect policy storm’ cuts puma numbers by almost half near Jackson, Wyoming
- A 14-year study following 134 tagged mountain lions north of Jackson, Wyoming, found a 48 percent reduction in their numbers.
- The researchers found that the combination of the reintroduction of wolves and increases in elk and mountain lion hunting led to the precipitous drop.
- Lead study author and Panthera biologist Mark Elbroch recommends suspending puma hunting for three years in the region to allow the population to recover.
Fish find it harder to smell in acidic oceans, study finds
- Even tiny decreases in seawater pH (or increases in ocean acidity) are enough to weaken the European sea bass’s sense of smell, which it relies on to find food and mates and to evade predators, a new study has found.
- In waters containing high carbon dioxide levels predicted for the end of the century, the sea bass had to be on average up to 42 percent closer to the source of the smell in order to detect it, compared to when they were exposed to waters containing present-day levels of carbon dioxide.
- The researchers also found that in fish that were exposed to more acidic waters, the expression of genes for smell receptors in their nose was decreased.
A warmer climate tinkers with Arctic spider’s choice of prey
- A team of researchers found that higher temperatures led Arctic wolf spiders to eat fewer insect-like springtails in study plots.
- Springtails eat fungus, an essential decomposer in the Arctic ecosystem, so with more springtails around in the warmer study plots, there was less decomposition.
- The scientists suggest that this change in prey preference could modulate the effects of a warming climate on the carbon that’s released from the thawing tundra.
How a better understanding of psychopathology in captive primates can aid in conservation efforts
- Maya Kummrow, a doctor of veterinary medicine, writes in a paper recently published in the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine that non-human primates have been used as models of human psychopathology — the study of mental illness — for decades. But, she notes, “the acquired knowledge has only hesitantly been applied to primates themselves.”
- In the paper, Kummrow states that she is seeking to raise awareness among her fellow veterinarians about the wealth of information on NHP psychopathology that is available in human medicine and anthropology literature and calls for “mental health assessments and professionally structured treatment approaches” in NHP medicine, as well.
- In this Q&A, Mongabay spoke with Kummrow about how her review of the literature on NHP psychopathology and treatment might apply to primate conservation efforts.
Ice-free passage for ships through the Arctic could cause problems for marine mammals
- A new study suggests that increased ship traffic in the Arctic, as ice there melts due to climate change, could disturb marine mammal species.
- In their assessment of 80 subpopulations living along the Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route, 42 are likely to be affected by a greater number of commercial ships, researchers found.
- The team suggests that mitigation measures, such as those employed in other parts of the world to protect North Atlantic right whales, could be effective.
Let there be light — but be mindful of the wildlife
- Artificial lights affect biological processes, such as plant photosynthesis, animals’ orientation and migrations, and human circadian rhythms. As communities replace older lights with energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lamps, they must weigh the needs of people with damage to local wildlife.
- Researchers have developed an tool that categorizes LED lamps by their output, energy efficiency and predicted impacts on wildlife, people and the darkness of the night sky.
- The researchers predict that filtered yellow-green and amber LEDs should have lower effects on wildlife than high-pressure sodium lamps, and that blue-toned light will affect wildlife — including birds, insects, fish, and sea turtles — more than orange- and yellow-toned light.
- Their results are presented on an updatable website to guide lighting designers and local government officials in installing lighting technologies that are both energy-efficient and less likely to harm wildlife.
Death by hippo poop: Scientists solve a fish massacre in the Mara River
- In the Mara River in Kenya, an overload of hippo feces can deplete the oxygen in the river water, resulting in mass fish die-offs downstream, a new study has found.
- Hippo pools are not just oxygen-poor, but also full of ammonium, hydrogen sulfide, methane and carbon dioxide — byproducts of microbial metabolism, some of which are potentially toxic to fish, the researchers say.
- When it rains heavily, the feces-laden, oxygen-poor water from the hippo pools gets flushed downstream, causing fish deaths.
- These frequent fish-kill events provide a great resource for the scavenger community in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, and have likely shaped The Mara River’s ecosystem, scientists say.
Tiny marsupials that practice ‘suicidal’ mating declared endangered
- On May 11, the Australian government officially declared two species of recently described antechinuses, a mouse-like marsupial, as endangered.
- The species are famed for their marathon mating sessions that leave the males so exhausted that they die.
- Both species occur only in high-altitude forests, and are threatened by climate change, habitat loss and threats from feral cats, cattle and horses.
India’s foxes and monkeys are dumpster diving and eating food scraps
- In Spiti Valley in northern India, red foxes can be seen rummaging through kitchen waste. Such dumpster diving could potentially bring wild animals in close proximity to humans and increase conflict, researchers say.
- Increasing reliance of wild animals on food waste could affect other ecological processes.
- In the state of West Bengal, for example, some troops of rhesus macaques spend most of their time “begging or chasing” tourists for food. These troops, unlike the forest-dwelling ones, contribute very little to the dispersal of seeds, researchers have found.
More gorillas and chimpanzees living in Central Africa’s forests than thought
- A study led by WCS researchers pulled together wildlife survey data collected between 2003 and 2013 at 59 sites in five countries across western Central Africa.
- They then developed mathematical models to understand where the highest densities of gorillas and chimpanzees are and why, as well as broader trends in the populations.
- They found that more than 361,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and almost 129,000 central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) inhabit these forests — about 30 percent more gorillas and 10 percent more chimpanzees than previously estimated.
- The team’s analyses also demonstrate that western lowland gorilla numbers are slipping by 2.7 percent a year.
Restoring flagging oil palm plantations to forest may benefit clouded leopards, study finds
- A team of biologists fitted four clouded leopards in the Kinabatangan region of Malaysian Borneo with satellite collars, and they gathered several months of data on the animals’ movements.
- They found that the cats stuck to areas with canopy cover, and they avoided land cleared for oil palm.
- Converting underperforming oil palm plantations back to forest could help the clouded leopard population with minimal impact on the state’s production of palm oil, the authors predict.
New short film captures rare spider monkey feeding behavior (commentary)
- A new short film captures rarely seen footage of endangered spider monkeys feeding at a mammal clay lick in the remote Peruvian Amazon.
- A Rainforest Reborn, a short documentary by filmmaker Eilidh Munro, was captured in the Crees Reserve, a regenerating rainforest within the Manu Biosphere Reserve, giving us hope that endangered species can return to previously disturbed forests.
- In this commentary, the filmmaker, Eilidh Munro, talks about the difficulties of filming spider monkeys in a rainforest and the importance of this story for conservation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Dogs in India are a problem for wildlife, study finds
- India is home to an estimated 60 million dogs, the fourth highest in the world.
- In a pan-India online survey, people reported domestic dogs attacking 80 species of Indian wildlife, of which 31 are listed under a threatened category on the IUCN Red List.
- Some experts have called for rethinking both dog population management and dog ownership policies in India, and addressing the threat of dogs as a conservation problem for wildlife.
Animal trainers are teaching wildlife to conserve themselves
- Positive training helps pets and their owners bond. But animal trainers working to conserve wildlife often have the opposite goal: teaching animals in the wild to avoid human beings — people often being the most dangerous creatures in the jungle.
- Wildlife kept in zoos have been trained with rewards to accept unnatural processes, procedures that previously might have required restraint or even anesthesia: allowing tooth brushing, hoof trimming, injections and blood draws — turning once alien actions into positive experiences for the captive animals.
- Animal trainers decades ago learned to train dolphins without having physical contact with the animals. More recently, a chimpanzee troop in Sierra Leone was taught to scream alarm in unison when poachers approached, alerting nearby rangers to come to the rescue — achieving an 80 percent decrease in poaching.
- Trainers have taught captive bred condors how to be more like wild condors, seeking food within their natural habitat and not congregating in towns. They’ve also taught polar bears to avoid anything associated with humans, preventing the bears from raiding trash cans and significantly decreasing wildlife conflicts.
Leopards could reduce rabies by controlling stray dog numbers in India, study finds
- Stray dogs make up about 40 percent of the diet of the roughly 40 leopards currently living in Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park, according to a recent study.
- Dog bites lead to perhaps 20,000 deaths from rabies each year in India, according to the World Health Organization.
- A team of scientists figures that leopards kill 1,500 stray dogs each year, reducing the number of bites by about 1,000 per year and the number of rabies cases by 90.
Camera traps nab crop-raiding animals near farms in the Amazon
- A team of scientists from the U.K. and Brazil used an array of 132 camera traps to snap more than 60,000 photographs around 47 farming communities in the Amazon.
- They also conducted 157 interviews with local farmers about the animals that they found most frequently in their fields.
- The researchers found that the animals that were most destructive to crops were also among the ones nabbed most frequently by their cameras.
Bornean bearded pigs seen adapting to oil palm habitats, study finds
- Bornean bearded pigs appear to thrive in oil palm plantations, but remain heavily dependent on nearby forests as their primary habitat, a recent study indicates.
- The findings are crucial because of the species’ key role as an “ecosystem engineer,” controlling the spread of tree species and turning over the soil with their rooting behavior.
- The researchers have called on the Malaysian government to better protect these forests in a bid to ensure a sustainable population of bearded pigs in mixed forest-oil palm areas.
Epic battle between tiger and sloth bear caught on film
- Footage of a fight between a male tiger and a mother sloth bear in an India wildlife reserve has gone viral on Facebook.
- The video, shot this week in Tadoba National Park, was captured by Akshay Kumar, the chief naturalist at Bamboo Forest Safari Lodge in Maharashtra.
- The video starts with the tiger chasing off a sloth bear that was headed with her cub toward a water body.
- The bear then charges the tiger and the fight ensues.
New study: Radar reveals bats are a bellwether of climate change
- New research indicates that bats could signal seasonal shifts due to climate change.
- The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, is the first to use radar to track an animal migration.
- The scientists found that bats that migrate between Mexico and a cave in Texas are now arriving about two weeks earlier than they did in 1995.
Audio: Exploring the minds and inner lives of animals
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with an author of a new book about the minds and lives of animals – about their amazing memories and minds, how they dream, and more – and we’ll also learn what Mongabay’s newest bureau just launched in India is reporting about.
- Our first guest is Sy Montgomery, the author of two dozen books for adults and kids about animals. She recently teamed up with her friend and fellow animal writer Elizabeth Marshall Thomas to write Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind, and is here to share a few of the fascinating stories from the book with us.
- Our second guest today is Sandhya Sekar, program manager for Mongabay India, who’s here to tell us about the environmental challenges India is facing and what kinds of coverage you’ll find at india.mongabay.com.
New study suggests Borneo’s had elephants for thousands of years
- The research, published in January in the journal Scientific Reports, used genetic information and changes to the topography of the region to surmise that Asian elephants arrived in Borneo between 11,000 and 18,000 years ago.
- The authors hypothesize that elephants moved from nearby islands or the Malaysian peninsula to Borneo via land bridges.
- It’s an indication that the elephants are ‘native’ to Borneo, the scientists argue, and points to the need to bolster conservation efforts.
Moth rediscovered in Malaysia mimics appearance and behavior of bees to escape predators
- The Oriental blue clearwing (Heterosphecia tawonoides) was rediscovered in Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park by Marta Skowron Volponi, a Ph.D. student at Poland’s University of Gdansk and lead author of a paper about the moth recently published in the journal Tropical Conservation Science.
- The moths have legs like bees, bright blue bands on their abdomens (bees in Southeast Asia can be a variety of colors, including blue), and furry bodies that resemble those of bees — though the moths’ “fur” is actually elongated scales.
- While the conservation status of the moths is unknown, Skowron Volponi found that the Oriental blue clearwing’s preferred habitat seems to be the banks of clean watercourses flowing through the primary rainforests of Malaysia — a country with one of the highest deforestation rates in the world.
The top 6 moments from the Mongabay Newscast in 2017
- Now that we’ve arrived at the end of 2017, we’ve decided to take a break from our regular production schedule and instead take a look back at some of the most compelling conversations we featured on the Mongabay Newscast this year.
- From world-famous conservationists like Jane Goodall and E.O. Wilson to renowned musicians like Paul Simon and best-selling authors like Margaret Atwood, we welcomed a lot of truly fascinating people onto our podcast in 2017.
- Here are six of our favorite quotes from the Newscast this year, which will hopefully provide jumping off points for you to dig in more deeply.
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