
Lions Are Making a Surprising Comeback--but Only When They Are Kept behind Fences
The big cats can still have a home in Africa, so long as the international community is willing to finance it
Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication. Follow Jason G. Goldman on Twitter @jgold85
The big cats can still have a home in Africa, so long as the international community is willing to finance it
Arachnophobic study subjects estimated the size of spiders as bigger than did people who do not fear the eight-legged beasties. Jason Goldman reports.
Aegean wall lizards are the first wild animals to be observed explicitly choosing the best background for their particular coloration to disappear into.
Pairs of the birds stay together no matter what—even if it means one loses out on a meal
Sharks that could smell headed straight back home when taken a few miles away whereas some that had their senses of smell blocked took slower, more erratic paths to their old haunts...
More members of an urban swan population that lets humans get near have a particular genetic variant than do a rural swan group that tends to take off when humans approach.
Hippos eat meat more than had been thought, a practice that could explain their susceptibility to anthrax die-offs when they consume infected animals.
Almost all southern right whale calves off the coast of Argentina’s Peninsula Valdez are being fed upon, some fatally, by kelp gulls, which was a rare occurrence four decades ago ...
And the ungulates operate by majority rule
Among howler monkey species, loud calls come at the expense of testicle size and sperm production—or to put it another way, monkeys with the largest testes don't make as much noise...
Sick red colobus monkeys in Uganda ate the very same plants that local people use to treat illnesses
The answer could well be “no”
The brown thornbill scares away its attacker by pretending an even bigger bird is nearby
And they expend energy to do so
Fruit bats stand in for vocal-learning mammals in isolation tests to test language development
Ants are known for their cleanliness. Why would they store their waste?
UV radiation may explain why plants and animals closer to the equator come in darker varieties
Spotted nutcrackers take perishability into account when storing food for later
Australian stingless bees stage strikingly rare interspecies battles
South African poachers continue to use sophisticated methods to dehorn—and kill—rhinos while rangers are severely hampered in combatting the practice
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