A recent scientific paper explains why cats can right themselves when falling, so they always land on their feet. How they managed this feat had been a mystery, but Yasuo Higurashi and his colleagues report that they have solved it. Cats, it turns out, have...
Until the lion has a historian of his own, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. This African proverb inspires the title of Professor Sandra Swart's book, as she sets out to take on the challenge of writing a multi-species history that does not glorify the hunter. Professor Swart from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, successfully produces a compelling multispecies history of Africa. As...
For animals in distress, the fate of a single animal can remove geopolitical borders, render differing ideologies unimportant, connect disparate institutions, and create coalitions that would not otherwise collaborate. From Cold War adversaries to today's networks of scientists, policymakers, and private actors, responses to animals...
In the 1960s, residents of the Hout Bay suburb in Cape Town would occasionally hear baboons calling from the mountains above the village. The males produced a deep, guttural "bogom" sound. Visitors to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve who parked at the end...
Modern agriculture has been very successful at delivering cheap food to dining room tables around the world, but there are growing concerns about some of the external costs associated with intensive agricultural systems. For example, no fewer than 11 journalists at the New York Times...
For nearly two centuries, Floreana Island in the Galápagos was missing one of its most important inhabitants. Giant tortoises—once the slow-moving "gardeners" that shaped the island's landscape—had vanished, leaving behind an ecosystem invaded by rats, feral cats, and other domestic animals that arrived alongside the...
High in the mist-covered slopes of the Virunga Mountains—where Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet—lives one of the world's rarest animals: the mountain gorilla. It is a conservation success story that these great apes still exist. Their numbers have nearly quadrupled to...
Professor Alan Kazdin is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and a former President of the American Psychological Association (2008). He is also a careful scientist who promotes evidence-based treatments for mental health. In his words:- "Our recent research shows worldwide...
Australia is rapidly becoming the global test case for intensive cat management. While debates about how best to manage pet and outdoor cats continue in many parts of the world, Australia is actively researching and implementing management strategies at both national and local levels. Increasingly,...
A New Frontier in Brain Science and Ethics Recent advances in stem-cell biology have enabled scientists to grow organoids—three-dimensional clusters of human cells that mimic aspects of real organs. Among these, brain organoids stand out. These lab-grown neural tissues offer unprecedented insight into human brain development...
