You hear about the global extinction rate of 150 species disappearing every day, and you figure most of those are probably just gnats and weeds. But then you learn about a single insect who does stuff that’s exceptionally gross/cool, and you have to wonder how much we’re missing out on by trashing the earth. Burying …
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was not a nice man. Although he did use his dirty money to build houses and community projects in poor areas of his country, he was also directly responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of murders. Although Escobar has by now been dead for almost two decades, his legacy lives …
Continue reading “Pablo Escobar’s Cocaine Hippos Threaten to Take Over Colombia”
It’s not every day that a state issues a national death warrant on a single bird. But Australia is a place where rules of normal life don’t apply. Meet Joe, a pigeon named after the U.S. President-elect Joe Biden. Yesterday, on January 14, Joe was sentenced to death. Joe had done nothing wrong – he …
Continue reading “Australia Nearly Executes Pigeon for the Sin of Being American”
As anyone who’s ever gotten punched will testify, it’s not fun. Getting served a heaping serving of knuckle sandwich just plain hurts. But imagine if you got pummeled by an assailant with eight arms. It sounds like a nightmare, but now you know what certain tropical fish have to live with. New research has found …
Continue reading “Octopuses Like to Sucker Punch Fish – Just to be Jerks”
Anytime there’s a story about a small furry animal going after a person, the answer’s always rabies. What else would make a creature take on someone so much bigger who has opposable thumbs? This story out of Queens is a friendly reminder that victory against wild animals is never assured. A group of squirrels decided …
Continue reading “Maniac Squirrels Terrorize Queens Neighborhood”
What happens if you scare a small lizard? It’ll likely drop its tail to distract the supposed predator and run off. But as we all know, it doesn’t really hurt the lizard. Before too long, the reptile will have grown a brand new tail. It might look a bit funkier than the original, but it …
Continue reading “Alligators Can Grow Back Lost Limbs, Research Finds”
This 2011 story about Humphrey, a “domesticated” hippo, has started making rounds on the internet again. It has the broad structure of a parable, about trying to tame wild animals and not having enough personal respect for the massive power of nature. There’s something specific to hippos that makes some people construct bizarre relationships with …
Dinosaurs were a bunch of fascinating and often strange creatures, and there are a lot of mysteries that still surround them. For example, paleontologists just recently made the first educated guesses of how they had sex, thanks to a fossilized butthole. But now they’ve found an even stranger animal that lived when dinosaurs still walked …
Continue reading “The ‘Crazy Beast’ that Lived with Dinosaurs and Defies all Science”
We’ve covered cases of dogs helping humans many times before. From sniffing out COVID-19 infections to helping out in the military, these good boys and girls have a long list of merits. They can now add nature conservation to that as well. In Florida, dogs are helping wildlife officials combat an invasion of a foreign …
Continue reading “Dogs are the Newest Weapon in Florida’s Battle Against Giant Invasive Pythons”
Sometimes it just happens that something that almost killed you ends up opening new doors for you. Maybe you get a new job because of it, or wind up meeting a person that becomes your special someone. Ever have something like that happen to you? Well, Gunner here sure has. At the end of November, …
Continue reading “Puppy Rescued from Alligator’s Jaws Becomes Sheriff’s Deputy”