Worldcrunch
Who knew!? Koalas are (true) tree huggers, not for environmental reasons, but as a way to keep cool and regulate their body temperatures during hot summer months. The BBC explains how PhD student Natalie Briscoe was studying koalas’ behavior and she noticed that in the winter the animals would stay high in the trees, up […]
Dozens of dogs are lost every day in Buenos Aires. On one side of it there’s the owner who has lost their cherished companion, and on the other, the pet, confused and waiting for their human to come pick them up. If they’re lucky, someone will find them and keep them safe for a while. […]
There’s a very famous Festival of Roses every year in the Kalaat M’Gouna oasis, near Ouarzazate in southern Morocco. But it’s held in May, not October, so unfortunately it smelled more of camel than flowers when we traveled there.
The death of an African lion in Mendoza Zoo in Argentina has revived allegations of the zoo keeping its animals in awful conditions, said Clarín earlier this week. The lion reportedly died two weeks ago, though the zoo apparently concealed this while they investigated the cause of death. Provincial environmental authorities recently declared it had […]
Dogs are adorable. Granted. But sadly, as it turns out, some of them need a helping hand to attract new humans to them. A project by Hungarian artist Sarolta Bán aims to “help dogs with images,” by photoshopping different scenarios to really bring their personalities out and tell their stories. You can check out the […]
Remember the story of Pablo Escobar’s hippos running wild in Colombia a few weeks ago? Although the late King of Cocaine’s half-wild hippos may be damaging farms and the environment in this southern region, it seems some locals are growing fond of them. Officials have warned people living near the Hacienda Nápoles park to avoid […]
Run. h/t Brain Magazine
Wildlife photographer Will Burrad-Lucas was snapping a picture of this young male lion in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve when a lioness emerged from the bushes with a strong urge to sniff the camera. Photo: Burrad-Lucas Photography
A smile, a chuckle, a LOL, a full-throated guffaw: getting yourself laughing is good for the soul, good for your health.
Residents of Ballarpur city in India woke up to an unpleasant surprise this week, after a full-grown leopard had taken shelter in a cowshed during the night. Early Monday morning, local residents of the busy neighborhood, with the help of a forest department team, eventually managed to capture the leopard. The one injury reported can […]
In case you missed this gem on our homepage, check out our world tour of animals in places you wouldn’t usually expect them… Read it here. Photo: Dromedar61
The Iranian capital of Tehran sits on a notorious seismic zone, and for years now, its residents are intermittently reminded of the potentially calamitous consequences of a large earthquake. Nobody knows for sure how resistant its building are or whether or not developpers have respected the country’s building norms during the construction frenzy of the […]
The late Colombian drug lord spent some of his cash on a private zoo, which the Colombian state took over after Escobar was killed. But now, deadly hippopotami have fled the reserve.
Fishing often makes for nice pictures, no matter where in the world you may be. Here in Southern China we learned about the ancestral and peculiar art of cormorant fishing, where the “rod” stays in place and birds are cast off to do the work.
BUENOS AIRES — A pending amendment to Argentina’s Hunting Act will consider packs of wild dogs in rural areas as harmful, allowing them to be hunted or captured. This has caused much discussion among animal rights groups, which claim that this amendment is would allow only authorized agencies to shoot or trap the animals, La […]
Ten people have been arrested for suspected animal trafficking after 1,500 tortoises and 80 caimans were discovered on a boat in northern Colombia. The animals are both on the South American country’s endangered wildlife list. Police stopped the boat on a river in the Mahates region, which is full of lakes and swamps, and is […]
MILAN — The economic crisis isn’t affecting just bipeds. Our furry four-legged friends have also been struggling, as many have been abandoned or neglected when their families no longer had the resources to care for them. Italy has launched its first food bank for animals to help with this problem, thanks to the volunteer group […]
KHARKIV — There’s a critical situation in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, and it doesn’t involve human rights. If the city zoo doesn’t get more money by Monday, officials say the animals there will begin to die of starvation. Zoo director Aleksey Yakovlev says that there is a pregnant elephant named Tandy who is […]
LONDON — The storms and flooding in the UK over the past few weeks hasn’t just damaged homes and cars, but also wildlife and ecosystems too. Bumblebees, beetles and caterpillars are at risk of dying at greatly elevated rates through drowning and disturbed hibernations, while earthworms, snails and beetles along the River Thames will be […]
These unfriendly marine iguanas, found only on Ecuador’s uninhabited Galapagos Islands, are actually quite harmless: They are vegetarian and dive into the water to feed on seaweed. But they don’t like to be disturbed, and should you go too close, you expose yourself to powerful bouts of spitting …
What’s that? Something happening over there? Welcome to Zoo’d – Worldcrunch’s brand new international blog about all things animal. Arf! Photo by amyfarrar via Instagram
JERUSALEM — Aharon Shulov was a man of faith who knew his Scriptures by heart. Especially the passage in which Isaiah promises a new heaven: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy […]
Animals are adorable. Usually. In a recent competition on YouTube, the blobfish was voted the ugliest animal in the world and is now the face of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. But is it truly the least fairest of them all? We took a look and found some creatures that only a mother that ugly […]
SÃO PAULO — When Jorginho wakes up in the morning, he has a breakfast of fruits and yogurt to get his bowels moving. Then he takes an anxiolytic to ease the worries of a stressful day ahead in the big city. Around the corner is Bino, who has a weekly session of acupuncture on his […]
An enterprising German trains his pooch to become the country’s first dope-busting dog-for-hire.
BERLIN – It’s an animal story with a happy ending, five years in the making. A Berlin woman who’d lost her tabby cat “Pauley” in 2008 had an almost unthinkable surprise waiting for her at the capital’s Tierheim animal shelter. “When I got the letter a few days ago from the shelter saying my cat […]
ZOO ATLANTA, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (USA), AP Worldcrunch ATLANTA – The world’s second most closely watched pregnancy has reached an end: Lun Lun, Zoo Atlanta’s giant panda gave birth to two little cubs on Monday night — the first twin pandas born in the U.S. since 1987. Both cubs appeared healthy, Zoo Atlanta deputy director […]
PANTHERA, TIMES LIVE, NAMIBIAN Worldcrunch Warnings came this week that the cheetah, the world’s fastest land creature, may be on its way to rapid extinction. The slender big cat could disappear from the wild by 2030, according to NGO Panthera, which reported that cheetahs have been removed from 77% of their original territory in Africa. […]
Gregory Carr has an American entrepreneur’s vision for saving African wildlife.
AAP, PLOS ONE (Australia) Worldcrunch SYDNEY – A new study from Australian scientists has concluded that animals are just as tempted by tasty treats as we humans are. In an article published in the PLOS One journal on Wednesday, researchers found that rats exposed to what they call a “cafeteria diet” increased their bodyweight by […]
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch VATICAN CITY– Pope Francis is his name, and Church watchers all seem to agree that this is a signal that a central them of the new papacy will be caring for the needy – needy humans, that is. But history also tells us that the inspiration for the Pope’s name, St. […]
CORRIERE FIORENTINO, LA STAMPA, LA REPUBBLICA (Italy) Worldcrunch ROME – Meet Tommy and Toldo, two Italian pets deeply attached to their owners. In fact, they’re still searching for them, months after they died. Tommy is a German Shepard who lives in the town of San Donaci in the southern region of Puglia. He goes to […]
French sex symbol turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot is shining a light on Baby and Nepal, two former circus elephants infected with tuberculosis, now facing euthanasia.
SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany) Worldcrunch Located some 1,800 kilometers off the coast of South America, South Georgia Island has no permanent human residents – but millions of rats. The rodents first made their way to this south Atlantic island on whaling boats in the 18th century and, feeding on sea birds, proliferated quickly. No one can […]
A photograph on the Internet shows Michael Kiok gazing into the eyes of his life partner, Cessy. Cessy is an eight-year-old German shepherd. Kiok, 52, is a zoophile — by his estimation one of 100,000 in Germany. The university librarian is sexually attracted to animals. Hans-Michael Goldmann, an animal protection expert who chairs the federal […]
GENEVA – The female mice are chasing the males around the cage; they raise their behinds in order to sniff their genitals, some even biting the males’ private parts. It is a strange spectacle, monitored by researchers from the University of Geneva (Unige). The phenomenon is described in an article in the latest issue of […]
AMBOSELI TRUST FOR ELEPHANTS (Kenya), AAP (Australia) Worldcrunch They say elephants never forget. We humans don’t either. When the Amboseli Trust for Elephants organization in Kenya learned of a baby elephant calf stuck in a 1.5-meter well somewhere on the savannah, there was only one thing to do: Jump in the SUV, hurtle toward the […]