Nature & Wildlife
Tool use isn’t unique to humans. Various species across the animal kingdom, including birds, insects and mammals, exhibit the behavior. For example, sea otters use stones to crack open shellfish, while crows modify twigs to probe for hidden prey—and even have been observed using cars to crack open nuts.
Conservation
There are many types of intelligence in the animal kingdom, and it seems that almost every day, we learn something more about them.
Nature & Wildlife
Sometimes, the divide between us and wildlife seems wide and deep. Animals live far “out there,” we typically think, while we reside in cities, suburbs, towns and semirural areas. But more and more, we find ourselves in the lands and vicinities of wild animals.
Nature & Wildlife
Anyone who has ever adopted a cat or dog into the family knows that each pet is distinctive. One of your dogs, for example, may have loved to spend all day at your side, while another may have enjoyed some daytime hours to chill out by herself on her favorite couch.
African Safaris
You probably already know the perilous position that the world’s elephants are currently negotiating. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has officially listed the Asian elephant as endangered and the African elephant as vulnerable.
Nature & Wildlife
When you weigh anywhere from 1,000 to 14,000 pounds, you tend to leave huge, deep footprints wherever you walk. But more than just evidence of your passing through, those footprints, it turns out, can be habitats for dozens of other beings. Much like beavers, elephants have widely been recognized as “ecosystem engineers.”
Nature & Wildlife
The woolly mammoth—an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago—is currently being considered for legal protection under conservation trade rules. “How that can be?” you might well ask. The answer lies in a story that’s entwined with some very modern-day issues: climate change and the rampant poaching of today’s elephants.
News & More
Circus elephants in Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey shows got good news last week when it was announced on January 11, 2016, that they would be retired in May.
News & More
When we hear news about the declining numbers—and even near-extinction—of some of the world’s largest animals, such as tigers and rhinos, we usually think about that loss in terms of the planet’s diminishing animal biodiversity and what we can do to conserve what’s left of these species.
Nature & Wildlife
Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pulverized nearly six tons of illegal African and Asian elephant ivory. A conservative estimate of this ivory, which was seized at our nation’s ports of entry from the late 1980s to the present, is that it represents 2,000 animals.
Conservation
I can’t say I’ve seen any tigers or rhinos lurking around my local post office, but next time I pop in for stamps, I’ll be able to help protect them. That’s because the U.S. Postal Service has issued a new “Save Vanishing Species” stamp, proceeds from which are dedicated to endangered wildlife conservation.
