The elephants are packing their trunks. By any standard, today’s decision by the Ringling Circus to phase out its elephant acts represents a seismic shift in the use of…
One of the six major glaciers being eroded from below by warm water What does it mean when two major studies this week tell us that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is…
Two events share top prize as game changers for the year just ending: The Nonhuman Rights Project's lawsuits have started a whole new conversation about how we relate to other…
It started out as the same hike that Andi Davis does every day to the top of one of the mountains near where she lives in Phoenix, Arizona. But this time, close to the top,…
When 100 people, mostly women from various rescue groups, rescued 178 beagles from a research lab in Brazil last week, nobody called them terrorists. The five security officers…
The Right Music for Cats
Greyhound Shock Angers Australians
Holiday Gift for Elephant Music Lovers
The Yeti Bear
What brought about the demise of the Neanderthals? Was it the arrival of the Cro-Magnon early-modern humans? John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust suggests that it was rabbits – or more precisely, the Neanderthals’ lack of skill in catching them.
Of course, those of us who studied ancient history under Prof. Monty Python know that killer bunnies were wiping out whole armies of humans well into the Middle Ages …
Fresh from their appearance at the President’s Inauguration, where they wore dead minks, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are now showing off their new shoes, made from the…
Congress has ordered the Pentagon to draw up a plan to phase out the use of animals in combat medical training – or, as the military calls it, “live tissue training.” (Sounds like how parents teach their children to blow their nose.) Sounds good. But will the Pentagon actually comply?
Singer Morrissey turned down an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” after learning that the stars of “Duck Dynasty”, a hunting show, would be appearing, too. “I…
The horsemeat scandal that’s eating away at Europe isn’t about bad food or labeling or criminal black markets. It’s about the violation of cultural taboos.
Every culture has its food taboos, and for some people, eating horses is one of those. But what we really need is a new set of taboos that aren’t rooted in outdated religions and will engender a new relationship with our fellow animals.
It really looked too cutesy to be true. Now we learn that the hugely viral video of a baby pig “rescuing” his friend the baby goat…
Spay/neuter is one of the bedrocks of the no-kill movement. Every year it saves millions of unwanted dogs and cats from being born. But veterinarians are always looking for better ways of preventing unwanted pregnancies. And in this guest post, Prof. Hal Herzog looks at new research that challenges conventional wisdom that desexing dogs is also good for their health.
He says that while “no one wants to go back to the days when 24 million unwanted cats and dogs got the blue needle each year … it’s a classic conflict between what is best for the individual versus what is best for society.” He also offers a possible solution.
Count on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to cut to the heart of how screwed up our tastes, our psychology and our culture are when it…
Early today, deep in Antarctic waters, a huge Japanese whaling ship rammed two Sea Shepherd boats that were attempting to block its access to a refueling…
Long before cats invented the Internet and walking on keyboards, they had to make do with books. Emir O. Filipovic tweets this photo of a kitty…
In Malaysia, as in most of the Muslim world, dogs are considered impure. So, too, then, are people who rescue them and look after them. But…
She began as an animal trainer in Hollywood, but went on to campaign for their freedom from zoos and circuses and to establish one of the…
This is the most you’re going to see of Camillo the chimpanzee – at least for the moment. When the San Antonio Express-News asked the Texas…
The Oregon Zoo has agreed to pay $400,000 to an elephant trafficking company in order to keep baby elephant Lily at the zoo.
A delightful video from the Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary for traumatized chimpanzees and other primates in Austria. We first met these guys, who came from laboratories where…
A 10-year study has concluded that billions of dollars of research have gone down the drain in experiments on mice that proved completely useless when applied…
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Lucy Cooke, explorer and writer for National Geographic, pays another visit to the Aviarios del Caribe sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. [readon] Sloths are one of…
This infographic shows how a simple change in what we eat can make an enormous difference to the warming of the planet and to how we’re…