Major Study: Plant-Based Diet Best for Heart

A vegetarian diet cuts your chance of having fatal heart disease by one third. That’s the conclusion of a major study that was launched in the…

Boldly Going Where Monkeys Have Gone Before

The monkey launched by Iran this week, and Laika in 1957 I recall being in the music room at school having a piano lesson when…

On Wildlife Murder, the Cat’s Out of the Bag

A new study makes the powerful case that cats who are left to roam out of doors are doing enormous damage to wildlife. Cat lovers and…

A Day at Yosemite

One day, 30 videographers, nine kinds of cameras, 14 minutes of video. Produced by Steve Bumgardner, a former park ranger who, he says, spends his time…

Cloning Cats, Cows and Neanderthals

When Prof. Church and others offer, as a reason for cloning Neanderthals, that this may help save the human race from extinction, they simply betray their deeper anxieties about their own mortality.

Cetacean Summation

The week in dolphins and whales: Dolphins try to save one of their own … Sperm whales support one who is not their own … Dolphin…

Manatees in Space?

Manatees – those peaceful herbivores who roam the inlets of Florida – are an endangered species. Maybe that’s why they appear to have taken off into…

What’s Next for the Government’s Chimpanzees?

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has taken another big step toward bringing an end to the use of chimpanzees in research. But there’s still a long way to go – and it’s still quite uncertain where the retired chimpanzees can go and who’s going to pay for them.

The Other Beyoncé Question

I could care less whether Beyonce was singing with a real voice or not at the Presidential Inauguration. I care a lot more about whether or not she was wearing real fur. Apparently, yes, she was wearing not only a real fur coat, but real mink eyelashes.

Dolphin Asks Human Divers for Help

You’ve probably seen or heard about the dolphin who approached some divers off the coast of Kona, Hawaii, all tangled up in a fishing line and…

Playing the Stock Market: the Winner

When the British newspaper The Observer set up its 2012 investment challenge, the editors invited a team of three experts from a wealth management company, a…

David Attenborough’s Swan Song?

The indefatigable David Attenborough is back on PBS’s Nature Tonight with the three-part series “Attenborough’s Life Stories“, which looks back over his 60 years of film…

‘Blackfish’ Orca Movie Is Talk of Sundance

Is the new movie “Blackfish” – a powerful damning indictment of SeaWorld, screened at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend – this year’s answer to the 2009 Oscar-winning “The Cove”?

The critics are giving it rave reviews, calling it “a damning indictment of SeaWorld” and even suggesting that “it stands a good chance of putting the “$2-billion theme park out of business.”

Crustacean Rights: The Case of the "Lucky" Crabs

Is it moral to rip the “arms” off a living creature? Psychologist Dr. Hal Herzog takes a boat trip in the Florida Everglades and comes away with moral and ethical questions about our relationship to crabs.

Marineland on the Ropes

Ontario SPCA orders Marineland to clean up its act Ministry of the Environment tells Marineland to stop burying animals on zoo property Marineland sues one of…

Second Best Photobomb Ever

The husky aces it. (But the #1 photobomb is still this one from last year.)

Hunting Twinkle

I was scrambling up the side of one of the dips after standing in the shade of some pine trees. Twinkle had reached the top ahead of me, peered back down and then ran off to play with one of the other dogs. Then a single shot rang out and I heard a single yelp.

It took me a moment to realize what had happened.