A pair of beavers have built what is believed to be the first dam in England for centuries.
The animals were hunted to extinction in England and Wales during the 12th century and disappeared from the rest of the country 400 years later.
However, two beavers from Germany were introduced to a river enclosure in Devon last [...]
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An animal welfare group says eBay auctions in the U.S. of illegal or possibly illegal ivory are skyrocketing.
In a statement Friday, the International Fund for Animal Welfare says eBay affiliates in Germany, Australia, France and China have nearly eliminated illegal ivory trading on their sites. The watchdog group says, however, that sales had shifted to [...]
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Asian and European honeybees can learn to understand one another’s dance languages despite having evolved different forms of communication, an international research team has shown for the first time.
The nine species of honeybees found worldwide separated about 30 to 50 million years ago, and subsequently developed different dance ‘languages’. The content of the messages is [...]
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The Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus) is one of the world’s smallest mammals. It is about four centimetres long and weighs merely two grams. Being a nocturnal animal, it hunts predominantly with its sense of touch. Professor Michael Brecht (Bernstein Center for Computional Neuroscience, Berlin) now reported on the particularities of its hunting behaviour at the [...]
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German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel Monday urged governments to take stronger action to protect the diversity of life. Opening the largest UN biodiversity gathering yet, Gabriel warned that the world is not on the right path to protect the diversity of species and said the world would not reach its agreed target of the year [...]
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Dave Tosh, from the School of Biological Sciences at Queens University, found the greater white-toothed shrew in Tipperary and Limerick while working with University College Cork and BirdWatch Ireland. Its natural range is in parts of Africa, France and Germany and before now the closest it has been spotted to Ireland is in the Channel [...]
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Researchers studying the echolocation behavior in bats have discovered that the diminutive flying mammals emit exceptionally loud sounds — louder than any known animal in air.
Annemarie Surlykke from the Institute of Biology, SDU, Denmark, and her colleague, Elisabeth Kalko, from the University of Ulm, Germany, studied the echolocation behavior in 11 species of insect-eating tropical [...]
German scientists are engaging bats to kick-start natural reforestation in the tropics by installing artificial bat roosts in deforested areas. This novel method for tropical restoration is presented in a new study published online in the science journal Conservation Biology this week. Detlev Kelm from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin [...]
Children run less risk of being sensitive to allergens if there is a dog in the house in the early years of their lives, scientists have found.
The conclusion, based on a six-year study of 9,000 children, adds weight to the theory that growing up with a pet trains the immune system to [...]
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Their names are Shadow, Butch, Misty, Rusty, Sparky, Sunshine, Esther, Marty and Spunky. They are cats, some former strays, some tiger-striped. But to Jan Fredericks of Wayne, N.J., they are family, they are God’s creatures and deserving of compassion.
And in Pope Benedict XVI, Ms. Fredericks, the chairwoman of the fledgling American branch of Catholic Concern [...]
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