Line up human and chimpanzee DNA and the first surprise is how little separates us. We share more than 96% of the sequences used to make proteins, the molecules that build and run a living body. And yet the human brain is roughly three times the size of a chimpanzee’s, and it does things a […]

Every autumn, Corvo Island in the Azores turns off its public lighting for a few key days to help fledgling Cory’s shearwaters as they attempt to fly to the ocean guided by the stars

Once a year, Corvo, the smallest and most northerly island of Portugal’s Azores archipelago, goes dark. Since 2019, the island’s 450 or so inhabitants have chosen to switch off the lights every autumn for five nights to tackle the disastrous effects of artificial light on Cory’s shearwaters, a seabird endemic to the Atlantic Ocean.

It began in 1991 when the community noticed huge numbers of deaths among young shearwaters.

A newborn Cory’s shearwater chick

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© Photograph: Andrea Zanenga

© Photograph: Andrea Zanenga

© Photograph: Andrea Zanenga

Show features live chat sessions with breeders, a podcast and updates on dogs’ progress from birth to weigh-ins

A 24-hour Finnish TV show dedicated entirely to the live progress of a dog and her six newborn puppies is drawing millions of viewers.

As well as a 24-hour webcam, Pentulive (Puppy Live) includes live evening chat sessions with the dogs’ breeder, a podcast and an instant notification service that updates followers on the puppies’ progress – from their birth to weigh-ins and first nail trims – for eight weeks.

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© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP

© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP

© Photograph: Julia Kiiskinen/Yle - The Finnish Broadcasting Company/AP

After 165 years, the tourist ritual — which now costs $77.22 for the first 20 minutes — may be coming to an end. Here’s a tour through the archives.

© Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Bills relating to animal welfare tabled by the PAN and CHEGA Parties have been approved at the first reading and vote by the Portuguese parliament and referred to the committee

The post Parliament approves draft bills on animal welfare from PAN and CHEGA appeared first on Portugal Resident.

A dramatic animal rescue took place on the island of Kythera, when a group of climbers discovered an injured and newborn baby seal without its mother. The baby seal estimated to be 7 days old was dehydrated and malnourished and weighed approximately 15 kilograms. Members of the “Outdoor Activities Greece” team spotted the injured baby […]

The post Dramatic rescue of newborn and orphaned baby seal on Kythera (video) appeared first on Keep Talking Greece.

As Cop17 kicks off, records since 1921 show more bee species declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alps

Most of Europe’s wild bee species and about half of its hover fly species have declined over the last century, a study has found, as a UN biodiversity summit begins in Armenia.

Records since 1921 show more bee species are declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alpine region. The richness of bee and hover fly species suffered a persistent drop in the Atlantic and Continental regions, the study found, though trends in other regions were mixed or even positive.

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© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

© Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

A rare newborn lamb, valued at up to $25,000, has gone missing from a farm in the Adelaide Hills, Australia. The owners suspect the animal may have been stolen. This is reported by ABC. Veterinarian and farm owner Madeleine Babos stated that the lamb was born last week but disappeared a few days later. She […]

The Georgia officer responsible for killing a 1-year-old miniature donkey, HeeHaw, has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against him, claiming the body camera footage proves he "reasonably believed the donkey posed an imminent threat to a fellow officer." But even if it doesn't, the officer argues he is immune from liability. 

In the early morning hours of August 30, Hannah Michelle Israel was at her Cedartown home in western Georgia when she received a distressing phone call. A supervisor with the Cedartown Police Department "tersely informed [Israel] that a donkey on her property had been 'dispatched,'" according to her federal lawsuit. After some clarification, she learned that police had not only entered her enclosed private property in the middle of the night without permission while looking for a missing person, but also shot and killed her miniature donkey in the process. 

Israel immediately set out to search for her beloved pet, HeeHaw, only to find her bottle-raised donkey's lifeless body alone in her field. Israel told ABC7 News the incident has left her "traumatized and shocked." She continued, "I honestly can't even believe he's not here…There's no words."

Demanding accountability, Israel filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in September against the shooting officer, Officer Trenton Ryan Garner, for violating her Fourth Amendment rights and submitted a separate demand for $1 million from the City of Cedartown.  

Last week, Garner responded by asking the court to dismiss the case, arguing in part that he did not violate Israel's constitutional rights when he entered her property. Under the open fields doctrine, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one's pastureland, even if enclosed. Further, the motion argues, exigent circumstances existed in the search for a missing 12-year-old girl. 

As far as HeeHaw is concerned, Garner claims he acted reasonably by using deadly force and argues the footage clearly shows HeeHaw "charging" and posing an "imminent threat to a fellow officer." 

However, the footage, posted by the Civil Rights Lawyer Raw, may not be so clear-cut. Garner's body camera was off at the time of the shooting but had a "rolling buffer of video," a recording without audio of the 30 seconds preceding activation of the camera, according to court documents. During the silent portion, two officers and a bloodhound are in front of Garner with flashlights in a dark field. A small donkey, roughly 3 feet tall, appears and slowly moves toward one of the officers. The officer backs away slowly, but the donkey moves closer and picks up speed. Garner pulls his gun and fires. The donkey turns and runs before falling over.

Whether Garner reasonably believed HeeHaw posed an imminent threat to his fellow officer may be up for debate.

When the audio kicks in, a fellow officer asks, "Why'd you shoot it up?" "I don't know," Garner responds rather nonchalantly before telling dispatch he had to shoot a donkey because "it was trying to attack." If another officer on the scene wasn't sure why Garner used deadly force, perhaps the decision wasn't so reasonable after all. 

In her lawsuit, Israel accuses Garner of needlessly killing HeeHaw "maliciously…and recklessly, with deliberate indifference…for [Israel's] constitutional rights." The suit continues: "No reasonable officer in…Garner's position would have believed that such force was necessary or justified." 

But whether Garner acted reasonably or not by shooting HeeHaw, qualified immunity may still shield him from accountability. Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects government actors from lawsuits alleging rights violations, unless the right is clearly established. In practice, that means plaintiffs must be able to point to a previous court ruling in a case with the same circumstances to show that the right was obvious to government officials. 

The bar can be quite high to show a right is clearly established. For example, in March, the Supreme Court reversed a 2nd Circuit decision in a case involving an officer who was sued for using a rear wristlock to arrest a protester. The 2nd Circuit denied qualified immunity, reasoning that a previous case from 2004 clearly established that rear wristlocks used to arrest anti-abortion protesters constitute excessive force. But the Court disagreed, stressing that "principles stated generally, such as that 'an officer may not use reasonable and excessive force,' do not suffice." 

And while there may be ample cases involving officers shooting pet dogs, cases involving miniature donkeys are in short supply. If the court finds that there is no clearly established rule that specifically prohibits officers from shooting a miniature donkey moving toward a fellow officer in the dark, the court may end up dismissing the case and sidestepping both the reasonableness and constitutional questions entirely.

The post Georgia Cop Who Shot a Miniature Donkey Says Body Camera Footage Shows an 'Imminent Threat' appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Horse-drawn carriage rides in New York’s Central Park could be discontinued starting June 1, 2028, under a bill supported by City Council member Zohran Mamdani and City Councilwoman Julie Menin, DPA reported, citing US media. The proposal calls for the gradual phasing out of the attraction, which has been part of the city’s tourism landscape […]

Nearly 183,000 giant tortoises inhabit the Aldabra Atoll in the Seychelles. This is the highest number ever recorded for the species and the result of decades of conservation efforts. A new study shows that the population is healthy and remains relatively stable, though scientists warn that climate change and invasive animals continue to threaten its […]

For Boston Magazine, Kara Baskin explores a growing subculture of tweens and teens who don’t feel entirely human. Some identify as one animal, like a cat or a dog; others identify with multiple animals. One kid Baskin speaks to, Sol, says she “doesn’t summon the animals, but rather they come and go on their own schedule.” These young people call themselves therians (distinct from furries, who are fans of anthropomorphic animal characters). Baskin provides a fascinating glimpse into a world where adolescents can express themselves and explore their identities.

Bafflement is the baseline condition of raising kids right now. The adolescent quest for self-discovery is timeless—but today’s parents experimented in ways that were analog: new hairstyles, inscrutable music, beer snuck in the woods. Their own parents might not have liked it, but they could at least relate.

Now the landscape of adolescent discovery is literally foreign, thanks to social media, which has turbocharged once-obscure subcultures like the furry fandom—and, at its rarer edge, therianthropy—and redefined what “fringe” even means. Even if a kid is the only therian at school, she can find 400 more people just like her online. That’s one of the biggest challenges for parents in the algorithm age: The world your kid actually lives in is one you can’t enter. It touches the fear in every parent, therian kid or not: What happens when our kids inhabit a world we don’t understand, with idols we don’t recognize?

They aren’t made of asphalt, have no traffic lights, and no cars drive on them. Yet, these unusual “highways” are already saving thousands of lives. In the Brazilian Amazon, conservationists have built rope bridges high up in the trees, allowing monkeys, sloths, and other jungle inhabitants to safely cross over the roads. The results are […]

Scientists have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to create the first dogs lacking a key protein that triggers allergic reactions in humans, the Associated Press reported two months ago. The study, published in *The CRISPR Journal*, describes how specialists from the US company Kindred Companion Sciences created two female Beagles—Bailey and Alfie. They “switched off” the […]

The study challenges prevailing views on the evolution of language A new study conducted by Hungarian researchers reveals that dogs can segment continuous speech into words—a capability previously observed only in humans. Hungarian researchers from Budapest have discovered that human speech changes the way dogs’ brains work, even though the animals cannot speak themselves. The […]

Among the stone tools that early humans left beside a lake in northern Israel, archaeologists found something far bigger: the molar of an elephant, about 8 inches (20 cm) tall and 3 inches (8 cm) wide, lying next to several pieces of tusk. It sat at the same level of ground as handaxes and cleavers […]

Vietnamese police have arrested 12 men accused of stealing nearly 2,700 cats during night-time raids in residential neighborhoods; the pets were taken to be slaughtered for food. Fur-removal machines, cat traps, and weighing scales were among the items confiscated during the investigation into the cat-theft gang in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnamese police and state […]

Animal behavior often seems predictable. Swallows follow the summer, ants build colonies, and most creatures run when they encounter a predator or wildfire. But nature keeps throwing researchers curveballs, sometimes from species humans have studied for centuries. Some of these discoveries reveal unexpected intelligence, while others expose physical abilities that sound nearly impossible. Orcas flee […]

The post 10 Astonishing Animal Abilities Scientists Never Saw Coming appeared first on Listverse.

The Great Sphinx has been without a nose for centuries. Now a fossil crocodile skull taken from the same rock turns out to be missing the tip of its snout too. The coincidence has put a name on a species science did not know it had, Herugavialis cairensis, which spent almost a hundred years in […]

In the winter of 2010, residents of a small Arkansas town awoke to find thousands of dead birds littering their lawns. Just days earlier, tens of thousands of dead fish had surfaced in the same state. It was the kind of coincidence that fuels conspiracy theories, yet investigators ultimately traced the two disasters to entirely […]

The post 10 Mass Animal Die-Offs That Looked Like the Apocalypse appeared first on Listverse.