Animal Behavior News

Damselfish can be fastidious farmers. They prune and cultivate small patches of algae, often no more than half a square meter (5 square feet) in area, ensuring they have a…

“Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like a brain of a crocodile” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos. In science, reptiles have been considered to be…

KATHMANDU — During his regular patrol in the forests of Dadeldhura district in Nepal’s westernmost tip in 2020, forester Bishnu Prasad Acharya heard something strange from a temple priest. “He…

The dents and dings on the surfaces of rocks used by chimpanzees to crack open nuts preserve a history of how the animals used the tools and how those patterns…

Some primates spend their entire lives in trees. They avoid the ground, where preferred food is scarce and predators lurk. But deforestation and climate change are threatening their homes in…

KATHMANDU — On the afternoon of Oct. 28, a wild male elephant attacked and killed a woman herding her sheep at a pasture in the town of Amlekhgunj, in the…

Electric wire fences set up to keep marauding elephants out of farms and villages in Indonesia’s Aceh province worked well — at least at first. When the elephants realized the…

In her new book, Karen Bakker relates a story from Brazilian researcher Rafael José de Menezes Bastos that crystallizes how differently some humans process and respond to the sounds around…

Gorillas and chimpanzees living in a remote part of the Congo Basin hang out together and some, like humans, even establish “relationships with benefits,” a new study reveals. Observations of…

Bonobos, sometimes referred to as the "hippies" of the ape kingdom, have long been known for their relatively peaceful relations within core family groups. But there’s been less consensus about…

In 2006 and 2010, Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula collected catfish and other species from the rivers in Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Then he hopped…

"Nature, red in tooth and claw.” According to Alfred Tennyson's poem, “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” that line describes "Creation's final law." Scholars say it captures the sometimes ruthless nature of ……

Raptors are famous for their ability to home in on prey and attack with precision. But how does this work when they hunt animals that flock, school or swarm, forming…

There are moments in researchers’ lives when they realize the significance of something they hadn’t paid much thought to in the past. For primatologist Catherine Hobaiter and her team, one…

In 2018, marine scientist Joni Pini-Fitzsimmons received an unusual stingray video from a colleague. It showed a mangrove whipray (Urogymnus granulatus) gliding over a reef in the Gili Islands of…

Frogs usually land on their feet, but one group of tiny toadlets from Brazil are so small they can’t stick a landing. Pumpkin toadlets (Brachycephalus spp.) are teensy, about the…

When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…

Gcina Dlamini blows through a whistle fashioned from a piece of dried fruit in the forest near his home in the town of Lavumisa in Eswatini, the Southern African kingdom…

Generally, the word pollution conjures images of billowing smokestacks, oily water and trash-filled highway medians. But for whales, dolphins and porpoises, a subtler and perhaps more sinister source of pollution…

The first time you see a proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus), you might be hit with a mix of fascination, joy and perhaps some confusion: muscular limbs attached to a pot-bellied…

Spotted hyenas appear to be adapting to climate change in Tanzania’s famous Serengeti National Park, surprising researchers who expected changing rainfall patterns would force the carnivores to spend more time…

In the cool of the desert night, the small gray-furred creature emerges from the safety of its burrow in search of food. The bilby (Macrotis lagotis) has a surprising combination of…

KATHMANDU/NEW DELHI — Media outlets in Nepal were abuzz recently with reports that the country’s iconic Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris), on whose protection the government and various NGOs lavish…

In 2019, researchers sailed to a sprawling seamount off the coast of South Africa, and lowered hydrophones to the seafloor. They picked up all kinds of noises: waves, the crackling of…

In March this year, headlines across the United States announced the rare sighting of an elusive creature in Yellowstone National Park: the wolverine. In the accompanying photographs, a lumbering, blackish-brown…

Throughout the winter and spring of 2007, there were several curious sightings of a manatee and her calf in a power plant intake canal in the Cuban town of Santa…

Conservationists feared that chimpanzees in Comoé National Park might have been wiped out during a decade of civil conflict in Côte d'Ivoire. But camera-trap footage found a healthy population and…

Leatherback sea turtles run a gantlet of fishing lines and other human impacts during their annual migratory loop from Caribbean nesting grounds to the eastern coast of North America and…

It seems natural to assume that fish and other marine biodiversity live in a silent world; the idea that fish live in a noisy ecosystem seems bizarre. But a new…

Even in the isolated, scrubby plains of the savanna, spotting the black ear tufts of a caracal prowling nearby remains a rare opportunity. The wild cat, sometimes known as the…