Top Predators News

KATHMANDU — Four of the five days of the Nepali Hindu festival of Tihar, which occurs at the same time as the better-known Deepavali, are dedicated to animals. Kukur Tihar,…

KATHMANDU —  On the morning of July 31, a tiger (Panthera tigris) entered the enclosure of the Kasara gharial breeding center in Chitwan National Park unnoticed. It observed the behavior of…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia have charged three men, including a local political leader in Sumatra, with selling body parts from a Sumatran tiger, a critically endangered and…

In January 2022, I saw my first wild wolf. Even growing up in Idaho, a wolf sighting is rare, and I had never seen one. But from afar, I watched…

KATHMANDU — The monsoon season in Nepal is expected to begin in the second week of June, which means officials in the country's prime habitats for Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting the ancestor of all domestic dog breeds:…

In the late 1990s, a Yale ecologist named Oswald Schmitz and his students made an interesting discovery by gluing spiders’ mouths shut. Schmitz’s team placed the glued spiders in enclosed…

In 2016, a mountain lion known as P-45 killed 10 alpacas on a ranch in California’s Santa Monica Mountains. That’s rare behavior for a mountain lion, writes wildlife biologist Mark…

The harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja) lives in tropical forests stretching from the south of Mexico to the north of Argentina. But it’s in the Brazilian Amazon that a project has…

New research looking at whether particular types of wildlife are more affected than others by habitat loss determined that predators are the most impacted, as was expected — but the…

The last tiger in Lao PDR likely died in terrible anguish. Its foot caught in a snare, the animal probably died of dehydration. Or maybe, in a desperate bid to…

AMBON, Indonesia — Last February, a crocodile in eastern Indonesia crawled right into a trap. The animal, a 2-meter-long (6.6-foot) saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), was suspected to have preyed on…

The puma family took biologist Mark Elbroch by surprise. They were supposed to be a ways off. But here they were, year-old kittens, bungling the final moments of a baby…

ÑUFLO DE CHÁVEZ, Bolivia — Few countries in the tropics have seen their trees chopped down as quickly as Bolivia did between 2001 and 2017. According to data from the…

Pulsating lights placed around llama and alpaca herds warded off puma attacks during a recent experiment in Chile, suggesting the method might help avert conflict between herders and dwindling populations…

New research suggests that mountain lions in the western United States play an outsize role in changing their surroundings, leading the authors of the study to suggest that the big…

Scientists have mapped out instances of human-black bear conflict in a part of the U.S. state of Nevada where bears are returning decades after they vanished. The results of their…

Few species have faced such vitriolic hatred from humans as the world's top predators. Considered by many as pests, often as dangerous, they have been gunned down, poisoned, speared, finned,…

Several decades of seemingly unrelated policies, ranging from increases in elk hunting to the reintroduction of wolves, have combined to cut a population of mountain lions in the western United…

Climate change could shift the appetites of Arctic spiders, leading to the slower release of carbon from the thawing tundra, according to new research led by biologist Amanda Koltz of…

Fishing nets and lines kill more young white sharks living near Mexico and southern California than any other cause of death, a new study has found. A team of researchers…

Deforestation in the tropics is caused by many different human activities that vary in intensity depending on location. In South America, industrial agriculture is the big driver of deforestation while…

Predators help humans far more than they’re given credit for, despite the antagonistic nature of the relationship, according to a review of studies. “While predators and scavengers are a large…

JAKARTA — Extensive deforestation in Sumatra has corralled the island’s native tigers into fragmented habitats, only two of which contain a sufficiently robust population of the nearly extinct big cat,…

A recent photo that sparked speculation that an Indonesian tiger species had come back from extinction most likely shows instead a rare, but certainly not extinct, Javan leopard (Panthera pardus…

Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are known for their elusive ways. Even people who share the mountains with the silvery felines seldom spot them. In spring 2014 a crew of filmmakers…

JAKARTA — Based on photographic evidence, park officials in Indonesia reported the possible sighting of the Javan tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) some 14 years after the animal was officially declared…

Update: Since the publication of this story, the IUCN has downgraded the conservation status of snow leopards from Endangered to Vulnerable. We are also interested in hearing informed arguments in…

The conservation NGO African Parks has signed an agreement with the government of Benin to rejuvenate a little-known park in the West African country of Benin. The organization will help…

SANJIANGYUAN, China — Late at night on March 15, a snow leopard secretly entered the sheepfold of a Tibetan household in a remote pastureland in China’s western Qinghai province, killing…