Animals | featured news

The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced Thursday it will phase out the show's iconic elephants from its performances by 2018.

Mozambique's rhinoceros population was wiped out more than a century ago by big game hunters. Reconstituted several years ago, it has again been driven to extinction, or to the brink of extinction, by poachers seeking their horns for sale in Asia....

South African officials say an elephant has overturned a vehicle carrying two tourists, injuring one of them. A statement from Kruger National Park says the tourists are of "Chinese origin." The statement says an elephant in the park attacked the vehicle on a road at 6:30 a.m. Monday, and a medical team in a helicopter rushed to help the injured male driver. He was taken to a hospital for further treatment.

A fisherman in Belarus was bitten to death by a beaver, and all he was doing was trying to take its picture, Sky News reports. The man spotted the beaver while fishing with friends at Lake Shestakov, but as he approached to take a photograph, the beaver bit him on the thigh. The animal managed to sever an artery, and his friends couldn't stop the blood flow.

Pig carcasses — about 14,000 of them — have been floating down rivers that feed into Shanghai for nearly two weeks. The city’s residents have been told not to worry, and not much else. Where the pigs came from, how they died and why they suddenly showed up in the river system that supplies drinking water to a city of 23 million has not been explained. Officials have told residents that their drinking water is safe and have censored microblog posts suggesting that the public organize peaceful protests.

Imagine two dolphins swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. You hear a series of clicks, whistles and whines coming from each, much like a conversation in dolphin language... "These whistles actually turned out to be names. They're abstract names, which is unheard of in the animal kingdom beyond people," said Randall Wells, one of the authors of a new study on dolphin behavior, told CNN affiliate WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida.

Citing inhumane and unsanitary practices, lawmakers want to regulate online pet sales. The current law allows breeders who sell puppies online to escape all health and safety requirements.

A notorious gangster known as Nutzu the Pawnbroker has been indicted for heading a gang charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, blackmail and illegally possessing weapons, but the public seems to be more interested in his pets: four lions and two bears....

A new study from researchers at Oxford University says the roots of the taboo on horse meat are in the spread of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England. But the real reason may be simple economics.

More than 1,500 hunters are struggling to find more Burmese pythons as a public hunt for the invasive species continues in the Everglades. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said Friday that the tally of pythons killed in the Python Challenge is holding at 50. That number hasn't changed since Tuesday.