Animals | featured news

More than 11,000 elephants have been killed by ivory poachers in Gabon since 2004 according to new research.

It’s not yet light, but Mr Qiu of Foshan in Guangdong is busy transferring king ratsnakes from a cage into a sack. He then tips them into a boiling pot. He’s been running his snake-soup shop for over a decade. In winter, residents of Guangdong province, south China, pay particular attention to diet and nutrition, meaning the shop is constantly busy. A bowl of piping hot snake soup is a breakfast favourite for many locals looking to ward off the cold. “We Cantonese have always believed that snake meat can treat illnesses, plus its nutritious and keeps out the cold,” Qiu says.

Calling all crocodile experts - South African police say you're needed to help capture thousands of crocs out on the lam....

"This second hypothesis says that when we settled down, and in conjunction with the development of agriculture, we produced waste dumps around our settlements; and suddenly there was this new food resource, a new niche, for wolves to make use of, and the wolf that was best able to make use of it became the ancestor of the dog," explained Erik Axelsson from Uppsala University.

600 in the area have joined the new City Dog Share pack, which matches up pet owners with others eager to help them out when needed. Other places are also sniffing out the idea.

Saber-toothed cats apparently did not go extinct for lack of prey, contradicting a popular explanation for why they died off, fossil evidence now suggests.

First came the polar bear. Now, the federal government has added two other marine mammals to the list of creatures threatened with extinction because of vanishing sea ice in a warming Arctic.

The pygmy right whale, a mysterious and elusive creature that rarely comes to shore, is the last living relative of an ancient group of whales long believed to be extinct, a new study suggests.

Endangered sea turtles are becoming stranded on Massachusetts' Cape Cod shores so frequently that they are on track to break records.

Someone has turned a crucial dolphin birthing area off the U.S. Gulf Coast into a killing zone. Now the race is on to find the culprit or culprits before the marine mammals begin giving birth and the newborn dolphins are put at risk.