#brown-bear-behavior

#brown-bear-behavior

Raccoons have very dense brains, and that likely explains their heightened ability to solve problems and to be behaviorally flexible, says Lauren Stanton, a cognitive ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. But new research published in Animal Behaviour suggests raccoons will try to solve problems even when they don't expect a food reward for the work.

The charity claims long-term separation was not a viable solution, as wolves' welfare is closely tied to living within a stable pack structure, and isolation can create further welfare concerns.

An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.

In Texas, the Houston Zoo has prepared its buildings and barns with heaters designed to withstand extreme conditions, the zoo said in a blog post on Friday. Animals will have access to extra hay and bedding, and food was stocked in advance. Across the Zoo, sensitive plants are being protected with coverings, and generators are positioned to provide backup power if needed, the blog post said.

Juha Kujala no longer knows how many reindeer will return to his farm from the forest each December. The 54-year-old herder releases his animals into the wilderness on the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border each spring to grow fat on lichens, grass and mushrooms, just as his ancestors have done for generations. But since 2022, grisly discoveries of reindeer skeletons on the forest floor have disrupted this ancient way of life.

The fox is currently in the Animal Health Center at the Bronx Zoo, where it is under the care of the zoo's animal and veterinary teams. Initial examinations indicate that the fox appears to be in good condition. Veterinarians are awaiting results from additional routine health screening.

The wolves arrived in May of last year, just days after Paul Roen had driven his cattle back up to their summer pasture in Northern California's Sierra Valley. He started finding the bleeding bodies of calves-some still alive, so badly paralyzed that they'd need to be shot. After weeks of this, Roen finally saw a kill himself. "One wolf grabbed a cow and spun her around, while another grabbed a calf," he told me. "He tore it into three pieces in 30 seconds."

Many people look up to admire the silhouette of raptors, some of the planet's largest birds, soaring through seemingly empty skies. But increasingly, research shows us that this fascination runs both ways. From high above, these birds are watching us too. Thanks to the development of tiny GPS tracking devices attached to their bodies, researchers are getting millions of data points on the day-to-day lives of these apex predators of the skies, giving us greater insight into where they hunt and rest.

Bats are impressive navigators. Like so many mini submarines equipped with sonar, they deftly navigate dark forests and caves by listening for the echoes of their own calls. But how bats can tell which echo to follow while flitting around in a sea of overlapping and competing signals pinging off the myriad surfaces in their environments has been a mysteryuntil now.

Animals' risk of becoming roadkill depends on several factors, including how many vehicles are on the road, how many animals are on the road, and how animals and human drivers behave, explains Tom Langen, a professor of biology at Clarkson University, who studies animal-vehicle collisions. DST can minimize these collisions, however.

It was a race against nightfall. As he hurried across the sandy, bristling landscape of California's Carrizo Plain, ecologist Ian Axsom stopped every 10 yards to place an aluminum live trap on the ground, eventually distributing traps over an area the size of two baseball fields. Against the rolling playas and tawny mountains, the traps glinted with golden remnants of the September dusk.

If they survived the summer and reached adulthood, they would become some of the fastest land animals on Earth. Adult pronghorn, a bit smaller than deer, can run seven miles in just 10 minutes, achieving short bursts of nearly 60 mph, much faster than horses or wolves. With their long thin legs and oversized hearts and lungs, they are built to cover ground in the wide-open sagebrush basins of Wyoming, my home state.

My husband, "James," is doing something I think is extremely irresponsible with our 6-year-old son "Kaden" and I'm desperate for a neutral party to give me some ammo with which to shut it down. For the past month, a raccoon has been going through our backyard at night. Originally we all got a kick out of watching it meandering through from the window (Kaden is a big fan of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which feature a raccoon).