Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 15, 2020

'Mind-control' cat parasite has now reached Hawaii's parks

Toxoplasma gondii, a mind-controlling parasite that causes the disease toxoplasmosis, has been found in public lands in Oahu, Hawaii for the first time, researchers have discovered. Though this parasite was previously found in people and in wildlife on the Hawaiian islands, it was unknown in Oahu's parks. And it hitchhiked...

Apr 15, 2020

Outrageous 'Tiger King' zoo owners say they help tigers. Conservation experts disagree.

The over-the-top, oddball cast of characters in Netflix’s popular Tiger King series have one thing in common: They all claim to love tigers. They even insist that through the ownership and operation of zoos and petting events, they raise public awareness about tigers and so, in turn, are helping endangered...

May 29, 2020

Last-known video of 'Tasmanian tiger' rediscovered

A rediscovered black-and-white video clip is the last-known footage of the thylacine — also known as the Tasmanian tiger — that was recorded before the marsupial went extinct in 1936. The 21-second clip shows a thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) pacing in an enclosure at the long-closed Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania, while...

Jun 29, 2020

Hey guys: Stop snuggling with your cats (at least in photos) if you want a date

Can posing with a pet help men find dating success? Not if the pet is a cat, scientists say. Posing with a cat makes men less desirable to women, compared with when they pose without their feline friends, researchers recently discovered. Overall, women rated cat-less photos of the same man...

Jan 5, 2021

Jaguar kills another predatory cat in never-before-seen footage

A sleek, spotted ocelot slinks down to a watering hole for a drink, when suddenly, a jaguar leaps from the shadows and bites down on the small cat's neck. Scientists captured footage of this unusual attack in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala in March 2019; they recently described the...

Jan 9, 2021

The strange history of white tigers

A rare white tiger cub was born at a zoo in Nicaragua just over a week ago and is being raised by humans after its mother rejected it, AFP news agency reported. The cub, named Nieve (snow in Spanish), is white, but both of its parents are orange Bengal tigers...

Jan 16, 2021

Cats with smooshed faces can't express emotions, and it's all our fault

It's no accident that cats are adorable: We've selectively bred them across generations for maximum cuteness. But that breeding has a downside: It's left some of our feline friends with permanent frowny faces that cannot show emotions. In particular, new research published in December in the journal Frontiers of Veterinary...

Mar 2, 2021

Cats are too socially inept to be loyal

In the cat world, there's a saying that you should keep your humans' friends close and your humans' enemies … just as close. That's the takeaway of a new study that shows that cats, unlike dogs, will gladly accept food from people who are not nice to their owners. While...

Apr 10, 2021

Why do cats have belly 'pouches'?

Fat cats are cute, but not every cat that looks like it has a big belly is overweight. Although the part of a cat's underside that swings when it walks may look like a paunch, it's actually not a tummy at all. So what is it? That bit of skin,...

Apr 17, 2021

Why were the ancient Egyptians obsessed with cats?

The ancient Egyptians are famed for their fondness of all things feline. There's no shortage of cat-themed artifacts — from larger-than-life statues to intricate jewelry — that have survived the millennia since the pharaohs ruled the Nile. The ancient Egyptians mummified countless cats, and even created the world's first known...

Jul 26, 2021

Biggest cats in the world

Big cats are found all over the planet, and each species is unique, from the elusive snow leopards that stalk wild sheep in the mountains of Afghanistan to the lions that face off against wildebeest in sub-Saharan Africa. There are many strong contenders for the giant cat crown, but two...

Aug 10, 2021

Frozen mummy of extinct cave lion is 'best-preserved ice age animal ever found,' researchers say

About 30,000 years ago, when enormous mammoths and woolly rhinos roamed the Northern Hemisphere, a tiny cave lion cub with golden-brown fur took her final stroll through the Siberian tundra. Disaster struck suddenly — perhaps a mudslide, or a crack splitting open the permafrost underfoot — and the cub fell....

Sep 8, 2021

Cheetahs battle raging river in stunning photo. Did they survive?

A stunning photo captures a group of cheetahs, the world's fastest land sprinters, struggling to swim through a raging river in Kenya. The group of male cheetahs was fording the Talek River in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in an effort to access better hunting grounds. The striking photo is...

Sep 9, 2021

Stunning colorized footage provides a glimpse of the last known Tasmanian tiger

Nearly a century ago, a filmmaker captured a short black-and-white movie of the last known thylacine, also known as a Tasmanian tiger, as it padded around its enclosure at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Australia. Now, that long-dead animal, which his keepers named Benjamin, has come back to life in...

Jan 4, 2022

Unique tree-climbing lions roar again in Uganda (Op-Ed)

Just six months have passed since the killing and mutilation of six lions in the Ishasha sector of Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP). If you were to visit the park, you would see these so-called Ishasha lions lazing around in the myriad branches of towering fig trees. This group...