Jon Beckmann is a conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) North America Program. He contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. In the 2015 film The Revenant, one of the most dramatic scenes pits frontiersman Hugh Glass in a harrowing effort to ward off...

Wildlife passes (Image credit: Banff Wildlife Crossings Project)To help wildlife safely navigate their natural habitats, crisscrossed with human-built roads and other structures, conservationists have built special crossings. And it turns out some four-legged furballs are utilizing these bridges. A genetic study by Montana State University scientists revealed, for instance, that...

The real-life inspiration for everyone's favorite plush toy has just gotten a new lease on life. For more than two decades, the Louisiana black bear — the iconic beast that inspired the teddy bear — has been considered a threatened species. But the adorable fuzzy bear will soon be removed...

The slashed kneecap of a bear found deep inside a prehistoric cave suggests human hunters lived in Ireland earlier than had been previously thought, a new study finds. Until now, the earliest evidence of humans in Ireland dated to the Mesolithic period, about 10,000 years ago. But new analyses of...

Bearded dragons (Image credit: Arthur Georges)Bearded dragons are amazing lizards in the genus Pogona. There are eight Pogona species. Researchers in Australia have studied Pogona vitticeps to learn more about how they rely on environmental cues or genetics (or both) to determine the sex of the babies. Here, a bearded...

Bearded dragon babies that are genetically male but have the physical and reproductive traits of females have hatched in a lab in Australia. Personality-wise, these sex-reversed lizards show extra-masculine behaviors, the researchers find. In some kinds of lizards, an individual's sex is determined by sex chromosomes, just as it usually...

A naturalist guide for a remote lodge in Alaska recently photographed an incredible sight — close-up views of a beached sperm whale carcass that was being scavenged by brown bears. The images were captured by Karyn Traphagen, a naturalist guide with the nearby Tutka Bay Lodge in the south central...

The bear dog, also called Amphicyon, shared features of bears (heavy-bodied, with feet planted flat on the ground) and dogs (relatively long legs and long snout), but they are neither bears (family Ursidae) nor dogs (family Canidae). They were not specifically in the bear's or dog's scientific families, but they...

Machu Picchu, the site of historic Incan ruins and a popular destination for tourists, is also a favorite destination for South America's only native bear species — the Andean bear. In a recent survey of the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, park officials and conservationists found signs of Andean bears...

A duck with a pink head, a tree-climbing crab, and a monkey with red thighs are among the targets of a new global hunt for lost species. Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC), an organization based in Austin, Texas, with a focus on biodiversity and wildland preservation, has launched a new initiative...

Bear attacks are rare, but when news of bear aggression hits the airwaves, even avid adventurers may wonder what's the best way to escape the long and curved claws of such a wild animal. This past weekend, a black bear mauled and killed 16-year-old Patrick Cooper during a trail race...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from the Endangered Species List yesterday (June 22). The decision to return the Yellowstone bears to state and tribal management reflected rebounding grizzly numbers in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), a region that encompasses Wyoming, Idaho...

Tardigrades, also known as water bears, are less than a fraction of an inch in length, yet they are believed to be Earth's toughest, hardiest animals. They are virtually indestructible. Tardigrades have the ability to withstand complete dehydration. Once desiccated, they have been frozen in blocks of ice, exposed to...

A rescued bear with a tongue so large it dragged on the ground has a second chance in life after surgery. A University of Edinburgh veterinarian joined bear rescue organizations in Southeast Asia to operate on the Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus). The young bear, nicknamed Nyan htoo, or bright,...

A fishy treatment has helped heal two black bears and a mountain lion whose paws were badly scorched in the deadly Thomas Fire, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). This past December, the CDFW trapped the three wild animals and treated their burnt paws with a...