Part of my online life includes editorial duties at ResearchBlogging.org, where I serve as the Social Sciences Editor. Each Thursday, I pick notable posts on research in anthropology, philosophy, social science, and research to share on the ResearchBlogging.org News site. To help highlight this writing, I also share my selections here on AiP. Let’s get [...]

What if there were only a couple dozen police officers to patrol all of Manhattan? Now imagine that the borough protected something far more valuable than gold, something that heavily armed criminals were willing to kill to get. How could those few officers keep the peace over such a large territory? That’s roughly the equivalent [...]

The governments of Kenya and Ethiopia agreed last week to develop a new action plan to help protect the endangered Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi), the rarest zebra species and the largest equid species on the planet. The previous five-year conservation strategy for the species expired last year. Grevy’s zebra populations have declined from an estimated [...]

In 2009 four of the world’s last seven northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) were moved from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. At the time conservationists expressed hope that returning the rhinos to semi-wild lives under their native African skies would help inspire the animals to mate and, [...]

Add another species to the long list of plants and animals being eaten out of existence so men can try to get it up in the bedroom. This time, instead of medically useless tiger penises or sea turtle eggs, it’s an African plant called White’s ginger (Mondia whitei ), often wrongly referred to as “white [...]

The world’s largest forest antelope faces almost certain extinction in the wild in as few as 14 years if current population trends continue, according to a statement by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). Just 103 critically endangered mountain bongos (Tragelaphus eurycerus isaaci) remain in Kenya, the last country where the animals exist in the wild. [...]

It has been 70 years since Rothschild giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi), aka Baringo giraffes, disappeared from the Lake Baringo area of Kenya that gave them one of their names. But now eight of these critically endangered animals have returned to the lake, and with them comes an unexpected bonus: a promise of peace. According to [...]

One of the world’s most critically endangered birds, Kenya’s taita apalis (Apalis fuscigularis), has suddenly and inexplicably become much, much rarer, according to BirdLife International. The organization, which has funded research into the species through its Preventing Extinctions Program, says that field work conducted in 2009 and 2010 found almost no taita apalis remaining in [...]