At first (and probably second) glance you wouldn’t think that tigers and kiwis have all that much in common. Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) live in India and the surrounding countries, where the predators can weigh more than 220 kilograms. Little spotted kiwi (Apteryx owenii) live exclusively in New Zealand, where the flightless birds weigh [...]

Poaching, habitat loss, inbreeding and hybridization. These are just a few of the threats faced by many wild feline species around the globe. Here are six of the world’s most endangered feline species and subspecies—some of which may not survive into the next century. 1. Amur leopards Let’s start with the good news: The population [...]

What do the Sumatran tiger, Philippine tarsier, and Galapagos land iguana have in common? They are all endangered or critically endangered species; they have all appeared on the covers of O’Reilly Media’s iconic software manuals; and they are all featured in the publisher’s new O’Reilly Animals campaign, which aims to mobilize the technology community to [...]

They are mostly forgotten today, but Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) once roamed in vast numbers across the Indian subcontinent, Mediterranean and Middle East until overhunting brought them to within a hair’s breadth of extinction. By 1907, when an Indian prince finally banned hunting and protected the last lions, only 13 members of the subspecies [...]

Two of the world’s rarest and most vulnerable cat species have had some good news in the past few weeks. The best of the news items covers the critically endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), probably the rarest cat species on the planet, with a wild population of approximately 40 to 50 individuals. Russia, which [...]

Jurassic meow? Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have come up with a novel idea for possibly saving endangered big cats: reproduce them in the lab. And the researchers have already accomplished the first step, creating embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an endangered adult snow leopard (Panthera uncia). The research was published [...]

Just two weeks after the World Wildlife Fund declared the Vietnam Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) extinct comes the announcement of another rhino extinction, this time the western black rhino (Diceros bicornis longipes) of Africa. The declaration came last week from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as part of [...]

This week’s release and death of more than 50 so-called “exotic” animals near Zanesville, Ohio, is a tragic reminder that the laws protecting wildlife in the U.S. are full of loopholes that endanger not only the animals themselves but also people. One of those loopholes could actually be closed soon. Last month, the U.S. Fish [...]

In June 2010, an emaciated and disorientated female Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) named Galia wandered into the Russian town of Terney seeking any prey she was still strong enough to kill. Authorities were forced to put her down, a sad day for a subspecies that numbers maybe 250 to 300 animals in the wild. [...]

A critically endangered South China tiger (Panthera tigris amoyensis) has killed another of its kind, sad news for efforts to save this rarest tiger subspecies from extinction. The death took place at the Laohu Valley Reserve in South Africa, where the organization Save China’s Tigers maintains a conservation project to breed South China tigers and [...]