The idea for this post came from a question I received when a guest on Skeptically Speaking: is menstrual blood an attractant to bears? Scicurious has since covered that paper in her usual delightful way, and I’m going to focus more on cultural issues and deer. Yes, deer. * * * That’s right ladies, it’s [...]

For the first time in more than 30 years an American hunter has been allowed to import a trophy from a black rhino he shot in Africa back into the country. Animal-rights groups argue that this is a precedent-setting setback for efforts to preserve the endangered species. Hunters, on the other hand, argue that this [...]

History books tell us that the last wild Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) was probably killed in 1922 by a French colonial hunter in Morocco. But in repeating the tale of this well-documented death, the history books may have left a chapter or two out of the story. Barbary, or Atlas, lions once roamed throughout [...]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that African lions (Panthera leo leo) may deserve protected status under the Endangered Species Act. The decision, published November 27 in the Federal Register, comes in response to a petition (pdf) filed in March 2011 by five conservation groups that argued that American hunters pose a [...]

The body of the last wild Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) in Vietnam was found floating in Ea Lam Lake on September 29. The 3.2-meter-long, 100-kilogram female had been strangled by two steel wires, possibly by hunters. She was estimated to be nearly 100 years old. Once present throughout Southeast Asia, critically endangered Siamese crocodiles have [...]

Gray wolves (Canis lupus) have targets on their backs. One of the next barrages of gunfire will start soon in Minnesota, where more than 23,000 people have applied for the 6,000 permits that the state will issue for its fall hunting season, set to start November 3. This is one of the latest salvos against [...]

They go by a lot of names: mountain lions, cougars, pumas, catamounts and more. But people living in the Midwest may soon have a new name for these big cats: neighbor. Cougars (Puma concolor) have not lived in Oklahoma, Missouri and other midwestern states since the  beginning of the 20th century. But now the cats [...]

The population of endangered California condors (Gymnogyps californianus) hit an important milestone last month, reaching a high of 405 birds—quite an achievement for a species that was down to its last 22 individuals just 25 years ago. California condors—North America’s largest birds, with a wingspan of up to 2.8 meters—were almost wiped out by poaching, [...]

A new U.S. rule went into effect this week that—after years of legal wrangling—places limitations on hunting of three critically endangered African antelope species: the scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah), addax (Addax nasomaculatus) and dama gazelle (Nanger dama). Although almost nonexistent in their homelands, thousands of these animals have been raised in captivity and now live [...]

For centuries the tribal Nyishi people in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh have worn the magnificent beaks of hornbill birds as a part of their traditional headgear, called pudum, which are considered a sign of manhood and tribal identity. Hornbills are the state birds of Arunachal Pradesh, but overhunting for pudum threatened all five [...]

With a population numbering fewer than 300 individuals, Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) are the rarest and most endangered of the world’s four gorilla subspecies. Although they remain threatened by habitat loss and illegal bushmeat hunting, new research shows the gorillas have a bit more potential habitat to roam, and in fact inhabit a [...]

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) has announced that it will hold a month-long competition starting January 12, 2013,  “to see who can harvest the longest and the most Burmese pythons” from designated public lands in southern Florida. The goal is to raise awareness about the threat this invasive species poses to the [...]

With a juicy insect dinner perched on a leaf above the water, what is a hungry little archer fish down below to do? Knock it down with a super-powered, super-precise jet of water that packs six times the power the fish could generate with its own muscles, according to new findings published online October 24 [...]

Tens of thousands of whales were slaughtered each year for decades from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, in the service of lighting city streets, painting ladies’ lips and providing multitudinous other modern conveniences. This monomaniacal hunt led many species to the brink of extinction. But recent research has suggested that gray whale (Eschrichtius [...]

A collection of delicate stone tools discovered on California’s Channel Islands indicates that early humans in the Americas were hunting local waterfowl some 11,200 to 12,200 years ago. "The points we are finding are extraordinary," Jon Erlandson, director of the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History, who has been working on the [...]

The Giant Anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, only eats ants and termites, as its name suggests. Since the giant anteater and its evolutionary ancestors have been feasting on ants and termites for nearly 60 million years, a researcher named Kent Redford hypothesized that, over time, ants and termites may have evolved various defenses to avoid predation. In [...]

Editor’s Note: While I’m on vacation, I’ve arranged a series of guest posts from other writers who routinely cover animal behavior and cognition. Today’s post, about attack behavior and social communication in great white sharks, comes from David Manly, who blogs at The Definitive Host. Follow him on twitter: @davidmanly. In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s thriller [...]