Bornean orangutans, gray bats and Grauer’s gorillas are among the endangered species in the news this week. This Week’s Most Heartbreaking Story: A family of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) was photographed clinging to the sole remaining tree in their former forest habitat after the rest of it had been chopped down for a palm oil [...]

Protecting the adorable but endangered slow loris—the world’s only venomous primate—from the illegal pet trade suddenly got a little harder. According to a paper pending publication in the American Journal of Primatology, what was once recognized as one slow loris species and two subspecies is actually four different species. Lead author Rachel Munds, an anthropology [...]

Here’s something amazing: a new bird species has been discovered in the U.S. for the first time since 1974. Unfortunately, the discovery wasn’t a live bird. It was actually a museum sample collected in 1963, and the scientists who discovered it fear it may already be extinct or threatened with extinction. The specimen was collected [...]

The slow loris shouldn’t be a difficult object of study. For one thing, it’s slow—very slow (think sloth slow). And these small primates, which are unique in possessing a toxic bite to ward off predators, are charismatic due in large part to their compelling, wide-eyed faces. But they are also nocturnal, and they tend to [...]

In the 18th century, not yet 30 years old, she became the first woman to travel around the world. Along the way she helped collect thousands of plant specimens, some of which were new species. And she did it all dressed as a man. In her own lifetime, French botanist Jeanne Baret fought for recognition [...]

There’s a new species convention happening somewhere right now and none of us got the memo because old. But that’s okay because we’ve got ROFLCon and Anthrocon Playstations. This week an international team of researchers announced that they’ve identified some 80 new species of plants and animals along Papua New Guinea’s Hindenburg Wall, a 50-km [...]

This week, researchers have announced the discovery of a handful of new species in Peru, including a night monkey, common shrew opossum and porcupine, and the extra great news is that they’re all storybook levels of adorable. In September 2011, ecologist Gerardo Ceballos from the Instituto de Ecología at the National Autonomous University of Mexico [...]