Animals may not be able to predict earthquakes, but many—from elephants to spiders—are quite adept at detecting vibrations that are imperceptible to humans. Yes, there’s a whole world out there we are mostly unaware of. It jiggles and gyrates and shakes and vibrates as waves travel through solid substrates such as sand and tree trunks. [...]

The fate of elephants, rhinoceroses and other imperiled species could be decided in the coming days at a major meeting on wildlife trade regulation in Bangkok. Beginning March 3, delegates from the 178 countries that have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, dubbed CITES, will gather to [...]

It’s a David versus Goliath kind of story, with an ecological twist: In African savannas (regions with both trees and grass), acacia-dwelling ants can repel voracious, tree-eating elephants, according to new research by published online September 2 in Current Biology. This ant-driven tree protection has large-scale implications for savanna landscapes, report zoologists Jacob Green and [...]

Upstaged spectacularly by a young Beluga whale that can sort of speak human, an Asian elephant named Koshik can also imitate human speech, but in Korean, using his trunk. Captive-born in 1990 and transferred to South Korea’s Everland Zoo three years later, Koshik lived with two female Asian elephants for a couple of years before [...]

In 1976, psychologists John and Sandra Condry of Cornell University had 204 human adults view videotaped footage of an infant boy named David and infant girl named Dana, and asked them to describe the infants’ facial expressions and dispositions. They described their findings in an article in the journal Child Development. In the video, infants [...]

What information is contained in the call of a mammal? Some calls might reflect the internal emotional state of the animal, like fear or anxiety, or they can refer to an external object, agent, or event, like the presence of a predator. Rhesus monkeys, lemurs, baboons, and guinea pigs, for example, will produce calls when [...]