In November 2011, Scientific American, Zooniverse and a team of research partners launched the Web site Whale.FM, a citizen-science project devoted to cataloging the calls made by Pilot whales and Killer whales (Orcas), both of which are actually dolphin species. Different whale families have their own dialects and closely related families share calls. Underwater microphones, [...]

One of the world’s rarest mammals, the antelope-like saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), has been effectively invisible since 1999, the last time the elusive creature was observed by scientists. Well, one of them finally turned up again. Too bad it died soon after. A single male saola was captured late last month outside a remote village in [...]

After a 65-year disappearance, the mysterious Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides) has been photographed for the first time, reports the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The tiny primate appeared to have gone extinct in 1939 after its Sri Lankan forest habitats were clear-cut to create tea plantations. A chance encounter in 2002 led [...]

How much is too much to spend on saving an endangered species? In the case of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis) $1.25 million seems to be the breaking point. The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) recently announced it would spend that much to protect the squirrels from cars near two dangerous [...]

Eat something that’s bad for you and you get sick, effectively teaching you to never eat that thing again. But if you eat something that kills you, there’s not much room left for learning, is there? That’s the problem in Australia, where the endangered northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), a small, cat-sized marsupial, has been driven [...]

More than 20,000 orangutans have been poached, killed by loggers or sold into the illegal pet trade in the past 10 years, according to a new report (pdf) from Nature Alert, Ltd., in Bath, England, and the Jakarta, Indonesia–based Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) that says not a single person in Indonesia has been prosecuted [...]

Isolation can be a blessing. I am most productive when I’m not connected to the web. If I’m writing in a train or plane, severed from the thoughts of others, it is easier to capture my own trails of thought and let them expand. Don’t get me wrong, my inner writer loves the internet. It’s [...]