Could space-age technology save the West from catastrophic wildfires? A handful of leading aerospace and tech companies think so — and they’re devoting serious research dollars into new artificial intelligence programs to prove it. For the past few decades, wildfires have been getting bigger and more destructive all across the Western United States. Traditionally, strategies [...]
Minnesota is home to one determined mother eagle. Snow often falls during bald eagles’ winter nesting season, but this mama had to dig deep when her nest became completely buried in a two-foot snowstorm this weekend. The eagle, spotted on the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ EagleCam, remained still even when only her head remained above [...]
A U.K.-based research company just investigated 10 top travel booking sites — including Airbnb, Expedia, Groupon, and TripAdvisor — and ranked them on how much they support notoriously cruel vacation experiences, like elephant rides The results might surprise you. We’ll get to those in a minute. But first, a brief overview of the problem: If [...]
Last week, a four-year-old Andean bear escaped from his habitat in the St. Louis Zoo, sending the entire facility into an hour-long lockdown. Guests and staff were corralled into safe indoor facilities while the zoo staff worked to secure the bear, named Ben. According to news network KMOV-TV, Ben was ultimately subdued with a tranquilizer [...]
When a train loaded with toxic chemicals crashed near East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month and poisoned a local stream, many local residents thought the first few days of cleanup would be the hardest. But now, weeks later, far more sinister after-effects are beginning to appear. And this time, it’s not just fish that are [...]
Dire wolves aren’t just fantastical beasts that were made up for Game of Thrones. They were real-life creatures that once roamed the Americas—and scientists have just discovered some new clues as to what they were really like. First, a little background: Real-life dire wolves only went extinct about 10,000 years ago. They were part of [...]
A Kansas zoo has just announced that two of their Indian rhinos have given birth. Zoo staff are heralding the event as a major win for the species, which is critically endangered. The calf, named MarJon, was born in Tanganyika Wildlife Park on February 16th. She weighed a whopping 80 pounds at birth and was [...]
Albuquerque police stumbled into an unlikely surprise while chasing down the source of gunfire in Albuquerque, New Mexico last month. They followed the sound of shooting to a mobile home, where they found the culprit—as well as a four-month-old baby tiger. The tiger, which had likely been obtained illegally as part of the black-market pet [...]
In Taiwan, a local population of wild pangolins—one of the world’s most endangered animals—is recovering a little too well. In most places in Southeast Asia, pangolin numbers are critically low after decades of hunting and poaching. (Prized for their unique scaly skin, the anteater-like creatures are the most-trafficked mammal on earth.) But near the Taipei [...]
You might think the name “giant phantom jellyfish” is a little dramatic, but you’ve never come face to face with a Stygiomedusa gigantea. Just recently, a group of international scientists with the Viking Expedition Team became the first to nab photographic evidence of the elusive creature — and prove that it definitely lives up to [...]
