Surfing on whale sharks, riding a moose, and mugging with bears, smart phone users do some not-so-smart, dangerous, even cruel things ...

In an Indian park, where every rhino life counts toward keeping the species going, a baby is saved in a monsoon ...

Critter cams can add data to the scientific literature, make citizen scientists out of lots of armchair naturalists, and may help keep endangered species safe from poachers ...

12/22/2014 First seen in 2013, a wild dwarf elephant in Sri Lanka, who is only five feet tall at the shoulder, has been sighted again—as pugnacious as ever. By Vicki Croke The world’s first documented wild dwarf elephant, who was seen briefly in 2013 before vanishing again, is alive and well, according to Pruthu Fernando, from the Centre for Conservation ...

8/1/2014 They crunch bones like popcorn. The females sport pseudo-penises. And the people who study these animals just adore them. A tour of the hidden life of the spotted hyena. By Vicki Croke They can crunch bone, one researcher says, like popcorn. The females have penises (technically “pseudo-penises”), which become erect with excitement, and through which they give birth. Where ...

8/28/2014 We share a lot with other animals—emotionally, cognitively, and neuro-chemically—but many humans still use outdated linguistic distinctions that put animals in their (allegedly inferior) place. By Vicki Croke Humans speak. Animals vocalize. We love. They bond. We form friendships, they maintain social bonds. We feel jealous. They resource guard. We have sex, they copulate. Notice a pattern? We humans ...

8/26/2015 Ohio zoo sending “Harapan” to Indonesia in hopes he’ll mate and help save his species. By Vicki Croke In order to help save his species, Harapan, the only Sumatran rhino living outside Southeast Asia, is going home—even though he’s a big-city American-raised rhino who’s never even seen “home” before. Members of the Cincinnati Zoo made it official in a ...

11/12/14 Have Myanmar's highly endangered Asian elephants been saved in a counter-intuitive way —in part, by keeping them employed in logging camps? By Vicki Croke As President Obama touches down in Myanmar today and many people talk of human rights and democratic reform, conservationists also see an urgent agenda: the future of elephants. Here is a country at the crossroads, ...

11/6/2014 If any bird can be considered an iconic New Yorker, he's it. At 24, a venerable age for a hawk, Pale Male has lived the lyrics of the famous song--he's done it his way. By Vicki Croke If any bird can be considered an iconic New Yorker, I’d say he’s it. Handsome. Successful. Tough, yet caring. Widowed several times ...

12/30/2015 In a place that welcomes hyenas after dark, an anthropologist ends up bonding with one of the fiercest predators on earth. By Vicki Croke Hyenas aren’t the most popular animals. In Western literature, they are depicted as giggling, cowardly, and dangerous. In almost all of Africa, where the formidable predators are known to bite people’s faces off, kill children, ...