The Blog · 12 stories
Stories and science from the animal world
Deep dives, surprising behavior and the science behind how animals live.
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Best Pet Fish For Beginners (And Three To Avoid)
The honest answer is that the fish matters less than the tank. But given a cycled 20-gallon setup, these seven are hardy,…
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Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore: What Diet Does To An Animal’s Body
No vertebrate can digest cellulose, not cows, not horses, not us. Every plant eater rents gut space to bacteria instead. That one…
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Why Remote Places Breed Rare Animals, And Then Lose Them
Rare animals cluster in a few predictable kinds of place: islands, isolated mountains, deep caves and ancient lakes. The isolation that creates…
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10 Rare Animals, And Why Each One Is Rare
Ten animals, each rare for a different reason: about ten vaquitas left, a lizard nobody sees because it eats ten meals a…
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Beginner’s Guide To Keeping Pet Fish (Start Here Before You Buy Any)
Most beginner fish die in the first month from something the shop never mentioned: a new tank has no bacteria to process…
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Does The Groundhog Actually Predict Anything?
Punxsutawney Phil’s handlers say he has never been wrong. Analyses put his accuracy at 35 to 40 percent, which is worse than…
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Why Florida’s Manatees Starved, And What Conservation Got Wrong
More than 1,100 manatees died in Florida between 2020 and 2022, and they starved. Nutrient pollution fed algal blooms, the blooms blocked…
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An A To Z Of Endangered Animals, And What Is Actually Killing Them
An A to Z of endangered animals, each with the specific thing threatening it. What comes out is a list where famous…
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How To Use This Site: Browsing, Classification And Scientific Names
139 animal profiles, filed six different ways. Here is how to find what you need, what the classification terms on each page…
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WWF Explained: The Panda, The Work, And The Criticism
The panda on the WWF logo was a real animal: Chi Chi, at London Zoo in 1961, chosen partly because she printed…
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What “Endangered” Actually Means: Reading The Red List
Endangered is not a mood, it is a category with criteria. Here is what the nine IUCN levels actually mean, why an…
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How India Doubled Its Tigers: What Conservation Actually Looks Like
In 2006 India counted its tigers properly for the first time and found 1,411, not the 3,600 it had been claiming. What…