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News articles on Mammals

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Mongabay.com news articles on mammals in blog format. Updated regularly.

conservation is saving lemurs and helping people in Madagascar
(5/7/2007) Madagascar, an island nation that lies off the coast of southeastern Africa, has long been famous for its unique and diverse species of wildlife, especially lemurs--primates found nowhere else on the planet. In recent years, the island country has also become world-renowned for conservation efforts that are succeeding in spite of extraordinary pressures from a poor population that relies heavily on forest burning for basic subsistence. A large part of this success is due to the early efforts of Patricia Wright, a primatologist who has been working in the country for more than 20 years. Wright led the effort to launch the country's leading protected area and helped Madagascar become a leading global example of conservation despite its economic adversity.


First ever photos of leopard with cub in Cambodia
(5/5/2007) WWF has captured the first ever photos of a wild leopard with cub in Cambodia. Leopards are exothermally rare in Cambodia, which has suffered one of the highest deforestation rates in southeast Asia due to illegal logging., clearing for agriculture, fires, and unsustainable hunting.


Commercial hunting may be biggest threat to tropical rainforests
(5/1/2007) Commercial hunting is decimating wildlife populations across the tropics and may be one of the gravest threats presently facing rainforests, reports a series of studies published in the May issue of the journal Biotropica. The research reveals that large-scale loss of wildlife is already affecting forest health and regeneration.


Japan will kill 50 humpbacks
(4/26/2007) Humpback whale populations are rebounding but concerns are rising over Japan's plans to kill 50 humpback whales for "scientific" research, reports a paper published in the latest issue of Science.


Scientists capture video of rare Borneo rhino
(4/24/2007) WWF has captured video footage of the rare Borneo rhino. There are only 25-50 of the rhino left in the wild on the island. Video from a camera trap shows the animal eating, walking to the camera and sniffing the equipment. It is first time the beast's behvaior in the wild has been captured on film.


Rarest leopardess brutally killed in Russia
(4/23/2007) WWF reports that a female Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) was found brutally killed in Russia. The Far Eastern or Amur leopard is the world's rarest cat with a wild population numbering 25-34 individuals.


Rare mountain gorillas in Uganda on the increase
(4/20/2007) High endangered mountain gorillas in Uganda are increasing, reports a new census by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the Wildlife conservation Society, the Max Planck Institute of Anthropology and other groups. The population of gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park has increased from 320 in 2002 to 340 today. A 1997 study found 300 gorillas, indicating that the park population has increased by 20 percent over the past decade. Aggressive conservation measures have been the key say researchers.


Global warming, not mass suicide, threatens lemmings
(4/20/2007) Lemmings, the rodents inaccurately believed to commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs, are at real risk from climate change reports the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS). The Bronx Zoo-based group has just announced plans to study the impact of global warming on these creatures of the far North.


Less than 35 Amur leopard remain in the wild
(4/19/2007) A new census shows the world's most endangered cat, the Amur or Far Eastern leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), is on the brink of extinction with a wild population estimated at 25-34 individuals. "The recent census confirmed once again that the Amur leopard survives on very shaky ground," said Pavel Fomenko, biodiversity conservation program coordinator at the Far-Eastern branch of WWF in Russia.


Photos of rescued seal pup at the Central Park Zoo
(4/13/2007) A seal pup rescued in Maine last year is now settling in at its new home in the Central Park Zoo. The pup, named Seven, was rescued last September by Marine Animal Lifeline, a group based in Maine that rehabilitates stranded animals and aims to release them back into the wild. They determined that Seven wouldn't be able to survive in the wild due to an impairment in her hind flipper, according to the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS), which runs Central Park Zoo.


Photos of world's largest, rarest Easter bunny found in Sumatra
(4/4/2007) Scientists from the Wildlife conservation Society working in the rainforests of Sumatra have captured the world's largest rabbit on film using remote camera traps.


Congo forest elephants declining from logging roads, illegal ivory
(4/2/2007) Fast-expanding logging roads in the Congo basin are becoming 'highways of death' for the fierce but elusive forest elephant, according to a new study published in the journal Public Library of Science. Logging roads both provide access to remote forest areas for ivory poachers and serve as conduits of advancing human settlement.


Photos of baby colobus monkey born at Central Park Zoo
(4/2/2007) A baby colobus monkey born at the Central Park Zoo in New York is doing well according to the Wildlife conservation Society. The infant, presently all white in color, will develop its characteristic black and white coat within the next three months. Colobus monkeys are native to the forests of Central Africa, ranging from Nigeria to Ethiopia and down into Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.


The news of extinction: western media's response to the demise of the Baiji
(4/1/2007) The news came and went with an alacrity that I found alarming, almost jolting. I waited for weeks, faithfully; I could not believe that the initial announcement would be followed by nothing but silence on the issue, no rationalizations, no opinions, no discussions, no outpourings of grief. Just silence.


Fruit bats crave sugar to overcome 'hangover'
(4/1/2007) Many of us will be familiar with cravings for sweet food, after having overindulged in alcohol the night before. It appears that Egyptian fruit bats also crave particular types of sugar to reduce the effects of ethanol toxicity.


Dinosaur extinction didn't produce current mammal evolution
(3/28/2007) A new Nature study argues that the demise of dinosaurs did not fuel the rise of mammals. Devising a new tree of life for 4,500 species of mammals using molecular evolutionary trees, an international team of researchers challenges the prevailing hypothesis that a mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago played a major role in the diversification of mammals.


Logging reduces abundance of rare mammals in Borneo
(3/27/2007) Selective logging profoundly reduces the abundance of rare forest species according to surveys of logged and unlogged rainforests on the island of Borneo, one of the most biodiverse parts of southeast Asia. The results, published in a trio of papers, have implications for biodiversity and forest conservation efforts in one of the world's most threatened ecosystems.


Monkeys have culture too
(3/24/2007) A study carried out in the Caatinga forest of Serra da Capivara National Park in the Piaui state of northeast Brazil provides new evidence for the existence of culture in monkeys. The research, published by Dr Antonio Moura, a Brazilian researcher from the Department of Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, suggests that monkeys can learn skills from each other, in the same manner as humans. Moura found signs that Capuchin monkeys in Brazil teach each other to bang stones as a signaling device to scare off potential predators.


Urban leopard attacks increase as habitat shrinks
(3/23/2007) A protected jungle billed as the world's largest urban national park in India's financial capital is being encroached, built over and damaged as a rapidly growing city takes a toll on the forest's diverse flora and fauna.


Evolution is faster in temperate zones
(3/15/2007) A new study argues that temperate zones are hotbeds of evolution, not tropical areas as conventionally held.


New cat species discovered in Borneo
(3/14/2007) Scientists have declared that the clouded leopard found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is an entirely new species of cat, genetically distinct from the clouded leopard that lives in mainland southeast Asia. The scientists say that the two species of clouded leopard appear to have diverged about 1.4 million years ago. They also note that the results of the genetic study are supported by separate research on geographical variation in the coat color of the clouded leopard.


Birds follow racoon-like coati to find food
(3/8/2007) A number of rainforest bird species are known to follow columns of army ants eating insects and other animals as they try to escape the marauding ants. Now the behvaior has been documented in birds that follow the coatimundi, a racoon-like mammal, as it forages in the rainforest.


Human hunting causes changes in monkey behvaior
(3/8/2007) Human hunting pressure causes significant behvaioral changes in Central Africa monkeys and duiker according to a paper published in the March issue of the journal Biotropica.


Cheetah in Iran?
(3/1/2007) Biologists from the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS) have fitted critically endangered cheetahs in Iran with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars. This marks the first time this population of Asiatic cheetah can be tracked remotely.


Photos: Orangutans and tigers become playmates
(2/28/2007) A pair of month-old Sumatran tiger twins have befriended a pair of young orangutans reports the Associated Press (AP). The animals share a room in the nursery at Taman Safari zoo in Sumatra. The AP reports that the animals, which were orphaned, 'cuddle' and play together.


Pakistani snow leopard settles in at Bronx Zoo
(2/26/2007) An orphaned snow leopard cub from northern Pakistan in enjoying its first winter at the Bronx Zoo in New York, according to the Wildlife conservation Society (WCS). The cub, named Leo, was moved to an open-air exhibit at the zoo last fall.


Elephant poaching for ivory accelerates
(2/26/2007) Thousands of African elephants are being killed for their ivory tusks, according to a new study led by a biologist from the University of Washington. In a paper published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Samuel Wasser, director of the University of Washington Center for conservation Biology, shows that elephants are being slaughtered at the highest rate since the international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989.


New monkey species in Uganda
(2/18/2007) Uganda may soon have a new species of monkey according to a report published in Kampala's New Vision newspaper. Dr. Colin Groves of the Australian National University told New Vision that the local population of the gray-cheeked mangabey (Lophocebus albigena) will soon be designated as a unique species, the Ugandan gray-cheeked mangabey (Lophocebus ugandae).


15 'new' bird species revealed in North America
(2/18/2007) DNA testing has revealed 15 'new' species of birds in North America and six 'new' species of bats from the South American country of Guyana, according to a paper appearing in the British journal Molecular Ecology Notes.


Europeans may have caused extinction of large mammals in Caribbean
(1/25/2007) New evidence suggests that the arrival of Europeans in the New World corresponds with the extinction of mammal species on the Caribbean islands.


Giant carnivorous marsupial beasts not killed by climate change in Australia
(1/25/2007) Humans, not climate change, caused the extinction of megafauna in Australia contends a team of Australian researchers writing in the January issue of the journal Science. Australia lost 90 percent of its largest animals, including a saber-toothed kangaroo, a marsupial lion and giant goannas, within 20,000 years of man's arrival some 50,000 years ago. Scientists have long debated whether the demise of Australian megafauna was due to human arrival, climate change, or a combination of the two factors. The new research found that the climate in southeastern Australia was little different 500,000 years ago, suggesting that climate change was not the ultimate cause of extinction.


Squirrels predict years of bounty
(12/22/2006) Squirrels are able to plan for the boom and bust seed production cycle of trees by producing an extra litter of babies in anticipation of a particularly rich season of tree seeds, according to new research published by scientists at the University of Alberta.


Moles and shrews can smell underwater
(12/20/2006) Mammals can smell underwater according to a study published in the December 21 issue of the journal Nature. Kenneth Catania, an assistant professor of biology at Vanderbilt University, found that moles and shrews are capable of detecting prey underwater using their sense of smell.


Goodbye to the Baiji
(12/13/2006) After a short illness spurred by pollution, overfishing, boat traffic, and obstructions like dams, the Baiji was declared 'functionally extinct' last night. As a species, the river dolphin found only in China's Yangtze River was 20 million years. The Baiji is survived by other river dolphins, all themselves threatened, in the Ganges, Indus, Amazon, Orinoco, and La Plata rivers. No memorial service will be held.


Chinese river dolphin nearly extinct says official
(12/3/2006) Xinhua, China's state news agency, reported that a 26-day search for the Baiji, or the Yangtze dolphin, found no dolphins. The Baiji is highly threatened by pollution, overfishing, and obstructions like dams.


'Bushmeat' link to SARS outbreak confirmed
(11/23/2006) Chinese scientists say they have found a genetic link between SARS in civet cats, a racoon-like animal eaten as a delicacy in China, and humans.


World's rarest cat captured in remote Russia
(11/14/2006) Wildlife conservation Society (WCS) captured a Far Eastern leopard in Southwest Primorski Krai in the southern Russian Far East, less than 20 miles from the Chinese border. With a wild population of 30, the Far Eastern leopard is the world's most endangered big cat.


Population of bizarre Mongolian antelope plunges 95% in 15 years
(10/19/2006) A group of scientists led by the New York-based Wildlife conservation Society (WCS) working in Mongolia's windswept Gobi Desert recently fitted high-tech GPS (Global Positioning System) collars on eight saiga antelope in an effort to help protect one of Asia's most bizarre-looking -- and endangered -- large mammals.


In search of rare, high elevation monkeys in China
(10/18/2006) High in the cloud-shrouded Yunling mountains of northwestern Yunnan and southeastern Tibet (southwestern China) lives one of the world's most elusive monkeys, the Yunnan golden or snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti). Despite dwelling the most extreme environment of any monkey species -- high-altitude evergreen forests at elevations from 3000 - 4500 m (9800 - 14,800 feet) where temperatures may fall below freezing for several months in a row -- today there are less than 2000 of Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys remaining. Hunting and habitat loss has brought the species, which is limited to a single mountain range and fragmented into 15 small sub-populations at risk to genetic bottlenecks and inbreeding depression, to the brink of extinction.


Tiger fur trade thrives in China
(9/28/2006) The illegal tiger and leopard fur trade continues to thrive in China according to recent investigations by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). The organizations say that the trade is "operating without any hindrance from the Chinese government" and endangers surviving wild tiger populations in India


Viruses can jump primate-human species barrier, researchers warn
(8/23/2006) Viruses that jump the species barrier between monkeys and humans can harm both people and animals, and we should take steps to reduce the risk of virus transmission. That's the message running through the September issue of the American Journal of Primatology, a special issue on disease risk analysis edited by a primate expert at the University of Washington.


Orangutan population plunges 43% in Indonesia
(8/14/2006) The Wildlife conservation Society-Indonesia Program said that Indonesia's population of orangutans fell nearly 43 percent in the past decade, from 35,000 in 1997 to 20,000 today. The decline has been caused by ongoing forest destruction and poaching in Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sumatra, the only two islands that still support wild orangutans. Environmental groups have warned that red ape could be extinct in the wild without urgent conservation measures.


Orangutans and chimps are smarter than monkeys and lemurs
(8/1/2006) The great apes are the smartest of all nonhuman primates according to scientists at Duke University Medical Center. The researchers found that orangutans and chimpanzees consistently outperformed monkeys and lemurs on a variety of intelligence tests, conclusively proving that apes are more intelligent than monkeys and prosimians.


Primate evolution linked to global warming says new study
(7/31/2006) New research suggests the ancient climate change fueled early primate evolution.


Rare indri lemur born in forest reserve in Madagascar
(7/13/2006) A rare lemur known for its haunting whale-like call has given birth in a reserve outside its native forest. The news is significant because the Indri, as the world's largest living lemur is known, has traditionally done poorly when kept in captivity or introduced to outside its montane forest in Madagascar. The birth occurred at Palmarium, a small private reserve of lowland tropical forest established by a tour operator in Madagascar, and provides further hope for the successful conservation of the endangered species.


Saving Orangutans in Borneo
(5/24/2006) A look at conservation efforts in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. I'm in Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. At 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) Tanjung Puting is the largest protected expanse of coastal tropical heath and peat swamp forest in southeast Asia. It's also one of the biggest remaining habitats for the critically endangered orangutan, the population of which has been great diminished in recent years due to habitat destruction and poaching. And orangutans have become the focus of a much wider effort to save Borneo's natural environment. We are headed to Campy Leakey, named for the renowned Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey. Here lies the center of the Orangutan Research conservation Project. Established by Birute Mary Galdikas, a preeminent primatologist and founder of the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), the project seeks to support the conservation and understanding of the orangutan and its rain forest habitat while rehabilitating ex-captive individuals. The Orangutan Research conservation Project is the public face of orangutan conservation in this part of Kalimantan, the Indonesia-controlled part of Borneo. Borneo, the third largest island in the world, was once home to some of the world's most majestic, and forbidding forests. With swampy coastal areas fringed by mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was virtually impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the island until a century ago.


Bats Hunt Using Guided Missile Strategy
(5/4/2006) When it comes to rocket science, it looks like bats had it worked out before the scientists did. A new University of Maryland study finds that echolocating bats use a strategy to track and catch erratically moving insects that is much like the system used by some guided missiles to intercept evasive targets and different from the way humans and some animals track moving objects.


Shahtoosh becomes illegal as Tibetan antelope is protected
(3/30/2006) The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife conservation Society today applauded a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Tibetan antelope, also known as chiru, as an endangered species. Through a series of expeditions to China's windswept Chang Tang Reserve over the past two decades, WCS had played a key role in sounding the alarm about the dramatic decline of this elegant animal due to poaching.


13 rare rhinos found in Borneo survey by WWF
(3/17/2006) World Wildlife Fund today released the results of a field survey from the island of Borneo which found that poaching has significantly reduced Borneo's population of Sumatran rhinos, but a small group continues to survive in the "Heart of Borneo," a region covered with vast tracts of rain forest.


Lemur land, Madagascar now protected
(1/8/2006) With the official establishment of the Makira Protected Area last week, the government of Madagascar has brought the total area of land and marine zones under protection to one million hectares.



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