• Rare Opportunity to Study the Critically Endangered North Pacific right whale in the Bering Sea

    Even after so many years of doing field work, sometimes you are still left amazed. Because every now and then the stars all align, and everything works out exactly as you hoped it would. Today was one of those times, because we found that needle in the haystack.

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  • Preserving one of world's most endangered primate species

    All day long, for five straight months, Sheila Holmes slipped through the Madagascar rainforest, 16,000 kilometres away from her Calgary university classes, eyes and feet following black-and-white ruffed lemurs as they flew through the trees.

    Holmes was not your average tourist on this Indian Ocean island off the eastern coast of Africa. Instead, this University of Calgary student, who is now working on her anthropology doctorate, became a crucial part of what is the longest continuous monitoring program of one of the most endangered primate species in the world.

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  • Monkey Species Not Seen Alive for 80 Years Rediscovered in the Amazon

    Scientists have rediscovered a species of monkey in the Brazilian Amazon not seen alive since 1936, according to reporting by Mongabay.

    The species, the bald-faced Vanzolini saki, was first discovered along the Rio Eiru more than 80 years ago by Alfonzo Olalla, an Ecuadorian naturalist. But scientists had found no other living evidence of the monkey since then. Earlier this year, a team of seven primatologists, led by Laura Marsh of the Global Conservation Institute, began a three-month expedition aboard a boat through the Upper Jurua River and its tributaries to search for the missing monkey and survey other wildlife in the remote region of Brazil.

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  • Prehistoric marine worm caught prey with spines deployed from head

    A team of scientists has identified a small marine predator that once patrolled the ocean floor and grabbed its prey with 50 spines deployed from its head.

    Named Capinatator praetermissus, this ancient creature is roughly 10 centimetres long and represents a new species within the group of animals known as chaetognaths – small, swimming marine carnivores also known as arrow worms.

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  • Technology tracks bee talk to help improve honey bee health

    Simon Fraser University graduate student Oldooz Pooyanfar is monitoring what more than 20,000 honeybees housed in hives in a Cloverdale field are “saying” to each other—looking for clues about their health. 

    Pooyanfar’s technology is gleaning communication details from sound within the hives with her beehive monitoring system—technology she developed at SFU. She says improving knowledge about hone

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  • Climate change jaw dropper: Great white shark could one day prowl B.C. waters

    If ocean temperatures continue to climb, you’re going to need a bigger boat.

    Great white sharks could one day be swimming in British Columbia waters, according to William Cheung, associate professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC who studies the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

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  • Seasonal Effects: "Winter foals" are smaller than foals born in summer

    Seasonal and diurnal rhythms determine the life cycle of many animal species. In equids this is not only true for wild species such as the Przewalski but season-dependent metabolic changes also exist in domesticated horses. Horses can reduce their metabolic activity during the cold season and thus reduce heat loss. The effects of such seasonal changes on pregnancy and foetal development, however, have not been investigated so far. Researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna could now demonstrate that foals born in winter are smaller than herd mates born later in the year.

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  • Wildlife royalties – a future for conservation?

    Writing in the journal Animals, they muse on whether organisations that profit in some way from wildlife imagery and popularity, could establish a corporate responsibility to contribute a portion of this income to the conservation of the animals represented.

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  • Lizard blizzard survivors tell story of natural selection

    An unusually cold winter in the U.S. in 2014 took a toll on the green anole lizard, a tree-dwelling creature common to the southeastern United States. A new study offers a rare view of natural selection in this species, showing how the lizard survivors at the southernmost part of their range in Texas came to be more like their cold-adapted counterparts further north.

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  • Animal coloration research: On the threshold of a new era

    In the last 20 years, the field of animal coloration research has experienced explosive growth thanks to numerous technological advances, and it now stands on the threshold of a new era.

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