Latest Animals News
Cowabunga! New England town celebrates being the birthplace of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
DOVER, N.H. (AP) — As the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grew to become a pop culture sensation, the place where they were conceived rarely got mentioned. It wasn't the New York City sewers, where the Turtles mutated from regular reptiles into a crime-fighting quartet who battled...
Just how rare is a rare-colored lobster? Scientists say answer could be under the shell
BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — Orange, blue, calico, two-toned and ... cotton-candy colored? Those are all the hues of lobsters that have showed up in fishers' traps, supermarket seafood tanks and scientists' laboratories over the last year. The funky-colored crustaceans inspire headlines...
Missouri patient tests positive for bird flu despite no known exposure to animals
A hospitalized patient in Missouri was infected with bird flu despite having had no known contact with dairy cows or other animals associated with an ongoing outbreak, health officials said Friday. This is the 14th person in the U.S. sickened with bird flu since March, when the...
Judge in Brazil orders slaughterhouses to pay for Amazon reforestation
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A judge in the Brazilian state of Rondonia has found two beef slaughterhouses guilty of buying cattle from a protected area of former rainforest in the Amazon and ordered them, along with three cattle ranchers, to pay a total of $764,000 for causing environmental damage,...
A 13-foot (and growing) python was seized from a New York home and sent to a zoo
NEW HARTFORD, N.Y. (AP) — A 13-foot (4-meter) Burmese python was confiscated from an upstate New York man who was keeping the still-growing snake in a small tank, authorities said. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said it got a complaint about an illegally owned...
Once-endangered Apache trout species has been restored, US interior secretary says
MESA, Ariz. (AP) — U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced Wednesday that the Apache trout — Arizona's state fish — has been removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened species following more than five decades of recovery efforts. Haaland traveled to...
Wildlife trafficking ring killed at least 118 eagles, prosecutors say
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A man helped kill at least 118 eagles to sell their feathers and body parts on the black market as part of a long-running wildlife trafficking ring in the western U.S. that authorities allege killed thousands of birds, court filings show. Travis John Branson...
Drought forces Kenya's Maasai and other cattle herders to consider fish and camels
KAJIADO, Kenya (AP) — The blood, milk and meat of cattle have long been staple foods for Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, perhaps the country's most recognizable community. But climate change is forcing the Maasai to contemplate a very different dish: fish. A recent yearslong drought...
Mountain lion attacks 5-year-old at Southern California park and is euthanized
MALIBU, Calif. (AP) — A mountain lion attacked a 5-year-old boy at a popular Southern California park over the holiday weekend and state rangers later euthanized the big cat, officials said Tuesday. The child was attacked Sunday afternoon while playing near his family's picnic...
Denmark reports cases of bluetongue disease that can be fatal to sheep but is harmless to humans
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark reported Tuesday cases of bluetongue in the country's east, a non-contagious, insect-borne viral disease that is harmless to humans but can be fatal for so-called ruminant animals — mainly sheep but also cows and goats. Authorities said the...
