Animals

Donated Dog Blood Helps Give Cat Another Life

12:03pm August 21, 2013

In New Zealand last week, Rory the cat was brought to the vet after eating rat poison. He needed a blood transfusion fast. There was no time to get a donor match, so the vet took a risk and used blood from a dog donor instead. The inter-species gamble paid off.

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Obamas Welcome New Puppy To The White House

6:38am August 20, 2013

The Obamas have been joined at the White House by a new puppy, Sunny, who will now be a little sister to their current dog Bo. Like Bo, Sunny is a Portuguese Water Dog.

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The olinguito (right) was discovered while a researcher was sifting through specimens at The Field Museum in Chicago. On the left is a North American raccoon.

Science

Meet The Olinguito, The Newest Member Of The Raccoon Family

5:44pm August 19, 2013

by Rhitu Chatterjee

This cousin of the raccoon is the first new carnivore discovered in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Native to the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Ecuador where it's still living, the olinguito was actually first identified in a Field Museum specimen storage room in Chicago.

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Katrina Boydon and her mustang Spirit. She adopted the horse as an orphaned foal with a rattlesnake bite on his hoof.

National

Wild Horses Run Free As Adoption Centers Fill Up

6:52am August 19, 2013

by Will Stone

Across the West, the Bureau of Land Management grapples with dwindling holding space for wild horses it has rounded up. But advocates say the bureau's housing of mustangs is not only ineffective but unsustainable. The cost of keeping the horses has tripled since 2000.

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Chinese Zoo Substitutes Dog For Lion

7:18am August 16, 2013

A mother taking her son around a zoo in China thought her boy was mistaken when he pointed out the barking lion. But he was right. The zoo had taken their African lion away for breeding, and moved in an employee's large and hairy mastiff dog.

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Bison have been roaming the Santa Catalina Island since the 1920s. At one time they numbered more than 600.

National

Of Bison, Birth Control And An Island Off Southern Calif.

7:59am August 15, 2013

by Kirk Siegler

A wild herd of bison has been roaming the rugged Santa Catalina Island since the 1920s, when the animals were brought there by a film crew shooting a movie that was never made. With no natural predators, the bison population quickly exploded.

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Colorful covers of menus from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (left) and the Monarch Room Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

Old Hawaiian Menus Tell Story Of Local Fish And Their Demise

3:53pm August 13, 2013

by Christopher Joyce

An ecologist wondered if Hawaiian menus might help explain what happened to Hawaii's sea turtle population. But the menus revealed another marine tragedy: that local fish numbers had dropped to about a tenth of what they once were.

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Could the images common in accounts of near-death experiences be explained by a rush of electrical activity in the brain?

Brains Of Dying Rats Yield Clues About Near-Death Experiences

7:57am August 13, 2013

by Rob Stein

Researchers discovered what appears to be a momentary increase in electrical activity in the brain associated with consciousness. As the brain struggles to survive, it also struggles to make sense of many neurons firing in the survival attempt.

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Thai Elephant Orchestra co-founder David Sulzer (bottom center, in red) poses with the animals and their mahouts, or keepers.

The Biggest Thing Out Of Thailand: An Elephant Orchestra

3:01pm August 08, 2013

by NPR Staff

Based out of a conservation center for former work animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra is just what it sounds like: a group of elephants trained to play enormous percussion instruments, holding mallets in their trunks and sometimes trumpeting along.

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The Emmen Zoo's baboons last week, when they were looking so sad.

Why Were The Baboons So Sad? Many Theories, No Answers

6:06am August 08, 2013

by Mark Memmott

At a zoo in the Netherlands, 112 baboons suddenly started acting oddly. They turned their backs to visitors. They moped around. They didn't want to eat. It was a week before they got back to normal. Were they upset by a storm or an earthquake that people didn't feel? Maybe aliens? It's a mystery.

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