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The Amusing Case of the Gulf Breeze Zoo Canada Geese

10,000 Birds

While I harbor mixed feelings about zoos in general, this facility seems to make the best effort possible to keep animals in interesting enclosures, move them to different areas of the zoo to maintain novel surroundings, and invest money and space into a 30 acre mixed species enclosure, where the animals can move freely.

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Six Thousand Leave Virunga, One Ranger Killed

Critter News

Six thousand people (over 1,000 Congolese soldiers with their families) have left Virunga National Forest where so many of the remaining mountain gorillas live. It's great news because it takes stress off the habitat and the species. You can donate to his family here. Tags: virunga gorilla congo.

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The Bee-eaters of Africa

10,000 Birds

The wonderful family Meropidae contains 27 dazzling species, of which Africa is endowed with no less than 20 species, the balance occurring across Asia and with one as far afield as Australia. We have both resident and migratory species, and this post will briefly discuss each of the 20 species of African bee-eaters.

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The Emotional Lives of Animals

4 The Love Of Animals

Chimpanzees and elephants grieve the loss of family and friends, and gorillas hold wakes for the dead. Donna Fernandes, president of the Buffalo Zoo, witnessed a wake for a female gorilla, Babs, who had died of cancer at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo. Paul says, “He would lick my face, or cry gently, or bark even.

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Come@Me: If Birds are Dinosaurs I’m a Monkey’s Uncle

10,000 Birds

There are important details within that dictum that we will ignore here, but this has to do with knowing when a characteristic doesn’t really tell you about the relative position of species on a “tree of life” vs when the characteristic works for that purpose. Rather, cladistics is a way of looking at the process of evolution of species.

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What happened with Archaeopteryx?

10,000 Birds

This has happened before, Archaeopteryx and the bird family tree have had an often tenuous relationship. The trait must then be identifiable as to whether or not it exists in a certain species. That’s what Archaeopteryx is. Recently, the news came out that beloved Archaeopteryx is not really a bird ancestor.

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Introducing the African Birding Beat

10,000 Birds

Approximately 2,300 bird species inhabit Africa, however as impressive as that sounds, much smaller South America boasts nearly 1,000 species more. Madagascar’s mammals are equally remarkable; over 100 species of endearing lemurs and bizarre carnivores amongst them!