Strange Love: 10 Animals with Truly Weird Courtship Rituals

On Valentine's Day, lovers who are eager to woo their partners show their affection with traditional gifts of red roses, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, or with romantic dinners at fancy restaurants. There's usually some effort involved, but pulling off a memorable Valentine's Day is easier — and generally safer — than some of the courtship rituals performed by other animal species.

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Goats Form Intense Connections with Humans, Too

Goats have surprisingly just been added to the very short list of animals that are known to communicate in very direct and complex ways with humans.  The other two animals, dogs and horses, are often raised as companions to humans, so the goat findings -- reported in the journal Royal Society Biology Letters -- mark the first time that an animal raised primarily for food has evolved such an intense and meaningful connection with our species.

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Sharks vs. Dolphins: Face Off

“Reel them in,” marine ecologist Dr. Mike Heithaus says with a laugh. No, Shark Week titles don’t get much grabbier than his, Sharks vs. Dolphins: Face Off, which premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on Discovery. As it suggests, the two species are at odds more than we suspect, and the hour looks at not only likely attack scenarios — see one in the sneak peek above — but also the strengths and weaknesses of each.

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What Are the Smartest Animals on the Planet?

Humans aside, chimpanzees would have to be at the the top of any consideration about relative intelligence of animals. They are most like us, sharing 99% of the same DNA, as we have have descended from the same ancestor species that lived 6-7 million years ago. 

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Animals Have to Live Fast to Survive Next Extinction

How do you survive when the world is crumbling around you, and basically all of your neighboring species are going extinct? You can either use tools to adapt to your new environment, or you can start having lots of kids in the hopes that maybe they can make something of themselves in this strangely spacious new world.

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NY Academy of Art Has Animals as Models for Class

At the New York Academy of Art in TriBeCa, it wouldn’t be insulting to say that the live models are a bunch of animals.  That’s because for one of the MFA program’s drawing classes, they are.  Wade Schuman, the director of the graduate school’s painting academy, came up with the idea about four years ago. Ever since, he’s brought in all manner of species to the classroom.

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Big Brained Animals Are Sicker

Bigger brained animals may be more vulnerable to a barrage of illnesses than species whose evolution has selected for immunity over braininess.“Organisms have to deal with the limited energy they have available -- they cannot have it all,” Alexander Kotrschal of Stockholm University’s Department of Biology told Discovery News. Kotrschal and colleagues Niclas Kolm and Dustin Penn conducted the research, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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Students Learn Hands-on With Animals

Talking birds, goats butting heads, and a giant tortoise that hangs out with chickens are all part of a living classroom.  High-school students at the Career Center in Arlington, Virginia are learning firsthand, and hands-on, how to care for animals. They are at the animal science laboratory, learning about, and taking care of, about 50 species of animals.

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What Does It Mean When Animals Suffer a Vast Die-Off?

Are die-offs occurring more often?  To the casual reader, it can certainly seem that reports emerge on a regular basis of thousands of animals of a species suddenly dying.  The latest victims are common murres in the Northeast Pacific. They have been dying for months, but estimates of the toll jumped sharply when David Irons, a retired United States Fish and Wildlife Service biologist walking a beach in Whittier, Alaska, found close to 8,000 dead birds in early January.

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Unusual Ocean Animals Spotted Across California

Warmer waters across the California coast have brought unprecedented sightings of marine animals along the shore and in the water. Larger fish and bigger schools of fish are staying around later in the year, and in some cases, species that have never before been documented in California have found their way to California shores. 

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When Animals Shrink to Miniature Form

A tiny dwarf chameleon just 29mm long (1.1 inches) and a record-breaking miniscule frog measuring in at 7.7mm (0.3 inches) are among the headline-grabbing species of diminutive proportions that have only been discovered in the past few years.

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These 18 Animals Could Become Extinct In Your Lifetime

According to the Guardian, species around the world are disappearing at almost 1,000 times the natural rate — which means we’re losing around 150-200 species every day. Close to 15% of all mammal species and 11% of all bird species are currently listed as threatened with extinction.  And while the human population shows no signs of slowing down, we continue to appropriate more land to develop cities, acquire natural resources, and build farms, not realizing or caring that we’re destroying other creatures’ natural habitats (not to mention man-made disasters like oil spills, climate change, acid rain, and over-hunting and fishing).  These animals are just a fraction of the thousands in danger of extinction…

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Cutest Animal Parenting Moments Ever

Humans aren’t the only species that can be incredibly affectionate towards their children. As these adorable pictures show, the intimate child-parent relationship can be witnessed across the animal kingdom.

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Endangered Species Then and Now

The Endangered Species Act is more than 40 years old, which begs the question: Where are they now? “They” being the thousands of threatened plant and animal species that are protected under the landmark legislation.  Maintaining biodiversity is no easy feat, but many species have rebounded since the act’s inception in 1973. So far, 59 species have been delisted, 20 of which are considered true success stories. But others haven’t been so lucky. An animal can be taken off the list if it is no longer threatened or if it goes extinct. Today, more than 1,400 plants and animals remain endangered or threatened.

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Extinct Animals Could Come Back

Until recently, the arrow of natural selection seemed to go only one way. A species could form, then it could flourish, then it could go extinct. And once it was extinct, it could not come back.  Now, though, some scientists say they see a new path.

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Which Shark Species Has the Strongest Bite?

You might be surprised to learn that the shark with the strongest bite is not the great white, the tiger shark or even the great hammerhead. Rather, it's the more modestly-sized bull shark, according to BBC Nature.

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Salamander Species Deemed World's Oldest, Beiyanerpeton Jianpingensis, Lived 157 Million Years Ago

A newly discovered 157-million-year-old salamander is the oldest of its kind and would've swum with the aquatic beasts of the Jurassic. The discovery supports the idea that this order diverged from other salamanders earlier than thought, the researchers said. Six specimens of this new species, now called Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis, were discovered in the Tiaojishan Formation, in Liaoning Province, China. 

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12 New Frog Species Discovered

Years of combing tropical mountain forests, shining flashlights under rocks and listening for croaks in the night have paid off for a team of Indian scientists which has discovered 12 new frog species plus three others thought to have been extinct.

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More than 1,000 Species Discovered in New Guinea

A new type of tree kangaroo, a 2.5-metre-long river shark, a frog with vampire-like fangs and a turquoise lizard are among hundreds of new creatures found and being documented in a report by conservationists working in the Pacific island of New Guinea.

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