Apex predators

Carole Baskin at an event in 2021.Photo: Tasos Katopodis (Getty Images)Remember March 2020, when we were all stuck inside watching a kooky gay big cat owner do battle with another kooky tiger-print-wearing big cat sanctuary owner? One of those catty characters just scored a big win in Washington.On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 263, known as the “Big Cat Public Safety Act,” which puts a slew of new amendments on an older law that regulates wildlife trafficking. The legislation bans private citizens…

In this collection from the 2022 Nature inFocus Photography Awards, you’ll see animals in their natural habitats—like a tiger lounging on a bed of flowers—and ones in decidedly unnatural environments, like a caterpillar in its nest of plastic or a fox in a snow-covered city. The contest received tens of thousands of…Read more... In this collection from the 2022 Nature inFocus Photography Awards, you’ll see animals in their natural habitats—like a tiger lounging on a bed of flowers—and ones in decidedly unnatural…

A polar bear swims to catch a beluga whale along the coast of Hudson Bay near Churchill on August 9, 2022.Photo: OLIVIER MORIN/AFP (Getty Images)Polar bear conservation nonprofit Polar Bears International is currently tracking and filming polar bears near Churchill, Canada. The Arctic bears have gathered there to wait for sea ice to form at Hudson Bay, which will make it possible for them to hunt their favorite meal: seals. There’s a livestream of these beautiful bears waiting for the ice, which you can check in on…

Towner with a great white shark carcass.Photo: Hennie Otto / Dyer Island Conservation TrustTwo orcas named Port and Starboard seem to have developed a taste for great white sharks. Since 2017, eight great white sharks have washed ashore in South Africa, with signs of having been attacked by orcas. Seven of the sharks—typically apex predators—were missing their livers, and some didn’t have their hearts anymore.The sharks’ wounds, as well as recorded sightings of the two orcas, indicated to a team of researchers that Port…

A polar bear in Hudson Bay in 2007.Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP (Getty Images)Researchers have extracted DNA from a 115,000-year-old polar bear jawbone and used it to analyze the genetic relationship between these Arctic predators and their brown bear cousins (grizzlies included). They found that polar bears intermixed with brown bears quite a bit over the millennia.Polar bear fossils are rare, and many of those that are found are relatively young. But scientists got lucky just over a decade ago, when a…