While both bats and dolphins use ecolocation to hunt down prey, patterns of echolocation vary greatly among species. Depending on what they eat and where they live, species produce sounds at different frequencies – from “broadband” calls that encompass a wide range of frequencies, to constant-frequency calls emitted at one particular frequency. Researchers from the…

Give it a few thousand years, and tusks could completely disappear from the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). The beautifully smooth, elongated ivory incisors neatly bordering a long trunk are iconic in the public mind. The reigning hypothesis is that tusks evolved to help male elephants fight one another, as demonstrated when males compete over females…

Fishing communities on Agatti Island in Lakshwadeep, India, blame their reduced fish catch on green turtles; according to them, green turtles chomp their way through the seagrass beds lining the shallow reef waters that are essential for fish to breed. This leads some in the community to clandestinely kill sea turtles and destroy their nests.…