Some Male, Mom Baboons 'Just Friends'

Apes starting climbing seconds before ground started shaking

(NEWSER) - In a mysterious phenomenon that has been observed since ancient times, animals at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, appear to have sensed Tuesday's earthquake before humans did. Seconds before the ground began to shake, gorillas and orangutans dropped their food, grabbed their young, and climbed as high as they could. The zoo's 64 flamingos huddled together, and an elephant made an unusual low-pitched noise just before the earthquake was felt, zookeepers tell the Washington Post . More»

Video, anecdotes support notion of interspecies bond

(NEWSER) - Do dogs and whales share a mysterious special bond? Yes, according to Discovery News writer Jennifer Viegas. For proof, she offers the YouTube clip above and some anecdotal evidence from Carrie Newell, who runs Whale Research EcoExcursions. Newell often brings her dog on her whale watching expeditions, and she reports that the quadruped frequently appears to interact with the whales. More»

Reindeer travel 3K miles a year—not including flights

(NEWSER) - Climate change is blamed for a drop of nearly 60% in reindeer numbers in recent decades and scientists warn that Arctic ecosystems are likely to suffer as a result. LiveScience lists other surprising—and less depressing—facts about St. Nick's beasts of burden.

• They're actually caribou. Caribou and reindeer are the same species. The term "reindeer" generally refers to domesticated caribou in Scandinavia and Siberia that are herded and used to pull sleds.

Robot would look after primate during 520-day round trip

(NEWSER) - The first Earthling to reach Mars may be a Russian monkey, according to scientists at an ex-Soviet facility. The director of an institute that supplied monkeys to the Soviet space program in the '80s says the facility is in talks with Russia's Cosmonautics Academy over supplying animals for a simulated Mars mission. A real mission could follow with a robot on board to look after the monkey, he says. More»

Heavy metal had calming effect on monkeys who ignored classic rock and jazz

(NEWSER) - Monkeys subjected to a range of human music ignored Bach, Nine Inch Nails, and jazz, but found Metallica soothing, the Daily Telegraph reports. The experiment on a group of cottontop tamarins, carried out by a psychologist and a cellist, found that while the monkeys showed no response to human music, Metallica's “Of Wolf and Man” excepted, they had strong emotional reactions to compositions based on the calls of their own species. More»