Officials say raccoon that broke into Virginia liquor store on 29 November had previously hit DMV and karate studio

The raccoon that barged into a Virginia liquor store, smashed bottles of booze and passed out drunk in a bathroom this past Black Friday has at least two other break-ins under his belt, a local government official has revealed.

Before burgling the Ashland ABC store on 29 November, the raccoon had separately broken into a karate studio and a department of motor vehicles office, all on the same block of businesses, Hanover county animal protection officer Samantha Martin said on an episode of the local government’s official podcast published Thursday.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Samantha Martin//Hanover County Protection via AP

© Photograph: Samantha Martin//Hanover County Protection via AP

© Photograph: Samantha Martin//Hanover County Protection via AP

Neath, south Wales: This quarry built the abbey and the nearby terraced towns – and it’s different every time I visit

The way to Neath Abbey Quarry is a perfect stranger to me this morning. It’s been three years since my last visit, and the maze of the path has shifted; old tree trunks have turned to mulch and the brook carves a different channel. My companion and I shoulder big bouldering pads, poorly proportioned for tight manoeuvres, yet we bump, turn and pivot our way through. Thanks to the late sunrise, we’re gifted a lingering coda of the dawn chorus, coming from a holly thicket heavy with berries. A goldcrest fizzes around ahead of us, seeking bugs startled by our approach.

Like every old quarry, this place has been host to much change. Once it was just a plain old hill, then a source of building blocks for monks and their abbey. Much later, it was extracted again for the terraced towns of the south Wales coalfield. Once that need had faded, climbers found the place, hacking paths through the tangle and stringing ropes up its face.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Eben Muse

© Photograph: Eben Muse

© Photograph: Eben Muse

Conservationists fear up to 11% of Tapanuli orangutan population perished in disaster that also killed 1,000 people

The skull of a Tapanuli orangutan, caked in debris, stares out from a tomb of mud in North Sumatra, killed in catastrophic flooding that swept through Indonesia.

The late November floods have been an “extinction-level disturbance” for the world’s rarest great ape, scientists have said, causing catastrophic damage to its habitat and survival prospects.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Zoos Victoria/SWNS

© Photograph: Zoos Victoria/SWNS

© Photograph: Zoos Victoria/SWNS

Scientists say bears in southern Greenland differ genetically to those in the north, suggesting they could adjust

Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species.

Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to have disappeared by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Alamy

© Photograph: Alamy

© Photograph: Alamy

In response to an article about a beaver spotted in Norfolk, Richard Foster reports sightings in Berkshire

In your article (‘No one knows where it came from’: first wild beaver spotted in Norfolk in 500 years, 7 December), you quote the Beaver Trust as saying that, as well as Norfolk, wild beavers have been spotted in Kent, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Herefordshire.

I can tell you that we also have beavers in Berkshire. I live by the River Kennet and I caught one on my garden trail camera in August, along with otters in the same 30-second clip. The identification of the beaver is unmistakable, and was confirmed by the Berks, Bucks and Oxon wildlife trust. Two weeks ago, my neighbour caught a beaver on her garden trail camera. Her garden is 50 yards downstream of ours.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

© Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

© Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Wildlife smuggling is serious organised crime that ‘fuels corruption and drives species to extinction’, Home Office says

More than 250 endangered species and illegal wildlife products were seized at the UK border in a single month, new figures have revealed, including spiders, snakes and birds.

The illicit cargo was uncovered as part of an annual crackdown on wildlife smuggling known as Operation Thunder, which is led by Interpol and the World Customs Organisation.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: DEFRA

© Photograph: DEFRA

© Photograph: DEFRA

A fin whale washed ashore in Anchorage and was left there for months. Then a self-described ‘wacko’ museum director made a plan

When a whale dies, its body descends to the bottom of the deep sea in a transformative phenomenon called a whale fall. A whale’s death jump-starts an explosion of life, enough to feed and sustain a deep-ocean ecosystem for decades.

There are a lot of ways whales can die. Migrating whales lose their way and, unable to find their way back from unfamiliar waters, are stranded. They can starve when prey disappears or fall to predators such as orcas. They become bycatch, tangled in fishing lines and nets. Mass whale deaths have been linked to marine heatwaves and the toxic algae blooms that follow.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images

© Photograph: Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images

© Photograph: Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images

Keeping reindeer in pens for public enjoyment can cause them physical and mental harm, charities warn

With their fluffy coats, big brown eyes and reputation as Santa’s helpers, reindeer are a common and popular attraction at Christmas markets around the UK.

But being stuck in a pen and approached by hordes of adoring fans is harming the mental and physical health of Rudolph and his brethren, animal charities have warned.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Simon Maycock/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

© Photograph: Simon Maycock/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

© Photograph: Simon Maycock/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Live News.

‘I was told not to go to St Charles as it was too dangerous. I went and was struck by how free the kids are. They’re not afraid of the region’s rattlesnakes’

I visited the Appalachian mountains for the first time in my mid-20s, after deciding I needed to get away from my inner circle in Sweden to find my way into photography. I felt I had to be by myself, just responding to things happening around me and not thinking about my daily life.

America played a big part in my family history, and the Appalachians called to me in particular because at that time, around 2006, I’d been listening to a lot of bluegrass music. I wanted to get closer to people who lived in the place where it originated – music has always been a big inspiration for me. While driving in the mountains with no particular destination in mind, I met a social worker who told me: “Whatever you do, don’t go to St Charles.” She said something about it being too dangerous, which made me curious.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Hannah Modigh

© Photograph: Hannah Modigh

© Photograph: Hannah Modigh

Human beings in 7th place out of 35 species on monogamy scale, according to a study by Cambridge University

Humans are playing in the premier league of monogamous mammals, according to a new ranking of animals by their reproductive habits, but we may need a new manager to beat the beavers.

In the study from University of Cambridge, humans ranked 7th out of 35 species on the monogamy scale, pipping white-handed gibbons and meerkats, but lagging behind moustached tamarins and Eurasian beavers.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Cultura Creative RF/Alamy

© Photograph: Cultura Creative RF/Alamy

© Photograph: Cultura Creative RF/Alamy

Conservationist who devoted his life to the study and preservation of the African elephant

The British scientist Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who has died aged 83, became the world’s leading authority on the behaviour of African elephants and played a vital part in ensuring their conservation.

His efforts to save the African elephant began in 1965 when, as an Oxford zoology graduate who had also just received his pilot’s licence, he flew his Piper Pacer bush plane from Nairobi down to Tanzania’s pocket-sized Lake Manyara national park. The challenge he had accepted at the age of 23 was how to solve the problem of 450 elephants confined in a space too small to support them.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: family for obits only

© Photograph: family for obits only

© Photograph: family for obits only

Teaching methods | Holly stripped bare | Cricket in state schools | Flat Earth Society physics prize | Impact School of Motoring

As a retired teacher with family and friends who are still in the profession, I must take exception to John Harris’s assertion that our current method of education consists of “standing in front of 30 kids and shouting at them for an hour” (The right’s callous overdiagnosis bandwagon is rolling. Wes Streeting should not be on it, 7 December). At no point in my career would this have been regarded as an acceptable method of teaching any children, regardless of their individual needs or learning styles.
Jane Caley
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

• Susie White was lucky to find holly with berries (Country diary, 8 December). The one in my front garden had had the inner berries eaten by wood pigeons some time ago, and now the rest have gone – after a flock of redwings took the ones at the ends of the branches that the fat pigeons couldn’t get to. Not a single flash of scarlet remains.
Copland Smith
Whalley Range, Manchester

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

Charlie Cox and Zooey Deschanel co-parent a depressed dog in a serviceable attempt to appeal to animal lovers during the festive period

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in my social circles, that co-parenting a dog is a bad idea. Most will tell you: shared canine custody arrangements prevent exes from moving on. It’s a logistical headache. It causes fights. It’s annoying for all involved (and then some). And apparently, in a revelation worthy of a straight-to-streaming movie, it makes dogs depressed.

Not to minimize the mental health of dogs – I’ve listened to my mother boast about our family chihuahua’s “EQ” enough to know that man’s best friend has the capacity for great emotional sensitivity. (And the ability to convey it on command – for a truly outstanding performance of doggie depression, please see Bing the bereft great dane in 2024’s The Friend.) I have no doubt that a dog like Merv, a wired-hair terrier sort played by Gus the Dog in Merv’s eponymous Amazon movie, would struggle to adjust from life in a single family unit to split homes. Whether or not the ill-advised dog-sharing arrangement can sustain a whole Christmas romcom, however, is a dubious proposition.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

Tapanuli orangutans survive only in Indonesia’s Sumatran rainforest where a mine expansion will cut through their home. Yet the mining company says the alternative will be worse

A small brown line snakes its way through the rainforest in northern Sumatra, carving 300 metres through dense patches of meranti trees, oak and mahua. Picked up by satellites, the access road – though modest now – will soon extend 2km to connect with the Tor Ulu Ala pit, an expansion site of Indonesia’s Martabe mine. The road will help to unlock valuable deposits of gold, worth billions of dollars in today’s booming market. But such wealth could come at a steep cost to wildlife and biodiversity: the extinction of the world’s rarest ape, the Tapanuli orangutan.

The network of access roads planned for this swath of tropical rainforest will cut through habitat critical to the survival of the orangutans, scientists say. The Tapanuli (Pongo tapanuliensis), unique to Indonesia, was only discovered by scientists to be a separate species in 2017 – distinct from the Sumatran and Bornean apes. Today, there are fewer than 800 Tapanulis left in an area that covers as little as 2.5% of their historical range. All are found in Sumatra’s fragile Batang Toru ecosystem, bordered on its south-west flank by the Martabe mine, which began operations in 2012.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

© Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

© Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. November’s list includes forensic details of the medieval assassination of a Hungarian duke, why woodpeckers grunt when they peck, and more evidence that X’s much-maligned community notes might actually help combat the spread of misinformation after all.

An assassinated medieval Hungarian duke

Credit: Tamás Hajdu et al., 2026

Back in 1915, archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of a young man in a Dominican monastery on Margaret Island in Budapest, Hungary. The remains were believed to be those of Duke Bela of Masco, grandson of the medieval Hungarian King Bela IV. Per historical records, the young duke was brutally assassinated in 1272 by a rival faction and his mutilated remains were recovered by the duke’s sister and niece and buried in the monastery.

Read full article

Comments

© Eötvös Loránd University

After the virus returned to Hawaii this fall, testing the shots in the endangered seal species became urgent.

© Loren Elliott for The New York Times

New studies of canine genetics shed light on the diversity of dogs and our longstanding, still-evolving relationship to them.

A collective of land trusts, conservancies and tribes is capturing birdsong with audio gear and A.I. for clues about habitat health.

© Meron Menghistab for The New York Times

The staggering array of modern dog breeds is typically traced to the Victorian era. But half of all canine variation was in place roughly 10,000 years ago, a new study suggests.

After the H5N1 virus hit the remote island of South Georgia in 2023, more than 50,000 breeding females may have disappeared.

At an international conference, researchers at the forefront of animal-human transplantation compared notes and allowed themselves the first real optimism in decades.

© Kevin Serna for The New York Times

“This is a type of science that has an impact that most people could see in their homes,” said Erin Hecht, a canine researcher at Harvard. “Now there’s just no money.”

© Lucy Lu for The New York Times