NOAA sets rules for Navy sonar training

Federal fisheries regulators announced rules Friday to protect marine mammals during Navy sonar training along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

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GAO: Dolphins, whales lack protection from fishing

The Bush administration has failed to provide protections required by law to more than a dozen marine mammals potentially at risk of death or injury due to commercial fishing, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

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Scientists: 1 in 4 mammals faces extinction

Conservationists have taken the first detailed look at the world's mammals in more than a decade, and the news isn't good.

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It pays to be well hung, if you're a rat

Well-hung males may enjoy an evolutionary advantage over their less well-endowed competitors - in certain rodents, anyway. The finding may help answer the vexing question of why penis size is so variable among mammals.

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Unleash your inner bloodhound – start sniffing

Human subject’s path following a scent trail scent trail of chocolate essential oil through a field (right), as compared to a dog’s scent path of a pheasant dragged through a field (Image: Jess Porter, UC Berkeley)

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Fossils reveal New Zealand's indigenous 'mouse'

Fossil bones of a mouse-sized creature that died between 16 million and 19 million years ago have been discovered on the South Island of New Zealand. It is the first hard evidence that the islands once had their own indigenous land mammals.

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Fossil Overturns Ideas of Jurassic Mammals

The discovery of a furry, beaver-like animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals.

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This is a great article about the gray whales and the discoveries that they have made about them. The beginning is about the naval sonar exercises and their effects on whales. Fantastic article!

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A new study of 30 million-year-old fossilized mega-dung balls, as big as three inches (seven centimeters) in diameter and produced from the dung of extinct giant South American mammals, reveals that the dung was also a food source for a number of insects that would steal a bite w …

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Adult tucuxi dolphins were seen apparently trying to kill a calf of the same species.

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Some Animal Photographs; D DeMilo Inspired Me with His "Furry Critters" Article & Images

Viner D DeMilo's article and images of "Furry Critters" shows that patience pays off...in photography...as it often does in our everyday lives. If you haven't seen his images, go now - I'll wait.

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Researchers have discovered an important element for making night vision possible in nocturnal mammals: the DNA within the photoreceptor rod cells responsible for low light vision is packaged in a very unconventional way, according to a report in the April 17th issue of Cell.

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"Thousands of dolphins" may have prevented an attack on Chinese ships by pirates.

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This streaming video shows the hunting behavior of one species of bat, the woolly false vampire bat, as it hunts down another species of bat, kills and eats it. For some odd reason, this video reminds me of Wall Street.

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"Dozens of dolphins washed up on a Pakistani beach" on March 6, 2009.

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A rare pink Bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, has resurfaced two years after it had first been seen in Lake Calcasieu, an inland saltwater estuary, north of the Gulf of Mexico in southwestern Louisiana.

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A system of opposing genetic forces determines why mammals develop a single row of teeth, while sharks sport several, according to a study published today in the journal Science.

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A dolphin badly injured in a shark attack has been escorted by a mate into the care of human hands.

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The discovery of 408 species of mammals — the planet's best-known group of animals — since 1993 demonstrates our poor understanding of global biodiversity, argue scientists writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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This is a beautiful image of the endangered St. Andrew Beach Mouse (Peromyscus polionotus peninsularis). There are roughly 6,000 remaining in the USA (Estimates range from 3,500 to 6,000).

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The Alabama beach mouse ekes out a living on a 14-mile stretch of the state's Fort Morgan Peninsula, where its dune habitat is fragmented by construction and lit up at night.

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German scientists devise an innovative method for freezing elephant sperm

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..."Scientists have known that male and female mammals respond differently to starvation, with male cells tending to conserve protein while female calls lean toward fat conservation.

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Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have reported for the first time that mammals can be stimulated to regrow inner nerve cells in their damaged retinas. Located in the back of the eye, the retina's role in vision is to convert light into nerve impulses to the brain.

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The expensive brain hypothesis predicts an interspecific link between relative brain size and life-history pace. Indeed, animals with relatively large brains have reduced rates of growth and reproduction. However, they also have increased total lifespan.

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At least one-quarter of the world's mammal species in the wild are threatened with extinction, according to an international survey released Monday that blames the loss of wildlife habitat as well as hunting and poaching for the steep declines.

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The origin and early evolution of talpids (moles, shrew−moles, and desmans) is not well understood, in large part due to the poor fossil record of early talpids. Here we report the oldest known talpid from North America, Oreotalpa florissantensis gen. et sp.

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"What tends to happen is if one individual has stranded, the social bonds between that group mean that the rest of the group don't want to leave the area without that individual," she said.

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To sleep, perchance to dream--and maybe not get devoured? When it comes to how much shuteye animals get in the wild, fear and food matter most. Researchers have spent decades trying to understand the confusing array of sleep patterns found in mammals.

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Scientists were surprised with findings of a recent study that reveals many animal species believed to persist in small contained areas actually need broad, landscape level conservation to survive.

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Long before the age of the dinosaurs, something was constructing tunnels in Antarctica. A burrow has been discovered in the ancient flood plain of a broad Antarctic river only a few million years after a mass extinction ended the Permian period.

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