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What can poop tell us about orangutans? Well, for one thing, a study of wild orangutan feces has revealed that these great apes, unlike some other species, are not chronically stressed by ecotourism

By Ari Rabinovitch and Rinat Harash JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Completing the same journey they have made for the past 2,000 years, a flock of swifts has flown halfway around the world to nest among the ancient stones of Jerusalem's Western Wall. The scores of small black birds who spend the spring flying high above Jerusalem's Old City and laying eggs in the cracks in the wall, where it is common for visitors to place prayer notes, have become a focus in efforts to rehabilitate the species' diminishing population worldwide

Image courtesy of Save the Tasmanian Devil Program A killer cancer that is threatening to wipe Tasmanian devils off the map for good has been spreading from an original infected female 15 years ago via live cancer cells, according to evidence from genome sequences of the cancer and the animal, published online Thursday in Cell . Finding out how this happened could help save this species from extinction and it could also prepare researchers for the unlikely event that a contagious cancer ever appeared in humans. [More]

Is there anything more everyday and familiar (given that we all possess one) and yet still so mysterious and puzzling as our own human brain?

Which limb do you prefer? If you’re like most members of our species, you prefer your right hand for most tasks.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Mark Lynas's book , The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans .

To monitor the biodiversity of a freshwater habitat, you could camp out by the water and count the rare wildlife.

To monitor the biodiversity of a freshwater habitat, you could camp out by the water and count the rare wildlife. Or you could just scoop up a cup of water. A new Dutch study has found that the DNA traces in a small sample of a body of water can reveal the species that live in it.

Rationality is the crowning achievement of our species.

No, it's not photoshopped--that dolphin's fin really is on backward. It is a type of spinner dolphin that lives in the eastern tropical Pacific

The 800-pound Goliath grouper was near extinction before conservation measures brought it back from the brink. What happens when it starts being harvested again? The fisheries in the Atlantic ocean--from North Carolina to the Caribbean--are best characterized by what's missing: snappers, groupers, redfish, lobster and the host of other species that once patrolled hundreds of miles of the Gulf Stream

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine New descriptions of Australopithecus sediba fossils have added to debates about the species' place in the human lineage.

From Nature magazine. Our ancestors bred with other species in the Homo genus, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

By Zo

Add another species to the long list of plants and animals being eaten out of existence so men can try to get it up in the bedroom. This time, instead of medically useless tiger penises or sea turtle eggs, it's an African plant called White's ginger ( Mondia whitei ), often wrongly referred to as "white ginger." It goes by many names in Africa, most notably mukombero in Kenya, where it is said that chewing the root of the plant or drinking it in tea form can boost virility and stamina in the bedroom [More]