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Tag: animals

  • The best animal photos of 2023, from hyenas to southern stingrays

    The best animal photos of 2023, from hyenas to southern stingrays

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    Spotted hyenas

    Wim van den Heever/naturepl.com

    This spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) pup is a natural in front of the camera, while its mother and sibling keep a watchful eye in the background. This playful shot was taken by Wim van den Heever in Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya.

    Split level view of Southern stingray (Dasyatis americana) female, swimming over a shallow, sandy seabed at dawn, North Sound, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Caribbean Sea.

    A southern stingray

    Alex Mustard/naturepl.com

    As the sun rises off the coast of the Cayman Islands, a southern stingray (Dasyatis americana) prowls the sandy seabed in this striking split-level snap by photographer Alex Mustard.

    A sap-sucking slug

    Mateusz Piesiak / naturepl.com

    Mustard also captured this vibrantly fluorescent oddity, known as the sap-sucking slug (Costasiella kuroshimae), creeping across green algae just off the coast of northern Indonesia. Two beady eyes sit close together on its face, while spotty green leaf-like appendages called cerata sprout from its body. These sea slugs have the special ability of preserving the chloroplasts in the algae they feed on, which means they can perform photosynthesis.

    A Eurasian brown bear

    Andy Rouse/naturepl.com

    Deep in the Finnish woods, Andy Rouse snapped this action shot of a Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) shaking itself dry after a quick dip in a pond. These mammals can weigh up to 480 kilograms and are commonly found across eastern Europe and Russia.

    A spotted fritillary larva

    Guy Edwardes/naturepl.com

    In the grasslands of the Rhodope mountains in Bulgaria, Guy Edwardes took this colourful picture of a spotted fritillary (Melitaea didyma) larva. It will eventually transform into a butterfly, whose wings – hints of which can already be seen along its back – will be bright orange with brown spots.

    A white-winged snowfinch

    Mateusz Piesiak / naturepl.com

    A majestic white-winged snowfinch (Montifringilla nivalis) braves a snowstorm in the Swiss Alps in this photograph by Mateusz Piesiak. They are relatively large, sturdy birds, measuring up to 19 centimetres tall. Their distinctive orange-yellow bills are seasonal, becoming black in the summer.

    A fruit bat

    Clément Kolopp/WCS

    This bemused fruit bat is having its nose and throat swabbed as part of efforts in the Republic of the Congo to better understand how zoonotic diseases, such as Ebola, could jump to people. Around 100 fruit bats have had their blood and saliva samples taken by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research.

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  • Chimpanzees recognise photos of friends they haven’t seen for decades

    Chimpanzees recognise photos of friends they haven’t seen for decades

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    Chimpanzees in zoos were shown photos of old group members to test their memory

    Johns Hopkins University

    Bonobos and chimpanzees seem to recognise photos of former group members – even animals they haven’t seen for over 20 years. This means that these apes have the longest social memory ever recorded in any animal besides humans.

    Great apes, such as gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, are known to have impressive memories – for example, some chimps can remember the exact location of specific fruit trees in a forest, and anticipate what happens next in a film they have viewed before. Researchers have also seen hints that great apes remember individuals for a long time.

    “When we go back to ape populations that we’ve worked with in the past, we noticed that they seem to recognise and remember us,” says Laura Lewis at the University of California, Berkeley.

    To investigate how long this social memory lasts in apes, Lewis and her colleagues put 12 bonobos and 15 chimps, living in zoos in the UK, Japan and Belgium, to the test.

    For each animal, the team flashed side-by-side photos of two different apes on a screen for 3 seconds. One of the photos was of an ape that they had lived with at least one year ago and the other was a stranger.

    Using eye-tracking technology, the team found that all the participants would look at the images of former group members around a quarter of second longer on average than they did for the ones of strangers. For former colleagues that they had positive relationships with, as described by zookeepers, they would linger on their photos even longer.

    The finding indicates that these apes remember acquaintances even after a lengthy time apart. “It’s not so different from walking down the streets in a major city, unexpectedly encountering someone you went to school with, and you do that double take,” says team member Christopher Krupenye at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

    In the most extreme case, a bonobo called Louise seemed to recognise her sister Loretta and nephew Erin after more than 26 years of separation.

    “That’s the longest long-term social memory ever recorded in a non-human animal,” says Lewis.

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