Are zoos really effective at education and conservation? Anthropologist Barbara J. King offers her top reasons why it's time to rethink the role of zoos.

Arturo the polar bear has died at the age of 30 after a life spent in captivity and displaying signs of stress, according to campaigners. Known as the "world’s saddest polar bear" and the last captive bear in Argentina, Arturo died at Mendoza Zoo, four years after his longtime companion Pelusa died of cancer. Visitors reported the bear pacing up and down inside his concrete enclosure, rocking from side to side, displaying his teeth and other signs of discomfort as temperatures would rise above 40C.

Animals by the hundreds are being set free as Buenos Aires closes its 140-year-old Palermo zoo. Among the first to leave will be birds of prey like owls and chimangos, destined for a reserve along the shores of the Rio de la Plata south of the capital. They will be placed there in larger confines that will give them room to stretch and strengthen their winds before they're ready for the wild. Others among the 1,500 animals at the zoo are destined for reserves in Argentina and abroad as their old home is transformed into a park.

It's cruelty, plain and simple.

Animal skins are being embraced by designers amid a push to make the lives and deaths of captive creatures more humane.

There have been many examples of animal abuse for entertainment and commercial use all over the world. But animal cruelty in China tends to be getting more outrageous. Every year, approximately 10 million animals are killed for various reasons in the country. Of course, it’s not new that innocent animals are slowly tortured, beaten to death, or boiled alive. Some animals are used for their fur and often sold and shipped to other countries for use in clothing, while other creatures are slaughtered to be placed on restaurants’ menus.

Fur seems to be making a high fashion comeback, the September issue of National Geographic reports. “The current revival is a story of the fur trade responding to its critics and often outmaneuvering them, combined with increased demand from the newly wealthy in China, South Korea, and Russia,” writes Richard Conniff. After the animal welfare movement hit a high-water mark in the 1990s, the movement has lost some ground. Nearly two-thirds of women’s 2016 fall fashion collections featured fur, according to the International Fur Federation.

Sir David Attenborough has joined forces with leading scientists and animal welfare experts to call for an end to the use primates in certain types of “cruel” testing by neuroscientists. The leading naturalist and broadcaster said recent breakthroughs in understanding primates’ capacity to feel suffering and pain meant it was time to stop funding some potentially painful or cruel types of experiments.

Releasing shocking hidden camera videos, a small animal rights group based in Lyon, France has reignited the debate on animal cruelty, causing French authorities to close down several abattoirs and launch a parliamentary inquiry. The videos have come as a shock to many, including in the farming world. Philippe Notin is a third-generation organic farmer from the Loire region. He is a minority shareholder in the slaughterhouse where his animals are killed, which he says gives him a say about what goes on there.

One SHARK "Angel" drone causes the California Highway Patrol and the Fresno County Sheriff's Department to totally lose their cool for two straight days.

Last February [six years ago], when a 12,000-pound orca named Tilikum dragged his SeaWorld trainer into the pool and drowned her, it was the third time the big killer whale had been involved in a death... By Tim Zimmermann (July 30, 2010)

We have all heard the perpetual argument about the meat industry. On one side, unwavering pro-meat eaters assert that some animals were put on this earth for our consumption, as a means for our survival. On the other side, vegan individuals claim that eating animals is not only cruel but evolutionarily outdated. Regardless of one’s moral compass or core beliefs, finding the facts can be difficult. Beyond “he said/she said,” there are some very tangible things happening around the globe that are a detriment to our health and to our planet.

The images, taken clandestinely by Mauricio Garcia-Pereira prove that cows bearing calves ready to be born are frequently slaughtered. The European legislation prohibits the transport of animals, and their slaughter, from 90% of term gestation, which is equivalent to eight months for a cow.

The country's controversial Mendoza Zoo is told it must transfer a chimpanzee named Cecilia to a primate sanctuary.

Animal rights groups have called for the permanent return home of “the saddest polar bear in the world”, who will be temporarily moved from a shopping mall aquarium in southern China during an upgrade. The three-year-old female bear, named Pizza, has become a focus of global attention since Hong Kong-based Animal Asia posted in July an online video of the bear lying on her side in a glass enclosure in Guangzhou.

When I teach practical ethics, I encourage my students to take the arguments we discuss outside the classroom. For Americans, there is no better occasion for a conversation about the ethics of what we eat than Thanksgiving, the holiday at which, more than any other, we come together around a meal. The traditional centerpiece of the Thanksgiving meal is a turkey, so that is the obvious place to start. According to the National Turkey Federation, about 46 million turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving each year. The vast majority of them — at least 99% — are raised on factory farms.

Chinese officials have seized 3.1 tonnes (more than 3.4 tons) of illegally trafficked pangolin scales from a port in Shanghai, according to state media. It's the largest such seizure China has ever made, Xinhua News Agency reports. Pangolins are the world's most widely trafficked mammals — their meat is a delicacy and their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

A new law in 2017 could help save animals trapped in hot unattended vehicles. Californians won’t have to worry about being sued or arrested for breaking into a hot unattended car to rescue an animal under a new law taking effect in 2017. It takes just 10 minutes on an 80 degree day for temperatures inside a car to reach 120 degrees. Most people say if they saw a distressed animal trapped inside a parked car on a hot day they would take action to save it.

Think of a farm and what comes to mind? Lambs leaping through a field, pigs rolling around in the mud and cows chomping on lush grass. Sadly, that vision is now a rarity - most chickens, ducks and turkeys in the UK are farmed in huge industrial sheds and a whopping 99 per cent of farm animals in the US are reared in factory farms, according to the ASPCA.

A Japanese ship has been caught with a slaughtered whale in the Antarctic in defiance of an international court decision against Tokyo's hunts, activist group Sea Shepherd said Sunday. The conservationist organisation -- whose two vessels departed Australia last month for the Southern Ocean to disrupt the hunt -- said it spotted the Nisshin Maru in the Australian whale sanctuary around the nation's Antarctic territory.