The author of a new book also says that animals can feel empathy, like the humpback whale that rescued a seal.

The evidence is in. A mysterious creature that lived on Earth over half a billion years ago has now been proven an animal. A fossil from 558 million years ago was so well preserved, it still had fat molecules.

The once-endangered vicuna is thriving in the Peruvian Andes, thanks to a bold plan to sustainably gather and sell its valuable fleece – and give locals a stake in its survival.

Would you eat a cat or dog? If Congress has its way, consuming our four-legged companions could soon land you a $5,000 fine.

Oumbi the male gorilla from the Twycross Zoo is the most active just before lunchtime. Like everybody else, he's getting all excited for the food. They are

The snack wouldn’t exist without the help of one furry critter and its unusually sharp teeth.

Did the octopus evolve its unique intelligence by playing fast and free with the genetic code? Elizabeth Finkel investigates.

Rare, mummified animals discovered by gold miners in Yukon territory

Akeno the greater one-horned rhino calf from Chester Zoo is just a barrel of energy. He runs around with those cute little wiggly ears headbutting his mom

Bighorn sheep and moose learn to migrate from one another. When they die, that generational know-how is not easily replaced.

A growing body of evidence points to how animals are aware of death and will sometimes mourn for or ritualize their dead

Wild dolphins have learned how to walk on water by copying tricks developed by captive animals, a 30-year study found. Scientists in Australia observed that dolphins in Adelaide learned tail-walking – when the animal rises vertically out of the water and moves forward or backwards across it – from a dolphin called Billie which had spent time in a dolphinarium. Dolphins rarely do this in the wild but it is a standard part of the routine in almost all dolphinaria.

Empirical observation told us years ago that goats were slowly becoming the new dog, and according to a new study, they are truly qualified to be man’s best friend. On Wednesday, the Royal Society released heartwarming research showing that just like humans, goats have no desire to interact with people who come off as angry or upset, and that they’re much more attracted to those with big smiles plastered across their faces.

After roaming Europe and Asia for more than a hundred thousand years, cave bears died out some 24,000 years ago, after a millennia-long death spiral possibly spurred by hunting, natural climate change, and competition with humans for habitat.

Deepsea Oddities

Dozens of nature reserves have helped wild pandas to breed, aiding the bears' move from endangered to vulnerable.

There are some things a dog just can’t shake. A good bone, tender loving care, and jumping up on the couch. In fact, my dog is sitting on the top part of the couch right now watching me type this, next to her bone. It doesn’t take much to make a dog happy. And that was the exact notion behind one Illinois animal shelter when they reached out to the community to bring something special to their homeless dogs.

For many weeks, news of a mother orca carrying her dead infant through the icy waters of the Salish Sea captured the attention of many around the world. Keeping the infant afloat as best she could, the orca, named Tahlequah, also known as J35 by scientists, persisted for 17 days, before finally dropping the dead calf.

Could a global icon of extinction still be alive?

Gray wolves from the radioactive forbidden zone around the nuclear disaster site of Chernobyl are now roaming out into the rest of the world, raising the possibility they'll spread mutant genes that they may carryfar and wide, a new study finds. The wolves are prospering not due to any mutant superpower, but because the radioactive zone now acts like a wildlife preserve, researchers added.

Barn owls have simpler brains than primates, but they can process information about things moving in their environment in a similarly complex way.

Scientists say they’ve used human test-tube baby techniques to try to save the nearly extinct northern white rhino. In an improbable experiment, they are trying to resurrect an entire subspecies using dead males, two infertile remaining females, and some closely related southern white rhinos. And they say they also plan to use stem-cell technology to try to create a population of pure northern white rhinos in the lab.

Can animals reflect on, and reject, their conditions of existence? The philosopher Owen Flanagan has pointed out that when Hamlet poses the question that has become the single most powerful query of all English literature, “he is, of course, contemplating suicide.

I was never an enthusiastic carnivore — but Esther the Wonder Pig and her farm pals made me question my own morals

A casual chill by the pool for a couple of tourists in South Africa's Kruger National Park became an unexpected up-close moment with nature. The pair were filmed frozen to their sunbeds as three wild elephants popped by for a drink from the swimming pool. Another couple made the recording and told Newsflare it was one of the "most amusing sights we have seen in a long time".

Raccoons are notoriously pesky, but are they as clever as a crow? Scientists recently put the masked mammals through the Aesop's Fable test, which measures if animals can discern cause and effect by displacing water to access food. The experiment is based on the story in which a thirsty crow can’t drink from a pitcher with a low level of water. By dropping in stones, the bird raises the water level and is able to drink.

New discoveries are changing long-held views of the biggest, meanest, and most bizarre animals that ever flew.

Australia's Taronga Western Plains Zoo has a new resident - a new baby black rhino, born to mum Bakhita and dad Kwanzaa. Born on Halloween, the new calf is yet to be named, but he's the second black rhino calf the zoo has welcomed this year as part of its concerted black rhino breeding program.

The typical punishments assigned to people who commit animal abuse often pale in comparison to the horrendous natures of their crimes. Here is why we should consider raising the penalty to that of a violent crime.

Huge, ape-like and hairy, the yeti has roamed its way into legend, tantalising explorers, mountaineers and locals with curious footprints and fleeting appearances. Now researchers say the elusive inhabitant of the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau has been unmasked.

India, Nepal and Bhutan are set to start a joint exercise for mapping of tigers and their habitats in high altitude ranges as none of the Census has so far done a comprehensive assessment of the presence of big cats at an altitude above 10,000-feet. The process is likely to be carried under the umbrella of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

In an experiment with science fiction implications, neurologists say they taught monkeys to play a game by stimulating their brains with electrodes.

From cannibalistic chimps to a new species of purple frog, here are our picks for Mother Nature’s best gifts of 2017. By Christine Dell’Amore. [Autoplay]

Despite making a poor first impression, jellyfish are among the most unusual animals on Earth and deserve a second chance to introduce themselves. By Philip Lamb.

At the start of this year, the world was left baffled when evidence emerged of a male snow monkey unsuccessfully getting it on with a female Sika deer on Japan's Yakushima Island.