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Animals

Animals · Oceans

Silt, a 38-year-old right whale, has her sixth calf off Quebec

Researchers from the Mingan Island Cetacean Study photographed Silt off Anticosti Island, Quebec, on 25 September with a calf nobody had recorded. It is her sixth known calf. It is welcome news for a critically endangered species: the latest count put North Atlantic right whales at about 384 in 2024.

By The Newsroom · VerifiedSource: Mingan Island Cetacean Study · New England Aquarium
Animals · Scotland

Beavers return to the Loch Ness area after 500 years

A family of six beavers has been swimming in a lochan at Dundreggan, in the Loch Ness catchment, since 4 November. It is the first release of the Ness Beaver Project, through which Trees for Life and Beaver Trust plan to return at least 15 beaver families to the area over three years under a NatureScot licence. Beavers were last recorded beside the loch about 500 years ago, before hunting wiped them out in Scotland.

Animals · Amphibians

Frogs wiped out by a fungus in Brazil's Atlantic Forest have bounced back, 40 years on

Between 1979 and 1982 the frogs at Boracéia field station in São Paulo, Brazil, crashed. A study by the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Penn State points to chytrid fungus and finds that most species have recovered: 12 of the 17 studied are still there. The other five have not been found, and the authors stress the result applies to that site, not the whole Atlantic Forest.

The numbers

15 Minimum number of beaver families Trees for Life and Beaver Trust plan to release in the Loch Ness catchment over the next three years. Read the story → 12 of 17 Boracéia frog species the researchers found again in six surveys between 2022 and 2024. Read the story → 384 North Atlantic right whales estimated in 2024, up 2.1% on the year before, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. Read the story →