In this fascinating special hosted by David Attenborough, the ability of dolphins to think creatively and abstractly is explored. The video provides a unique look into the depth of dolphins’ intelligence.

Walker is a four-week-old Caribbean flamingo at SeaWorld Orlando. He eats fish, krill, hard boiled eggs, and cereal. When he matures, he’ll also eat a special formula made just for flamingos. At three years, he’ll develop the characteristic bright pink plumage. The coloring results from eating carotenoid pigments found in a variety of plant and animal life.

For more info, see Seaworld.org.

(Photos by Jason Collier/SeaWorld Orlando)

The Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida is host to a slew of new baby animals.  Pictured above is a five-week-old black and white ruffed lemur baby.  The zoo also welcomed a baby spider monkey and a Florida sandhill crane.  The baby crane’s father is actually a wild crane who flew into the zoo.

For more info: Florida Today

Yesterday, the Maryland Zoo opened its new $500,000 prairie dog habitat.  Unfortunately, within ten minutes, several prairie dogs tested the limits of their new home and found multiple escape routes.  Climbing and jumping over the walls, the prairie dogs had zoo workers in a frenzy chasing after them with nets.

In the end, all the prairie dogs were returned and the enclosure was secured.

For more info, see: Baltimore Sun

To learn more about prairie dogs and their interesting behavior, see Animal Fact Guide’s article about Black-tailed Prairie Dogs.

Primatologists Emmanuelle Normand, Christophe Boesch, and Simone Ban recently conducted a study focused on the spatial memory of chimpanzees. Using GPS, the team mapped the location of 12,500 individual trees within the home range of a group of chimps in the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast.  Then, after tracking which trees the chimps regularly fed from, the researchers found that chimps would specifically seek out certain fruit trees depending on when the fruit was in season.

According to Normand:

“Across all seasons, it seems that they have preferred tree species. Like when it is the coula nuts season, chimpanzees crack nuts using tools for hours during a day. Or when it is the Sacoglottis fruits season, then the chimpanzees stay hours digging their fruit wadge in the water to press a maximum of juice from those fruits.”

The team believes this preference for fruit and the need to remember where the fruit trees are and when they are in season drove the evolutionary development of the primate brain.  Another primate who also has a penchant for finding their favorite fruit within a vast forest range is the Bornean orangutan.

For more information about the chimp study, see: BBC Earth News.

This month marked another significant step in the conservation of clouded leopards.  Three cubs were born to parents Jing Jai and Arun at the Nashville Zoo.  As mentioned in a previous post where two clouded leopard cubs were born at the National Zoo, breeding these wildcats in captivity has proven difficult.  Many times the male leopard will kill the female or the female will kill her cubs.  So the birth of three cubs is a momentus occasion.

Clouded leopards are endangered in the wild (southeast Asia) due to hunting.

For more info: Tennessean.com

Julie is a 27-year-old patas monkey who has lived her whole life in captivity at the Racine Zoo in Wisconsin. She is the world’s oldest patas monkey.

Patas monkeys are incredibly quick primates, reaching speeds up to 34 mph (55 km/h).  They reproduce starting at the early age of three years, which is imperative in the wild, where many patas monkeys don’t live past four years old.

So Julie’s 27th birthday on May 20 of this year was a spectacular feat.  Zoo keepers celebrated by giving Julie a banana and grape cake and a bag of wash cloths  (her favorite toys).

For more info: The Journal Times Online

A baby anteater is the newest addition to a Tokyo zoo. The anteater has not been named yet because the staff is unable to determine the gender, though they suspect it’s a boy. Anteaters have no teeth and use their tongues to lick up ants from anthills.  Anteaters are also known for their large claws on their front feet; the claws came in handy for this little anteater as he slipped from his perch.

More info: Independent Television News

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have created a scoring system to assess whether animals should be relocated to cooler areas to help animals survive on a rapidly heating planet.  Although this idea was balked at in the past because interfering with present ecosystems could spell disaster, scientists now warn that the situation has become so escalated that action needs to be taken.

Two arguments back their position. First, scientists believe that the climate is changing at such a rapid rate that animals cannot evolve quickly enough to adapt to their changing environment.  Second, because humans have altered the landscape so drastically with urban development, animals do not have the space to migrate north themselves.

For more information, see CBCNews.ca.

This amazing photo was taken by wildlife photographer Brian McFarlane in Strumpshaw, Norfolk, England.  The greylag goose was attempting to land on a freshwater lake on a very windy day. Turning its body upside is a move not uncommon for birds. It even has its own name, whiffling. Birds whiffle so that they may slow down and reduce their height quickly.

For more on the story, visit the Belfast Telegraph.