9+ hour, 57+ min ago   (394+ words) On Saturday, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo hosted a panda party in the District to celebrate Qing Bao’s fifth birthday. And plenty of her fans showed up dressed for the occasion. Six-and-a-half-year-old Abby Shelley wore a panda dress to the celebration....

1+ day, 7+ hour ago   (357+ words) Brigid Lynch was working along a wooded creek in a mountainous part of the San Francisco Bay Area when something that didn’t look like the rocks she’d been studying caught her eye. It turned out to be the fossilized tooth…...

4+ day, 16+ hour ago   (482+ words) There’s little worse in a gardener’s mind than watching their careful planning and hard work go up in a cloud of teeth, thanks to every four-legged freeloader within chewing distance. So if you’re planting bulbs this fall, select the rights…...

5+ day, 2+ hour ago   (822+ words) It was a neighbor all right, but not a human one. A black bear had opened the door of a Toyota SUV and gotten trapped inside the vehicle in Gold Hill, Colorado, northwest of Denver. In one of hundreds of…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (528+ words) In charge of deciding who gets the s-s-s-s-starring reptilian role is Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer-turned-opera actor cast as the snake handler in the Met’s version of “Così fan tutte,” inspired by Coney Island in the 1950s. Ziegfeld takes each snake,…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (967+ words) While experiments in containment continue, including the release of tens of thousands of octopus predators, the industry’s response has been shifting to find new markets for the crustaceans. The strategy is already salvaging the livelihood of some fishermen and, some…...