The bears, which rely on Arctic sea ice, are now protected under the Endangered Species Act, but officials emphasize that the decision will not be used to determine U.S. climate policy.

The urgent need for food and shelter resulting from the disaster could have a devastating impact on forests and wildlife, conservationists warn.

Scientists hope the summer emergence of pregnant females can shed some light on the enigmatic white-nose syndrome—before time runs out for the animals and their environment.

A species of Chinese frog has evolved an elaborate system of ultrasonic mating calls to circumvent its noisy hot spring environment, researchers say.

As plants bloom earlier due to rising temperatures, caribou are arriving at their calving grounds when the bounty is past its peak, leading to fewer births and a lower survival rate, researchers say.

Poisonous chemicals trapped for decades in ice are now seeping into the polar ecosystem via glacial meltwater, researchers report.

See a supercell light up the Texas sky, U.S. Marines braving a sandstorm in Afghanistan, the Olympic torch reach the top of Mount Everest, and more.

Watch young chimpanzees beat Japanese college students in a short-term-memory test by a wide margin—raising questions about primate intelligence and evolution.

The world's largest group of orangutans in Indonesia may face extinction by 2011 because of palm oil plantation expansion, which is destroying habitat, experts say.

Great tits are timing their egg laying to coincide with an earlier emergence of caterpillars in England, a decades-long study has found.

Thousands of horses, cows, and other livestock face a possibly toxic brew of deep ash and gases. And the region's all-important farms may be devastated for decades.

Eight Amur leopards—the world's rarest big cats—were recently photographed in far southeastern Russia, giving renewed hope to conservationists.

The genome of the platypus—our most distant mammal relative—has been decoded, revealing traces of mammals' evolutionary break from reptiles hundreds of millions of years ago.

A six-month-old whale found dead on a New Zealand coastline is giving scientists a rare peek into the anatomy of the bizarre creature.

After 9,000 years Chaiten volcano has exploded back to life, forcing people to flee its southern Chile region.