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The image of a polar bear floating on a single sheet of ice has become synonymous with the discussion of climate change. As the polar bear’s habitat literally melts before our eyes, we are starting to recognize the direct impact that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are having on the other species we share the world with. The polar bear’s Arctic habitat is quickly diminishing, in fact, an estimated 8.6 million acres of ice disappear a year and this rate is only expected to increase along with the temperature of the planet. With this in mind, many conservationists have begun to...

<p>In the backyard of a Tudor home on a leafy street in Queens live four tenants who pay their rent in companionship, pest control, and fresh eggs.</p> <p>"Our 9-year-old daughter wanted a dog for her birthday and we surprised her with chickens instead. She was at first disappointed," said Ruth Harrigan. "They're very independent. It's almost like having a cat."</p>

He chased them for hours before shooting themA Saudi farmer in his 70s got into his four-wheel car and chased three wolves for hours before shooting them with his machine gun after they killed his sheep. Mohammed Al Sandali chased the wolves into hills and valleys before spotting them resting after a raid on his sheep and nearby farms in the Western town of Raniyah. “He got out of his car, stalked the wolves and shot them…he then brought them dead to his village to show them to the farmers,” ‘Sabq’ daily said.

Earlier this week, USDA secretary Tom Vilsack met in Washington with representatives from the British government. Atop the list of issues UK environment secretary Owen Paterson was to bring up in his meeting with Vilsack is the continuing US ban on the sale of authentic Scottish haggis. Haggis, Scotland’s national dish, has been unavailable in the United States since 1971, when the USDA issued a succinct rule: “Livestock lungs shall not be saved for use as human food.” But sheep lungs are a key ingredient in haggis. The reasoning behind the USDA’s ban on lungs is generally couched in terms...

While we're taught that food that smells rotten should be thrown away, there are actually many foods that you eat whenever they've just started rotting. Of course, it's not pleasant to call these foods rotten, so we refer to them in different ways instead. Cheese Making cheese comes down to your ability to control rot. This is because milk is treated with bacteria and enzymes causing it to curdle. The curdles are then cut, formed and ripened into cheese. Stinkheads Another native Alaskan delicacy is what's known as stinkheads. These are King Salmon heads that have either been buried in...

Bumblebees, a linchpin of the global food supply, are vanishing across huge swaths of North America and Europe as a result of climate change, a new study says. The findings, published Thursday in the journal Science, apparently solve a mystery that's alarmed farmers, experts, policymakers and environmental advocates worldwide, as well as bedeviled researchers. While habitat destruction and potent pesticides known as neonicotinoids have destroyed some bumblebee populations, researchers concluded climate change has played the greatest role in the mass disappearance of bumblebee species, which pollinate plants and crops that are part of the food supply for both animals and...

A Bug’s Life 07.07.156:05 PM ET Breaking News: Worker Ants Really Lazy A new study out of the University of Arizona finds that ants specialize in inactivity. Good news for slackers! Turns out nature’s archetypal busybodies, worker ants, are lazy too.Researchers have actually been aware of ants’ slacker habits for a while, but they didn’t know whether the sluggish members of the Temnothorax rugatulus species of western North America were inactive or rather just taking a break.“It’s just the sort of a thing that anyone who’s ever worked on social insects has noticed: ‘Oh look, half of them are standing around...

How to Prepare for a Collapse in 9 Steps – a Case Study with David Holmgren By William Horvath It’s 2025, the long troubled financial markets have finally crashed the overleveraged banking system and the world is experiencing global depression on a massive scale. Precipitated by environmental destruction, heatwaves are scorching the planet, destroying the monoculture food crops, and there are food riots in every major city. In order to maintain the social order upon panicked and desperate populations governments are forced to introduce a command economy, issuing people supermarket food stamps.But for you and your family nothing has changed,...

The Entomology Research Museum at the University of California, Riverside today announced the discovery of a new species of firefly from Southern California, collected by an undergraduate student as part of his semester's insect collection. Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist, said the student, Joshua Oliva, obtained one specimen of the new species while collecting near Topanga, Calif. "He wasn't 100 percent certain it was a firefly, and brought it to me for confirmation," Yanega said. "I know the local fauna well enough that within minutes I was able to tell him he had found something entirely new to science. I...

My Dad taught me how to drive a car with a manual transmission. "Let the clutch out slower next time."

Finland's government wants the country to turn away from fossil fuels and look towards horse manure to heat its homes instead, it's reported. The new coalition's manifesto sets out plans for the large-scale use of horse dung as a renewable source of energy, the national broadcaster Yle reports. One energy company is already trying out a biofuel made by mixing horse manure with a wood-based litter, which is then burned to create power. The Fortum group says the annual waste created by three horses would be enough to heat a family home for a year. And with about 77,000 horses...

SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — San Jose is forcing its residents to cut back on water use during the drought, so one couple found a patriotic solution to their ugly brown lawn by painting an American flag on it. Claudia Decker and her husband stopped watering their lawn in January. Tired of looking at the patchy turf and dirt, they wanted to increase their curb appeal. “People are painting their lawns green because of the drought,” Decker told KPIX 5. Instead of green, the couple painted an American flag on the lawn, in honor of Flag Day. The flag even...

A 15-foot-tall Agave plant is blooming and drawing crowds to the Dallas Arboretum. The Arboretum says the Agave victoriae-reginae is 20 years old and this will be the only time it blooms in its lifetime. Once it finishes blooming, the plant will die, but not before sowing seeds for the next generation. The plant just started opening up and will bloom in the Garden's Rory Meyers Children's Adventure Garden for two to four weeks. Agave victoriae-reginae plant is endangered in its native Sierra Madre mountain range of Chihuahua, Mexico.

I'm tired of paying good money for soft pickles..................

The operation to remove hundreds of tiny stones took doctors around two hours Doctors in China have removed 420 kidney stones from a man's body, blaming an excessive amount of tofu in his daily diet. Mr He from Zhejiang Province in eastern China, checked into the Dongyang People's Hospital complaining of intense pain in his abdomen last month. A CT scan revealed that his left kidney was packed full of stones, most of them tiny. Doctors operated on Friday in an agonising procedure that lasted about two hours. Mr He said he had a history of suffering from kidney stones....

If you live in the United States, you've probably seen an odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile) – one of the most common ants in the country. And for more than 50 years they've been described as smelling like rotten coconut. But Clint Penick thinks they smell like blue cheese. And he can prove he's right. Penick is postdoctoral researcher at NC State. Most of his work revolves around ants, and for years he's been fascinated by the fact that you can identify some ant species by smell – such as T. sessile. In grad school he heard that T. sessile...

A new international competition, from the team behind GlobalMeatNews, launches today (5 June) - the World Steak Challenge.

A 56-year-old man from North Texas is accused of stealing 144 head of cattle from two ranchers, including one who is elderly. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association announced in a press release that Jerry Dean Kulow, who is accused of third degree felony theft of livestock and second degree felony theft of livestock from the elderly on May 4 was arrested Thursday. Kulow was a ranch foreman for one of the victims. All of the cattle stolen were worth nearly $100,000. According to the TSCRA, Kulow confessed to the crime, but didn't tell authorities where the money went....

Researchers in the U.K. aim for a new commercial potato that resists many of the worst vulnerabilities of potato crops around the world. Super spuds are coming. A genetically modified potato that could resist destructive blight, defend itself against parasitic worms, avoid bruising, and cut down on the accumulation of a suspected carcinogen during cooking would be worth many billions of dollars per year to potato producers across the world. It could also serve as a model technology for addressing issues that affect many different crops and are increasingly likely to cause concerns about global food security as the population...

Millions of flies are invading one Minnesota neighborhood, and nothing his being done. Officials say one farmer is responsible for the infestation. "We've been getting these flies like this. They're all over the car, they're all over the house, they're in our full barn, they're in our patio by the billions," Tom Hanson said. Hanson says it started thanks to their neighbor across the street who owns the property, but doesn't normally live there. "The gentleman across the road has been dumping this stuff since last winter and he has no intention of cleaning it up. He doesn't care what...