Jason Bittel The Washington Post

Dogs are a weird bunch. They range in size from bearish behemoths like Newfoundlands to pipsqueaks like Milly, a Chihuahua who measures less than 4 inches tall and holds the Guinness record for World's Shortest Dog.

For 10 years, the world's last known Sehuencas water frog, named Romeo, lived alone in captivity in a Bolivian museum. Repeated expeditions by biologists into the nation's cloud forests, the only place the amphibians exist, had turned up no new specimens. The once-plentiful frogs had been all but wiped out by a killer fungus, widespread habitat los...

Most people try to stay far away from hissing cockroaches, desert hairy scorpions, and venomous, six-eyed sand spiders. Not the team of thieves that hit the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion over four days in late August.

Just a few decades ago, the California sea lion seemed on the verge of becoming an endangered species. It was 1964, and hunting and fishing had caused the breeding population off the West Coast to shrink to just 35,000.

Cat people and dog people have long sparred over which species possesses the best brains. But according to a new study published in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, the best way to measure cognitive ability is to tally each animal's neurons.

Plants in the genus Pisonia don't appear to be particularly menacing. The trees lack the thorns of acacia, the poisonous fruit of the manchineel tree and the botanical jaws of Venus flytraps. But Pisonia trees, which are found from Hawaii and New Zealand all the way to India, have a dark secret. Search among their roots and you're likely to find ga...

Dogs are a weird bunch. They range in size from bearish behemoths like Newfoundlands to pipsqueaks like Milly, a Chihuahua who measures less than 4 inches tall and holds the Guinness record for World's Shortest Dog.

For 10 years, the world's last known Sehuencas water frog, named Romeo, lived alone in captivity in a Bolivian museum. Repeated expeditions by biologists into the nation's cloud forests, the only place the amphibians exist, had turned up no new specimens. The once-plentiful frogs had been all but wiped out by a killer fungus, widespread habitat los...

Most people try to stay far away from hissing cockroaches, desert hairy scorpions, and venomous, six-eyed sand spiders. Not the team of thieves that hit the Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion over four days in late August.

Just a few decades ago, the California sea lion seemed on the verge of becoming an endangered species. It was 1964, and hunting and fishing had caused the breeding population off the West Coast to shrink to just 35,000.

Cat people and dog people have long sparred over which species possesses the best brains. But according to a new study published in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy, the best way to measure cognitive ability is to tally each animal's neurons.

Plants in the genus Pisonia don't appear to be particularly menacing. The trees lack the thorns of acacia, the poisonous fruit of the manchineel tree and the botanical jaws of Venus flytraps. But Pisonia trees, which are found from Hawaii and New Zealand all the way to India, have a dark secret. Search among their roots and you're likely to find ga...