Death did not sneak up on Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, who was put to sleep on Monday after a months-long battle with a number of health complications. He was 45, and there will never be another animal quite like him.
The health of the world’s last male northern white rhino, Sudan, is rapidly declining, bringing the subspecies’ inevitable extinction closer to a reality. Even as scientists and conservationists work on an ambitious in vitro fertilization effort, there’s little reason for hope that the 45-year-old Sudan and his two…
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already visited Wakanda—maybe two or three times during Black Panther’s record-breaking opening weekend. Otherwise, I know you wouldn’t want to spoil your upcoming trip by reading the incredible conversation The Glow Up had with the film’s production designer, Hannah…
For Ryan Coogler, Black Panther was an opportunity to wrestle with questions he’s been dealing with his entire life.
Ornithologist Wulf Gatter spent six days a week observing birds in the forest of Liberia, the West African country. He spotted one seen nowhere else, a medium-sized yellow songbird, on nine occasions during the county’s annual dry season lasting from November to February. It looked quite similar to another species,…
Climate change might not feel that important if you’re living far away from a coastline. But that doesn’t mean your life won’t change. Lots of the items people love will likely be influenced by the changing climate in some way, and the popular Ethiopian coffee is a prime example.
The remains of five early Homo sapiens have been unearthed at a site in northwest Africa. At around 300,000 years old, the fossils are a whopping 100,000 years older than the previous record, pushing back the origin of our species by a significant margin. And because the fossils were uncovered in Morocco—far from the…
Humans are at war. They’re at war with each other, they’re at war with themselves, and some are at war with elephants. Researchers want to know how humans and the long-snooted aggressors can live in peace.
Astronomy needs expensive things, and lots of them. You might remember that astronomers almost literally turned the Earth into a telescope just to see a black hole, by combining lots of existing radio telescope dishes.
In 1898, a pair of lions feasted on the most fearsome of predators: humans. Some think they could have killed 135 people constructing a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya, though research lowered that number down to 35 human lunches between the pair.
A pastor and independent miner in Sierra Leone has unearthed an uncut 706-carat diamond estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. The pastor turned the diamond over to the government in hopes that the proceeds from its sale will help the impoverished country. But given the history of this former…
A coalition of officials met in Zimbabwe this month to discuss a little pest that has become a big problem. The fall armyworm has spread through Africa over the course of the last year and it has had devastating effects on crops. Experts fear that globalization and climate change are setting the caterpillar up to…
A newly-discovered peatland in the Congo Basin of central Africa contains an estimated 30.6 billion tons of carbon in its waterlogged soils—equivalent to three times the total annual carbon emissions of every human being alive today.
Dr. Kwadwo Safo is, according to his own legend, many things. He is a Pentecostal pastor. He is an inventor. Now he claims to be Ghana’s first carmaker as well. Over the past year, his Kantanka Automobile Company has made international news with its vehicles, mature industrial products emerging fully realized from a…
Will Burrard-Lucas likes to photograph unsuspecting African animals with strategically placed camera traps. For his latest project, the wildlife photographer sought to capture images of nocturnal animals as they conduct their affairs at night, and the results are spectacular.
If you like jigsaws, you’d love to be on the team at the European Space Agency that created this image. Made up of 7,000 separate files—totalling 32 TB of data—the picture provides a completely cloud-free view of the whole of Africa.
New research shows that temperatures are set to skyrocket in parts of the Middle East and Africa, making human habitation next to impossible. In a region that’s home to 500 million people, that could trigger a climate-exodus of epic proportions.
Earlier today, Kenya set ablaze 105 tons of stockpiled ivory in a measure designed to discourage the poaching of elephants and rhinoceros in the country. The blaze is the biggest of its kind in history.
CNN reports that a piece of plane wreckage found off Mozambique in southeastern Africa likely belongs to lost plane Malaysia Airlines 370.
This plain-looking silicone ring is more useful than it looks. Doped with an experimental antiretroviral drug, when worn in the vagina by women in sub-Saharan Africa it was shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by as much as 61 percent.
