Meek and mighty animal sounds are all around us. In a few weeks, some of the most interesting among them will be discussed and heard at the largest meeting ever devoted to acoustical science, the Acoustics '08 Paris meeting, to be held Monday June 30 through Friday July 4 at the Palais de Congrès in Paris, France.

Biologists at Harvard University have determined that some African frogs carry concealed weapons: When threatened, these species puncture their own skin with sharp bones in their toes, using the bones as claws capable of wounding predators.

For the first time, researchers have shown that the pre-hatching calls of baby Nile crocodiles actually mean something to their siblings and to their mothers.

Researchers have found that female red squirrels showed high levels of multimale mating and would even mate with males that had similar genetic relatedness, basically mating with their relatives.

The world's only known hairy-nosed otter in captivity, one of the rarest and little known of otter species, got a new home and a Buddhist blessing today.

Why bother running on hind legs when the four you've been given work perfectly well? This is the question that puzzles Christofer Clemente. For birds and primates, there's a perfectly good answer: birds have converted their forelimbs into wings, and primates have better things to do with their hands.

A large genetic study of the extinct woolly mammoth has revealed that the species was not one large homogenous group, as scientists previously had assumed, and that it did not have much genetic diversity.

Researchers of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research have developed two new methods, in order to be able to better estimate the numbers of European Otters (Lutra lutra) and their effects on the fish farming industry.

Thousands of toads appeared on the streets in one Chinese town days before it hit. Zoo animals started acting strangely hours before the worst earthquake in China’s history. Could these signs have been used to alert people something was about to happen?

Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History and Pennsylvania’s Villanova University have discovered a new family of gecko, the charismatic large-eyed lizard popularized by car insurance commercials.

Rats housed in standard conditions show a stronger response to the loss of an expected food reward than those housed in enriched conditions, perhaps indicating a more negative emotional state, according to new research by scientists at Bristol University Veterinary School, published in this week's issue of Royal Society Biology Letters.

A nine-year-old Tasmanian boy is hoping for a big response to 'Black-and-White, Save the Tasmanian Devil Day' project, which aims to raise funds to save endangered Tasmanian Devil.