The plant Cannabis sativa is an herbaceous flowering annual that was originally native to central and eastern Asia. It has been cultivated throughout recorded history as a source of fiber for fabric and rope, seed oil, animal feed, and medicine. Evidence exists that some ancient...

When Babur, the great conqueror and founder of the Mughal Empire, first entered India with his armies in the 16th century, he was not impressed by how people dressed. The climate and landscape of the Indian subcontinent were very different to that of Samarqand (in...

The Serengeti ecosystem is regarded as one of our planet’s greatest natural treasures, where one can witness“the largest remaining unaltered animal migration in the world,” according to UNESCO. ...

Editor’s note: This article was originally published as “Gottfried Mind, The Raphael of Cats,” on The Public Domain Review under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. If you wish to reuse it, please see https://publicdomainreview.org/reusing-material/. ...

I saw macaques for the first time along the river’s edge on the island of Borneo in 1983. I was in a boat with scientist and conservationist Dr. Biruté Galdikas on our way to the orangutan rehabilitation and research site she established on the island....

The sight and sound of a bumblebee or a honey bee buzzing from flower to flower in an alpine meadow or a roadside planting is calming to many, yet it invokes outright panic in others. This happens frequently in Western cultures, where we usually reach...

While in Delhi late one evening, on the drive back to the hotel after a terrific meal in a Kashmiri restaurant, our taxi stopped at a traffic light in the middle of a congested and major intersection. The air is less than salubrious, thick with...

Birdsongs have inspired poets and lovers, becoming one of the philosophical focal points in ancient Greece and Rome. They have also led to several long-ago debates about the relationship between birdsong and human language. ...

The popularity of support animals attests to the mental health benefits of bonding with a pet, such as decreased stress, anxiety, and loneliness. According to the Mayo Clinic, having pets may also positively impact cardiovascular health and blood pressure control. ...

For the nonhuman animal cause, the 19th century’s end would bring to a close a defining period—a transformative 30-year era beginning in 1866, with the founding of the first animal welfare society. It is a story of activism and activists like George Thorndike Angell,...