A 24-year-old woman died after falling 120 feet from the Kalugumalai Ucchi Pillayar temple hilltop in Tamil Nadu, India. She panicked when a group of monkeys surrounded her after she fed them, causing her to fall.
Irish band Bleech 9:3 channels their experiences with addiction and recovery into raw, autofictional music. Frontman Barry Quinlan and guitarist Sam Duffy, both in Alcoholics Anonymous, share their journey from personal struggles to a burgeoning music career with major label interest and festival dates.
Nigerian biologist Iroro Tanshi rediscovered the short-tailed roundleaf bat, believed extinct since the 1970s, in Nigeria's Afi mountain wildlife sanctuary. Her work combats deforestation, hunting, and wildfires threatening bat populations.
The CTBC Brothers and Rakuten Monkeys played to a 9-9 draw in a dramatic 12-inning game. The Monkeys took a 3-run lead in the top of the 12th, but the Brothers fought back to tie. However, a baserunning error by Lin Rui-Chun in the bottom of the 12th cost the Brothers a chance to win.
A Costa Rican court has ordered the state electricity company and the Ministry of Environment to implement measures to prevent wildlife electrocutions on uninsulated power lines. The ruling follows a campaign by conservation groups after hundreds of animals, primarily howler monkeys, were electrocuted in 2025.
Costa Rican nonprofit Costas Verdes has restored deforested Pacific coastlines by planting over 100,000 native trees across 34 beaches since 2011, reviving wildlife habitats and combating deforestation from cattle farming.
Thousands of pet monkeys in the UK face being put down due to new stringent licensing laws requiring "zoo-like" conditions. Owners like Lisa-Marie Bearman fear they cannot meet the requirements, potentially leading to a "mass euthanasia" of primates.
Researchers at the Rock of Gibraltar have documented macaques increasingly eating soil, a behaviour that may help the monkeys avoid stomach upset from consuming human snacks like chocolate, crisps and ice cream provided by tourists. The study found soil-eating was more common in monkey groups that consumed more tourist food, which is high in sugar, fat and dairy but low in fibre. The researchers propose that soil acts as a natural antacid to buffer negative effects of human food on the macaques' digestive systems.
Research from Cambridge University reveals that Gibraltar's macaque monkeys have learned to eat soil to counteract digestive issues caused by junk food stolen from or offered by tourists. Scientists observed 46 dirt-eating events across 98 observation days, noting that the behaviour increases during peak holiday season. The soil acts as a protective barrier in the digestive tract and provides beneficial bacteria, while the monkeys' natural diet consists of herbs, leaves, seeds and insects.
Research indicates that Gibraltar's macaques have learned to eat soil to soothe digestive upset caused by consuming junk food stolen from or fed by tourists. The behavior appears to be a culturally learned adaptation to mitigate the negative effects of high-calorie human snacks.
Monkeys in Gibraltar have learned to eat soil to settle their stomachs from all the junk food they consume, research suggests.
