Please Do Not Annoy, torment, pester, plague, molest, worry, badger, harry, persecute, irk, bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate, beset, bother, tease, nettle, tantalize or ruffle the Animals.--sign at zoo

Since the early days of traveling menageries and staged attractions that included animal acts, balloon ascents, and pyrotechnic displays, zoos have come a long way. The Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris, founded in 1793, didn't offer its great apes lessons in parenting or perform dental surgery on leopards. Certainly the introduction of veterinary care in the nineteenth...

Though the pygmy hippopotamus has been designated as a flagship species of West African forests (meaning that by raising conservation efforts for a single species, an entire ecological region could benefit), very little research has been published on the animal. They are solitary, nocturnal, and highly evasive, and until recent developments in "camera trap" technology, they were considered the least-photographed large mammal species in the world. The information currently available on this endangered species is scattered, limited, redundant, and often inaccurate, and no major volume exists as...