Cat

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

A mountain lion was struck and killed by a vehicle Friday in the Santa Monica Mountains, not far from where her mother was killed in a 2018 crash, the National Park Service said.

Thirteen genetic variants associated with disease in cats are present in more pedigreed breeds than previously thought, according to the largest ever DNA-based study of domestic cats, led by Heidi Anderson from Wisdom Panel in the United States and colleagues from the University of Helsinki in Finland. However, these variants are declining in frequency in breeds that are regularly screened for the genetic markers. The results are publishing June 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics.

Predation by feral cats is putting the critically endangered Kangaroo Island dunnart—a small, mouse-sized marsupial found only on the Kangaroo Island off South Australia—to the brink of extinction. The study, published in Scientific Reports, highlights the urgent need to protect vulnerable species from feral cat predation, particularly following natural disasters such as bushfires.

A fossilized lower jaw has led an international team of paleontologists, headed by Bastien Mennecart from the Natural History Museum Basel, to discover a new species of predator that once lived in Europe. These large predators belong to a group of carnivores colloquially known as "bear dogs." They could weigh around 320 kilograms and appeared 36 million years ago before becoming extinct around 7.5 million years ago.