Sammy is a wildlife-loving Environmental Scientist and Conservationist, traveler, photographer, and adventure seeker. She's been all over the US and across the world to study and work with wildlife. She wants to save the world.
It may be hard to believe, but Canada Geese were once on the brink of extinction. Just 80 years ago, the wildly vocal birds were presumed extinct in the United States due to overhunting. Miraculously, a small flock was spotted in Rochester, Minnesota, and scientists came together to conserve the tiny population that remained. Soon […] More
An African Bush Camp guide and his guests witnessed quite a spectacular event on a game drive in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe: a wild dog playing dead to escape the jaws of a lioness. A pack of wild dogs were relaxing after a recent kudu feast when they were spotted by a hungry lioness, recalled […] More
Talk about a bizarre finding: Genetics have confirmed that an animal killed by a Greenland hunter in the 1980’s was a narwhal-beluga whale hybrid, and they’ve dubbed it a “narluga.” The animal’s skull had been sitting in a museum collection at the Natural History Museum of Denmark for nearly 3 decades before a DNA analysis […] More
One of the most breathtaking and incredible migrations on the planet is made by a creature you might not expect: the monarch butterfly. It is a sight to behold. Unable to survive the cold winters of North America, millions of these incredible butterflies travel 50-100 miles a day to reach the forests of central Mexico at […] More
What kind of creature is this? A wriggling aquatic centipede? Some sort of misshapen, possessed caterpillar? Nope. This is a bearded fireworm, and you really don’t want to touch it. Every so often, fishermen accidentally bring one of these guys up from the depths. The creatures writhe around on the deck as the anglers look […] More
Off the coast of Liberia lies an island inhabited solely by chimpanzees that were infected with a barrage of diseases and abandoned there by a testing lab. It sounds like the beginning of a movie, but there’s nothing fictional about this place. New visitors to “Monkey Island”—as it’s called by locals—are unwelcome. Apart from a […] More
Forget the reindeer decorations — folks in some parts of the world adorn their Christmas trees with spider ornaments, instead. The unusual arachnid ornaments are part of a centuries-old Eastern European Christmas tradition. The legend of the Christmas spider is believed to have originated in Ukraine, and according to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, […] More
Christmas Island, a tiny Australian territory in the middle of the Indian Ocean, has a bit of a crab problem. An estimated 40 to 50 million Christmas Island crabs reside on this 52 square mile island. In comparison, the human population there is only about 2,000. Each year, these fire-engine red crustaceans make their way […] More
Early humans roamed the planet with a colossal shaggy rhinoceros that scientists have dubbed the “Siberian unicorn.” The so-called unicorn, officially known as Elasmotherium sibericum, was a large rhinoceros that wandered Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 2.6 million years ago until just around 39,000 years ago. The animals weighed a staggering 4 tons and were adorned […] More
The iconic tusked elephant may soon be a thing of the past, say researchers. Male African elephants’ tusks are smaller than in the past, and many females are missing them altogether due to years of intense poaching pressure. Because individuals with the largest tusks have been targeted by poachers for so long, their genetics are […] More
Sperm whales are so loud that their clicks are capable of killing a human within their vicinity, says one science and adventure journalist. James Nestor, an avid ocean-goer and author, claimed in a recent presentation that a fellow diver was swimming alongside a pod of sperm whales when one approached him out of curiosity. He put […] More
If you thought crocodiles were intimidating, you might be horrified to know that an aggressive, 9-ft-long crocodilian predator once patrolled its North American hunting grounds on hind legs, snacking on small mammals and reptiles. Carnufex carolinensis — also known as the “Carolina Butcher” — existed long before the dinosaurs rose to dominance, roughly 230 million years ago. The […] More
