My big brother invited me to the zoo this week so I'd have something to put in my column for The Independent. That, and also to help him look after his children. I've got two nieces and a nephew or two nephews and a niece, and I've read enough newspaper articles and Roald Dahl books over the years to know that these people need to be protected when they are near things like hippos and toucans. The last thing I want to do is make up some excuse about having to wallpaper my toilet and then later learn that my niece was pecked by a flamingo because I wasn't there.

The Independent columnist and novelist Howard Jacobson is celebrating becoming the first writer to claim the UK's only prize for comic fiction for a second time.

A worldwide appeal has been launched to find a mate for the last remaining males of a fish on the brink of extinction. The Mangarahara cichlid, from Madagascar, is believed to have vanished from the wild as a result of the building of dams on the Mangarahara River.

Sam Masters

Panda experts say Tian Tian was showing signs that were not 'conducive to mating'

Edinburgh Zoo hopes Tian Tian and Yang Guang will mate for the first time within days

It's almost boring: yet another excellent British Sea Power album.

A bird-brained philosophy of science

Remember ant farms? Two sheets of glass filled with earth and topped off with a cartoon rendering of a Midwestern cattle ranch? In my experience, they seemed to offer a matchless way for a budding entomologist to study the process by which live ants turn into dead ones – or, just occasionally, how excitable human matriarchs can become when the ant colony breaks free and heads across the kitchen for the sugar bag. Having watched Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony, though, I can see that these rudimentary affairs barely deserved the name of ant farm.

'Luna' will be formally named in Facebook contest

Gervais's latest addition to his comedy menagerie grates more than it amuses

If you haven't seen it yet and want to feel all Christmassy, here's a video of a dog adopting orphaned tiger cubs.

Avian pox, which has spread among woodpigeons and house sparrows for a number of years, is now taking its toll of populations of the great tit

The alleged abuse of elephants at Twycross Zoo should make us consider once more the role zoos play in animal conservation