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

Berlin likes to honour its animal legends. Knautschke was the name of the city's beloved hippopotamus – a brave creature born in Berlin's zoo at the height of the Second World War, he survived the trauma of the Allied air raids which killed his mother.

The boy, who was visiting the zoo with his mother and friends, fell about 14 feet into an exhibit that's home to a pack of African painted dogs