An endangered Philippine eagle, one of only a few hundred left in the world, has been shot dead, a conservation group that had previously rescued the bird said Friday.

The two-year-old female raptor was found last month with a bullet embedded in its carcass in a forest in the southern island of Mindanao, according to Dennis Salvador, head of the Philippine Eagle Foundation.

Villagers who found the carcass -- which had been tagged with a radio transmitter by the foundation -- turned it over to Salvador's group this week, he told AFP.

Some male crickets will apparently put the lives of their mating partners ahead of their own. When a mated pair is out together, a male will allow a female priority access to the safety of a burrow, even though it means a dramatic increase in his own risk of being eaten. That's according to infrared video observations of a wild population of field crickets (Gryllus campestris) reported online on October 6 the Cell Press journal Current Biology.

Scientists present the largest distribution data compilation ever on butterflies of an entire continent. The Germany based Society for the Conservation of Butterflies and Moths GfS ("Gesellschaft für Schmetterlingsschutz"), the German Nature Conservation Association NABU ("Naturschutzbund Deutschland") and the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) are delighted to announce the publication of the „Distribution Atlas of Butterflies in Europe".

The atlas was initiated by Otakar Kudrna and is a result of the joint efforts of a team of authors, led by him. It contains full colour distribution maps of all 441 European butterfly species.

Culling will not control the spread of facial tumour disease among Tasmanian devils, according to a new study published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. Unless a way of managing the disease is found, the iconic marsupial could become extinct in the wild within the next 25 years.

Testing and culling infected animals is widely used to control disease in livestock, but its use in wild animals is controversial.

The nine-spotted ladybug, New York's official state insect, was feared to be extinct in this state until citizen scientists rallied to Cornell's call to help look for it. Several nine-spotted ladybugs were spotted by citizen scientists on Long Island this summer.

"The nine-spotted ladybug was once one of the most common ladybugs in the United States, and it was so revered in New York for its role in suppressing pests that it was named the official state insect in 1989," said John Losey, associate professor of entomology at Cornell and director of the Lost Ladybug Project.

For one species of seabird in the Galápagos, the child abuse "cycle of violence" found in humans plays out in the wild.

The new study of Nazca boobies by Wake Forest University researchers provides the first evidence from the animal world showing those who are abused when they are young often grow up to be abusers. The study appears in the October issue of the ornithology journal, The Auk.

"We were surprised by the intense interest that many adults show in unrelated young, involving really rough treatment," said Wake Forest Professor of Biology Dave Anderson, who led the study with Wake Forest graduate student Martina Müller. "A bird's history as a target of abuse proved to be a strong predictor of its adult behavior."

UWA Institute of Agriculture has discovered that sheep, despite having a cultural reputation for being unintelligent, have excellent memories.

Head of School for Animal Biology Winthrop Professor Graeme Martin says sheep are able to memorise the faces of up to 50 sheep and recognise them two years later.

Sheep use this capacity for long-term face recognition to distinguish between flocks and learn which sheep in their own flock are friendly and which are aggressive—this helps sheep position themselves within their flock’s dominance hierarchy.

It was a case of a besotted male and beer. Love-sick and lonely, the male girded his loins and took immediate action to relieve his unhappiness – but with a surprising outcome, as a U of T Mississauga professor discovered.

The male in question, an Australian jewel beetle (Julodimorpha bakewelli), became so enamored with a brown "stubby" beer bottle that he tried to mate with it – so vigorously that he died trying to copulate in the hot sun rather than leave willingly, says Professor Darryl Gwynne of biology, an international expert in behavioural ecology, specifically the evolution of reproductive behaviour.

Fruit fly aggression is correlated with smaller brain parts, involves complex interactions between networks of important genes, and often cannot be controlled with mood-altering drugs like lithium.

Those are the results of a painstaking study conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University and colleagues in Belgium who are trying to discover what happens in the genes and brains of hyper-aggressive flies and how that differs from what takes place in more passive fly cousins.

In the animal world, males typically search for their female partners. The mystery is that in some species, you get a reversal -- the females search for males.

A new study of katydids in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B -- co-authored by U of T Mississauga professor Darryl Gwynne -- supports a theory that females will search if males offer a lot more than just sperm.

"In this beast [in this study], it's a big cheesy, gooey substance that the male ejects when he copulates," says Gwynne. "It's attached to his sperm packet, so while she's being inseminated, she can reach back and grab this mating gift and eat it."