Wondering how my local beach fared after a hot day with lots of human activity, I took my dogs for a run and did a spot of rubbish collecting along the shore and rock pools.

Resembling a fierce ancestor of the Loch Ness monster, the first fossil of a shark-like reptile has been found.

Humans have been doing a lot of terrible stuff to each other lately. Some of us are evil bastards, but as a species I reckon we're generally pretty good.

Sharks enjoying the surf at a popular Coromandel holiday spot caused a bit of a stir with beachgoers yesterday.

Cats are never around when you want them most.

Andrew and Fleur the cats were rescued by the SPCA from a house overrun by animals.

Sadie was found in a paddock of horses.

A shortage of sheep north of Auckland has placed Kaikohe's shearing competition under pressure - but organisers are confident they can make it click.

A sea lion's aggressive behaviour forced about 40 swimmers to retreat from the water at St Kilda Beach yesterday afternoon.

Losing our native species is not an inevitability but a choice - and one that could hurt New Zealand in more ways than we realise.

Five months ago, Juno came home from the SPCA to join Gerard and Liz Buckley and their two cats, Charlotte and Zeus.

This is a true underdog story, a young brother and sister duo from the foothills of Richmond.

It's party time for pests, and some holidaymakers are returning to find uninvited, hungry house-sitters lurking at home.

Thousands of people have again levelled contempt at Texas cheerleader Kendall Jones over an online competition she set up to find the "hottest" male hunter.

On Labour Weekend this year, Ashley Schomaker decided to make the holiday a memorable one.

New figures show ACC paid $49.1 million in compensation for more than 107,000 animal-related incidents in the past two years.

The mine-strewn border between Iran and Iraq has become an unlikely sanctuary for one of the world's most endangered species of leopard.

Smokey the goat was never a likely best friend for Madelaine Young's retriever poodle, Teddy.

Two youths have been charged after police found 22 sheep crammed in a van in Gisborne this morning.

Chow Chow dogs, painted and dyed to look like panda bears, have been seized from an Italian circus.

The move to grant an orang-utan in Argentina some legal rights enjoyed by humans could open the floodgates to thousands of similar cases.

A newly discovered beetle has been named after television naturalist Sir David Attenborough.

There are aliens living amongst us, not little green men but foreign animal species from ecosystems far away, writes Sally Hibbard.

An Argentine court has granted "habeas corpus" to a female orangutan at the Buenos Aires Zoo and recognised basic rights for her as a "non-human individual" to live in semi-freedom with other large primates.

A rare native bird has been released back into the wild a month on from a stormy rescue by a Hamilton police officer.

An Auckland woman who kept 50 cats living in disgusting conditions with serious infections and ailments has been sentenced for her neglect.

The firefighter who rescued a kitten trapped in the dashboard of a Tauranga car has been described as the "finest cat whisperer".