Research - ZooReviews

Research

News and information bout research projects led by zoological facilities across Africa & the Middle East

Two aquarium staff crouch in a shallow holding pool, one wearing a head torch, working on a spotted gully shark held at the surface.

Africa & Middle East

Four Sharks Outgrew the Exhibit and Left Wearing Tags

Mr Zoo News

Palm forest on Silhouette Island, slender trunks and young palm fronds over a floor of fallen leaves.

Africa & Middle East

A Tree Down to Five Was Flowering and Fruiting

October 30, 2026

A Western leopard toad sits in a pair of cupped human hands, its back marked with dark brown patches outlined in bright yellow.

Africa & Middle East

A Million Photographs, and 130 Toads Under One Road

Three dorcas gazelles rest and stand among pale rocks beneath an eroded desert cliff in the Negev, two of them looking directly at the camera with their lyre-shaped horns raised.

Africa & Middle East

Israel Counted 1,387 Gazelles in the Negev

Six bonobos sit along two felled logs fitted with metal puzzle boxes at Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary, several of them holding thin sticks used to reach food inside the puzzles.

Africa & Middle East

Bonobos Are Being Watched to See Who Copies Whom

At Lola ya Bonobo, the world’s only bonobo sanctuary, a team of researchers ...

A pair of bar charts titled Predict context in elephants from EB family and Predict context in non-EB elephants. Teal, yellow and orange bars show classification accuracy between roughly 0.19 and 0.46 for single rumbles, chorus to chorus and single to chorus tests, each bar rising above a dashed predicted distribution baseline and marked with one, two or three asterisks for statistical significance.

Africa & Middle East

Oakland Zoo Helped Pay for the Elephant Chorus Study

When several elephants rumble at the same time, the overlapping sound is not ...

Africa & Middle East

Nigeria’s Conservation PhD Grant Is Open Until December

The Nigerian Conservation Foundation has opened applications for the 2027 edition of the ...

A fallen tree trunk lying across a muddy forest track with long strips of bark torn away, exposing pale wet wood, with researchers working in the vegetation behind it.

Africa & Middle East

What Mount Elgon’s Elephants Eat When They Are Sick

Eight people who have spent their lives around the elephants of Mount Elgon ...

A Cheetah Conservation Fund handler stands on a sand track beside a seated scat detection dog, next to a game fence in rural Namibia.

Africa & Middle East

The Cheetah Count Just Dropped Below 7,000

For years the Cheetah Conservation Fund has said the same sentence: fewer than ...

A lioness stands on a low rock in dry thornbush scrub in the Tsavo Conservation Area of southeastern Kenya, in late afternoon light.

Africa & Middle East

Two Villages, One Decline, Two Explanations

Ask twelve villages around the Serengeti whether there is less bushmeat around than ...

Salima Niyigena stands at a wood-panelled podium gesturing toward a large screen that shows her presentation title slide, which reads 'Oral processing behaviors of golden monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis spp. kandti) from the Volcanoes National park in Rwanda' above a photograph of three golden monkeys on a rocky slope.

Africa & Middle East

The Rwandan Scientist Studying How Golden Monkeys Chew

Salima Niyigena studies how golden monkeys chew. In September she took that work ...

A single African wild dog standing alone on bare ground in dry golden bush, head turned back over its shoulder, with no other dogs in sight.

Africa & Middle East

A Wild Dog Walked 4,126 Kilometers and Found No Mate

Three African wild dogs left their pack in Zambia’s Kafue National Park in ...

A bull elephant with very long curved tusks standing on green grass at the edge of a muddy waterway, with storks and egrets spread along the far bank and a buffalo in the background.

Africa & Middle East

Tsavo Built 13 Sand Dams Instead of Boreholes

Putting water into a dry place looks like the simplest conservation decision there ...

A lioness walks from right to left across short dry red-brown grass in low golden light, with open scrub and bare ground stretching to a flat horizon behind her.

Africa & Middle East

Tsavo’s Six Cats, and the Zoo Money That Is Not Theirs

Tsavo holds six wild cat species. Three have population baselines, three have none, ...

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