What's the point of kissing? What biological function can a make-out session have? Or is it an evolutionary function? These are questions that are unlikely to cross your mind while watching Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in that iconic scene from From there to eternity. But this is the question that some Oxford scientists asked themselves, leading them to investigate the kissing history of some animal species, especially primates. Because humans aren't the only ones who kiss: ants, birds, and polar bears do it too, to name a few. We're talking about kissing on the mouth, an action to which we attribute a romantic component that science seems to have trouble understanding, since—according to the new study—this action "doesn't appear to aid survival or reproduction in any obvious way, while the potential costs of transferring a disease are high." The very definition these Oxford scientists use strips away all the romanticism: kissing is "non-aggressive interactions involving directed, intraspecific oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no transfer of food."

A day of mourning at Barcelona Zoo. Susi, the park's oldest African elephant and one of the oldest in Europe, passed away this Friday. She was estimated to be over 55 years old, exceeding the average lifespan of elephants in captivity, which is 39 years. Susi had been at the zoo for 23 and a half years after a difficult life. As a young elephant, she had been captured in the wild to be exhibited in a circus, and before arriving at Barcelona Zoo, she had been at the Safari Park Vergel in Alicante. As a result of Susi's death, the zoo will remain closed this Friday.

In 1975, following a conference on recombinant DNA in Asilomar, California, a moratorium—self-imposed and widely accepted by experts—came into effect to allow time to assess the risks of the new technology, which for the first time allowed the mixing of genetic material from different species, thus creating modified organisms. The potential applications were fabulous, as was the possibility of generating unimaginable disasters. It was necessary to carefully consider the consequences of using the knowledge that had been acquired and to agree on minimum regulations that everyone could follow.

Residents of Normanby, a town in the east of the United Kingdom, have been warning for some time that they are living with rats "the size of cats." Specifically, a pest control worker captured a 56-centimeter-long rat inside a home at the end of July, and after authorities responded to the residents' concerns, Normanby councilors have confirmed the worst: this is not an isolated case.

After spending at least three days tied up and locked in an abandoned car on Tor Mountain, in Pallars Sobirà, four dogs were freed and taken to a private facility in the municipality, awaiting transfer to an animal shelter. According to sources from the Rural Agents corps, the operation to free the animals was launched this Tuesday after a resident of the municipality called 112 that the animals had been locked inside the vehicle for several days.

The hours before a fire is declared under control are long and agonizing, but it is when the flames are extinguished that a long-distance race begins to revive life from the ashes. In the case of the Paüls forest fire (Baix Ebre)A third of the burned land is part of the Els Ports Natural Park, an area of high ecological value. The flames scorched more than 2,360 hectares of forest, of which more than a thousand are part of this protected area; a system with great biodiversity, home to hundreds of animal and plant species. What has been done in the wake of this fire?

There are chimpanzees that wounds are healed with medicinal herbs. Meerkats have local traditions depending on the group to which they belong, just like the Argentine parrots, which In Madrid they nest in cedars, but in Barcelona they prefer palm trees. Humpback whales learn songs that they modify, sperm whales vary their dialect depending on the area, and orcas coordinate to produce the waves that cause seals to fall off the ice floes. Even invertebrates acquire knowledge and transmit it to their communities. For example, Fruit flies tell their offspring their sexual preferences.

Under Paulina's desk at the Purina (Nestle) offices isn't just her backpack. At her feet, lying on a gray blanket with a bowl of food within reach, is her apple, Luna. This is the third time Luna and she have spent the workday together: they enter through the main door together, take the elevator together, sit at the table together, attend meetings together, and leave together during breaks (now walks) and at lunchtime. And Luna isn't alone: she's one of the 120 dogs allowed into the company's offices in Esplugues de Llobregat.

The cameras that the Rural Agents have spread throughout Catalonia have allowed them to detect a situation that until now was unusual: an Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) in the wild in Catalonia. The discovery comes a year after the lynx was moved from endangered to vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.

The local police of Roda de Berà, in Tarragonès, have arrested a 47-year-old man for continuously sexually assaulting five animals on two farms in the municipality and even causing the death of a sheep. The arrest took place this Wednesday for a crime of animal abuse, although the investigation dates back to the end of 2022. It was then that the owner of one of the two farms alerted that two of her animals had serious injuries to their genitals.

Despite starring in many legends and folk tales, in the first third of the 20th century wolves disappeared from Catalan forests and mountains. Yet in the year 2000 it managed a comeback in the Pyrenees, after a very long journey from Italy, through the Alps and across France. Within the framework of the European project LoupO, the Catalan nature rangers are tasked with monitoring on the field and currently have detected four males living in Catalonia. Two of them were located some time ago –one in Ripollès and one in Port del Comte–, but there are two more that have been confirmed recently: one has settled in the region of Moianès and the other in Alta Ribagorça. The wolf monitoring coordinator, Gabriel Lampreave, emphasises that it is an animal that is very afraid of humans and, therefore, "there is no danger to people". However, with its return, the nightmares for shepherds and their herds, who are wolves' main victims, have also returned. "The administration compensates you for any animals lost, but this does not compensate you for all the losses you have suffered," laments a livestock farmer from Odèn (Solsonès), Florenci Serra, who after losing 150 animals had to switch from sheep to cattle to prevent the farm from going under.

The announcement comes from 2014: Barcelona will fine dog owners who walk their dogs off the leash outside the designated areas. The problem was, then, that these spaces were scarce, small and poorly adapted to the needs of animals. Therefore, the amendment of the ordinance for the protection and possession of animals that included these new penalties came into force linked to a moratorium: until there were enough spaces enabled there would be no fines for carrying pets off leash. Now the city already has 113 recreational areas for dogs, 41 of them over 400 square meters, but has not yet deployed the so-called shared-use areas (ZUC), which are those spaces where, in certain time slots, dogs can walk off leash and without the limitation of any fence, whether parks, streets or squares. It has to define one in each neighbourhood -a total of 73-, but the subject is dragging from the last term, when there were tensions between the municipal government and the entities representing dog owners due to some of the proposals, which animal rights advocates considered insufficient. Now the political guardianship of the project has changed hands and has corresponded to the socialist Laia Bonet, who inherited the list and today has explained in committee that some of these proposed spaces, which have not been made public, are now occupied by extraordinary school uses due to the new needs of the pandemic.