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Louisiana woman faces charges after 17 cats found dead in extreme-heat conditions

Madison Rebecca Colello, 29, surrenders after 20 other cats in severe distress rescued from business in town of Walker

A Louisiana woman faces dozens of animal cruelty charges after 17 cats were found dead at a local business amid dangerously hot conditions without food or water, with 20 other cats in severe distress being rescued.

Madison Rebecca Colello, 29, surrendered on Thursday morning at the Livingston parish detention center in Walker, Louisiana. She faces 17 felony counts of aggravated animal cruelty – in connection with the dead cats – and 37 misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty.

Fat Bear Week has returned – and the salmon are swimming for their lives

The public will, for the 12th year in a row, vote for the fattest of brown bears in Alaska’s Katmai national park

The bears have returned to the river and are packing on the pounds as another Fat Bear Week begins at Katmai national park.

The 12th annual Fat Bear Week, in which the public will vote for the fattest of Katmai’s brown bears as mothers, cubs and males gather along the salmon-run at Brooks river in Alaska begins on Monday.

Louisiana firefighters find feline native to sub-Saharan Africa while responding to house fire

The African serval, illegally enclosed in the back yard, was subdued and transferred to an animal welfare facility

Louisiana firefighters responding to a small house blaze found a wildcat native to sub-Saharan Africa illegally enclosed in the back yard, prompting an animal welfare agency to seek placing the creature in an appropriate environment, according to officials.

Firefighters investigating a report of a minor fire at a home in the suburban New Orleans community of Marrero on Tuesday spotted the cat in question – an African serval – behind the residence in a chain-linked enclosure resembling a cramped baseball batting cage, a spokesperson for the local animal protection services said.

Week in wildlife: swimming pigs, circling sharks and a fox on the cricket pitch

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

New cat species identified for first time in more than a century in Bolivia

New species of wild feline was discovered in Bolivia’s Yungas forest that is smaller than the average domestic ⁠cat

A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia’s ⁠cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living feline species has been formally named and described in more than a century.

The cat, called tilcayo by local communities, is part of a group called tiger ⁠cats found across much of South ⁠America. It was found in Bolivia’s ​lush Yungas forest, a mountainous region where forests are often covered by clouds and surrounded by high humidity, according to researchers. It measures about 18in (46cm) long and weighs about 3lb (1.4kg), making it smaller than the average domestic ⁠cat.

‘Like a Disney movie’: Three wild dog brothers make Africa’s longest journey

As three siblings came of age and had to leave their pack, scientists tracked the dogs’ perilous 2,500-mile odyssey to find their own territory

It sounds like a Disney movie: three wild dogs, all brothers, on an epic journey to find a home of their own after their family tells them to leave. They dodge cars and hunters in search of a new life, navigating bushmeat snares and the hostility of a human-dominated landscape until they find a new haven on the African savannah.

But this is exactly what happened in Zambia last year, when three endangered African wild dogs made the longest-ever recorded single journey of any mammal from the continent. The brothers travelled more than 2,500 miles (4,100km) over eight months in their “dispersal” – when a young dog comes of age and must establish new territory to find a mate and start a family of their own.