Archive for the ‘animals’ Category

If you're eyeing your next vehicle with the classic American family road trip in mind—perhaps a visit to your favorite national park out West—you might want to consider this: Hungry bears overwhelmingly prefer minivans for their next fix.

For reasons not fully understood, at one of the country's most popular national parks, your chances of a bear breaking into your Dodge Grand Caravan minivan are far greater than if you'd chosen a Dodge Journey crossover, for instance.

According to an article in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers looked into selective foraging habits of black bears in Yosemite National Park and found that, at least...

It's deer season. Whether or not you knew that, or even care, you should consider that this is the time of the year when—as the weather changes, hunters are chasing whitetail, and deer are, um, mating—your chances of hitting one of these animals is much higher.

Typically, more than half of all vehicle-deer crashes annually occur in October through December.

Even as most new vehicles include confident anti-lock braking and electronic stability control and some models even offer collision warning systems, collisions with deer continue to rise. Blame expanding suburbs and exurbs, which continue to displace animals from their natural habitats,...

Residents of the southern states, who most likely have never met a moose, may not realize how much damage they can do. Deer will damage your car, but moose can kill you.

Brigham Young University student Cassi Elton, however, wasn't even in her Toyota Yaris when the moose shattered her windshield.

In fact, the moose fell through a barrier onto the car after being tranquilized by Utah wildlife officials. (It also damaged a Saturn owned by Elton's friend Chris Hair.)

A brief disagreement ensued, with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources declining to pay the $1,500 in damages to Elton's subcompact Toyota. "It's just one of those things,"...