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Egg labels, egg-splained: from cage-free to free-range, how to eat ethically and economically

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Friday, April 26, 2024

Shopping for eggs at the grocery store can be a confusing experience. Cartons are labeled with all kinds of descriptors – natural, organic, cage-free, free-range – and some cost more at checkout. But what do they actually mean, and for ethically minded consumers, are they actually worth the money?Protein-packed eggs are linked to relatively low carbon emissions compared with other land-based animal protein sources, but not all eggs are created equal when it comes to the environment, health or animal welfare, experts say.“When it comes to ensuring better lives for laying hens, consumers have a lot of power, as long as they’re not led astray by meaningless labels,” said Daisy Freund, vice-president of farm animal welfare at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA.The Guardian spoke with several experts, who explained what these egg labels mean, and how to shop in a way that balances a concern for hens with what’s good for the planet and your own wallet.What exactly do different egg labels mean?Grade AA, A or BGrade AA eggs are considered the best, and have ‘thick and firm’ whites. Illustration: Olivia de Salve Villedieu/The GuardianConsumer grades rate the interior quality of the egg yolk and white, as well as the appearance and condition of the shell. Grade AA eggs are considered the best, and have “thick and firm” whites, according to the US Department of Agriculture, or USDA, with yolks that are high, round and practically free from defects, with clean, unbroken shells. Grade A eggs are similar to Grade AA eggs but with less firm whites.Grade B eggs tend to have thinner whites and wider yolks. Their shells are also unbroken, but may show light stains. These eggs are rarely found in retail stores because they are often used to make liquid, frozen and dried egg products.Cage-freeEggs labeled “USDA-grade cage-free” are from hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses. They must have access to fresh food and water, litter and protection from predators. These systems vary from farm to farm, but they must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors and include scratch areas, perches and nests.In the last 10 years, hundreds of companies have committed to going entirely cage-free, and the country’s cage-free egg-laying flock increased by more than 10.5m hens in the first six months of 2023.But it’s important to remember that cage-free does not equal cruelty-free. “Cage-free means the bird lives indoors, but not in a cage,” said Carolyn Dimitri, director of NYU’s graduate food studies program. “This bird probably lives in crowded conditions.”Hormone-freeNo hormones are used in the raising of chickens. In fact, federal regulations banned their use in the 1950s, so if you see labels that say “no hormones”, it’s simply a marketing tactic and is not related to more humane treatment of hens or the health of an egg.Certified organicCertified organic eggs come from uncaged organic hens, which are fed organic feed free of animal byproducts, GMO crops or synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Regulated, certified and inspected by the USDA, organic flocks must have access to outdoor spaces and be raised without growth hormones (as all chickens, even non-organic ones, are) or antibiotics.But the organic label hasn’t always met consumer expectations for animal welfare, since organic layer hens still often live in crowded conditions. Some producers confine their hens to barns with concrete porches instead of true outdoor space. A new rule, however, mandates indoor and outdoor space requirements, thanks to the efforts of advocacy groups. But it doesn’t go into effect until 2029, said Freund, “so in the meantime, consumers should still seek out welfare-certified options”. The Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit food and farm watchdog group, maintains a score card to help consumers decide which organic eggs are best.Free-rangeRegulated by the USDA, free-range eggs are produced by hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses, have access to fresh food and water and continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle. The outdoor area may be fenced and/or covered with netting-like material.Like cage-free hens, free-range hens must be allowed to exhibit natural behaviors and include scratch areas, perches and nests and have access to litter, have protection from predators and be able to move in the barn. Animal welfare advocates say free-range is a loosely defined term and since the type of outdoor space can vary, the label may fall short of shoppers’ expectations.Certified humaneNot affiliated with the USDA, Certified Humane is a project of Humane Farm Animal Care, a third-party non-profit certification program. The Certified Humane label means the hens’ environment takes into account their welfare needs and protects them from physical and thermal discomfort, fear and distress and allows them to perform their natural behavior. No cages or aviary systems that confine birds are allowed and laying hens must be provided with nest boxes.Pasture-raisedHens raised entirely on pasture can eat bugs, worms and grass and have ample room to roam, scratch, dust-bathe and engage in all of their natural behaviors. Since the term “pasture-raised” has no legal definition and is not regulated by the USDA, consumers should look for eggs that have additional labels and certifications to ensure the term is not misused by producers. Once considered a luxury item, rising demand helped shrink the price gap and increase supply. Pasture-raised eggs can be richer in flavor and more nutritious than caged eggs since the hens spend time outdoors and eat a more diverse diet. When hens have access to natural forage, the need for large-scale feed production and transportation is reduced, which results in fewer emissions compared to conventional egg production.What if a carton of eggs has none of these labels?The majority of the 300m chickens involved in egg production in the US are still raised in long, windowless sheds in rows of stacked battery cages. These caged hens are afforded only 67 sq ins of space on average – smaller than a sheet of letter-sized paper – and denied natural behaviors such as nesting, perching and dust-bathing. Factory-farmed eggs are often advertised as being “natural” or using “no antibiotics ever” and their cartons can paint misleading scenes of humane treatment on idyllic farms. If these cartons are not labeled as being “cage-free”, “free-range”, “organic” or “pasture-raised”, you can assume they came from factory farm hens who are confined to such a degree that they can’t even flap their wings.How do I eat ethically without breaking the bank?While eggs are still one of the cheapest forms of animal protein, prices have soared in recent years, now sometimes exceeding $1 per egg. “Higher-welfare animal products sometimes do cost more because farmers are investing in better conditions and treatment, as opposed to factory farming, which relies on cruel practices and externalized costs to make a cheap product,” said Freund. Since brands commonly charge more for claims such as “humane”, “natural” and even “free-range”, which are not backed by strong definitions or on-farm audits, shoppers can be easily misled.Experts suggest buying higher-welfare eggs like pasture-raised for special meals or reducing the number of eggs you eat each week. Another option is to supplement your diet with plant-based options. The ASPCA’s Shop with Your Heart Grocery List allows shoppers to find the lowest-cost, highest-welfare products.How do I know what kinds of eggs restaurants are using?The short answer is, you often don’t. While some restaurants may disclose what kinds of eggs they use for egg-centric dishes on a menu, it’s harder to know what types of eggs are featured in items such as baked goods, pastas, dressings and desserts. In 2018, Panera petitioned the FDA to know what an “egg” was exactly, stating that many of its competitors sell egg patties that contain more than five ingredients.McDonald’s recently announced they’re using 100% cage-free eggs, and Panera has committed to sourcing 100% cage-free eggs across all products by the end of 2025. Many restaurants use frozen, refrigerated liquid and dried forms of eggs whether they’re cage-free or not. The best way to find out is to ask the restaurants you patronize, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll get a clear answer.Are eggs from the farmers’ market automatically good?Farmers market eggs are richer in color and taste. Illustration: Olivia de Salve Villedieu/The GuardianFarmers’ markets can be great places to find alternatives to factory-farmed food. The yolks of farm-fresh eggs are often richer in color and taste since their food sources are of a higher quality than factory-farm chickens. Of course, not all farmers’ markets are created equal and just because a product is local doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. Ask the farmer for details on how their hens are raised since not all farms raise animals the same way.What about vegan alternatives?For people looking for plant-based alternatives, there are a host of options. Simply Eggless’s vegan eggs are made from lupin beans and are available as a liquid, patty, bite and omelet, while Crafty Counter’s hard-boiled WunderEggs are created from cashews, almonds and other plant-based ingredients. For vegan baking, Bob’s Red Mill’s gluten-free Egg Replacer and Ener-G’s Egg Replacer are both made primarily from potato starch and tapioca flour, and Neat’s Egg Mixx is crafted from chia seeds and garbanzo beans.While vegan eggs that mimic the look, texture and taste of real eggs tend to be more expensive than eggs from hens, many of the flour-like products that replace eggs in baking are affordable (a 16oz bag can equal around 100 eggs). Experts say it’s critical for plant-based companies to scale up production and optimize ingredients so products can be competitively priced for consumers.The verdict: so what should I buy?When considering animal welfare, environmental impact and health, certified-organic, pasture-raised eggs are the winner.“The birds are able to live a free life that suits their biological needs, and they are not exposed to synthetic chemicals on the pasture or through their feed,” said NYU’s Dimitri. “This egg has the best animal-welfare and environmental lifestyle.” One study found that pasture-raised eggs had significantly more omega-3 fats and vitamin E compared to those from caged hens.When looking solely at animal welfare, experts point to eggs from hens raised on pasture as the best option. “Shoppers should look for eggs from farms that are certified by the Animal Welfare Approved program, which requires that animals are on pasture throughout their lives, or can look for the Certified Humane seal with the words ‘pasture-raised’ on the package,” said the ASPCA’s Freund.Even if shoppers can’t find one of these options, experts say most retail stores carry some Certified Humane products, even if they’re not pasture-raised. Those products at least ensure that animals are never in cages and are raised in enriched indoor spaces or have access to large outdoor spaces.

Egg cartons are labeled with all sorts of descriptors, making grocery shopping a confusing experience. Experts tell us what these labels mean and how to shopShopping for eggs at the grocery store can be a confusing experience. Cartons are labeled with all kinds of descriptors – natural, organic, cage-free, free-range – and some cost more at checkout. But what do they actually mean, and for ethically minded consumers, are they actually worth the money?Protein-packed eggs are linked to relatively low carbon emissions compared with other land-based animal protein sources, but not all eggs are created equal when it comes to the environment, health or animal welfare, experts say. Continue reading...

Shopping for eggs at the grocery store can be a confusing experience. Cartons are labeled with all kinds of descriptors – natural, organic, cage-free, free-range – and some cost more at checkout. But what do they actually mean, and for ethically minded consumers, are they actually worth the money?

Protein-packed eggs are linked to relatively low carbon emissions compared with other land-based animal protein sources, but not all eggs are created equal when it comes to the environment, health or animal welfare, experts say.

“When it comes to ensuring better lives for laying hens, consumers have a lot of power, as long as they’re not led astray by meaningless labels,” said Daisy Freund, vice-president of farm animal welfare at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA.

The Guardian spoke with several experts, who explained what these egg labels mean, and how to shop in a way that balances a concern for hens with what’s good for the planet and your own wallet.

What exactly do different egg labels mean?

Grade AA, A or B

Grade AA eggs are considered the best, and have ‘thick and firm’ whites. Illustration: Olivia de Salve Villedieu/The Guardian

Consumer grades rate the interior quality of the egg yolk and white, as well as the appearance and condition of the shell. Grade AA eggs are considered the best, and have “thick and firm” whites, according to the US Department of Agriculture, or USDA, with yolks that are high, round and practically free from defects, with clean, unbroken shells. Grade A eggs are similar to Grade AA eggs but with less firm whites.

Grade B eggs tend to have thinner whites and wider yolks. Their shells are also unbroken, but may show light stains. These eggs are rarely found in retail stores because they are often used to make liquid, frozen and dried egg products.

Cage-free

Eggs labeled “USDA-grade cage-free” are from hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses. They must have access to fresh food and water, litter and protection from predators. These systems vary from farm to farm, but they must allow hens to exhibit natural behaviors and include scratch areas, perches and nests.

In the last 10 years, hundreds of companies have committed to going entirely cage-free, and the country’s cage-free egg-laying flock increased by more than 10.5m hens in the first six months of 2023.

But it’s important to remember that cage-free does not equal cruelty-free. “Cage-free means the bird lives indoors, but not in a cage,” said Carolyn Dimitri, director of NYU’s graduate food studies program. “This bird probably lives in crowded conditions.”

Hormone-free

No hormones are used in the raising of chickens. In fact, federal regulations banned their use in the 1950s, so if you see labels that say “no hormones”, it’s simply a marketing tactic and is not related to more humane treatment of hens or the health of an egg.

Certified organic

Certified organic eggs come from uncaged organic hens, which are fed organic feed free of animal byproducts, GMO crops or synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Regulated, certified and inspected by the USDA, organic flocks must have access to outdoor spaces and be raised without growth hormones (as all chickens, even non-organic ones, are) or antibiotics.

But the organic label hasn’t always met consumer expectations for animal welfare, since organic layer hens still often live in crowded conditions. Some producers confine their hens to barns with concrete porches instead of true outdoor space. A new rule, however, mandates indoor and outdoor space requirements, thanks to the efforts of advocacy groups. But it doesn’t go into effect until 2029, said Freund, “so in the meantime, consumers should still seek out welfare-certified options”. The Cornucopia Institute, a non-profit food and farm watchdog group, maintains a score card to help consumers decide which organic eggs are best.

Free-range

Regulated by the USDA, free-range eggs are produced by hens that are able to roam vertically and horizontally in indoor houses, have access to fresh food and water and continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle. The outdoor area may be fenced and/or covered with netting-like material.

Like cage-free hens, free-range hens must be allowed to exhibit natural behaviors and include scratch areas, perches and nests and have access to litter, have protection from predators and be able to move in the barn. Animal welfare advocates say free-range is a loosely defined term and since the type of outdoor space can vary, the label may fall short of shoppers’ expectations.

Certified humane

Not affiliated with the USDA, Certified Humane is a project of Humane Farm Animal Care, a third-party non-profit certification program. The Certified Humane label means the hens’ environment takes into account their welfare needs and protects them from physical and thermal discomfort, fear and distress and allows them to perform their natural behavior. No cages or aviary systems that confine birds are allowed and laying hens must be provided with nest boxes.

Pasture-raised

Hens raised entirely on pasture can eat bugs, worms and grass and have ample room to roam, scratch, dust-bathe and engage in all of their natural behaviors. Since the term “pasture-raised” has no legal definition and is not regulated by the USDA, consumers should look for eggs that have additional labels and certifications to ensure the term is not misused by producers. Once considered a luxury item, rising demand helped shrink the price gap and increase supply. Pasture-raised eggs can be richer in flavor and more nutritious than caged eggs since the hens spend time outdoors and eat a more diverse diet. When hens have access to natural forage, the need for large-scale feed production and transportation is reduced, which results in fewer emissions compared to conventional egg production.

What if a carton of eggs has none of these labels?

The majority of the 300m chickens involved in egg production in the US are still raised in long, windowless sheds in rows of stacked battery cages. These caged hens are afforded only 67 sq ins of space on average – smaller than a sheet of letter-sized paper – and denied natural behaviors such as nesting, perching and dust-bathing. Factory-farmed eggs are often advertised as being “natural” or using “no antibiotics ever” and their cartons can paint misleading scenes of humane treatment on idyllic farms. If these cartons are not labeled as being “cage-free”, “free-range”, “organic” or “pasture-raised”, you can assume they came from factory farm hens who are confined to such a degree that they can’t even flap their wings.

How do I eat ethically without breaking the bank?

While eggs are still one of the cheapest forms of animal protein, prices have soared in recent years, now sometimes exceeding $1 per egg. “Higher-welfare animal products sometimes do cost more because farmers are investing in better conditions and treatment, as opposed to factory farming, which relies on cruel practices and externalized costs to make a cheap product,” said Freund. Since brands commonly charge more for claims such as “humane”, “natural” and even “free-range”, which are not backed by strong definitions or on-farm audits, shoppers can be easily misled.

Experts suggest buying higher-welfare eggs like pasture-raised for special meals or reducing the number of eggs you eat each week. Another option is to supplement your diet with plant-based options. The ASPCA’s Shop with Your Heart Grocery List allows shoppers to find the lowest-cost, highest-welfare products.

How do I know what kinds of eggs restaurants are using?

The short answer is, you often don’t. While some restaurants may disclose what kinds of eggs they use for egg-centric dishes on a menu, it’s harder to know what types of eggs are featured in items such as baked goods, pastas, dressings and desserts. In 2018, Panera petitioned the FDA to know what an “egg” was exactly, stating that many of its competitors sell egg patties that contain more than five ingredients.

McDonald’s recently announced they’re using 100% cage-free eggs, and Panera has committed to sourcing 100% cage-free eggs across all products by the end of 2025. Many restaurants use frozen, refrigerated liquid and dried forms of eggs whether they’re cage-free or not. The best way to find out is to ask the restaurants you patronize, but that doesn’t always mean you’ll get a clear answer.

Are eggs from the farmers’ market automatically good?

Farmers market eggs are richer in color and taste. Illustration: Olivia de Salve Villedieu/The Guardian

Farmers’ markets can be great places to find alternatives to factory-farmed food. The yolks of farm-fresh eggs are often richer in color and taste since their food sources are of a higher quality than factory-farm chickens. Of course, not all farmers’ markets are created equal and just because a product is local doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. Ask the farmer for details on how their hens are raised since not all farms raise animals the same way.

What about vegan alternatives?

For people looking for plant-based alternatives, there are a host of options. Simply Eggless’s vegan eggs are made from lupin beans and are available as a liquid, patty, bite and omelet, while Crafty Counter’s hard-boiled WunderEggs are created from cashews, almonds and other plant-based ingredients. For vegan baking, Bob’s Red Mill’s gluten-free Egg Replacer and Ener-G’s Egg Replacer are both made primarily from potato starch and tapioca flour, and Neat’s Egg Mixx is crafted from chia seeds and garbanzo beans.

While vegan eggs that mimic the look, texture and taste of real eggs tend to be more expensive than eggs from hens, many of the flour-like products that replace eggs in baking are affordable (a 16oz bag can equal around 100 eggs). Experts say it’s critical for plant-based companies to scale up production and optimize ingredients so products can be competitively priced for consumers.

The verdict: so what should I buy?

When considering animal welfare, environmental impact and health, certified-organic, pasture-raised eggs are the winner.

“The birds are able to live a free life that suits their biological needs, and they are not exposed to synthetic chemicals on the pasture or through their feed,” said NYU’s Dimitri. “This egg has the best animal-welfare and environmental lifestyle.” One study found that pasture-raised eggs had significantly more omega-3 fats and vitamin E compared to those from caged hens.

When looking solely at animal welfare, experts point to eggs from hens raised on pasture as the best option. “Shoppers should look for eggs from farms that are certified by the Animal Welfare Approved program, which requires that animals are on pasture throughout their lives, or can look for the Certified Humane seal with the words ‘pasture-raised’ on the package,” said the ASPCA’s Freund.

Even if shoppers can’t find one of these options, experts say most retail stores carry some Certified Humane products, even if they’re not pasture-raised. Those products at least ensure that animals are never in cages and are raised in enriched indoor spaces or have access to large outdoor spaces.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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A Foot-Tall Elephant? 'Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age' on Apple TV Reveals Surprising Creatures

Apple TV has launched “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age,” a five-part series that brings the Pleistocene era to life with stunning visuals

It was an incredible time when the Earth was going through immense systemic changes and was filled with often nightmarish creatures — carnivorous kangaroos, 14-foot-tall bears and armadillos bigger than cars. Sid the sloth's eyes would bulge even more.A hyper-realistic picture of life during that Pleistocene era emerges with Apple TV's five-part, computer-driven “Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age,” which takes place millions of years after the dinosaurs’ extinction.“Nobody’s made a natural history representation of these creatures behaving and interacting in the way that we have in this series,” says Mike Gunton, co-executive producer and senior executive at the storied BBC Natural History Unit. This is the third chapter in the “Prehistoric Planet” series, blending cinematic storytelling with photorealistic visual effects and the latest scientific knowledge to give viewers a treat: Nostrils flare, fur is rustled by howling winds and eyelashes twitch. “Within one second of turning the show on, I do not want people to think, ‘Oh, it’s a CGI show.’ I want them to think, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s that animal? Where did they film that?'” Gunton says.The filmmaking style mimics the visual vocabulary of documentary nature shows like “Planet Earth” or “Blue Planet” but conjures up animals dead for millions of years with the latest digital innovations. “Even five years ago, we couldn’t have done it,” says Gunton. “Even in the time we’ve been making it, the acceleration of the power of the visual effects has been absolutely noticeable.”The series is narrated by Golden Globe- and Olivier Award-winner Tom Hiddleston, with an original score by Hans Zimmer, Anže Rozman and Kara Talve from Bleeding Fingers Music.Jon Favreau is co-executive producer and came at the series after directing the live-action/CGI “The Jungle Book” in 2016 with Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o and Scarlett Johansson, and 2019's “The Lion King,” with a voice cast including Donald Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor. “I was very struck by the photorealism we were able to achieve in both of those projects and this seemed like a really good application for using realism in both animation and environmental design and render to create the illusion that you’re actually looking at something real and to apply it to dinosaurs and ice age megafauna,” he says.Gunton, who has produced such nature shows as “Hidden Kingdoms” and “The Green Planet,” turned to the topic of the ice age more than three years ago after wrapping up two dino-filled previous chapters and quickly learned he had a lot to learn. “I was thinking, ‘Well, this is all going to be ice and woolly mammoths and mastodons and saber-tooth tigers,” he says. What he found out was there wasn’t just one ice age but a series of eight, and while as much as a quarter of Earth’s landmass was covered by ice, the rest was becoming arid and desert, changing animals' evolution.There were Diprotodons, rhino-sized relatives of wombats and the largest marsupials of all time. There were giant short-faced kangaroos and 14-foot-tall bears. One of the cutest creatures is a dwarf Stegodon, which resembled a 3-foot elephant. The filmmakers added its baby, standing just 12 inches, and we meet him playing with a butterfly. “A swishing trunk and tail means a Stegodon wants to play,” says Hiddleston. But the little guy gets into trouble when a gang of 6-foot giant storks come hunting. Mom, thankfully, comes to the rescue. “In a world where birds can eat elephants, you should never stray too far from Mother,” Hiddleston concludes.“These animals feel alive,” says Gunton. “That comes from spending 35, nearly 40 years filming animals, watching animals, knowing how they react to each other and also knowing how to photograph these kind of behaviors.”While the look of the series is cutting edge, Favreau points out that it was crafted with artists and traditional technological techniques, not AI, and that helps it connect.“At the end of the day, to be working side by side with artists, animators, filmmakers — there is something that creates a very specific and personal and emotional connection with tremendous specificity, which is still something that eludes the other technologies.”During the ice age, sea levels dropped, creating land bridges and connecting North and South America to create a kind of animal superhighway, with creatures going in both directions and encountering new rivals and food.The filmmakers leaned on the visual effects company Framestore and consulted over 50 ice age specialists to create the series, often using puppets to get the shots right before removing them and adding the visual effects. Fossil records are better than with dinosaurs because many of the ice age creatures were captured in the permafrost.“We see that the species that were most able to adapt still survive to this day, and there are many that didn’t,” says Favreau. “We’re capturing a moment here where there was transition in relatively short amount of time. Even though it would be thousands of years, it’s still a blink of an eye in the history of our planet.”“Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age,” tells little vignettes for each animal, showing how they hunt or mate, travel and play. Gunton says he's not interested in making an endless loop of predators chasing prey. He'd rather show how a pregnant woolly mammoth lost in a blizzard can be protected by her herd.“I think that audiences are more engaged in complexity of relationships and what animals do and how they behave with each other,'' he said. “The voyeuristic kill doesn’t interest me particularly, and I don’t think it interests most of the audience.”Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Nov. 2025

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AI Is Coming for Your Toddler’s Bedtime Story

I began this morning, as I do every morning, by reading my daughter a book. Today it was Arthur Dorros’ Abuela, illustrated by Elisa Kleven. Abuela is a sweet story about a girl who imagines that she and her grandmother leap into the sky and soar around New York City. Dorros does an elegant job […]

I began this morning, as I do every morning, by reading my daughter a book. Today it was Arthur Dorros’ Abuela, illustrated by Elisa Kleven. Abuela is a sweet story about a girl who imagines that she and her grandmother leap into the sky and soar around New York City. Dorros does an elegant job weaving Spanish words and phrases throughout the text, often allowing readers to glean their meaning rather than translating them directly. When Rosalba, the bilingual granddaughter, discovers she can fly, she calls to her grandmother, “Ven, Abuela. Come, Abuela.” Her Spanish-speaking grandmother replies simply, “Sí, quiero volar.” Their language use reflects who they are—a move that plenty of authors who write for adults fail to make. Abuela was one of my favorite books growing up, and it’s one of my 2-year-old’s favorites now. (And yes, we’re reading my worn old copy.) She loves the idea of a flying grandma; she loves learning bits of what she calls Fanish; she loves the bit when Rosalba and Abuela hitch a ride on an airplane, though she worries it might be too loud. Most of all, though, she loves Kleven’s warm yet antic illustrations, which capture urban life in nearly pointillist detail. Every page gives her myriad things to look for and gives us myriad things to discuss. (Where are the dogs? What does Rosalba’s tío sell in his store? Why is it scary when airplanes are loud?) I’ve probably read Abuela 200 times since we swiped it from my parents over the summer, and no two readings have been the same. I don’t start all my days with books as rich as Abuela, though. Sometimes, my daughter chooses the books I wish she wouldn’t: ones that have wandered into our house as gifts, or in a big stack someone was giving away, and that I have yet to purge. These books have garish, unappealing computer-rendered art. Some of them have nursery rhymes as text, and the rest have inane rhymes that don’t quite add up to a story. One or two are Jewish holiday-oriented, and a couple more are tourist souvenirs. Not a single one of these books has a named author or illustrator. None of their publishers, all of which are quite small, responded to my requests for interviews, but I strongly suspect that these books were written and generated by AI—and that I’m not supposed to guess. The maybe-AI book that has lasted the longest in our house is a badly illustrated Old MacDonald Has a Farm. Its animals are inconsistently pixelated around the edges; the pink circles on its farmer’s cheeks vary significantly in size from page to page, and his hands appear to have second thumbs instead of pinkies. All of these irregularities are signs of AI, according to the writer and illustrator Karen Ferreira, who runs an author coaching program called Children’s Book Mastery. On her program’s site, she warns that because AI cannot create a series of images using the same figures, it generates characters that are—even if only subtly—dissimilar from page to page. Noting this in our Old MacDonald, I checked to see whether it was copyrighted, because the US copyright office has ruled out copyright for images created by machine learning. Where other board books have copyright symbols and information—often the illustration and text copyright holders are different—this one reads only, “All rights reserved.” It’s unclear what these “rights” refer to, given that there is no named holder; it’s possible that the publisher is gesturing at the design, but equally possible that the statement is a decoy with no legal meaning. What makes a good children’s book, and how much does it matter if a children’s book is good? I have many objections to maybe-AI books like this one. They’re ugly, whereas all our other children’s books are whimsical, beautiful, or both. They aren’t playful or sly or surprising. Their prose has no rhythm, in contrast to, let’s say, Sandra Boynton’s Barnyard Dance! and Dinosaur Dance!, which have beats that inspire toddlers to leap up and perform. (The author-illustrator Mo Willems has said children’s books are “meant to be played, not just to be read.”) They don’t give my daughter much to notice or me much to riff on, which means she gets sick of them quickly. If she chooses one, she’s often done with it in under a minute. It gives me a vague sting of guilt to donate such uninspiring books, but I still do, since the only other option is the landfill. I imagine they’ll end up there anyway. But I should admit that I also dislike the books that trigger my AI radar—that uncanny-valley tingle you get when something just seems inhuman—out of bias. I am a writer and translator, a person whose livelihood is entirely centered and dependent on living in a society that values human creativity, and just the thought of a children’s book generated by AI upsets me. Some months ago, I decided I wanted to know whether my bias was right. After all, there are legions of bad children’s books written and illustrated (or stock photo–collaged) by humans. Are those books meaningfully and demonstrably different from AI ones? If they are, how big a threat is AI to quality children’s publishing, and does it also threaten children’s learning? In a sense, my questions—not all of which are answerable—boil down to this: What makes a good children’s book, and how much does it matter if a children’s book is good? I’m not the only one worried about this. My brother- and sister-in-law, proud Minnesotans, recently sent us a book called Count On Minnesota—state merch, precisely the sort of thing that’s set my AI alarms ringing in the past—whose publisher, Gibbs Smith, includes a warning on the back beside the copyright notice: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies and systems.” Count On Minnesota is nearly wordless and has no named author, but the names of its artist and designer, Nicole LaRue and Brynn Evans, sit directly below the AI statement, reminding readers who will be harmed if Count On Minnesota gets scraped to train large vision models despite its copyright language. In this sense, children’s literature is akin to the many, many other fields that generative AI threatens. There’s a danger that machines will take authors’ and illustrators’ jobs, and the data sets on which they were trained have already taken tremendous amounts of intellectual property. Larry Law, executive director of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association, told me that his organization’s member stores are against AI-created books—and, as a matter of policy, refuse to stock anything they suspect or know was generated by a large language or vision model—because “as an association, we value artists and authors and publishers and fundamentally believe that AI steals from artists.” Still, Law and many of GLIBA’s members are comfortable using AI to streamline workflow. So are many publishers. Both corporate publishing houses and some reputable independent ones are at least beginning to use AI to create the marketing bibles called tip sheets and other internal sales documents. According to industry sources I spoke to on background, some corporate publishers are also testing large language and vision models’ capacities to create children’s books, but their attempts aren’t reaching the market. The illustrations aren’t good enough yet, and it’s still easier to have a human produce text than to make a person coach and edit a large language model. “Kids are weird! They’re joyfully weird, and if you spend time with them and are able to get that weirdness and that playfulness out of them, you can really understand why a moralizing book really comes across as gross.” Other publishers, meanwhile, are shying away. Dan Brewster, owner of Prologue Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio—a shop with an explicit anti-AI policy—told me, “The publisher partners we work with every day have not done anything to make me suspect them” of generating text or illustrations with AI; many, he added, have told him, “‘You’re never going to see that from us.’” (Whether that’s true, of course, remains to be seen.) In contrast, Brewster has grown more cautious in his acquisitions of self-published books and those released by very small independent presses. He sees these as higher AI risks, as does Timothy Otte, a co-owner and buyer at Minneapolis’ Wild Rumpus, a beloved 33-year-old children’s bookstore. Its legacy and reach, he says, means they “get both traditionally published authors and self-published authors reaching out asking you to stock their book. That was true before AI was in the picture. Now, some of those authors that are reaching out, it is clear that what they’re pitching to me was at least partly, if not entirely, generated by AI.” Otte always says no, both on the grounds Law described and because the books are no good. The art often has not just inconsistencies, but errors: Rendering models aren’t great at getting the right number of toes on a paw. The text can be equally full of mistakes, as children’s librarian Sondra Eklund writes in a horrified blog post about acquiring a book about rabbits from children’s publisher Bold Kids, only to discover that she’d bought an AI book so carelessly produced that it informs readers that rabbits “can even make their own clothes…and can help you out with gardening.” (Reviews of Bold Kids’ hundreds of books on Amazon suggest that its rabbit book isn’t the only one with such issues. Bold Kids did not respond to repeated efforts to reach them for comment.) The text of more edited AI books, meanwhile, tends to condescend to young readers. Otte often sees books whose authors have “decided that there is a moral that they want to give to children, and they have asked a large language model to spit out a picture book that shows a kid coming up against some sort of problem and being given a moral solution.” In his experience, that isn’t what children want or how they learn. “Kids are weird!” Otte says. “They’re joyfully weird, and if you spend time with them and are able to get that weirdness and that playfulness out of them, you can really understand why a moralizing book really comes across as gross. The number of times I’ve seen kids make a stank face at a book that’s telling them how to be!” AI could be no menace at all to picture-book classics, but it could make high-quality contemporary board books go extinct. But is a lazy, moralizing AI book any worse than a lazy, moralizing one written by a person? When I put this question to Otte, the only distinction he could come up with was the “ancillary ethical concerns of water usage and the environmental impact that a large language model currently has.” Other book buyers, though, pointed out that while AI can imitate a particular writer or designer’s style or mash multiple perspectives together, it cannot have a point of view of its own. Plenty of big publishers create picture books and board books—which are simple, sturdy texts printed on cardstock heavy enough to be gnawed on by a teething 8-month-old—in-house, using stock photos and releasing them without an author’s name. Very rarely is the result much good, and yet each publisher does have its own visual signature. If you’re a millennial, you can likely close your eyes and summon the museum-text layout of the pages in a DK Eyewitness book. It’s idiosyncratic even if it’s not particularly special. To deny our children even that is to assume, in a sense, that they have no point of view: that they can’t tell one book from another and wouldn’t care if they could. Frankly, though, I’m less concerned with the gap between bad AI and bad human than I am with the yawning chasm between bad AI and good human, since bad children’s books by humans are the ones more likely to become rarer or cease existing. If rendering models get good enough that corporate publishers stop asking humans to slap together, let’s say, stock-photo books about ducks, those books could, in theory, vanish. That doesn’t mean Robert McCloskey’s canonical, beautiful Make Way for Ducklings will go out of print. But it’s much less expensive to publish a book that was written years ago than it is to pay an author and illustrator for something new. It’s also less expensive to print a picture book like Make Way for Ducklings than a board book, with its heavier paper and nontoxic (again: gnawing baby) inks. AI could be no menace at all to picture-book classics, but it could make high-quality contemporary board books go extinct. Only instinct and imagination can tell you what Sandra Boynton means when she writes in ‘Dinosaur Dance!’ that “Iguanodon goes dibbidy DAH.” It doesn’t help that everyone from parents to publishers is susceptible to undervaluing board books. It’s very difficult to argue that the quality of a picture book doesn’t matter, since they are the ones that most children use to learn to read. But it’s easy to dismiss board books, which are intended for children not only too young to read, but too young to even follow a story. Can’t we just show a baby anything? According to Dr. John Hutton, a pediatrician and former children’s bookstore owner who researches the impact reading at home has on toddlers’ brain function and development, we shouldn’t. In fact, we should avoid reading our kids anything that bores us. Beginning in utero, one of the greatest benefits of shared reading is bonding, and unsurprisingly, Hutton has found that the more engaged parents are in the book they’ve chosen, the greater its impact on that front. But reading to babies is also important, he explained, because the more words a child hears, the greater their receptive and expressive vocabularies (that is, the words they know and can say) will be. This, starting around age 1, lets parents and children discuss the books they’re reading, a process that Hutton told me “builds social cognition and later dovetails with empathy.” It does this by training children’s brains to connect language to emotion—and to do so through imagination. Hutton presented this as vital neurological work. “Nothing in the brain comes for free,” he told me, “and unless you practice empathy skills—connecting, getting along, feeling what others are feeling—you’re not going to have as well-developed neural infrastructure to be able to do that.” It’s also a social equalizer. Research has shown that reading aloud exposes children whose parents have lower income levels or educational backgrounds to more words and kinds of syntax than they might otherwise hear—and, Hutton notes, this isn’t a question of proper syntax. Rather, what matters here is creativity. Some of the best board books out there bend or even invent language—only instinct and imagination can tell you what Boynton means when she writes in Dinosaur Dance! that “Iguanodon goes dibbidy DAH”—and this teaches their little listeners how to do the same. Of course, not all good board books’ strength is linguistic. Ideally, Hutton says, a book’s text and illustrations should “recruit both the language and visual parts of your brain to work together to understand what’s going on.” From ages 6 months to 18 months, my daughter was enamored with books from Camilla Reid and Ingela Arrhenius’ Peekaboo series, which have minimal text, cheery yet sophisticated illustrations, and a pop-up or slider on each page. My daughter loved it when I read Peekaboo Pumpkin to her, but she also loved learning to manipulate it herself. It was visually and tactilely appealing enough to become not just a book, but a toy—and it was sturdy enough to do so. She’s got plenty of other books with pop-ups, but Peekaboo Pumpkin and Peekaboo Lion are the only ones she hasn’t more or less destroyed. Reid and Arrhenius publish with Nosy Crow, a London-based independent press. I reached out to ask if the company was concerned about AI threatening its business and got an emphatic no from its preschool publishing director and senior art director, Tor England and Zoë Gregory. England immediately highlighted the physical durability of Nosy Crow’s books. “We believe in a book as an object people want to own,” she said, rather than one meant to be disposable. They invest in them accordingly: England and Gregory visit Arrhenius in Sweden to discuss new ideas and often spend two or three years working on a book. Neither fears that AI could compete with the quality of such painstaking work, which, for the most part, is entirely analog. Some of Nosy Crow’s books do make sounds, though—something I generally hate, but I make an exception for the shockingly realistic toddler giggle in What’s That Noise? Meow! Gregory told me that while working on that book, she couldn’t find a laugh she liked in the sound libraries Nosy Crow normally uses, so she went home, set her iPhone to record, and tickled her daughter. A good board book could become one more educational advantage that accrues disproportionately to the elite. But somebody shopping on Amazon won’t hear that giggle. Nor can an online shopper identify a shoddily printed book, which may well be cheaper than Nosy Crow’s but will certainly withstand less tugging and chewing before it falls apart. A risk that Otte and the other buyers I spoke to identified—and while it serves booksellers’ interests to say this, it is also an entirely reasonable projection—is that while independent bookstores and well-curated libraries will continue to stock high-quality books like Nosy Crow’s, Amazon, which is both the largest book retailer and the largest self-publishing service in the nation, will grow ever fuller of AI dreck. If corporate publishers turn to AI to write and illustrate their board books, this strikes me as very likely to occur. It would mean that parents with the time and resources to browse in person would be likely to provide significantly higher-quality books to their pre-reading-age children than parents searching for “train book for toddlers” online. A good board book could become one more educational advantage that accrues disproportionately to the elite. In Empire of AI, journalist Karen Hao writes that technology revolutions “promise to deliver progress [but have a] tendency instead to reverse it for people out of power, especially the most vulnerable.” She argues that this is “perhaps truer than ever for the moment we now find ourselves in with artificial intelligence.” The key word here is perhaps. As of now, AI children’s books are on the fringes of publishing. Large publishers can choose to keep them that way. Doing so would be a statement of conviction that the quality and humanity of children’s books matter, no matter how young the child in question is. When I asked Hutton, the pediatrician, what worried him most about AI books, he mentioned the example of “lazy writing” they set, which he fears might disincentivize both hard work and creativity. He also pointed to an often-cited MIT study showing that writing with ChatGPT dampened creativity and less fully activated the brain—that is, it’s bad for the authors, not just the readers. Then he said, “You know, there are things we can do versus things we should do as a society, and that’s where we struggle, I think.” On this front, I hope to see no more struggle. We should not give our children, whose brains are vulnerable and malleable, books created by computers. We shouldn’t give them books created carelessly. That’s up to parents and teachers, yes—but it’s also up to authors, illustrators, designers, and publishers. Gregory told me that “there’s a lot of love and warmth and heart” that goes into the books she works on. Rejecting AI is a first step toward a landscape of children’s publishing where that’s always true.

Animals
Business
Education

Beloved eagle, a school mascot, electrocuted on power lines above Bay Area elementary school

A beloved eagle, a school mascot, was electrocuted on PG&E power lines near an elementary school in the Bay Area. Could anything have been done to prevent it? How often does this happen?

MILPITAS, Calif. — As scores of students swarmed out of their Milpitas elementary school on a recent afternoon, a lone bald eagle perched high above them in a redwood tree — only occasionally looking down on the after-school ruckus, training his eyes on the grassy hills along the western horizon.The week before, his mate was electrocuted on nearby power lines operated by PG&E.Kevin Slavin, principal of Curtner Elementary School, said the eagles in that nest are so well-known and beloved here that they were made the school’s mascots and the “whole ethos of the school has been tied around them” since they arrived in 2017. What exactly happened to send Hope the eagle off the pair’s nest in the dark of night and into the live wires on the night of Nov. 3 is not known (although there’s some scandalous speculation it involved a mysterious, “interloper” female). According to a spokesperson from PG&E, an outage occurred in the area at around 9 p.m. Line workers later discovered it was caused by the adult eagle.The death, sadly, is not atypical for large raptors, such as bald and golden eagles.According to a 2014 analysis of bird deaths across the U.S., electrocution on power lines is a significant cause of bird mortality. Every year, as many as 11.6 million birds are fried on the wires that juice our televisions, HVAC systems and blow driers, the authors estimated. The birds die when two body parts — a wing, foot or beak — come in contact with two wires, or when they touch a wire and ground source, sending a fatal current of electricity through the animal’s body.Because of their massive size, eagles and other raptors are at more risk. The wingspan of an adult bald eagle ranges from 5.5 to 8 feet across; it’s roughly the same for a golden eagle.According to a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Forensics Laboratory, which analyzed 417 electrocuted raptors from 13 species between 2000 and 2015, nearly 80 percent were bald or golden eagles.Krysta Rogers, senior environmental scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Investigations Laboratory, examined the dead eagle.She found small burns on Hope’s left foot pad and the back of her right leg. She also had singed feathers on both sides of her body, but especially on the right, where Rogers said the wing looked particularly damaged. She said most birds are electrocuted on utility poles, but Hope was electrocuted “mid-span,” where the wires dip between the poles. Melissa Subbotin, a spokesperson for PG&E, said the poles and wires near where the birds nested had been adapted with coverings and other safety features to make them safe for raptors. However, it appears the bird may have touched two wires mid-span. Subbotin said the utility company spaces lines at least 5 feet apart — a precaution it and other utility companies take to minimize raptor deaths. “Since 2002, PG&E has made about 42,990 existing power poles and towers bird-safe,” Subbotin said. The company has also retrofitted about 41,500 power poles in areas where bird have been injured or killed. In addition, she said, in 2024, the company replaced nearly 11,000 poles in designated “Raptor Concentration Zones” and built them to avian-safe construction guidelines.Doug Gillard, an amateur photographer and professor of anatomy and physiology at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward, who has followed the Milpitas eagles for years, said while there is safety equipment near the school, it does not extend into the nearby neighborhood, where Hope was killed.Gillard said a photographer who lives in the neighborhood took a photo of the eagle hanging from the wires that Gillard has seen. The Times was unable to access the photo.Not far from the school is a marshy wetland, where ducks, geese and migrating birds come to rest and relax, a smorgasbord for a pair of eagles and their young. There are also fish in a nearby lake. Gillard said one of the nearby water bodies is stocked with trout, and that late fall is fishing season for the eagles. He said an army of photographers is currently hanging around the pond hoping to catch a snapshot of the father eagle catching a fish.Rogers said the bird was healthy. She had body fat, good muscle tone and two small feathers in her gut — presumably the remnants of a recent meal. She also had an enlarged ovary and visible oviduct — an avian fallopian tube — suggesting she was getting ready for breeding, which typically happens in January or February.Slavin, the principal, said that a day or two before the mother’s death, he saw the couple preparing their nest, and saw a young female show up. “It was a very tense situation among the eagles,” he said. Gillard, the photographer, said the “girlfriend” has black feathers on her head and in her tail, suggesting she isn’t quite five years old.Gillard and Slavin say they’ve heard from residents there may have been some altercation between the mom and the interloper that sent Hope off the nest and into the wires that night.The young female remains at the scene, and is not only being “tolerated” by the father, but occasionally accompanies him on his fishing trips, Gillard said. Eagles tend to mate for life, but if one dies, the other will look for a new mate, Gillard said. If the female eagle sticks around, it will be the dad’s third partner.Photographers can identify the father, who neighbors just call “Dad,” by the damaged flexor tendon on his right claw, which makes it appear as if he is “flipping the bird” when he flies by.

Animals
Health
Water

‘Forever chemicals’ contaminate more dolphins and whales than we thought – new research

The sex and age of an animal turn out to be stronger predictors than habitat for higher PFAS levels, suggesting they accumulate over a lifetime.

Getty ImagesNowhere in the ocean is now left untouched by a type of “forever chemicals” called “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances”, known simply as PFAS. Our new research shows PFAS contaminate a far wider range of whales and dolphins than previously thought, including deep-diving species that live well beyond areas of human activity. But most surprising of all, where an animal lives does not predict its exposure. Instead, sex and age are stronger predictors of how much of these pollutants a whale or dolphin accumulates in its body. This means chemical pollution is more persistent and entrenched in ocean food webs than we realised, affecting everything from endangered coastal Māui dolphins to deep-diving beaked and sperm whales. This graphic shows that PFAS contamination affects a range of marine mammals, from nearshore dolphins to deep-diving predators. Science of the Total Environment, CC BY-ND PFAS were originally designed to make everyday products more convenient, but they have ultimately become a widespread environmental and public health concern. Our work provides stark evidence that no part of the ocean is now beyond the reach of human pollution. What are PFAS, and why are they a problem? PFAS are a group of more than 14,000 synthetic chemicals that have been used since the 1950s in a wide range of everyday products. This includes non-stick cookware, food packaging, cleaning products, waterproof clothing, firefighting foams and even cosmetics. Many everyday products contain PFAS. Author provided, CC BY-SA They’re known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down naturally. Instead, they travel through air and water, eventually reaching their final destination: the ocean. There, PFAS percolate through seawater and sediments and enter the food web, taken up by animals through their diet. Once inside an animal, PFAS can attach to proteins and accumulate in the blood and organs such as the liver, where they can disrupt hormones, immune function and reproduction. Like humans, whales and dolphins sit high in the food web, which makes them especially vulnerable to building up these pollutants over their lifetime. Whales and dolphins are the ocean’s canaries Marine mammals are an early warning system of the ocean. Because they are large predators with long lifespans, their health reflects what’s happening in the wider ecosystem, including risks that can affect people, too. This idea is at the heart of the OneHealth concept, which links environmental, animal and human health. New Zealand is one of the best places in the world to study human impacts in a OneHealth framework. More than half of the world’s toothed whales and dolphins (odontocetes) occur here, making Aotearoa a rare hotspot for marine mammals and an ideal place to assess how deeply PFAS have entered ocean food webs. We analysed liver samples from 127 stranded whales and dolphins, covering 16 species across four families, from coastal bottlenose dolphins to deep-diving beaked whales. For eight of these species, including Hector’s dolphins and three beaked whale species, this was the first time PFAS had ever been measured globally. PFAS contamination is an additional stress factor for Hector’s dolphins, which are endemic to New Zealand and already threatened. Getty Images We expected coastal species living closer to pollution sources to show the highest contamination, with deep-ocean species being much less exposed. However, our results told a different story. Habitat played only a minor role in predicting PFAS levels. Some deep-diving species had PFAS concentrations comparable to (or even higher than) coastal animals. It turns out biology matters more than habitat. Older, larger animals had higher PFAS levels, indicating they accumulate these chemicals over time. Males also tended to have higher burdens than females, consistent with mothers transferring PFAS to their calves during pregnancy and lactation. These patterns were consistent across all major types of PFAS chemicals. Why this matters Our findings show PFAS contamination has now entered every layer of the marine food web, affecting everything from nearshore dolphins to deep-diving predators. While diet is a major exposure pathway, animals could also be absorbing PFAS through other mechanisms, including potentially their skin. PFAS may further interact with other stressors, including climate change, shifting prey availability and disease, adding further pressure to species already under threat. Knowing that PFAS are present across different habitats and species raises urgent questions about their health impacts. Are these chemicals already affecting populations? Could PFAS contamination weaken immunity and increase disease risk in vulnerable species, such as Māui dolphins? Understanding how PFAS exposure affects reproduction, immunity and resilience to environmental pressures is now central to predicting whether species already under threat can withstand accelerating environmental change. Even the most remote whales carry high PFAS loads and we know humans are not isolated from these contaminations either. Answering these questions is not optional but essential if we want to protect both marine wildlife and the oceans we all depend on. The research was a trans-Tasman collaboration which also included Gabriel Machovsky at Massey University, Louis Tremblay at the Bioeconomy Science Institute and Shan Yi at the University of Auckland. Frédérik Saltré receives funding from the Australian Research Council.Emma Betty, Karen A Stockin, and Katharina J. Peters do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Animals
Chemicals
Food

Watch a Wolf Cleverly Raid a Crab Trap for a Snack. It Might Be the First Evidence of a Wild Canid Using a Tool

Footage from British Columbia shows just how intelligent wild wolves can be, but scientists are divided as to whether the behavior constitutes tool use

Watch a Wolf Cleverly Raid a Crab Trap for a Snack. It Might Be the First Evidence of a Wild Canid Using a Tool Footage from British Columbia shows just how intelligent wild wolves can be, but scientists are divided as to whether the behavior constitutes tool use Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent November 19, 2025 11:53 a.m. Members of the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation caught the crafty female wolf on camera. Artelle et al. / Ecology and Evolution, 2025 Key takeaways: A dispute over tool use A female wolf figured out how to pull a crab trap from the ocean onto shore to fetch a tasty treat. Scientists debate whether the behavior represents tool use, or if the animal needed to have modified the object for it to count. Something strange began happening on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 2023. Traps set by members of the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation to control invasive European green crabs kept getting damaged. Some had mangled bait cups or torn netting, but others were totally destroyed. But who—or what—was the culprit? Initially, the Indigenous community’s environmental wardens, called Guardians, suspected sea lions, seals or otters were to blame. But only after setting up several remote cameras in the area did they catch a glimpse of the true perpetrators: gray wolves. On May 29, 2024, one of the cameras recorded a female wolf emerging from the water with a buoy attached to a crab trap line in her mouth. Slowly but confidently, she tugged the line onto the beach until she’d managed to haul in the trap. Then, she tore open the bottom netting, removed the bait cup, had a snack and trotted off. Now, scientists say the incident—and another involving a different wolf in 2025—could represent the first evidence of tool use by wild wolves. They describe the behavior and lay out their conclusions in a new paper published November 17 in the journal Ecology and Evolution. This wolf has a unique way of finding food | Science News “You normally picture a human being with two hands pulling a crab trap,” says William Housty, a Haíɫzaqv hereditary chief and the director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, to Global News’ Amy Judd and Aaron McArthur. “But we couldn’t figure out exactly what had the ability to be able to do that until we put a camera up and saw, well, there’s other intelligent beings out there that are able to do this, which is very remarkable.” Members of the Haíɫzaqv Nation weren’t surprised by the wolves’ cleverness, as they have long considered the animals to be smart. That view has largely been shaped by the community’s oral history, which tells of a woman named C̓úṃqḷaqs who birthed four individuals who could shape-shift between humans and wolves, reports Science News’ Elie Dolgin. Scientists weren’t shocked, either, as they have long understood that wolves are intelligent, social creatures that often cooperate to take down their prey. People aren’t sure how the wolves figured out the crafty crab trap trick. The animals may have learned by watching Haíɫzaqv Guardians pull up the traps, or their keen sense of smell may have helped them sniff out the herring and sea lion bait inside. Or perhaps they started with traps that were more easily accessible, before moving on to more challenging targets submerged in deep water. Wolves are also largely protected in Haíɫzaqv territory, which may have given them the time and energy they needed to learn a new, complex behavior, reports the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni. Whatever the explanation, experts are divided as to whether the behavior technically constitutes nonhuman tool use, which has been previously documented in crows, elephants, dolphins and several other species. The debate stems mostly from varying definitions of tool use. Under one definition, animals can’t simply use an external object to achieve a specific goal—the creature must also manipulate the object in some way, like a crow transforming a tree branch into a hooked tool for grabbing hidden insects. Against this backdrop, some researchers say the wolves’ behavior represents object use, not tool use. However, some of the disagreement may also be rooted in bias. “For better or for worse, as humans, we tend to afford more care and compassion to other people or other species that we see most like us,” says study co-author Kyle Artelle, an ecologist with the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, to the Washington Post. Marc Bekoff, a biologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved with the research, echoes that sentiment, telling Science’s Phie Jacobs that “if this had been a chimpanzee or other nonhuman primate, I’m sure no one would have blinked about whether this was tool use.” Regardless, scientists say the footage suggests wild wolves are even smarter than initially thought. In less than three minutes, the female efficiently and purposefully executed a complicated sequence of events to achieve a specific goal. She appeared to know that the trap contained food, even though it was hidden underwater, and she seemed to understand exactly which steps she needed to take to access that food. Tool use or not, the findings point to “another species with complex sociality [that] is capable of innovation and problem solving,” says Susana Carvalho, a primatologist and paleoanthropologist at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique who was not involved with the research, to the New York Times’ Lesley Evans Ogden. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Animals
Energy
Food

Suggested Viewing

Saving Jaguars and Ourselves

This feature film has already won 3 top awards: Best Environment and Climate Feature, Semi-Finalist, and Quarter-Finalist. Are you ready for an adventure out on the rivers of the Pantanal Wetland, south of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil? Here we spot wild jaguars like Medrosa and her cubs, giant river otters, and giant storks, while hearing harrowing memories from locals Elizeu, Eduarda, and zoologist Abbie about the climate change fires they have been fighting for 4 years due to severe climate droughts that threaten to destroy this exquisitely beautiful area and the Earth we live on. The Amazon Rainforest is struggling to survive. It affects the global climate. The Pantanal cannot survive without the Amazon and neither can we. We discover that saving jaguars is also saving ourselves and in the process, we discover real solutions and actions that will help save us all. The cinematography and wildlife in this film is described by professionals as stunning, amazing. The Pantanal is the only place in the world where wild jaguars live peacefully with people through ecotourism. These jaguars are known individually by name thanks to the work of Abbie Martin of the Jaguar Identification Project and citizen science efforts of the local community. They are identified by their individual rosette spot patterns. This film includes examples of human--jaguar interaction and communities safely living in close proximity with jaguars. The Pantanal has 5,000 species of wildlife, and is the world's largest wetland, bigger than Florida. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres describes the extreme urgency of addressing climate change. Al Gore explains that we have everything we need to solve climate change. What is lacking is political will. This film is includes many practical solutions that everyday people can do to address climate change!

Solutions
Animals
Climate

Primal State

Set at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center, Port Aransas, Texas, the film is supportive of the international efforts to utilize wastewater treatment facilities as bird sanctuaries. The film features an original jazz score and commentary by naturalist Jeff Anderson and provides a glimpse of some of the diversity of bird life found along the Texas Coast while conjuring a Zen-like union with nature.

Animals
Music
Conservation

A Year With Northern Owls

We follow five North American owls in different seasons; from summer heat to spring rejuvenation.

Animals
Conservation
Documentary

Reboot

Humans have exploited Earth to the point where it is no longer possible to live on it. Their only option is to relocate to Mars. When the last group of people has boarded the spaceship for the red planet, the Earth can finally breathe easy. Like an expressionist painting, Reboot depicts a world in which the absence of our species is the only chance nature has to recover its lushness and flourish once more.

Animation
Crisis
Cosmos

Silent Forests

Loss of more than half the central African forest elephant population to poaching in the last decade has led to a concerted effort to save those that remain. These efforts are explored through one of Cameroon’s first female eco-guards, a grassroots wildlife law enforcement group, a Congolese biologist studying elephant behavior, a reformed elephant poacher, and anti-poaching sniffer dogs led by a Czech conservationist, all fighting corruption despite a lack of funding that threatens to derail their work to save the elephants.

Animals
Conservation
Documentary

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