The following is adapted from LIFE’s new special issue on bears, available at newsstands and online: Globally, bear populations are plummeting, with several species designated as endangered or vulnerable to extinction. But in many parts of North America, people are seeing more bears than ever. Since the 1970s, American bears in the lower 48 states…
Behind the Picture: Hansel Mieth’s Wet, Unhappy Monkey
It is, without question, one of the most famous, most frequently reproduced animal photographs ever made. But photographer Hansel Mieth‘s own attitude toward her 1938 portrait of a sodden rhesus monkey hunched in the water off of Puerto Rico was, to put it bluntly, conflicted. In fact, the German-born Mieth (1909-1998) memorably called the creature…
Apes: Their Remarkable World
The following is from LIFE’s new special issue Apes: Their Remarkable World, available at newsstands and online: Two rangers quietly sat on a platform 25 feet up in a tree with a large pile of bananas and red buckets filled with milk. As I watched, a dozen orangutans quickly climbed and swung over to grab the…
Penguins: Their Extraordinary World
The following is from the introduction to LIFE’s new special issue Penguins: Their Extraordinary World, available at newsstands and online: You never forget your first penguin. Mine stood atop a white slab of ice, the tuxedoed groom on a wedding cake, looking back at our passing ship slicing through the Drake Passage from Argentina to…
Female Jockeys Who Broke Down Barriers
In 2022 more than a quarter of all jockeys—27.2 percent—were female. That is only true because of the pioneering women of the late 1960s who fought for the right to compete. In its Dec. 13, 1968 issue LIFE wrote about Penny Ann Early and her battle to break the gender barrier in horse racing. At…
Seriously, Check Out This Porcupine: A Lending Library for Animals
A library that lets you check out animals? It sounds like a fanciful idea, perhaps a premise for a children’s book. But in Sacramento in the 1950s, there was a place where kids could actually check out animals and take them home. The service was run out of the California Junior Museum, which was located…
Are City Dogs Better Off Than Country Dogs?
Many decades ago LIFE took a bold stance by suggesting that dogs in the city were better off than those in the country. Yes, the magazine actually put forward the idea that dogs thrived more living in cramped apartments than in places where they could frolic through fields and streams. “Deprived of wide open spaces,…