More than 30 wild animals, including pythons, tortoises, a slow loris and a marmoset have been seized from a flat in Singapore in the city's largest such haul of banned wildlife in more than a decade, a government agency said Tuesday. The owner, who kept the animals in a public housing apartment, could be jailed for two years and fined up to Sg$500,000 ($297,000), the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said in a statement.

Men and their preference for younger female mates may have led to the phenomenon of menopause in women, according to a controversial study by Canadian researchers published this week. "If women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing like men are for their whole lives," said evolutionary geneticist Rama Singh, a professor at McMaster University.

The Philippines said Tuesday it would destroy five tonnes of confiscated elephant tusks as part of a global campaign to raise awareness against the illegal trade of so-called "blood ivories". The seized tusks represent a portion of the 13.1 tonnes of Tanzanian elephant tusks seized in 2005 and 2009 that are kept in a government vault, said Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau head Theresa Mundita Lim. "This action is meant to send a message that the Philippines is against the illegal trade of ivory and the merciless massacre of elephants," Lim told AFP.

VANCOUVER - Researchers are learning a lot about the lives of orcas from the deaths of orcas, thanks to a team of experts from British Columbia and the United States. Though killer whale carcasses are on occasion found washed up on beaches around the North Pacific, few tests were being done to figure out why or how.