We love animals and we’re writing about them with every occasion that comes up, as knowing better our nonspeaking buddies from the wild is a great opportunity to understand life itself and to come up with better, more efficient ways of protecting nature and help it thrive. While we never miss the chance to show you the newest discovered species or the latest fun pictures on the Internet, we are also very connected to the animals in the news and the research conducted by brave scientists and wildlife lovers. Therefore, recent news speak about a dolphin – human translator, a new IMAX 3D movie lulling us into the mysterious world of lemurs and a genetically engineered salmon meant for human consumption which is still facing hot debates. So without wasting too much time, let’s see today’s animals in the news and take a walk on the serious side of exploring animal life.

2. The Dolphin – to – Human translator seems to work

We were stunned to hear that dolphins call each other by names and we are even more stunned now to hear that incredible progress was made in the field of translating dolphin “language” into human. The director of the Wild Dolphin Project and creator of the Cetacean Hearing Telemetry device (CHAT), Denise Herzing stated that her team of researchers managed to narrow down and identify so far eight sounds common to dolphins’ communication system. This is just a drop in the ocean, as the dolphins have a tremendous range of sounds, some not even audible to the human ear, but the researchers hope that, based on the eight fundamental translations they could narrow down, in the future they will expand their understanding over larger areas of dolphin communication. The first identified “word” was “seaweed” and we all hope that one day we can eavesdrop on dolphins while they talk about us.

2. Welcome to the world of dancing (and soon to be extinct) lemurs

You all loved King Julian and the world entirely became suddenly curious about the mysterious lemurs after seeing “Madagascar”, so hearing that there is a new 40 minutes movie / documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman that explores the world of lemurs, the extinction they face and the efforts of incredible people (like primatologist Patricia Wright) to save what is left in the Madagascar forests, can only bring us joy and restore our hope in humanity. “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” from Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros studios is the title you may look for in IMAX theaters on Friday.

3. The genetically engineered salmon won’t hit the shelves any time soon

If you are interested in animals in the news, scientific research, bio-medicine and genetic engineering, you may remember that back in 2010, there were some debates regarding the FDA approving of an engineered salmon to enter mass – consumption. The “Frankenfish”, as it was called by the idea’s opponents, was considered safe to eat even in 2012, but the FDA isn’t hurrying up to bless the fish with its approval. Two sides are fighting against each other, one being represented by the company engineering the fish, and the other by all animal and human rights advocates, together with two big U.S. grocers, Safeway and Kroger – who sworn not to sell the modified fish not even if it gets approved for development and selling. Besides the ethical and practical dilemmas that revolve around the engineered salmon, the time problem is also delicate: even if the engineered salmon gets approved, it will take another two years until it will actually reach the shelves.

For now, these are our animals in the news of the day. While we aren’t very eager to eat the engineered salmon, we will definitely keep an eye on the developments regarding the dolphin language translator and will surely check out the documentary on the lemurs.