AFP - Almost half of Hong Kong's aid package to help China's quake-stricken Sichuan will be used to restore a giant panda reserve, the government said Sunday.

Reuters - Scientists have sequenced the genome of the giant panda, an achievement which may aid efforts to protect the endangered species, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

LiveScience.com - We know our siblings and in-laws have personalities - sometimes to a fault. But science recently has revealed that such individual differences are widespread in the animal kingdom, even reaching to spiders, birds, mice, squid, rats and pigs.

AFP - Global warming is driving tropical plant and animal species to higher altitudes, potentially leaving lowland rainforest with nothing to take their place, ecologists argue in this week's issue of Science.

Reuters - Most Europeans have reservations about cloning animals for food, while 67 percent see cloning as justified if used to preserve rare animal species, a survey that could help forge EU policy in the area showed on Thursday.

AP - Animal authorities in western Ohio have a possible sequel to "Snakes on a Plane": a case of a snake in a car. The Clark County Humane Society is looking for the owner of a 7-foot-long boa constrictor found under the hood of a vehicle in Springfield.

AP - New York City police are investigating a rabbi's complaint that he received a thousand threatening e-mails over the slaughter of chickens before a Jewish holy day.

AFP - Half to three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies could be damaged or wiped out if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a report released Wednesday.

AFP - Hundreds of new marine species and previously uncharted undersea mountains and canyons have been discovered in the depths of the Southern Ocean, Australian scientists said Wednesday.

AP - The PETA animal rights organization is targeting Armani in its latest anti-fur campaign.