Images of our planet from space tend to bring out the existential in those that examine them. How can they not? Object lessons in the subjectivity of perspective, they’re simultaneously self-portraits and group portraits, landscapes and still-lifes.

Earth seen from Apollo 17, December 7, 1972. Credit: NASA

Even the staggering images of nebulae captured by the Hubble Telescope reduce to abstractions unless you really know what it is you’re looking at (and where you stand relative to them). The appeal of these photographs of Earth is, in the truest sense of the word, universal. No matter who you are (or when you were born), you, or at least your constituent atoms, are represented by this cerulean bubble floating in blackness.

That realization is both humbling and thrilling. Though it leads to the inexorable conclusion that each of us is vanishingly insignificant in the context of the universe as a whole, it also underscores the fact that our existence at all is remarkable. All we have found in the inky expanses beyond our planet are tantalizing suggestions of the possibility life; we remain, empirically at least, alone.

Have a look at several 2012 composite images of Earth, as well as the Pale Blue Dot image, below, and ponder.

Image of Earth taken by the Elektro-L Russian weather satellite, 2012. Credit: © Research Center for Earth Operative Monitoring (NTs OMZ)/Russian Federal Space Agency

A composite image of Earth captured by instruments aboard NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, 2012. Credit: A composite image of Earth captured by instruments aboard NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, 2012.

'Pale Blue Dot' image taken by Voyager 1, 1990. Earth is visible as a dot near the middle of the brown streak. Credit: NASA

The Truong Son munjtac (Muntiacus truongsonensis), one of the elusive mammalian species found in the Annamite Mountains whose DNA was detected in leech blood meals. Courtesy of Lucy Molleson/Tom Gilbert

The findings, which were published in the journal Current Biology, suggest that leech DNA analysis could significantly expedite biodiversity screening efforts, which play a key role in acquiring the type of data needed for conservation assessments by organizations such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Biodiversity screening traditionally entails species tracking, often in remote areas that are difficult to access and traverse, in order to gather information on population size, distribution, and range. But for secretive species or species that may be endangered, and thus are few in number in the wild, this process can take years, causing major delays in species assessment and protection.

Micropredators and molecular imprints

While scientists have known that water and other components of the environment retain molecular imprints of species in the form of DNA, the new study has drawn attention to the role of micropredators—ticks, mosquitoes, leeches, and the like—as environmental DNA reservoirs. Nucleic acids from viruses, for instance, have been detected in leech blood meals as many as 27 weeks following ingestion.

But no one had actually tested leeches as tools for assessing mammalian biodiversity. That idea, according to Gilbert, originated with Bertelsen and the Copenhagen Zoo. “The Zoo has a field station in Malaysia where they are trying to monitor endangered Southeast Asian tapirs,” Gilbert explained. “I believe that one day while Mads was out there, marveling at all the leeches that were trying to eat his colleagues, the idea struck. He simply wondered how long the DNA from dinner would last, and if it would last long enough in a leech so that it could be traced.”

The team decided to test the idea with medical leeches that were fed known quantities of blood from a goat. The leeches were sacrificed over time to determine how long the goat DNA persisted in the blood meal and how rapidly it degraded. They discovered that the mammalian genetic material, similar to that of viruses, was retained for several months in leeches but that it became increasingly fragmented with time.

A Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) snapped by a camera trap set up by Copenhagen Zoo researchers. Camera traps are an important tool for biodiversity screening, but some secretive species have continually evaded them. Courtesy of Copenhagen Zoo

Because of the fragmented condition of the DNA, Gilbert decided to target a short segment, about 150 base pairs in length, for amplification by PCR (polymerase chain reaction). The targeted segment represented a portion of a mammalian gene known as 16S rRNA, which is found in mitochondrial DNA and frequently is used in genetics research to determine a species’ taxonomic position. With numerous PCR-generated copies of the 16S rRNA segment in hand, the team was able to compare DNA from leeches with known mammal sequences stored in DNA databases. A special “blocking primer” in the PCR analyses prevented the amplification of any sequences of human DNA that may have contaminated the leeches during handling.

To test the utility of leeches in the detection of mammalian DNA in the field, Gilbert partnered with Nicholas Wilkinson, a researcher in the department of geography at the University of Cambridge. “Nicholas was out in Vietnam and simply offered to pick up leeches while he was doing his current research of tracking the saola in central Vietnamese forests. He shipped them to us, and we tested them,” Gilbert explained.

The saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) of Wilkinson’s research is often referred to as the Asian unicorn because it is extraordinarily rare. The last one was sighted in 2010 and was captured but then died. The most recent sighting prior to then had been in 2000. It is precisely this sort of secretive animal that Gilbert and his team hope to be able to detect in DNA from leeches.

Mapping the distribution of cryptic mammals

Extrapolating new information about the distribution of mammals based on areas where leeches are collected may be possible with Gilbert and colleagues’ approach. In fact, Gilbert hopes to soon start mapping the distribution of cryptic mammals in the Annamite Mountains. “Ultimately this method is similar to tools like camera trapping,” he said. “It tells you where things are and possibly, if our development goes well, minimum numbers on how many individuals are where (although that [work is] in progress).”

Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia. Courtesy of Copenhagen Zoo

“The method may also be a way to detect unknown species,” he added. “If one gets a result that is similar, but not identical, to known sequences, one can start to see whether that is because a new species or just a known, but not sequenced, species [has been detected].”

As it is, conservationists have already latched on to the leech method, owing to its cost-effectiveness and speed and the ease of collecting leeches. Researchers with the World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Fauna & Flora International are beginning to use the approach in Southeast Asia.

Gilbert hopes next to undertake sampling not only across Southeast Asia but also in Madagascar, examining in particular questions about what animals are where and whether species thought to be extinct really are.

“We want to fully explore the power of the method to see if we can move from species to individual information,” he added. “We also are trying to see how well viruses survive in the leeches.” The latter investigations could result in the development of a leech-based tool for monitoring emerging viral pathogens.

About Science Up Front

A regular Britannica Blog feature written by the encyclopedia’s senior editor of biomedical sciences Kara Rogers, Science Up Front goes behind the headlines to bring researchers’ stories of discovery centerstage. Begun in 2009 to highlight the ingenious work of pioneering scientists and to bring greater accuracy to science reporting, Rogers goes straight to the source, exploring the latest advances in science through first-hand interviews with researchers.

Even as Beagle was sailing there, British warships were evicting the residents of the Falklands, a handful of Argentine herders, to establish a small station to serve passing British vessels. That eviction had complex origins. Write Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins in their comprehensive history The Battle for the Falklands, “The first colony on the islands was French, but this was ceded[…]to Spain—virtually the only straightforward deal in the whole history of the Falklands.” A Spanish colony held the Falklands until 1811 but then abandoned the islands. Britain, which had laid claim in 1790 to only one island, West Falkland, failed to renew its assertion of territorial rights, giving Argentina plenty of legal room to set forth its own claim to what it called the Islas Malvinas when it gained independence from Spain in 1820.

It was American intervention that started the brouhaha. In 1829, an Argentine ship halted an American vessel and accused it of illegal sealing in the islands, seizing some of its cargo and then taking the ship and its crew to Buenos Aires for trial. The American consul there thundered that America could do as it pleased, and soon an American warship arrived in the islands, seized the confiscated sealskins, and blew up an Argentine ammunition dump, declaring that henceforth the Falklands were “free of all government.”

The British did not see it that way, though after the seizure of 1833 the Falklands were mostly administered by benign neglect. The decades rolled by, and from time to time one of Argentina’s leaders would remember events and threaten action, threats that the British government ignored, even as diplomats gathered to discuss the relative merits of each nation’s claim to the cold, windswept islands.

Finally, in 1982, Argentina’s military junta, led by a general named Leopoldo Galtieri, undertook an irredentist dare: on April 2, 1982, American-trained Argentine commandos and soldiers invaded the Falklands, overwhelming a small garrison of British marines at Port Stanley and placing the islands’ similarly small civilian population under martial law. By the end of the month, nearly 10,000 Argentine troops were encamped in the Falklands and the disputed territories of South Georgia Island and the South Sandwich Islands. Most of these soldiers were draftees, ill-equipped to spend the advancing austral winter in the elements, since the government in Buenos Aires—assured by elements in the U.S. State Department—believed that Britain would do nothing in response.

The junta misjudged. Within weeks, a British task force had assembled, its officers overjoyed, by many accounts, to be fighting a real war, however small, instead of waiting for the Soviet invasion that never came. That real war was first fought at sea, with submarines and cruise missiles sinking ships such as the Argentine cruiser Admiral Belgrano and the British destroyer Sheffield well before the Falklands were ever sighted.

British troops landed in late May, fighting a hard battle across the Falklands for the next three weeks, and on June 14, the Argentine garrison, now numbering about 11,400, surrendered. The British had suffered nearly 1,000 casualties; an unknown but probably like number of Argentines were killed or wounded.

Note Hastings and Jenkins, “The Falklands campaign was fought with remarkable respect for decency on both sides.” Said a British senior officer at the time, “The motto of the Falklands war is, ‘You never know.’”

The Argentine defeat had one salutary effect: the Galtieri government crumbled, and civilian rule was restored in 1983. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party seized the hour and won reelection, though it, too, would crumble. From time to time, Parliament debates about what to do about the islands, subsidized at many millions of pounds a year, while every now and again an Argentine hard-liner, seeking political benefit, stirs up the dust with a demand to retake the islands—as, in fact, it has been doing lately.

One category under which this blog posting is indexed is “Facts That Matter.” It is a fact that Britain claims the Falklands as its own. It is not a fact that the Falklands are rightfully Britain’s. That word “rightfully” is the giveaway, for morality and ethics and territoriality and power do not necessarily overlap.

Just so, it is a fact that Argentina claims the Malvinas as its own, and not a fact that the Malvinas are rightfully Argentina’s.

Because the two nations cannot agree on the contending facts of the matter, it seems likely that the conflict that brewed up 30 years ago will continue into the future, now hot, now cold. Unless, that is, the world does something sensible and turns the country and its sheep over to some neutral administrator. The government of Greenland, say, or Greater Luxembourg.

Of course, neither of those nations would likely accept such a solution—because it is another fact that underlying the Falklands/Malvinas is oil. How much isn’t certain, but it may equal the reserves in the North Sea. That’s another fact waiting to be discovered—and that’s another story.

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The Falklands War was not universally received as a triumph in Britain. Having made an excellent study of Falklands-era journalistic cynicism and official corruption with The Ploughman’s Lunch, Richard Eyre came forth with his troubling film Tumbledown, which, it is said, Thatcher so roundly hated that British television never showed it again following its airing in May 1988. Colin Firth has never been better, but the film is extinct.

The war also inspired Elvis Costello to write “Shipbuilding,” with its memorable lyrics (“Diving for dear life / When we could be diving for pearls”). Costello originally wrote the song for Robert Wyatt, whose version follows.

On the Argentine side, the 2005 film Iluminados por el fuego (Illuminated by the Fire) recounts the lot of battle-scarred veterans who returned home only to be shunned as a reminder of an ugly war that should not have been fought. In a promising example of international cooperation, the director, Tristán Bauer, was allowed to film in the Falklands. The trailer, in Spanish, also follows.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whaam!, acrylic and oil on two canvas panels by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963; in the Tate Modern, London. 174 × 408 cm. Credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the Tate Gallery, London

The artist, who died in 1997, is a major figure of 20th-century Pop art. Like Andy Warhol and others working in that genre, Lichtenstein explored the intersection between “low art” and fine art. After experimenting with Abstract Expressionism, Lichtenstein found his signature style in 1961, when he painted Look, Mickey. Bearing an appropriated comic-book image of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, it scandalized the public. Donald and Mickey next to Rembrandt?

Roy Lichtenstein, American (1923-1997). Look Mickey, 1961. Oil on canvas. 121.9 x 175.3 cm (48 x 69 in). © National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery of Art. Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein, Gift of the artist, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery. Credit: courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

What’s best about the AIC show? I loved revisiting old familiar work—such as the iconic I Don’t Care! I’d Rather Sink Than Call Brad for Help! The painting shows one frame of an old, old story, the drowning heroine, with tears in her eyes plainly visible, overwhelmed by troubled waters. But most of all I like to be surprised. The AIC show reveals a versatility that took me by surprise. I did not expect elegant Art Deco-like sculptures, black-and-white drawings, several series of benday-dot “Monets,” and many enjoyable art-historical references. Near the end of his life, Lichtenstein made some remarkably effective Chinese-inspired landscapes. And some comic-book nudes, as well. Who knew?

Lichtenstein’s subject remained constant throughout his career. More or less it was brushstroke (intimate, individual, fine art) vs. mass production. I for one had no idea that his study of this motif embraced such a large vocabulary. The aforementioned landscapes alone are worth the price of admission, in my opinion.

Roy Lichtenstein, American (1923-1997). Landscape in Fog, 1996. Oil and Magna on canvas. 180.3 x 207.6 cm (71 x 81.75 in). © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Private Collection. Credit: Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

See it at the AIC or you’ll have to catch it at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Tate Modern in London; or the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

In previous years, adult black-crowned night herons have arrived at Nature Boardwalk around the beginning of April. However, in keeping with our months-long trend of seeing slightly offseason birds—probably due to the extremely mild winter—the herons have arrived considerably earlier this year. (A few juveniles seem to have spent the majority of the winter at the site.)

Scientists at Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute have studied black-crowned night herons near Nature Boardwalk for the last two years. Herons show high nest site fidelity, meaning they tend to return to the same place to breed year after year. Lincoln Park Zoo has records of them breeding in the area since 2007.

Black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) at Lincoln Park Zoo's Nature Boardwalk. Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo/Vicky Hunt

Because of the Urban Wildlife Institute’s long-term study, we’ll be able to see how this historically mild winter and warm spring influence the timing of certain milestones in the birds’ breeding season, such as evidence of the first hatchlings. We already know they’re getting started earlier than in previous years.

Black-crowned night herons are endangered in Illinois. Lincoln Park Zoo works together with the Chicago Park District and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to ensure the birds have an opportunity for a successful breeding season in such a highly urban area. Last year there were about 400 adult black-crowned night herons at the population’s peak. We’ll have to wait and see what happens this year, but so far we’re off to an early start!

[For more on black-crowned night herons, check out this piece by Britannica blogger Richard Pallardy on our sister platform, Advocacy for Animals. He describes the black-crowned night heron that has loitered on the Chicago River near Britannica's offices for the past few summers.]

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This piece was originally published on Lincoln Park Zoo’s Nature Boardwalk Blog. Its author, Vicky Hunt, is the coordinator of wildlife management for the Nature Boardwalk.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee

The May bank holiday has been changed and will occur on Monday June 4^th this year, and an additional holiday has been declared for the Jubilee, creating a four-day weekend from June 2-5^th.

Diamond Jubilee Events in London

London will be one of the best places to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as there are plenty of excellent events planned for the city. The Diamond Jubilee Pageant will be held on the private grounds of historical London landmark Windsor Castle on the 10, 11, and 13^th of May. This exciting event is a lavish display of musicians, dancers, and live bands, as well as equestrian shows from all over the world.

On Saturday May 19^th the Royal Navy, Army, and Air Force will parade their troops through Windsor Castle and the town for an official Jubilee muster. It is estimated that at least 2,500 troops will be involved in this event.

The BBC will be organizing a huge concert at Buckingham Palace on Monday June 4^th, which will be attended by the Queen herself as well as other members of the Royal Family. However, the tickets for this event have already been made available through a national ballot and have been allocated, so they will be difficult to come by.

Museums and Galleries Join In the Fun

The excellent museums and art galleries of London will also be celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with special exhibits and offers. The Royal Collection will be exhibited at Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and Windsor Castle, showcasing some of the art and artifacts owned by the Royal Family.

There is also an interesting exhibit at the National Maritime Museum, which opened in April. It is called “Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames,” and it informs viewers about the relationship between the Royal Family and the River Thames.

If you are interested in seeing even more royal-family related artwork, The National Portrait Gallery in London will be showcasing an exhibition of portraits of Her Majesty, and the Victoria and Albert Museum will be displaying a show of photographs of the Queen by renowned photographer Cecil Beaton.

This article was produced during research for Door2Tour, which has co-coordinated a range of tour packages for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

These are just a few of the great events, exhibitions, and celebrations that will be happening in London this summer to celebrate the Queen’s 60-year reign. Why not come to the vibrant capital and take part in the festivities?

Credit: courtesy of Chris Mooney

Liberals, it’s said, are trusting to a fault, easily suckered by people of bad intent. Conservatives, it’s said, are resistant to change—and not just resistant, but fearful, and very well aware of the threats that changes to the status quo involve.

These are matters of character—that old-fashioned word. Increasingly, newfangled neuroscientists are finding, they are also matters of brain chemistry. Conservatives and liberals have different beliefs, to be sure, but also different ways of processing the information that yields or confirms those beliefs.

Discover magazine science blogger Chris Mooney is both an unabashed liberal and a science reporter of many years’ standing. Working his beats, he found himself wondering why, when presented with the same data, people with views on the left and right came to widely different conclusions about such things as climate change and environmental pollution. “Like many liberals,” he says, “I grew increasingly frustrated by the denial of science and fact coming from the political right in the United States, and by the inability of factual or reasoned arguments to change minds. So finally my only recourse was to explore what science itself has to say about how the left and right process information differently, and what kind of communication remains possible once we look at the real roots of our political differences.”

The result of that exploration is his new book The Republican Brain. Britannica contributing editor Gregory McNamee caught up with Chris Mooney to talk about his work and findings.

Britannica: To judge by your book and the extensive scientific research it reports, the conservative, or Republican, brain would indeed seem to be wired differently from the liberal, or Democratic, one. What are some of the principal differences between them, and in their resulting ways of thinking?

Chris Mooney: Well, let’s be careful with the word “wired.” To a lot of people, it implies that we lack any choice or are unable to change our political views. That’s a bit more deterministic than the evidence warrants, because people can and do change their minds. It’s important to get that on the table.

That said, there is a vast body of research from the field of psychology showing differences in personality and psychological needs between the average liberal and the average conservative. Most broadly, liberals seem to be more open to new experiences, to trying new things, and more tolerant of ambiguity, uncertainty, nuance and change. Conservatives are less open, with all that implies, but more conscientious, meaning they appreciate order and structure in their lives—being on time, driving to work the same way every day, keeping organized, and so on.

It was probably inevitable that eventually researchers would try to find more basic physical correlates for these psychological differences. And they haven’t just done this in the brain, by the way. They’ve done it by tracking physiological or bodily responses to various stimuli. Conservatives show more skin conductance when shown threatening images, for instance (an indicator of sympathetic nervous system arousal), and their eyes dart toward them faster and stay there longer.

All of this stuff, by the way, is automatic. It is not under your conscious control.

Then there’s the brain. Here, the research is tentative but suggestive. Several studies have correlated conservatism with the amygdala—the brain’s automatic fear and threat center—and liberalism with the anterior cingulate cortex, an error-detecting region involved in making us change a habitual pattern of behavior. The research seems to suggest that small variations in these regions or how they are used may impel our political differences.

So, yes: It is starting to look like there may be actual left–right brain differences, of a sort that are easily measurable. But we shouldn’t overemphasize the brain studies alone. What’s important is that they are part of a much broader body of evidence, across scientific fields, showing that liberals and conservatives just process information differently, on average, and probably go through life experiencing the world differently. And this may be at the root of our political and even our factual divides.

Chris Mooney, 2011. Credit: courtesy of Chris Mooney

Britannica: If you were designing a brain science-based campaign against a Republican candidate, what might some of its rhetoric or strategies be? Similarly, how might a Republican campaign against a Democratic opponent, again based on science?

Chris Mooney: One part of this is easy. The conservative fares best if he or she appeals to fear. All the research shows that at times of great stress or threat, conservatives are at an advantage politically—after 9/11, for instance.

This sensitivity to threat is probably why. At times of fear and threat, people don’t have any time or interest for the wonky, nuanced policies that liberals like to propose. They’re focused on something much, much more immediate and visceral. And they like strong and decisive leaders.

Liberals fare best at a different time—when they can excite widespread emotions of empathy in the public, such as happened after Hurricane Katrina. So that is the emotion that a liberal candidate wants to evoke.

Britannica: Where do greens, libertarians, independents, and other outliers from the two-party system fit into all this? Are their brains different, too, or just their politics?

Chris Mooney: Everybody’s brain is a little different. It’s important to emphasize that not every liberal is a psychological liberal, nor is every conservative a psychological conservative. The psychological traits that separate left and right describe average tendencies, but there will be many people who are above or below the average, on both sides of the aisle.

Greens have a broadly liberal psychology. As for independents, I spend a section of the book on them. They’re tricky.

There are both disengaged independents, who simply aren’t following politics closely enough to take a side, and then there are well-informed moderates or centrists. These are two very different groups. The disengaged independents may be psychologically quite liberal or conservative, but not attuned enough to see how their values and psychologies match up with the current parties. By contrast, the well-informed moderates or centrists might have a blend of typically conservative and typically liberal traits, and it feels natural to them to split the difference.

And then there are libertarians—theoretically, those who are economically conservative but socially liberal. They are a smaller group, but the research shows that at least for economic conservatives, they, too, tend to be less open to new experiences, and more conscientious.

Britannica: Can this neurological way of looking at political differences be applied to other countries? Are people studying up on such things at Foggy Bottom and Langley?

Chris Mooney: One of the most prominent recent left–right brain studies was done in the UK. And the psychology-of-ideology research that all of this is based on has been carried out across countries. However, it has naturally been much easier to do the research in European democracies than to do it in, say, communist countries. And none of the researchers that I’m reading seem to have much of a handle on Asian countries.

That said, in Europe and the United States, left and right do seem to share quite a great deal, even though there are also significant cultural and political differences.

Basically, I think there is enough evidence at this point to propose that political ideology is an outgrowth of basic human nature; that it emerges from some combination of personality and moral values; and that these, in turn, are rooted in more basic traits, but also inevitably shaped by experience.

There is such an intellectual ferment in this area now that in ten years, I am sure we’ll know a ton more. But already, it seems clear that ideology is the reflection of something much deeper than our conscious ideas and choices about how we think society should be structured.

Britannica: Your reporting has implications in many areas. Let’s concentrate on two closely related ones: education and science. What are the implications of the two political brains, so to speak, when it comes to governmental funding for them?

Chris Mooney: Interesting question. First, the scientific establishment in the United States is strongly liberal, and conservatives know that very well. And I argue in the book that liberals and scientists are closely aligned for deep psychological reasons—both groups are much more comfortable with ambiguity, nuance, uncertainty, and change. Both groups are intellectual explorers and innovators. That sort of makes them natural allies.

However, it is very important that science not get politicized to the point that conservatives come to think of it as the enemy and seek to cut its funding. Rather, conservatives, to my mind, should take the view that science and the academy are naturally liberal parts of society, and that’s just fine, because it’s part of who human beings are, just as conservatism is also part of who human beings are.

With respect to education—higher education, at least—the story is very similar. Universities are like a playground for people who are open to new experiences and want to try out new things, including new ideas—in short, liberals. Rick Santorum attacked universities during the campaign, but he did so based on a clichéd idea that universities make you liberal. No: Universities appeal to the liberal side of human nature, which will always be there. You might almost think of it as tradition.

That’s something that conservatives should appreciate, shouldn’t they?

Each winter, flocks of millions of hawks, accompanied by smaller numbers of kites, vultures, falcons, and other birds, wend their way south through Central America to South America to while away the frigid North American winter in tropical comfort (and gustatory abundance). In the Mexican state of Veracruz, their route narrows due to mountainous topography, and the resulting increase in concentration of birds makes for a conspicuous spectacle, a veritable “river of raptors.”

Of all the birds, raptors are among those that have had the most persistent and universal hold on the human imagination. Cultures as diverse as the ancient Egyptians and the Norse, the tribal cultures of America and of Africa, have placed hawks, eagles, and falcons in the upper tiers of their respective pantheons. The striking contrast of their beauty and savagery echoed the perceived dualities of the gods, making them prime candidates for deification (or, at the very least, sanctification).

Though thought by the ancient Greeks to be the messengers of Apollo and referred to by Homer in the Odyssey as “of winged things the swiftest,” hawks probably rank below their fellow Falconiformes the eagles and falcons in theological and popular importance. Most people can probably tell you a thing or two about eagles and almost everyone knows that the stooping peregrine is the fastest of birds (contrary to Homer’s assertion), but for most except ornithologists and birders, they probably fade into an indistinct flock of roughly equivalent brownish grey versions of their higher-profile relatives.

That is a misconception that warrants some correction. If eagles and falcons are the marquee names, hawks are the underappreciated character actors. Though they may not do so in showboating fashion like their relatives, they contribute immensely to the ecosystems they inhabit; call them apex predators with humility. And, speaking of the Odyssey, as seen in the video above, some species are capable of seemingly supernatural feats of locomotion.

Check out some of the more common participants in the transcontinental exodus that soars over  Veracruz each year. From top to bottom, some 200,000 Mississippi kites (Ictinia mississippiensis), some 2 million broad-winged hawks (Buteo platypterus), and about 1 million Swainson’s hawks (Buteo swainsoni).

Mississippi kite. Credit: Bill Majoros/CC BY-SA 2.0

Broad-winged hawks circling over Soberanía National Park, Panama. Credit: bgv23/CC BY 2.0

Swainson's hawk. Credit: Tucker Hammerstrom/CC BY-ND 2.0