Science & Nature | Wildlife | Smithsonian.com

Endangered Ocean Creatures Beyond the Cute and Cuddly

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:10:00 GMT

Staghorn coral is listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. NOAA Fisheries has proposed it be reclassified as endangered. Photo by Albert Kok Our oceans are taking a beating from overfishing, pollution, acidification and warming, putting at risk the many creatures who make their home in seawater. But when most people think of struggling ocean species, the first animals that come to mind are probably whales, seals or sea turtles. Sure, many of these large (and adorable) animals play an important part in the marine ecosystem and are threatened with extinction due to human activities, but in fact, of the 94 marine species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA),

Why the Endangered Species Act Is Broken, and How to Fix It

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:44:27 GMT

While a college student in the early 1990s at Northwestern, Peter Alagona became fascinated with the red-hot controversies swirling endangered species, from the California condor and desert tortoise to the northern spotted owl and black-footed ferret. As environmentalists and animal lovers pushed to do whatever it took to save them, there was strong resistance from the ranchers, loggers, and other communities threatened by the rigorous federal laws required to do so. “I was watching this stuff unfold on a daily basis, wondering what the hell was going on, why it was so contentious, and why we couldn't figure it out,” recalls Alagona, now a professor of environmental history at

Earthworms in Your Garden May Help Prevent Invasive Slugs from Devouring Plants

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:52:02 GMT

The invasive Spanish slug, one of the worst alien pests in Europe, is naturally repelled by ecosystems if soils house a healthy population of earthworms, new research suggests. Photo by Xauxa Håkan Svensson They creep through a garden, lubricated by their own secretions, leaving a trail of mucus behind. In their wake is destruction–their rapacious appetites can require them to consume several times their own body weight each day, chomping roots and leaves with guillotine-like jaws and thousands of backward-pointing teeth. Hermaphroditic as adults, they lay tiny pearls of eggs easily mistaken for fertilizer beads in potting soil, allowing them to rampantly proliferate in gardens a

Amazing Sea Butterflies Are the Ocean’s Canary in the Coal Mine

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:27:00 GMT

The shelled sea butterfly Hyalocylis striata can be found in the warm surface waters of the ocean around the world. Photo: © Karen Osborn The chemistry of the ocean is changing. Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic. Tiny sea butterflies are related to snails, but use their muscular foot to swim in the water instead

What Genomic Research Can Tell Us About the Earth's Biodiversity

Thu, 16 May 2013 02:35:27 GMT

Inside two gleaming white rooms at a vast complex in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. are 20 round five-foot-tall steel tanks whose contents are cooled by liquid nitrogen to temperatures as low as minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit. Lift the lid of one of the tanks and look through the wispy nitrogen vapor that wafts upward, and you’ll see rack upon rack of two-inch-tall plastic vials, tens of thousands of them, each containing a bit of tissue extracted from a living thing somewhere in the world—North American birds, Gabonese monkeys, venomous brown recluse spiders, Burmese rainforest plants, South Pacific corals. There are now some 200,000 samples in the Natural History Museu

Solving an Alligator Mystery May Help Humans Regrow Lost Teeth

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:07:00 GMT

Could this gator’s teeth hold clues for regenerating humans’ pearly whites? Photo by Flickr user montuschi Humans drew the short end of the toothbrush when it comes to our pearly whites’ longevity. Other animals such as reptiles and fish frequently lose and replace their teeth by growing new ones, but people are stuck with the same set of mature adult teeth their entire lives. If they lose a tooth–or all 32–dentures are usually the only option. Oddly enough, alligators’ deadly chomps may hold a clue for how scientists could coax humans into regrowing teeth. These reptiles belong to the order Crocodilia, who, with their famous cheerful grins, caused

Baby Weddell Seals Have the Most Adult-Like Brains in the Animal Kingdom

Thu, 09 May 2013 01:00:10 GMT

Helpless babe or capable professional navigator? Photo by Samuel Blanc With their big, glossy black eyes and downy fluff, baby Weddell seal pups are some of the most adorable newborns in the animal kingdom. But these cute infants are far from helpless bundles of joy. New research published in the journal Marine Mammal Science reveals that Weddell seal pups likely possess the most adult-like brain of any mammal at birth. The seal pups’ brains, compared to adult seals’ brain proportions, are the largest known for any mammal to date. The researchers write that this is “remarkable” considering that the pups are quite small at birth compared to many other newborn ma

How Does Science Help Pandas Make More Panda Babies?

Wed, 08 May 2013 03:11:27 GMT

The National Zoo’s two giant pandas don’t know how to mate with each other. But thanks to artificial insemination Mei Xiang (L) and Tian Tian (R) have produced two cubs, and a third may be on the way. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo The National Zoo’s two giant pandas have little interest in each other 11 months of the year. Mei Xiang, 15, and Tian Tian, 16, are solitary creatures, happy to spend most of their days chowing down and napping. But March was mating season. For 30 to 45 days, pandas undergo behavioral and physical changes that prepare them for an annual 24- to 72-hour window in which females ovulate, the only time they can conceive. Just because they a

PHOTOS Baby’s First Romp: Andean Cubs Play in the Rain

Tue, 07 May 2013 05:43:20 GMT

One cub surveys the course ahead. All photos by Leah Binkovitz Andean bear cubs, Curt and Nicole, played in the rain for the first time in their new outdoor home. Before making their public debut Saturday May 11, the cubs got to know their space on a rainy Tuesday morning. Under the watchful eye of mother Billie Jean, the two cubs, born last December, took to the rocky walls and steep climbs. Staffer Craig Saffoe says this species has a particular fancy for heights and a flair for daring acrobatics that can sometimes leave visitors breathless. “But I’ve never seen them fall,” says Saffoe. Curt and Nicole both took a few small tumbles as they tried out their mountaine

Breaking News: Bozie the Elephant to Join National Zoo

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:22:54 GMT

Bozie will go into quarantine for a minimum of 30 days upon her arrival at the National Zoo, per standard procedure. An expert team of elephant keepers, nutritionists and veterinarians will care for her. Following quarantine, Zoo staff will begin the process of introducing her to females Ambika and Shanthi and male Kandula. Photo courtesy of the National Zoo The National Zoo’s three Asian elephants are about to get a new friend. Today, the Zoo announced the pending arrival of Bozie, a 37-year-old female Asian Elephant who will be on-loan from the Baton Rouge Zoo. Baton Rogue recently decided to find a new home for Bozie after her last elephant companion, Judy, died of chronic ga

UPDATE: Sloth Bear Cub Has a New Name

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:25:37 GMT

This little guy needs a name. Can you help? Photo by Mindy Babitz UPDATE: The results are in. The Zoo’s new adorable sloth bear is now officially named Hank, a combination of his parents’ names—Hana and Francois. Voted most favorite on the Zoo’s Facebook page, winning 830 votes, the name Hank beat out the other two options Ravi (615 votes) and Bandar (219). Born on December 19, 2012 and busy bonding with his mom ever since, the Zoo’s sloth bear cub is need of a name. The Zoo opened up its Facebook poll to fans May 1 to allow everyone to weigh in before noon on May 3. So, does the little cutie look like a Ravi, a Bandar or a Hank? You decide. Because the cub wa

Exploring the World’s Most Imperiled Rivers

Wed, 01 May 2013 05:49:11 GMT

Canyon walls tower above river rafters in the cathedralesque Grand Canyon. Traveling by raft may be the most enjoyable and easiest way to explore the Colorado River, one of the most threatened rivers. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Gran Canyon NPS. The classic film Deliverance immortalized the American tradition of canoes, river canyons, guitars and banjos—but less remembered from the film, and the novel that preceded it, is its very premise: Four men were out to see one of Appalachia’s last free-flowing rivers—the fictional Cahulawassee—months before a scheduled dam project forever disrupted its flow. This fate, or something similar, has befallen most major river systems on earth

Baby Sand Tiger Sharks Devour Their Siblings While Still in the Womb

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:01:07 GMT

How many unborn brothers and sisters did this sand tiger shark devour to be here today? Photo by Amada44 Baby animals may seem irresistibly adorable, but in reality many of them are calculating killers. Hyena, wolf or even dog litter runts are pushed aside by their larger siblings and left to go hungry; fuzzy white egret chicks will kick their weaker clutch mates out of the nest to certain doom; and baby golden eagles sometimes go so far as to snack on their smaller brothers and sisters while their mother looks on. Perhaps most disturbing of all, however, is the case of the baby sand tiger shark. While sharks may not be the most snuggly animals to begin with, the sand tiger shark set

Saving the Cao Vit Gibbon, the Second Rarest Ape in the World

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:00:24 GMT

A baby cao vit gibbon learns to search for food. Photo: Zhao Chao 赵超, Fauna and Flora International You probably haven’t heard of the world’s second rarest ape, the cao vit gibbon. Scientists know of only one place the species still lives in the wild. In the 1960s, things got so bad for the cao vit gibbon that the species was declared extinct. But in 2002, to the surprise and elation of conservationists, the animals—whose shaggy coats can be a fiery orange or jet black—turned up along Vietnam’s remote northern border. Several years later, a few gibbons were found in China, too. Also known as the eastern black-crested gibbon, the cao vit gibbons once covered an expans

14 Fun Facts About Penguins

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:30:52 GMT

Emperor penguins swimming. Photo by Polar Cruises Penguins seem a bit out of place on land, with their stand-out black jackets and clumsy waddling. But once you see their grace in the water, you know that’s where they’re meant to be–they are well-adapted to life in the ocean. April 25 of each year is World Penguin Day, and to celebrate here are 14 facts about these charismatic seabirds. 1. Depending on which scientist you ask, there are 17–20 species of penguins alive today, all of which live in the southern half of the globe. The most northerly penguins are Galapagos penguins (Spheniscus mendiculus), which occasionally poke their heads north of the equator. 2. While they can’

Hiking with Your Dog This Summer May Be Harder Than You Think

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:10:56 GMT

These dogs have hiked off-leash to the top of Handies Peak in Colorado. Sharing the great outdoors with our pets is a favorite pastime—but as a result of conflicts between dogs and wildlife, leash laws and dog bans have become commonplace. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Oakley Originals. America is, as we’re told, the land of the free—and for tail-wagging, four-legged travelers that were born to run, road-tripping across our vast country of fields, mountains, forests and campgrounds might seem like a dream vacation. But visiting America’s most treasured parks and other places of natural heritage is not so easy for people with their dogs in tow. Leash laws and full pet prohi

For Some Species, You Really Are What You Eat

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:30:23 GMT

Flamingos depend on plant-derived chemical compounds to color their feathers, legs and beaks. Photo: Flickr user longhorndave Pop quiz: Why are flamingos pink? If you answered that it’s because of what they eat—namely shrimp—you’re right. But there’s more to the story than you might think. Animals naturally synthesize a pigment called melanin, which determines the color of their eyes, fur (or feathers) and skin. Pigments are chemical compounds that create color in animals by absorbing certain wavelengths of light while reflecting others. Many animals can’t create pigments other than melanin on their own. Plant life, on the other hand, can produce a variety of them, and if a large qua

Which Primate Is the Most Likely Source of the Next Pandemic?

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:01:09 GMT

This chimp may look innocent, but he may harbor any of dozens of diseases that infect humans. Photo by AfrikaForce Anyone who has read a Richard Preston book, such as The Hot Zone or Panic in Level 4, knows the danger of tampering with wildlife. The story usually goes something like this: Intrepid explorers venture into a dark, bat infested cave in the heart of East Africa, only to encounter something unseen and living, which takes up residence in their bodies. Unknowingly infected, the happy travelers jump on a plane back to Europe or the States, spreading their deadly pathogen willy-nilly to every human they encounter upon the way. Those people, in turn, bring the novel virus or bact

From Sea to Shining Sea: Great Ways to Explore Canada

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:29:17 GMT

Lake Louise, one of the world’s most beautiful compositions of water, rock and ice, belongs to Canada. The small lake attracts throngs of tourists while serving as a stepping stone to surrounding wilderness areas of the Rocky Mountains. Photo courtesy of Flickr user biberfan. Americans love Canada. Year after year, Americans polled by Gallup indicate that they have a strong affinity toward Britain, Germany, Japan, France and India. But Canada consistently scores higher than any other place. In 2013, 90 percent of Americans polled said they have a “favorable” impression of our neighbor to the north. Only 6 percent gave an “unfavorable” rating. AmericansR

Intriguing Science Art From the University of Wisconsin

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:41:12 GMT

ZnO Fall Flowers. Image by Audrey Forticaux, a graduate student in the Chemistry Department. “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” —Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician (1854-1912) Earlier this month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the winners of its 2013 Cool Science Image contest. From an MRI of a monkey’s brain to the larva of a tropical caterpillar, a micrograph of the nerves in a zebrafish’s tail

10 Things We’ve Learned About the Earth Since Last Earth Day

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 03:09:20 GMT

Image via NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring Last year, to celebrate the 42nd Earth Day, we took a look at 10 of the most surprising, disheartening, and exciting things we’d learned about our home planet in the previous year—a list that included discoveries about the role pesticides play in bee colony collapses, the various environmental stresses faced by the world’s oceans and the millions of unknown species are still out in the environment, waiting to be found. This year, in time for Earth Day on Monday, we’ve done it again, putting together another list of 10 notable discoveries made by scientists since Earth Day 2012—a list that ranges from specific top

DNA Sequencing Reveals that Coelacanths Weren’t the Missing Link Between Sea and Land

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:01:58 GMT

The rare coealacanth’s genome is slowly evolving—and contrary to prior speculation, it probably isn’t the common ancestor of all land animals. Image via Wikimedia Commons/Amelia Guo On December 23, 1938, South African Hendrick Goosen, the captain of the fishing trawler Nerine, found an unusual fish in his net after a day of fishing in the Indian Ocean off of East London. He showed the creature to local museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, who rinsed off a layer of slime and described it as “the most beautiful fish I had ever seen…five foot long, a pale mauvy blue with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It

Sequestration to Cause Closures, Secretary Clough Testifies

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:24:18 GMT

Secretary G. Wayne Clough testified before Congress today about the effects of sequestration on the institution. Photo by Ken Rahalm, courtesy of the Smithsonian On April 16, Smithsonian Institution Secretary G. Wayne Clough testified before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about the impending effects of sequestration. Though the Obama administration had sought a $59 million budget increase for the Institution in fiscal 2014, this year Clough has to contend with a $41 million budget reduction due to sequestration. Gallery closings, fewer exhibitions, reduced educational offerings, loss of funding for research and cuts to the planning process of the under-construction Na

Where Have the Trees of Guam Gone?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:32:05 GMT

Scientists believe the absence of seed-dispersing birds is thinning the forests on the island of Guam. Photo by Isaac Chellman Visitors to Guam’s forests find them quiet–eerily so: No chirping of birds can be heard overhead. But slithering in the shadows on the ground are snakes, each some six feet long. Brown tree snakes made their debut on Guam, the southernmost island in the Mariana Archipelago, when islanders were rebuilding after World War II. Most likely, they were stowaways in lumber shipments heading north through the Pacific Ocean from New Guinea. They quickly began feasting on the birds and small lizards they discovered in Guam’s dense forests, and–free to s

Bean Leaves Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite by Using Tiny, Impaling Spikes

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:01:00 GMT

This adult male bedbug wants to suck your blood. Photo: Armed Forces Pest Management Board For thousands of years, humans have shared their beds with blood-sucking parasites. The ancient Greeks complained of bedbugs, as did the Romans. When the lights go off for those suffering from this parasitic infestation today, from under the mattress or behind the bedboard creeps up to 150,000 of the rice grain-sized insects (though average infestations are around 100 insects). While bedbugs are one of the few parasites that live closely with humans yet do not transmit a serious disease, they do cause nasty red rashes in some of their victims, not to mention the psychological terror of knowing t

What Should Be Done With Yachak, the Cattle-Killing Bear of the Andes

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 05:11:03 GMT

On November 12, 2009, in the remote northern highlands of Ecuador not far south of Colombia, a pair of grazing bulls lost their footing on a steep, muddy slope. They slipped down the sheer face of a deep Andean ravine and landed dead in the small stream gully below. Some days later, a large spectacled bear picked up the smell of ripe flesh. The animal, a male, followed the scent trail down from its high cloud forest habitat and spent several days feasting on the carcasses—treasure troves of protein and fat for an animal that lives mostly on vegetables, fruits and tubers. The event, seemingly just another day in the high Andes, where bears and cattle have crossed paths for centurie

Photos: Scenes From Life Under the Sea

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:31:31 GMT

Playful but poignant, this photo of a tiny yellow goby living inside an abandoned soda can taken in Suruga Bay, Japan reveals the arresting quality of Brian Skerry’s work. All photos courtesy of Brian Skerry. Brian Skerry may have just about the best office in the world. It’s beautiful, quiet and big, like 70 percent of the Earth big. That’s because Skerry is a photojournalist who spends most of his time exploring the oceans. “To some, my work might seem like one long, endless vacation,” writes Skerry on his blog, “traveling to exotic locales and living romantic adventures.” But he says, “The reality is far less romantic of course.”

19th Century Shark Tooth Weapons Reveal A Reef’s Missing Shark Species

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:01:00 GMT

Lashed to a spear made in the Gilbert Islands, researchers found a tooth from a dusky shark, a species previously unknown in the area. Image via PLOS ONE/Drew et. al. For decades, a total of 124 swords, tridents and spears taken from the Pacific Ocean’s Gilbert Islands in the mid-1800s sat untouched in vaults in Chicago’s Field Museum. The weapons—each made up of dozens of individual shark teeth that islanders lashed to a wooden core with coconut fibers—were primarily considered artifacts of anthropological value. Then, Joshua Drew, a marine conservation biologist at the museum, had an unusual idea: that the shark teeth lining the serrated blades could also se

Why Geckos Don’t Slip Off Wet Jungle Leaves or Hotel Ceilings

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:01:47 GMT

A handsome tokay gecko. Photo: Ethan Knapp and Alyssa Stark Anyone who lives in or has visited a tropical country is likely familiar with the chipper chirping of the gecko. These friendly little lizards inhabit homes and jungles stretching from Indonesia to Tanzania to the Dominican Republic. They emerge after sunset, taking advantage of their night vision eyesight—which is 350 times more powerful than a human’s—and are welcome guests in homes and hotels since they gobble up mosquitoes and other insect pests. In addition to the locals, scientists also love these colorful lizards. Geckos possess the unique ability among lizards to run up flat walls and scamper across ceilings, ev

Sugar Cube-Sized Robotic Ants Mimic Real Foraging Behavior

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:01:10 GMT

Researchers used miniature robots to mimic how real ants maneuver networks of their own. Credit: Simon Garnier, et al For ants, the pheromone-laden foraging trails they leave behind are like lifelines: they direct the workers toward food hubs discovered earlier and help guide them home back to their nest. These networks of trails can stretch for hundreds of feet, quite the achievement considering many worker ants are less than half an inch in length. One type of harvester ant can lay down a set of trails (PDF) that stretch 82 feet from the entrance of its nest. The trails of a wood ant, an insect measuring just five millimeters (that’s one-fifth of an inch), reach 656 feet, each one b

The Otherworldly Calm of Wolfgang Laib’s Glowing Beeswax Room

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 03:04:08 GMT

Wolfgang Laib, Wax Room. (Wohin bist Du gegangen-wohin gehst Du?/Where have you gone-where are you going?), 2013. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. When I step into the newly installed Laib Wax Room at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the floral smell of beeswax wafts through my senses. Psychologists say that scents can quickly trigger memories, and this one transports me back to my childhood: The fragrance of the amber beeswax coating the walls instantly reminds me of the crenellated sheets of beeswax, dyed pink and purple, that came in a candle making kit I had as a kid. I remember rolling the sheets into long tapers for Advent. The warm

Sea Monkeys, Ferns and Frozen Frogs: Nature’s Very Own Resurrecting Organisms

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 03:39:14 GMT

Tadpole shrimp eggs can remain dormant for years, then burst into life when elusive desert rains arrive. Photo by Flickr user theloushe As Easter draws near, we begin to notice signs of nature’s very own annual resurrection event. Warming weather begins “breeding lilacs out of the dead land,” as T.S. Elliot noted, and “stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Where a black and white wintery landscape just stood, now technicolor crocus buds peak through the earth and green shoots brighten up the azalea bushes. Aside from this grand show of rebirth, however, nature offers several cases of even more overtly stunning resurrections. From frozen animals jumping b

Brown Polar Bears, Beluga-Narwhals and Other Hybrids Brought to You by Climate Change

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 02:43:41 GMT

Polar bear-brown bear hybrids like this pair at Germany’s Osnabrück Zoo are becoming more common as melting sea ice forces the two species to cross paths. Photo by Corradox/Wikimedia Commons Scientists and science writers have created catchy monikers for hybrid species, much the way tabloid writers merge the names of celebrity couples (Kimye, Brangelina, anyone?). Lions and tigers make ligers. Narwhals meet beluga whales in the form of narlugas. And pizzlies and grolar bears are a cross between polar bears and grizzlies. In coming years, their creativity may get maxed out to meet an expected spike in the number of hybrids. A driving force? Climate change. A new study published

Video: This Lizard-Inspired Robot Can Scamper Across Sand

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 06:01:15 GMT

The new robot runs across an uneven surface in a way modeled off a zebra-tailed lizard. Image courtesy of Chen Li, Tingnan Zhang, Daniel Goldman Designing a robot that can easily move across loose terrain—say, a rover meant to traverse the surface of Mars—poses a unique engineering challenge: Wheels commonly sink into what engineers call “flowable ground” (mixtures of sand, soil, mud and grass). Given the many biologically-inspired innovations in robotics, a team of researchers from Georgia Tech had an idea—to base a design on desert creatures such as zebra-tailed lizards that are able to scramble across a loose, sandy surface without slowing down. Their efforts allowed them to

After 17 Years, the Northeast Is About to Be Blanketed by a Swarm of Cicadas

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:54:00 GMT

This cicada is part of Brood XIX, a 13-year recurrent swarm from the southern US. Photo: dra415 It’s been 17 years since the cicadas of Brood II swarmed the northeastern United States. A mass of winged creatures, red eyes glowing, the cicadas “are expected to emerge and overwhelm a large swath of land from Virginia to Connecticut — climbing up trees, flying in swarms and blanketing grassy areas so they crunch underfoot,” says WNYC. Across the United States, different broods of cicadas emerge after long withdrawls underground, some on 13-year cycles, some, like Brood II, on 17-year cycles. Cicadas live in the ground, near trees. They feed off the roots of trees.

Untangling the Mysterious Genetic Tentacles of the Giant Squid

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:30:50 GMT

A model of a giant squid versus sperm whale. Photo taken at the American Museum of Natural History by Mike Goren from New York For centuries, monsters of the deep sea captivated the imagination of the public and terrified explorers–none more so than the many-tentacled kraken. In 13th century Icelandic sagas, the Vikings wrote of a terrifying monster that “swallows both men and ships and whales and everything that it can reach.” Eighteenth century accounts from Europe describe arms emerging from the ocean that could pull down the mightiest ships, attached to bodies the size of floating islands. Today, we’re fairly confident that a tentacled beast will not emerge

VIDEO: Herons Crash the Zoo

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:37:19 GMT

Last week, National Zoo officials spotted several black-crowned night herons roaming the property. Within two weeks, they expect to see hundreds more because the birds are the one species that come and go as they please at the Zoo. The black and white birds have been nesting there since 1889, before the Zoo was founded, and every year around mid-March, they fly in and visit until around mid-September. Though the population is doing fine worldwide, in the mid-Atlantic region the status of the birds is threatened due to habitat loss. According to biologist Sara Hallager, the big draw that keeps the birds coming back to the Zoo year after year might be the plentiful free food and lush gr

How Do Roosters Know When to Crow?

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:01:00 GMT

Roosters have an internal circadian rhythm, which keeps them crowing on schedule even when the lights are turned off. Image via Wikimedia Commons/Muhammad Mahdi Karim Some scientists investigate the universe’s biggest mysteries, like the Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that endows all other subatomic particles with mass. Other researchers look into questions that are, well, a bit humbler—like the age-old puzzle of whether roosters simply crow when they see light of any kind, or if they truly know to crow when the morning sun arrives. Lofty or not, it’s the goal of science to answer all questions that arise from the natural world, from roosters to bosons and ev

Nearly 8 Miles Down, Bacteria Thrive in the Oceans’ Deepest Trench

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 06:01:00 GMT

At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, nearly eight miles below the ocean’s surface, abundant communities of bacteria thrive. Image via PNAS/Yayanos et. al. The Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the entire seafloor, lies in the Mariana Trench off the coast of the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Islands. It is nearly 36,000 feet—7.8 miles—below the ocean’s surface. If you were to stand at this remarkable depth, the column of water above your head would exert 1000 times the amount of pressure you normally experience at the surface, crushing you instantly. Even in this extreme environment, though, organisms can survive. One type, it turns out, can even prosper: b

Look Out! Look Out! Elephants Get New Digs

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 08:48:41 GMT

Shanti the elephant has been having the time of her life. In 2010, the National Zoo opened the first phase of Elephant Trails, a major renovation of its elephant habitat, and zookeepers allowed her to be the first to play in her home’s expanded yards. She was ecstatic. Now, the Zoo is set to open a new Elephant Community Center on Saturday, March 23, and Shanti again got a sneak preview. “Shanti just loved every single moment of it,” says elephant manager Marie Galloway. “She came in and she explored every single nook and cranny.” Shanti takes a drink! The Elephant Community Center has a wading pool with a shower that the elephants can activate. The Elephant C

14 Fun Facts about Marine Ribbon Worms

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:30:48 GMT

Ribbon worms come in all shapes and sizes. This one, with white stripes along the body, was found off the coast of Mexico. Photo by Chris Meyer and Allen Collins Whether they’re on a rain-soaked sidewalk, in the compost bin or on the end of a fish hook, the worms most people know are of the segmented variety. But what about all the other worms out there? With more than 1,000 species of ribbon worms (phylum Nemertea), most found in the ocean, there is a huge range of sizes and lifestyles among the various types. A defining characteristic of ribbon worms is the presence of a proboscis—a unique muscular structure inside the worm’s body. When attacking prey, they compress their bod

Why We Should All Celebrate Save a Spider Day

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:25:00 GMT

Fear-inducing or awe-inspiring? For more stunning shots of spiders, check out our Save a Spider Day slideshow. Photo by Thomas Vignaud If you’re afraid of spiders, you’re in good company–at least according to the Wikipedia page on arachnophobia, which lists Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson as sharing the affliction. As star-studded as the fear may be, however, it’s not particularly well-founded. For example, one of the most infamous spiders, the brown recluse, has earned a terrible and outsized reputation for its supposedly deadly bite. Doctors often blame the species for spider bites, even in states where the brown recluse isn’t pre

Prehistoric Birds May Have Used Four Wings to Fly

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 06:01:00 GMT

A fossil of a prehistoric bird from the enantiornithine genus shows feathers on its hind legs—evidence of an extra pair of wings. Courtesy of Xiaoting Zheng et al/Science Roughly 150 million years ago, birds began to evolve. The winged creatures we see in the skies today descended from a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which included tyrannosaurs, during a 54-million-year chunk of time known as the Jurassic period. Why the ability to fly evolved in some species is a difficult question to answer, but scientists agree that wings came to be because they must have been useful: they might have helped land-based animals leap into the air, or helped gliding creatures who flapped t

Stressed Corals Dim Then Glow Brightly Before They Die

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:30:26 GMT

Fluorescent proteins all aglow in these corals. Photo by Michael Lesser and Charles Mazel, NOAA Ocean Explorer Anyone who has gone scuba diving or snorkeling in a coral reef will likely never forget the dazzling colors and other-worldly shapes of these underwater communities. Home to some of the world’s most diverse wildlife hotspots, reefs are worth an annual $400 billion in tourist dollars and in the ecosystem services they provide, such as buffering shores from storms and providing habitat for fish that people eat. Yet it’s a well known fact that coral reefs around the world are in decline thanks to pollution and rapidly warming oceans. However, determining just how ree

An Otter Learns to Play Therapeutic Basketball at the Oregon Zoo

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:30:00 GMT

A rescued sea otter named Eddie is keeping spry by playing basketball at the Oregon Zoo. Eddie is turning 16 this year—a ripe old age for otters, which normally live around 15 to 20 years. Recently, Eddie began developing arthritis in his elbows. To help keep him limber, the zoo keepers decided to teach the old otter a new trick: basketball. “There aren’t many natural oppportunities for Eddie to work those arthritic elbow joints, because sea otters don’t use their front limbs to swim — they swim by moving their back legs and flippers,” explained Eddie’s lead keeper to the Weather Channel. “So training him with the basketball hoop was a wa

Cold, Hungry and Happy in the High Andes

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:40:12 GMT

The quiet highway that leads through Cotopaxi is a bike-friendly route. Photo by Alastair Bland. I had only $40 in my wallet, but cash doesn’t help a person much on the freezing Andean tundra. Instead, my most valuable assets at the moment were two beers, some quinoa and two avocados for dinner—plus a riveting book about the hunt for a man-eating Siberian tiger by John Vaillant. Tent-bound life was good here in the high country. My hands were numb, but I was camped under the roof of a sheltered barbecue hut, and I dared the volcano to give me all the weather it could muster. The mountain seemed to answer. Wind and clouds swirled off the white, freshly dusted slopes, and rain bega

The (Natural) World, According to Our Photo Contest Finalists

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:12:12 GMT

The Milky Way Galaxy Exploding from Mount Rainier. Photo by David Morrow (Everett, Washington). Photographed at Sunrise Point in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, October 6, 2012. David Morrow, a 27-year-old aerospace engineer by day and budding photographer by night, was perched at Sunrise Point on the evening of October 6, 2012. From the popular viewing spot in Mount Rainier National Park, he had a clear view of Rainier, the 14,411-foot beastly stratovolcano to his west. As he recalls, at about 9 p.m. the sun had set and the stars began to appear. Filling the viewfinder of his Nikon D800, quite brilliantly, was the Milky Way. “It is not often that you see the Milky Way

A Plague of Locusts Descends Upon the Holy Land, Just in Time for Passover

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:02:33 GMT

A swarm of locusts descends upon Israel. Photo by Amir Ayali Locusts have plagued farmers for millennia. According to the Book of Exodus, around 1400 B.C. the Egyptians experienced an exceptionally unfortunate encounter with these ravenous pests when they struck as the eighth Biblical plague. As Exodus describes, “They covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened, and they ate all the plants in the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left. Not a green thing remained, neither tree nor plant of the field, through all the land of Egypt.” Locusts attacks still occur today, as farmers in Sudan and Egypt well know. Now, farmers in Israel ca

This 33,000-Year-Old Skull Belonged to One of the World’s First Dogs

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 10:01:21 GMT

A new DNA analysis confirms that this ancient skull, found in a Siberian cave, was an early ancestor of man’s best friend. Image via PLOS ONE/Ovodov et. al. In 1975, a team of Russian archaeologists announced that they’d made a remarkable find: From a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, they’d unearthed a 33,000-year-old fossil skull that resembled a wolf. In 2011, an anatomical analysis suggested that the fossil was a hybrid of a wolf (with its large teeth) and a dog (with its shortened snout), raising the possibility that it was a partly domesticated wolf—in other words, one of the oldest ancestors of the modern dog ever discovered. At the time, though, DNA ana

Snowy Day, But Smithsonian D.C. Museums Open, Zoo Closes

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:49:59 GMT

Smithsonian in snow, circa 1977. Photo by Smithsonian Institution Looking for something to do today, while the snowy weather conditions persist? The Smithsonian museums will be open for business today. But the National Zoo will be closed Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Plan your visit, using our convenient Tours app, a free download is available here.

How Emperor Penguins Survive Antarctica’s Subzero Cold

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 12:01:00 GMT

Scientists discovered that the penguins plumage is even colder than the surrounding air, potentially allowing them to absorb heat through convection. Image © Université de Strasbourg and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Strasbourg, France Antarctica, as you might expect, gets pretty darn cold: Temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit are often recorded during the winter. For the creatures who live there, this extreme cold demands innovative survival strategies that enable the loss of as little heat as possible. Scientists recently discovered that Emperor Penguins—one of Antarctica’s most celebrated species—employ a particularly u

Miniature African Forest Elephants Could Be Extinct in 10 Years

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:15:25 GMT

A bull male forest elephant in Gabon. A new study published in the PLOS ONE shows that African forest elephants are being poached into extinction. Photo by Elizabeth M. Rogers When you think of an elephant, you probably picture a big-tusked bull stampeding through vast African grasslands. But there are more to elephants than this run-of-the-mill savannah variety. The African forest elephant—recently declared a distinct species from its plains-dwelling cousin–lives exclusively in the forests of Central Africa. Males rarely exceed 8 feet in height, compared to about 13 feet for savannah elephants–all the better for navigating through the jungle trees. They eat mostly fruit, a

Biking Ecuador’s Spectacular Avenue of the Volcanoes

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 07:10:34 GMT

Lake Quilotoa is gaining a reputation as one of the most attractive destinations in Ecuador. The surrounding area, of rugged mountains and dirt roads, offers some of the most rewarding cycle touring in the Andes. Photo by Alastair Bland. Ecuador has done a tremendous job of preserving its wild places. More than 20 percent of the country is protected within more than 30 parks and reserves, some of them quite vast. In a nation as compact as Ecuador, what this translates into for travelers is beautiful national parks, one after another, like stepping stones through some of the world’s most astounding scenery. In the Andes, many of the giant volcanoes have their own namesake national park

Could Disappearing Wild Insects Trigger a Global Crop Crisis?

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:24:00 GMT

Wild bees, such as this Andrena bee visiting highbush blueberry flowers, provide crucial pollination services to crops across the globe. Photo by Daniel Cariveau Insect pollination is crucial for the healthy development of our favorite foods, from apples and avocados to cucumbers and onions. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the global population’s food, nearly three-quarters rely on pollination by bees. The rest need beetles, flies, butterflies, birds and bats to act as pollinators. It’s a mutually beneficial system—the flowers of most crops require pollen from another plant of the same crop to produce seeds or fruits, and bees and other critters tr

Nitpicking the Lice Genome to Track Humanity’s Past Footsteps

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 10:01:00 GMT

A male human head louse. Photo by Flickr user Gilles San Martin Parasites have been around for more than 270 million years. Around 25 million years ago, lice joined the blood-sucking party and invaded the hair of ancient primates. When the first members of Homo arrived on the scene around 2.5 million years ago, lice took advantage of the new great ape on the block for better satisfying its digestive needs. As a new genetic analysis published today in PLoS One shows, mining these parasites’ genomes can lend clues for understanding the migration patterns of these early humans. The human louse, Pediculus humanus, is a single species yet members fall into two distinct camps: head a

Snakes in a Frame: Mark Laita’s Stunning Photographs of Slithering Beasts

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:07:08 GMT

Rowley’s Palm Pit Viper (Bothriechis rowleyi). This venomous snake, which ranges from two and a half to five feet in length, lives in the forests of Mexico. © Mark Laita. Mark Laita captured plenty of photographs of snakes striking, their mouths agape, in the making of his new book, Serpentine. But, it wasn’t these aggressive, fear-inducing—and in his words, “sensational”—images that he was interested in. Instead, the Los Angeles-based photographer focused on the graceful contortions of the reptiles. “It is not a snake book,” says Laita. As he explained to me in a phone interview, he had no scientific criteria for selecting the species he did, thoug

Growing New Hearts Without Using Embryonic Stem Cells

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 01:00:17 GMT

The human heart. Illustration by Patrick J. Lynch It seems like science fiction, but researchers have actually grown organs from stem cells, organs that were successfully transplanted into humans. Two years ago, a man received a new trachea to replace his, damaged by cancer—the trachea was made by Swedish researchers who infused a synthetic scaffold with the patient’s own stem cells. Earlier, in 2006, scientists at Wake Forest used stem cells to successfully implant laboratory-grown bladders in young patients with spina bifida, a developmental birth defect. Now, science has set its sights on even bigger lab-grown organs: hearts. Researchers are currently growing them in labs usi

Interview: Jane Goodall on the Future of Plants and Chimps

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

Over the course of 45 years studying the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, Jane Goodall revolutionized our understanding of our closest primate relatives. A champion of animal conservation and the author of 26 books, she turns her attention for the first time to plants with Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants, to be published April 2 and excerpted in the March issue of Smithsonian. As one of the world’s most renowned animal researchers, what made you decide to write a book about plants? For my last book about saving endangered animals from extinction, I wrote a long section about plants, but my publisher said the book was way too long, so

PHOTOS: Andean Cubs Get a Clean Bill of Health (Caution: Cuteness)

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 03:24:18 GMT

With their numbers in the wild endangered and dwindling, two healthy Andean bear cubs are a welcome addition to the species. Photo by Beth Branneu, courtesy of the National Zoo The National Zoo‘s pair of eight-week-old Andean bear cubs received a clean bill of health yesterday, February 20, after a thorough physical exam. The cubs had already marked a significant milestone for the species when they made it to seven days–something only one other captive litter in the country had achieved since 2005 and that was the National Zoo’s own 2010 litter, Chaska and Bernardo. Weighing in at 10.1 and 9.2 pounds, the two cubs will stay with their mother Billie Jean until their public

Brian Skerry Has the World’s Best Job: Ocean Photographer

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

You could forgive Brian Skerry if he let a hint of despair seep into his voice. He did, after all, achieve his lifelong dream of becoming an underwater wildlife photographer just in time to see the coral reefs, fish and other creatures he loves start disappearing from the world’s oceans. “Everywhere I go, I notice the wildlife just isn’t what it used to be,” he tells me over the phone from his home in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. “There are places where I’ve spent weeks and not seen a single shark, and I know if I’d been there ten years earlier, I would have seen dozens.” But Skerry is also an optimist who hopes—believes—that his sta

Jane Goodall Reveals Her Lifelong Fascination With…Plants?

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note: There have been allegations of plagiarism in the book Seeds of Hope, from which this excerpt was drawn. Smithsonian has checked this material independently and ascertained to the best of our ability that everything published in the magazine and in this post is original. From my window, as I write in my house in Bournemouth, England, I can see the trees I used to climb as a child. Up in the branches of one of them, a beech tree, I would read about Doctor Dolittle and Tarzan, and dream about the time when I, too, would live in the forest. I spent hours in that tree, perched in my special place. I had a little basket on the end of a long piece of string that was tied to my br

How Two Women Ended the Deadly Feather Trade

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

John James Audubon, the pre-eminent 19th-century painter of birds, considered the snowy egret to be one of America’s surpassingly beautiful species. The egret, he noted, was also abundant. “I have visited some of their breeding grounds,” Audubon wrote, “where several hundred pairs were to be seen, and several nests were placed on the branches of the same bush, so low at times that I could easily see into them.” Audubon insisted that birds were so plentiful in North America that no depredation—whether hunting, the encroachment of cities and farmlands, or any other act of man—could extinguish a species. Yet little more than half a century after Audu

The Meanest Girls at the Watering Hole

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

A roar broke the silence of a dead winter's night. When I heard the noise, I shot up and tossed back the hood of my sleeping bag, which I had pulled over my head to cut the chill. From my bed up in the research tower, I looked down at the water hole 20 feet below, now black since the moon had set several hours ago. This was my home during my elephant field season, and it offered a great view of elephants in action day and night. I couldn’t make sense of the situation in the dark, so I reached for my night-vision scope. The shadows of four elephants came into view, too few for an extended family group. I watched an adult female marching up and down the most popular drinking spot, a c

Bioluminescence: Light Is Much Better, Down Where It’s Wetter

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

“Surface, surface, this is Triton.” The acrylic sphere floats like a soap bubble in the rough waves, and I drop through the dripping hatch into my seat beside the famed ocean explorer Edith Widder. We are test-driving a new three-person submarine in choppy waters off Grand Bahama Island. Despite the rocking gusts of wind outside, Widder is serene. “Surface, surface, this is Triton,” our pilot says. “My hatch is secure. My life-support systems are running.” “You are cleared to dive,” a static-drowned voice replies. “OK, folks, here we go.” We sink. Widder studies underwater light. From bacteria to sea cucumbers to shrimp and

Locking Eyes With Spiders and Insects

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:03:40 GMT

Male Paraphidippus aurantius (a species of jumping spider), by Thomas Shahan Thomas Shahan came eye to eye with a jumping spider in his backyard about seven years ago when he was living and attending high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since that first encounter, he has been “smitten,” according to a December 2011 spread of his macrophotography in National Geographic. “I began learning about their names and their ways, then looking for them in local parks and reserves like the Oxley Nature Center,” he wrote in the magazine. Holcocephala fusca (robber fly), by Thomas Shahan For the past seven years, Shahan has developed a hobby of photographing arthropods—insects,

A Visit to the Natonal Zoo’s “Ark of Life”

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 07:00:00 GMT

A 90-minute drive from the National Mall and the bustle of the capital, on 3,250 verdant, rolling acres next door to Shenandoah National Park, sits a hidden gem in our network of museums and centers: the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, in Front Royal, Virginia, a unit of the National Zoo. This is the sort of behind-the-scenes operation that all zoos wish they could have, an ark of life. Away from the demands of public exhibitions, our scientists study red pandas, clouded leopards, maned wolves, red-crowned cranes and other threatened animals—25 species and some 275 animals in all. Many of the animals roam (or sprint!) across the hillsides, in ample enclosures of several

It’s Raining Spiders in Brazil

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:12:00 GMT

Footage from Brazil’s “spider rain.” Photo: TV45000 The Northeast may be prone to blizzards this time of year, but in Brazil it’s raining spiders. In a video that’s covered the Internet like an immense web, a local photographer captures images of thousands of spiders shimmying up and down silk threads attached to telephone pole wires. The footage gives the distinct impression of a shower–or perhaps light snow–of spiders sprinkling down on the shocked residents below. Erick Reis, a 20-year-old web designer in Santo Antonio da Platina, a town about 250 miles west of Sao Paulo, captured the striking video that has since accumulated mor

A Valentine for Sci-Art Lovers

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:46:56 GMT

Mates for Life, by Jacqueline Schmidt at Screech Owl Design. Happy Valentine’s Day, Collage readers! I’ll be brief. I just wanted to pass along this cool find—a print by artist and designer Jacqueline Schmidt. In a style that smacks of scientific illustration, Schmidt depicts 12 species that, generally, remain loyal to a single mate over the course of a lifetime. With gray wolves (#1, in the diagram), couples pair off Sadie-Hawkins style. The female determines her mate. The alpha female and alpha male are the only pair to breed, from January to March each year, in a pack of wolves, and they keep things monogamous. Meadow voles (#6) are quite loyal. The rodents make the mos

Flushing Your Anti-Anxiety Pills Down the Toilet Could Affect the Behavior of Wild Fish

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 07:01:00 GMT

A study shows that wild perch are less fearful, eat faster and are more anti-social when exposed to a common pharmaceutical pollutant. Image via Bent Christensen It’s obvious that anti-anxiety medicines and other types of mood-modifying drugs alter the behavior of humans—it’s what they’re designed to do. But their effects, it turns out, aren’t limited to our species. Over the past decade, researchers have repeatedly discovered high levels of many drug molecules in lakes and streams near wastewater treatment plants, and found evidence that rainbow trout and other fish subjected to these levels could absorb dangerous amounts of the medications over time. N

Outrageous Taxidermy, the Subject of a New Show on AMC

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 03:49:26 GMT

Judges Paul Rhymer, Catherine Coan and Brian Posehn. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC Taxidermy: dying trade or resurgent art form? As an outsider—I have never hunted, let alone stuffed and mounted an animal—I was tempted to think the former. Then, I spoke with Paul Rhymer, a former Smithsonian taxidermist and model maker.”Taxidermy is alive and well,” he says. “Commercial taxidermy, for hunters, has probably never been stronger than it is now—and probably never been better. The skill levels have just gotten so good with all the different advances in materials and techniques.” Rhymer is a traditionalist. He hails from the museum world, where he spent 26 years (

Meet Indonesia’s New Owl Species

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 10:00:30 GMT

Photo by Philippe Verbelen Indonesia’s numerous islands (18,307 to be exact) house a wealth of avian biodiversity, yet scientists speculate that many of the country’s bird species have yet to be discovered or categorized. But ornithologists are celebrating today as a new species of owl joins the list, taking filling in one more spot in the catalog of the archipelago’s animals. In 2003, George Sangster, a Dutch ornithologist from Stockholm University, and his wife were exploring the forested foothills of Lombak, an island just east of Bali. While traipsing through the forest at night, Sangster picked up on an owl call he did not recognize. Coincidentally, just a few d

Is It Love? Why Some Ocean Animals (Sort Of) Mate For Life

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 05:45:00 GMT

Two waved albatrosses, the only tropical albatross species, courting one another on the Galapagos Islands. Photo by Flickr User James Preston We often hear stories of animal love—tales of rare monogamy in the animal kingdom where life-long love is implied. But there is a distinction between romantic love and an efficient mating system. Here’s a look at some ocean animals to see what is really going on. Albatrosses Get ‘Romantic’ to Increase Chick Survival Albatross relationships seem especially relatable to humans. These long-lived and highly-endangered birds will court each other through ritual dances for years. Albatrosses are slow to reach sexual maturity, and some spe

Critter Cupids: Animals in Love

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:36:34 GMT

Valentine’s Day–it’s not just for humans. Courtesy of the National Zoo This Valentine’s Day, take a cue from our furry friends and bond with the best of them. The National Zoo is spreading the love this year with their very own “Critter Cupids,” custom cards whose proceeds go to the wonderful animals that inspired them. We got the inside scoop from caretakers and Zoo officials about all the many ways animals say, Happy Valentine’s Day. Animal puns are the most romantic gift you can give, according to nine out of ten Zoo creatures. Courtesy of the National Zoo Sea lions, Rebecca Miller: “Our sea lions often greet each other by touching nose

This Sea Slug Discards Its Penis After Sex and Grows Another

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:00:46 GMT

Chromodoris reticulata, native to the Pacific, engages in mating behavior unknown in the rest of the animal kingdom. Image via Stephen Childs Even in the utterly dry language of science, there is no way to describe the mating behavior of the sea slug Chromodoris reticulata as anything other than bizarre. The creature, native to the Pacific Ocean, engages in simultaneous hermaphroditic mating—that is, each slug has both a penis and a vagina, and when mating, both members of a couple inserts their penises into the other’s vagina at the same time—but that’s not nearly the strangest aspect of their reproduction efforts. As discovered by a group of Japanese scientists and revea

What Makes the Trout in Ecuador Look Like Salmon?

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:57:00 GMT

Billboards and advertisements depicting huge and beautiful rainbow trout announce to travelers in much of the Ecuadorian Andes that fishing is one reason to come here. Photo by Alastair Bland. A crisp, clear stream flows out of Cajas National Park on a 20-mile circuitous route down to the town of Cuenca—but few fish live in these wild waters. Yet the Quinuas River Valley it forms is a hot destination for sport fishermen. They come by the hundreds each weekend, mostly from Cuenca, seeking the most popular game fish in the world: the rainbow trout. “What kind of trout live in here?” I ask a young man who serves me coffee at Cabana del Pescador, the campground where I

Can Birds Survive Climate Change?

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 04:46:43 GMT

The Indian Peafowl may need help adapting to climate change. Photo by Sergiu Bacioiu In the coming years, the birds of Asia’s Eastern Himalaya and Lower Mekong Basin, considered biodiversity hotspots by scientists, will need to relocate within the region to find viable habitat, according to a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology. The reason? Climate change. Researchers at England’s Durham University tested 500 different climate-change scenarios for each of 370 Asian bird species and found that every possible climatic outcome–even the least extreme–would have an adverse effect on the birds. The researchers honed in on sensitive habitat in Bhutan, Laos, C

Salmon Swim Home Using Earth’s Magnetic Field as a GPS

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 05:18:00 GMT

Sockeye salmon rely on a magnetic map to navigate home after years spent at sea. Credit: Putman et al., Current Biology Scientists have long known that various marine animals use the earth’s magnetic forces to navigate waters during their life cycles. Such inherent navigational skills allow animals return to the same geographic area where they were born, with some migrating thousands of miles, to produce the next generation of their species. As hatchlings, sea turtles scuttle from their sandy birthplace to the open sea as if following an invisible map, and, as adults, the females return to that spot to lay their own eggs. Bluefin tuna home in on their natal beaches after years

The Year’s Most Outstanding Science Visualizations

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:09:00 GMT

First Place and People’s Choice, Photography: Biomineral Single Crystals. Credit: Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert and Christopher E. Killian; University of Wisconsin, Madison. When Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert, a biophysicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her colleague Christopher E. Killian saw the scanning electron micrograph that they took of a sea urchin’s tooth, they were dumbstruck, says the journal Science. “I had never seen anything that beautiful,” Gilbert told the publication. The individual crystals of calcite that form an urchin’s tooth are pointy, interlocking pieces; as the outermost crystals decay, others come to the surface, keeping the too

Why Cockroaches Meticulously Groom Their Antennae

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 08:03:00 GMT

A cockroach diligently cleans his antenna. Photo by Ayako Wada-Katsumata When encountering a two-inch American cockroach, most people quickly skedaddle the other way or raise a foot to stomp the little creeper out of existence. For those curious few who stick around to quietly observe the roach, however, the insect will inevitably fall into a certain diligent, repetitive motion. First, it reaches its spiny little roach feet up towards its head, then grips the base of one of its antennae and finally, as if it were spinning yarn at triple speed, threads the length of its antennae through its furiously working mouthparts. Insects such as cockroaches, house flies and carpenter ants often

Honey, I Blew Up the Bugs

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:15:08 GMT

A leaf grasshopper (Phyllophorina kotoshoensis). Courtesy of the museum exhibition “Bugs…Outside the Box.” As a kid, I was an avid bug collector. I had one of those screen-covered bug boxes, and I carried it with me on backyard adventures and forays into the woods behind my house. I have fond memories of the first nights of summer when the fireflies came out–I’d cup the air and catch one, put it in my box and lie belly in the grass, with the box at my nose, watching the little thing light up. My brother and I had ant farms, sea-monkeys and kits to grow monarch butterflies from caterpillars and frogs from tadpoles. Seeing little critters up-close was fasci

Solving the Mystery of Owls’ Head-Turning Abilities

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:19:00 GMT

This barred owl shares an adaptation with other owl species that allows it to rotate its head 270 degrees without damaging blood vessels in the neck. Photo via Flickr user The Rocketeer Ever wonder how owls can turn their heads almost all the way around? They have a complex, adaptive network of protective blood vessels that make the structures in our necks look puny–a network that researchers have now dissected, mapped and illustrated for the first time. “Until now, brain imaging specialists like me who deal with human injuries caused by trauma to arteries in the head and neck have always been puzzled as to why rapid, twisting head movements did not leave thousands of ow

VIDEO: See a Thought Move Through a Living Fish’s Brain

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 05:01:39 GMT

You may have never seen a zebrafish in person. But take a look at the zebrafish in the short video above and you’ll get to see something previously unknown to science: a visual representation of a thought moving through a living creature’s brain. A group of scientists from Japan’s National Institute of Genetics announced the mind-boggling achievement in a paper published today in Current Biology. By inserting a gene into a zebrafish larvae—often used in research because its entire body is transparent—and using probe that detects florescence, they were able to capture the fish’s mental reaction to a swimming paramecium in real time. The key to the technology is a

How the Star-Nosed Mole ‘Sees’ With Its Ultra-Sensitive Snout

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:01:42 GMT

The utterly strange-looking star-nosed mole sees the world with one of the most sensitive touch organs in the animal kingdom. Photo by Kenneth Catania That’s an actual, earthly animal you’re looking at in the photo above—not, as you might have assumed, a creature out of Star Wars. The star-nosed mole, which resides in the bogs and wetlands of the eastern U.S. and Canada, is roughly the size of a rat when fully-grown. It’s functionally blind and eats insects, worms and small fish. But the most noticeable aspect of the animal is its utterly strange appearance, dominated by its 22-tentacled ultra-sensitive snout, called a star (those aren’t its eyes and face at th

Feral Cats Kill Billions of Small Critters Each Year

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:17:00 GMT

A feral cat, just trying to get by. Photo: Topsynette There are so many ways for a little bird or squirrel to die these days–they can be squished by cars, splattered into buildings, run over by bulldozers, poisoned or even shot. But if you have ever had to clean up a mangled “present” left on your doorstep by a kitty, you’ll know that little creatures can also be killed by pets. Cats in particular have earned a nasty reputation for themselves as blood thirsty killers of wildlife. They have been named among the top 100 worst invasive species (PDF) in the world. Cats have also earned credit for countless island extinctions. Arriving onto the virgin specks of la

Museums Delay Opening Due to Weather

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 02:04:01 GMT

Let your horse sleep in today. Smithsonian museums don’t open until noon due to weather. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Smithsonian museums in the Washington, D.C. area as well as the National Zoo will open at noon Monday, due to inclement weather. An early morning round of freezing rain left roads slick with ice as federal workers and schools around the area got off to a slow start. Canada would like to remind us, via Huffington Post, that cold weather has some perks too, eh? Like making it more difficult for some viruses and bacteria to live. Plus you can effectively “wash” your bed linens by hanging them out in the cold. We’d recommend waiting for the r

Seven Must-See Art-Meets-Science Exhibitions in 2013

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 05:05:14 GMT

Courtesy of the Water Tank Project. This New Year’s Eve, in addition to the typical resolutions to exercise more or spend more time with family, consider resolving to take better advantage of the cultural offerings of America’s cities and towns. Whether you seek to attend concerts, listen to lectures by authors and visiting scholars or become regulars at area museums, a few exhibitions slated for 2013 on the intersection of art and science will be must-sees in the New Year. The Water Tank Project Courtesy of the Water Tank Project. The skyline of New York City will be transformed next summer when 300 water tanks in the five boroughs become public works of art, calling at

The Most Infamous Komodo Dragon Attacks of the Past 10 Years

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:52:09 GMT

A Komodo dragon lounges near the Komodo National Park welcome center on Rinca Island. Photo: Rachel Nuwer Mr. Safina, a local guide working at Komodo National Park, took a particular relish in describing the way a Komodo dragon’s strong jaws can snap a man’s leg in two. He’d lived on Rinca – a speck of land off Indonesia’s Flores Island, and one of the five places Komodo dragons reside – his whole life, and he was used to the various horror stories that surfaced every now and then after a tourist wandered off the trail or a kid got ambushed while playing in the bush. Standing in front of an assembly line of water buffalo, deer and wild horse skulls &

African Dung Beetles Navigate At Night Using the Milky Way

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:00:00 GMT

A new study shows the tiny insects orient themselves by the stars. Image via Current Biology, Dacke et. al. Science has shown us that a number of organisms use the stars for navigation: songbirds, harbor seals and, of course, humans. But a new study by a team of Swedish and South African researchers published today in the journal Current Biology indicates that a rather unexpected creature can be added to this list—the lowly dung beetle. The beetles are known for creating small balls made of animal feces (i.e. dung) and rolling them in straight lines over long distances. They do this because the dung is their main food source—and other beetles often try to steal the dung o

The Komodo Dragon is an All-Purpose Killing Machine

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:00:00 GMT

It didn’t seem prudent to bring two small children along. We had just docked at a remote island in southeastern Indonesia, and the five-hour hike would traverse a rocky, exposed ridge in the baking heat of the dry season. My companions—a blond Frenchman named Fred, his wife and their two kids—were dressed for a game of shuffleboard. My concern heightened when I saw he had a single water bottle for the four of them. Also, there were dragons. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Fred, glancing at his sockless feet and leather loafers. We had just met at the tourist dock on Flores the day before. “You are the one who proposed it,” he said, ma

Researchers Discover New Method of Barnacle Sex

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 02:45:00 GMT

The gooseneck barnacle (with a relaxed penis at arrow) is capable of a method of sex previously unobserved in barnacles, upending 150 years of theory. Image via Barazandeh, et al. Proc. R. Soc. B. Barnacles are renowned for the size of their penises. The strange-looking creatures, which live inside shells glued to rocks or boat hulls, have outsized members that are among the longest in the animal kingdom relative to their size—their penises can stretch up to eight times their body length. Barnacles can even change the size and shape of their penis depending on the amount of wave action in their ocean real estate. Perhaps this is why the sex lives of barnacles have long been of

The Gory Details of Artist Katrina van Grouw’s Unfeathered Birds

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:30:06 GMT

Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis). © Katrina van Grouw. Katrina van Grouw’s new book The Unfeathered Bird is a work of passion. A former curator in the ornithological division of London’s Natural History Museum, the fine artist, based in Buckinghamshire, England, has used her experience in ornithology and taxidermy to draw, over the course of her career, 385 beautiful illustrations of birds—all, as the book’s title suggests, without their feathers. Her work shows the skeletal and muscular systems of 200 different species, from ostriches to hummingbirds, parrots to penguins, in life-like poses. Collage of Arts and Sciences interviewed van Grouw by email. When did you

New Study Suggests Crabs Can Feel Pain After All

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:00:00 GMT

As part of a new study, shore crabs that were given a mild electrical shock responded in a way indicating they felt pain. Credit: Queen’s University Belfast Can crabs feel pain? New research on the clawed crustaceans suggests the answer is yes. A group of UK researchers came to this conclusion by examining the reactions of common shore crabs to mild electric shocks in a study released today in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The key to their finding is the distinction between the nervous system activity known as nociception and pain, which is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience. For years, many researchers assumed crustaceans such as crabs experienced

Communication Towers Are Death Traps for Threatened Bird Species

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 04:07:16 GMT

Each year, around 5,300 Golden Warblers – a threatened species – die from collisions with communication towers. Photo: Brian Small Beneath massive communication towers, fallen bird bodies pile up like confetti. They collide with the steel structures—which can reach heights twice that of the Empire State Building—or fly into the miles of cables radiating around the beacons. Each year, nearly 7 million birds lose their lives to these web-like traps of wire and metal—27 times more birds than were killed in the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The killing season peaks during the time nocturnal migratory birds make their way between Canada and the U.S. Flying in the darkness,

Why Are Chimpanzees Stronger Than Humans?

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 06:22:46 GMT

Image: Kevin Case This summer, two chimpanzees attacked a graduate student at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden. It wasn’t pretty: In fact, the unfortunate student probably would have been better of had he been attacked by two humans. Chimps are far stronger than we are. Slate writes: A chimpanzee had, pound for pound, as much as twice the strength of a human when it came to pulling weights. The apes beat us in leg strength, too, despite our reliance on our legs for locomotion. A 2006 study found that bonobos can jump one-third higher than top-level human athletes, and bonobo legs generate as much force as humans nearly two times heavier. Other, more impressive figure

Scientists Finally Figure Out How Squids Mate

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:51:00 GMT

Image:Smithsonian Animal sex is a strange thing to us. Spiders eat their mates, honey bees’ testicles explode, garter snakes have giant orgies, and snails have their genitals on the necks. But there are also all sorts of animals that we actually have never seen get it on. Squid were one of them. But no longer! Scientists have finally filmed some squid sexy times, and here is the footage: Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History describe the squid love this way: Undaunted by the bright lights of the remote controlled sub filming their activity some 1,400 meters down in the Gulf of Mexico, the two deep-sea squ

Drill, Baby, Drill: Sponges Bore Into Shells Twice as Fast in Acidic Seawater

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 03:12:00 GMT

Small red boring sponges embedded in star coral, killing the coral polyps immediately surrounding them. Image via Sean Nash, Flickr Whenever anyone talks about ocean acidification, they discuss vanishing corals and other shelled organisms. But these aren’t the only organisms affected—the organisms that interact with these vulnerable species will also change along with them. These changes won’t necessarily be for the good of the shell and skeleton builders. New research published in Marine Biology shows that boring sponges eroded scallop shells twice as fast under the more acidic conditions projected for the year 2100. This makes bad news for the scallops even worse:

Should Trophy Hunting of Lions Be Banned?

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:27:00 GMT

Their numbers are declining, but lions remain a legal target of trophy hunters in Africa. Big males, like this one, are potential trophies. Photo courtesy of Flickr user suburbanchicken. Nowhere in the world is it legal to hunt wild tigers, as each remaining subspecies of the giant cat is infamously on the verge of extinction. Yet the close cousin of the tiger, the lion—almost equally large, equally charismatic and, in places, equally threatened—is legally killed by trophy hunters across its shrinking African range. The remaining lion population, centered in eastern and southern Africa, has declined by as much as 30 percent in the past 20 years, and the cats are considere

Where’s Rudolph? Inside the Decline of Alaska’s Caribou

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:21:09 GMT

As Christmas approaches, young eyes will be focused on the sky searching for a glimpse of Santa and his reindeer—or are they caribou? The differences between the two are mostly taxonomic—both are subspecies of Rangifer tarandus, but Jim Dau of Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game is quite familiar with the subtleties of the antlered cousins. Dau studies the Western Arctic caribou herd, among the largest in the world at 300,000 strong, that ranges over an area about 143,000 square miles in northwestern Alaska. While those figures might sound impressive, the caribou population has been steadily declining since 2003, when the herd peaked at nearly half a million. The declin

How the Tree Frog Has Redefined Our View of Biology

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Karen Warkentin, wearing tall olive-green rubber boots, stands on the bank of a concrete-lined pond at the edge of the Panamanian rainforest. She pulls on a broad green leaf still attached to a branch and points out a shiny clutch of jellylike eggs. “These guys are hatchable,” she says. Red-eyed tree frogs, Agalychnis callidryas, lay their eggs on foliage at the edge of ponds; when the tadpoles hatch, they fall into the water. Normally, an egg hatches six to seven days after it is laid. The ones that Warkentin is pointing to, judging from their size and shape, are about five days old, she says. Tiny bodies show through the clear gel-filled membrane. Under a microscope, the red

The Top 10 Animal Superpowers

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:31:04 GMT

So you think Spiderman’s and Catwoman’s special powers are impressive. They’re nothing compared to what these creatures can do

Beavers On Parachutes

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:40:57 GMT

Beavers On Parachutes

The Top 10 Greatest Survivors of Evolution

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:37:54 GMT

When we think about the history of life on earth and the vast changes that have transpired over millions and millions of years—as single-celled organisms evolved into species as disparate as redwood trees, dragonflies and humans—are wonderfully apparent. But, among all that evolutionary change, some organisms have little modified from their distant ancestors. Creatures such as sharks and crocodiles are often viewed as evolutionary sluggards or “living fossils.” While the rest of nature was caught up in life’s race, the coelacanth and duck-billed platypus sat things out. This perception isn’t quite right. Many species of these living fossils differ signi

Hummingbirds Are Popping Up in the Strangest Places

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:05:52 GMT

It is a little past 6:30 in the morning on Whidbey Island, in Washington’s Puget Sound, and despite the earliness of the hour and wretchedness of the weather, Dan Harville is admiring the torch lilies in Al Lunemann’s garden. Hummingbirds flurry about the tall red plants, drinking, hovering and chasing each other. “Okay,” Harville says, shaking himself from his reverie. “Let’s set up the trap.” He arranges a homemade, remote-controlled net over one of the feeders Lunemann keeps on the front porch. He waits until three or four hummingbirds are working the feeder’s spigots and then, with a push of a button, drops the net, trapping the birds in

The Best Wildlife Photographs of the Year

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 05:46:05 GMT

Over 48,000 photos were entered in the Veolia Environnement contest; these 10 were among the most stunning

The Scariest Monsters of the Deep Sea

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 02:00:00 GMT

We took the spook-tacular celebration to the depths of the ocean, where some of the craziest—and scariest—looking creatures lurk in the dark.

Rare and Intimate Photos of a Gorilla Family in the Wild

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 06:30:00 GMT

Butterfly season came suddenly to the Dzanga-Sangha reserve, a dense rainforest in the Central African Republic. Furious storms of butterflies filled the air, and their frail brown forms carpeted the earth. They swarmed over Fiona Rogers and Anup Shah and also seemed to pester the gorilla family that the photographers were following. The harassed apes bashed away at the insects and clamped their mouths shut so none would fly in. Except, that is, for the family’s dominant female, Malui. She plowed straight through one drove of butterflies resting in the bais, as the swampy meadows in the forest are known. Seeming to relish the rush of wings, she paused to let the butterflies envelop

What is North America’s Most Mysterious Bird?

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:00:00 GMT

On a hot, dry July evening, a dentist named Mike Hurtado leads two biologists into a narrow, windy stretch of the St. Charles River canyon in southern Colorado. Hurtado grew up hiking around here, and he and his family still refer to this part of the canyon reverentially as “The Place.” Its high granite walls usually echo with the sound of falling water, but the river is at the lowest point Hurtado can remember, and its waterfalls have turned to mere trickles. He and the biologists hope to catch a black swift, and the conditions don’t look promising. Black swifts, Cypseloides niger, are among the most enigmatic birds in North America. Though the species has a huge range,

Bears, Up Close and Personal, in the Alaskan Wilderness

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 04:34:19 GMT

Rule number one on a Kodiak Island adventure: Never surprise a bear. "Stay together, talk in normal tones and don't make sudden movements," instructs guide Fred Katelnikoff, shouldering a rifle and leading our group of six hikers from the Karluk Lake shore, where we've anchored our skiff, to a river bluff viewing post. In between lies a mountain-backed meadow of shoulder-high wildflowers, grasses and fireweed where, most certainly, bears bed down. The evidence lies in the vague trails parting the grass where large things clearly have trod, empirical reminders of the Alaskan island's fame as home to the densest population of brown bears in the world: An estimated 3,500 bears live on Kodia

Amazing Underwater Photos of Ocean Creatures

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 05:22:04 GMT

Check out these incredible images by photojournalist Brian Skerry, and help select which photographs will appear in an upcoming exhibit

How Looking to Animals Can Improve Human Medicine

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:33:40 GMT

If humans and animals experience some of the same injuries, diseases and disorders (and they do), then why don’t doctors more often seek the advice of veterinarians and animal experts? It is a good question, and one that Barbara Natterson-Horowitz asks in her new book, Zoobiquity, co-authored by Kathryn Bowers. A cardiologist at the UCLA Medical Center, Natterson-Horowitz serves on the medical advisory board of the Los Angeles Zoo. In this role, she is occasionally called on to help examine chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other exotic animals with heart conditions. When Cookie, a lioness at the Zoo, for instance, developed pericardial tamponade, or a build-up of fluid in the

How Biomimicry is Inspiring Human Innovation

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 02:24:43 GMT

The first thing you notice about the entomology collections department, Lepidoptera division, at the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History is a faint, elusively familiar odor. Mothballs. I briefly contemplated the cosmic irony of mothballs in a room full of moths (and butterflies, a lineage of moths evolved to fly during the day) before turning to Bob Robbins, a research entomologist. “There are many insects that will eat dried insects,” he said, “so traditionally you kept those pests out using naphthalene, or mothballs.” The mothballs have been phased out (in favor of freezing new specimens to kill any pests), but that lingering smell, as well as the endle

Found: A Time Capsule at the National Zoo

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Last fall, contractors renovating the National Zoo’s Elephant House were about to pour a layer of concrete when Tim Buehner, the Zoo’s design manager, arrived. “We came in to inspect it before the pour,” Buehner says, “and we said, ‘Hey, there’s a box in there.’ ” After some poking around in a hole in a wall, workers extracted a copper container about the size of a shoe box. When they pried it open, they found a stack of aging Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus programs, a copy of the May 17, 1936, Washington Post and a crumbling pair of lists of the then-new Elephant House’s imminent inhabitants from Zoo director Will

How Can a Jellyfish This Slow Be So Deadly? It's Invisible

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:00:00 GMT

One of the planet’s most notorious invasive species is a comb jelly, Mnemiopsis leidyi. A native of the east coast of North and South America, the comb jelly is capable of eating ten times its body weight per day, starving entire ecosystems by scarfing up everything at the bottom of the food chain. For decades, marine biologists have been baffled by the creature’s hunting prowess, since it is slow, blind and brainless (it’s also known as the “sea walnut”). But scientists finally discovered the secret of its success: The jelly is invisible to its prey. That information could be valuable intel in fending off the latest Mnemiopsis invasion. The comb jelly, which

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Ocean Sunfish

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:48:34 GMT

Part of the appeal of the ocean sunfish, or Mola mola, is its unusual shape. The heaviest bony fish in the world, it can grow more than 10 feet long and pack on a whopping 5,000 pounds, and yet its flat body, which is taller than it is long, has no real tail to speak of. (“Mola” means “millstone” in Latin and refers to the fish’s disc-like physique.) To motor along, the fish uses powerful dorsal and anal fins. The mola is something of a star at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the only facility in North America to currently exhibit the bizarre-looking fish. “You just don’t see anything like that,” says John O’Sullivan, curator of field opera

Betty White on Her Love for Animals

Tue, 15 May 2012 03:17:23 GMT

Most of us know Betty White as the actress from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Golden Girls” or as the resurgent nonagenarian who starred in The Proposal with Sandra Bullock, hosted “Saturday Night Live” after a massive Facebook campaign and took a lead role in the sitcom “Hot in Cleveland.” But what about Betty White the animal lover? For nearly 40 years, White has served as a trustee of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association. She is a devoted advocate of the work that zoos do, educating the public and helping to conserve endangered species in the wild. Her latest book, Betty & Friends: My Life at the Zoo, is a polished scrapbook of

The Noah's Ark of Plants and Flowers

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:22:18 GMT

Down a spiral staircase, deep inside the Millennium Seed Bank in West Sussex, an hour or so from London, you’ll find the heart of the facility. Behind a massive airlock door you enter four 516-square-foot cold-room chambers, maintained at minus-20 degrees Celsius—sufficiently frigid to preserve botanical treasure, depending on the species, for 500 years. Dozens of shipments arrive weekly from every corner of the globe—seeds air-freighted from far-flung locations: the deserts of Kyrgyzstan, the Dominican Republic’s tropical valleys, the alpine meadows of China, the plains of Oklahoma. In more than 50 countries, hundreds of researchers are engaged in one of the

Ten Extremely Rare Seeds on the Brink of Extinction

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:22:42 GMT

The Millennium Seed Bank has set out to collect 25 percent of the world's plant species by 2020—before it is too late

What is Killing the Tasmanian Devil?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:02:14 GMT

Tasmanian devils are named for their chilling nocturnal shrieks, which reminded early colonists of hellhounds. Perhaps more than any other sound, the screams give a lone bush walker “this feeling of being in the wilderness,” says Elizabeth Murchison, a Tasmanian-born geneticist who studies the animals. “But,” she adds, “it’s quite rare to hear them now.” The squat black creatures are in the throes of an epidemic that has reduced their numbers by more than 80 percent across the island since the disease was detected in 1996. Once common, the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial is now endangered. The culprit is a contagious cancer that kills

How Do Birds Find Their Way Home?

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:00:00 GMT

For thousands of years, homing pigeons were the most sophisticated means of long-distance communication. The winners of the first Olympics were announced by homing pigeon. Julius Reuter started his news service with them. Cher Ami, an avian member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, received the Croix de Guerre in World War I after completing a mission with a bullet in his breast. How do the birds find their way home? Decades of studies with frosted lenses, magnetic coils or scent deprivation show they use pretty much every clue available. The most difficult one for us to comprehend may be the earth’s magnetic field. Birds see it, but what it looks like to them, nobody knows. Work by Ros

How Plants and Animals Can Prepare Us for the Next Big Disaster

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:44:00 GMT

Rafe Sagarin is what you might call a “natural” security expert. In his new book, Learning From the Octopus, the University of Arizona marine ecologist and environmental policy analyst argues that we ought to look to nature—and its 3.5 billion years of adaptations for survival—for how to better protect ourselves from terrorist attacks, natural disasters and infectious disease. He spoke with Megan Gambino. You are both an ecologist and a security expert. How did that happen? I was a marine ecologist first. Back in 2002, I was working in Washington as a science adviser to Congresswoman Hilda Solis, now the Secretary of Labor. I was watching all the new security meas

The Fight to Save the Tiger

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 07:15:51 GMT

“It’s a sign saying, ‘I am here! I am here!’ ” says Ullas Karanth as he flails his arms and jumps up and down in a mock attention-grabbing wave. He is referring to a scrape, a patch of jungle floor recently cleared by a tiger’s hind paws. It’s huge, the size of a cafeteria tray. Based on the freshness of the uprooted grass along the edges, Karanth figures a tiger passed here sometime last night. I kneel down and am hit by an overwhelming stench—the musky spray of a quarter-ton cat that has just marked its territory. Signs of tigers are everywhere inside Nagarhole National Park in southwestern India. From our forest service lodge we hear the

A Debate Over The Best Way to Protect the Tiger

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 07:16:12 GMT

The question of how best to save the tiger population is surprisingly contentious. In 2010, officials gathered for a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, organized by the World Bank and produced the Global Tiger Recovery Plan, which calls for increasing conservation efforts in existing reserves while developing larger protected areas to connect the sanctuaries. The stated goal: double the world tiger population by 2022. Nearly two dozen of the world’s leading tiger biologists—including Ullas Karanth and Panthera CEO Alan Rabinowitz— vehemently opposed the plan. They felt it would spread conservation resources too thin, because 70 percent of the world’s remaini

The Story of the Most Common Bird in the World

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:37:13 GMT

Even if you don’t know it, you have probably been surrounded by house sparrows your entire life. Passer domesticus is one of the most common animals in the world. It is found throughout Northern Africa, Europe, the Americas and much of Asia and is almost certainly more abundant than humans. The birds follow us wherever we go. House sparrows have been seen feeding on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building. They have been spotted breeding nearly 2,000 feet underground in a mine in Yorkshire, England. If asked to describe a house sparrow, many bird biologists would describe it as a small, ubiquitous brown bird, originally native to Europe and then introduced to the Americas and els

Why Are Some Feathers Blue?

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

For decades, scientists have known how birds with yellow or red feathers usually get their color: It comes from pigments in foods the birds eat. Flamingoes, for instance, extract pink pigments from algae and crustaceans they filter out of the water. The challenge has been to figure out exactly how blue birds get their color. It can’t be their diet: blue pigments, like those in blueberries, are destroyed when birds digest them. Scientists theorized that birds look blue for the same reason the sky looks blue: Red and yellow wavelengths pass through the atmosphere, but shorter blue wavelengths bounce off of particles and scatter, emitting a blue glow in every direction. Richard Prum, a

The Secret Life of Bees

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:00:00 GMT

On the front porch of an old Coast Guard station on Appledore Island, seven miles off the southern coast of Maine, Thomas Seeley and I sat next to 6,000 quietly buzzing bees. Seeley wore a giant pair of silver headphones over a beige baseball cap, a wild fringe of hair blowing out the back; next to him was a video camera mounted on a tripod. In his right hand, Seeley held a branch with a lapel microphone taped to the end. He was recording the honeybee swarm huddling inches away on a board nailed to the top of a post. Seeley, a biologist from Cornell University, had cut a notch out of the center of the board and inserted a tiny screened box called a queen cage. It housed a single honeybee

What You See When You Turn a Fish Inside Out

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:27:13 GMT

Scientists use X-rays to classify different species, but when viewed outside the lab, the images provide stunning art

Nine Ways to Lure a Lover, Orchid-Style

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Beauty, mystery and deceit—the Smithsonian's collection of nearly 8,000 live orchids has it all

Wild Things: Yeti Crabs, Guppies and Ravens

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Tree killers and the first beds ever round up this month in wildlife news

The Orchid Olympics

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:00:00 GMT

Orchids are seducers. They trick animals into pollinating them and usually give nothing in exchange. Some orchid species mimic nectar-producing flowers to lure bees; others emit the fetid smell of rotting meat to attract carrion flies. In China, Dendrobium sinense orchids release a chemical normally broadcast by bees in distress; the scent attracts bee-eating hornets expecting an easy meal. The scent of Cymbidium serratum entices a wild mountain mouse, which spreads pollen from flower to flower with its snout. And around the world, orchid species have evolved to look or smell like female insects; males try to mate with the flowers but gather and deposit pollen, which they carry on their fl

Mistletoe: The Evolution of a Christmas Tradition

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:54:45 GMT

Baldur, grandson of the Norse god Thor, woke up one morning certain that each and every plant and animal on earth wanted to kill him. His mother consoled him. His wife consoled him, but all to no avail. As Baldur cowered in his room, half-wild with fear, his mother and wife decided to ask every living thing to leave their poor Baldur in peace. They begged the kindness of the oak tree, the pig, the cow, the crow, the ant and even the worm. Each agreed. Then, as Baldur paused to celebrate his release from torment, he felt a pain in his chest. He had been stabbed and killed by an arrow made from the wood of a mistletoe plant. Mistletoe was the one species on earth his wife and mother had fail

Wild Things: Killer Whales, Spiders and Woodpeckers

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Yellow saddle goatfish, mastodon ribs and more in this month’s summary of wildlife news

The Way of the Wolverine

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Seven biologists and I crunch through the snow in the Cascade Range about 100 miles northeast of Seattle. Puffs of steam shoot from our noses and mouths as we look for a trap just off the snow-buried highway. The trap is a three-foot-tall, six-foot-long box-like structure made of tree trunks and branches. Its lid is rigged to slam shut if an animal tugs on the bait inside. When we find it, the lid is open and the trap unoccupied, but on the ground are four large paw prints. We cluster around them. “Putative, possible or probable?” someone asks. Keith Aubry glances at the tracks. “Putative,” he says. “At best.” He says they’re probably from a dog.

The Disappearing Habitats of the Vaux’s Swifts

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:48:30 GMT

Larry Schwitters, a fit 70-year-old in black Ray-Ban sunglasses, climbed a narrow, 40-foot ladder to the top of an old brick chimney on an elementary school. It was a sunny day in Monroe, Washington, and heat radiated off the flat, tar roof. Schwitters, uncertain whether or not the extension on the ladder was locking securely, jiggled it warily. Schwitters looked vulnerable so high in the air, even rigged to a climbing rope held by a friend. “Larry takes his life into his hands when he does this,” said the man holding the rope, Jim Rettig, president of a nearby Audubon Society chapter. “No, I take my life in your hands,” Schwitters called down. Schwitters is a ret

The Sperm Whale's Deadly Call

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

On the swells of the Sea of Cortez, everything looks like a whale. But the suggestive shapes usually turn out to be whitecaps or a cloud’s shadow. Lulled by disappointment, the rocking boat and general monotony, I drift into torpor. Then, less than half a mile away, a series of unmistakable spouts erupts, and bursts of exhalation carry across the water. The BIP XII, a trawler from Mexico’s Center for Biological Research, changes course and chugs toward a group of about 25 sperm whales—adult females, juveniles and suckling calves up to 2 years old. The calves and juveniles are 15 to 20 feet long, and some of the larger females are more than 30 feet from head to tail (a ma

Wild Things: Piranhas, Nazca Boobies, Glowing Millipedes

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Elephant Seals, Neanderthal evolution and more news from the world of science

Top 10 Real-Life Body Snatchers

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:27:55 GMT

To ensure their own survival, parasites alter the appearance and behavior of their hosts in the creepiest ways. For instance, rats carrying the parasitic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, which reproduces inside the gut of a cat, no longer fear the smell of cat urine. In fact, they are sexually attracted to the scent, according to a recent study. This way, infected rats walk right into the grips of a feline. Here are ten other parasites whose sophisticated manipulations of animals are more horrifying than fiction. 1. Paragordius tricuspidatus Exactly how a hairworm parasitizes a cricket is unknown. Scientists suspect that the insect ingests either an infected mosquito or water containing hair

Ten Threatened and Endangered Species Used in Traditional Medicine

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Species are disappearing so quickly that scientists now debate whether the earth is going through it’s sixth mass extinction. Plants and animals go extinct for a variety of reasons, including climate change, habitat destruction, hunting and the introduction of nonnative species. The use of animal parts in traditional medicine can also contribute to a species’ decline, despite there being no real evidence of the efficacy of these treatments. The rarity of a creature does not protect it from being killed in the name of “medicine”; it just raises the market price. Rhinoceros Rhino poaching reached epidemic levels in the 20th century, nearly driving all five species in

Defending the Rhino

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Johannesburg’s bustling O. R. Tambo International Airport is an easy place to get lost in a crowd, and that’s just what a 29-year-old Vietnamese man named Xuan Hoang was hoping to do one day in March last year—just lie low until he could board his flight home. The police dog sniffing the line of passengers didn’t worry him; he’d checked his baggage through to Ho Chi Minh City. But behind the scenes, police were also using X-ray scanners on luggage checked to Vietnam, believed to be the epicenter of a new war on rhinos. And when Hoang’s bag appeared on the screen, they saw the unmistakable shape of rhinoceros horns—six of them, weighing more than 35

Wild Things: Feathered dinosaurs, king crabs and spotted hyenas

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Traveling snails, brainwashed rats and more updates from the world of wildlife

Who Can Identify the World's Rarest Butterfly

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:32:52 GMT

Nick Haddad is a tall, quick-to-smile Minnesotan. But lest the easy grin fool you, he is also a man who likes to win. He wins in Scrabble. He tries to win in basketball. And he thinks he has won in the grim contest waged among biologists over which is the rarest butterfly in the world. Haddad spends hundreds of hours a year studying the St. Francis Satyr, a small brown butterfly the size and weight of a folded postage stamp. The St. Francis Satyr lives at Fort Bragg, a military base near Fayetteville, North Carolina, and nowhere else. The St. Francis Satyr was once common but is now on the brink of extinction. One part of the story of the St. Francis Satyr begins with beavers. If you&rsq

The Jaguar Freeway

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

The pounding on my door jolts me awake. “Get up!” a voice booms. “They caught a jaguar!” It’s 2 a.m. I stumble into my clothes, grab my gear and slip into the full-moon-lit night. Within minutes, I’m in a boat with three biologists blasting up the wide Cuiabá River in southwestern Brazil’s vast Pantanal wetlands, the boatman pushing the 115-horsepower engine full throttle. We disembark, climb into a pickup truck and bump through scrubby pastureland. Half a mile in we see them: two Brazilian biologists and a veterinarian are kneeling in a semicircle, their headlamps spotlighting a tranquilized jaguar. It’s a young male, about 4 years

A Buddhist Monk Saves One of the World's Rarest Birds

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

“Rrrrrr, Badgers!” Tashi Zangpo says, cradling the remains of a bird nest in his hands on a mountain slope nearly 14,000 feet above sea level. For weeks, Tashi, a Tibetan Buddhist monk and self-taught conservation biologist, has scoured these mountains in China’s Qinghai province for nests of the Tibetan bunting. Now that he’s found one, he’s discovered that a badger has beaten him to it and devoured the young. The Tibetan bunting (Emberiza koslowi) is one of the least-known birds on the planet. It has a black and white head and chestnut-colored back and is only slightly larger than a chickadee. In 1900, Russian explorers were the first to document the bird a

Wild Things: Wildcats, Pigeons and More...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Sea monster mamas, bat signals and opossum versus viper

Saving Coral…Through Sperm Banks?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:12:32 GMT

The outstretched giant squid at our backs and the tail of a 45-foot model right whale looming above our heads in the National Museum of Natural History’s Ocean Hall make it easy to imagine we are sitting on a coral reef. Mary Hagedorn, a marine biologist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, sketches the scene: “Let’s say it is all one species. We can imagine Acropora palmata. They look like sequoias. They are mammoth corals, and there are hundreds of them in front of us.” The endangered species, also known as elkhorn coral because its branches resemble elk antlers, is found in shallow water throughout the Caribbean. Once a year, in August or Septemb

The Salamanders that Refuse to Grow Up

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:09:32 GMT

Dead leaves drift on the green, cloudy water that’s nearly to the brim of the six-million-gallon open concrete reservoir. Set on a tree-covered hillside, the reservoir is surrounded by a metal fence, like a community swimming pool long forgotten. It lies on the northern edge of the decommissioned Badger Army Ammunition Plant, a sprawling World War II-era ammunition factory 30 miles northwest of Madison, Wisconsin. Once one of the largest ammunition plants in the world, Badger is polluted by metals, solvents and explosives waste and is now being dismantled, piece by contaminated piece. Workers strip away siding from nearby buildings and remove bricks. Bulldozers push mounds of dirt a

The Hawks in Your Backyard

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:31:05 GMT

Bob Rosenfield stares up into the high canopy of a Douglas fir in Joanie Wenman’s backyard, in the suburbs of Victoria, British Columbia. “Where’s the nest again?” he asks. “It’s the dark spot near the top, about 100 feet or so up,” says Andy Stewart. “The first good branch is around 70 feet,” he adds helpfully. “All right!” Rosenfield says. “Let’s go get the kids.” He straps on a pair of steel spurs and hefts a coil of thick rope. Hugging the tree—his arms barely reach a third of the way around it—he starts to climb, and soon falls into a labored rhythm: chunk-chunk as the spurs bite into the

Otters: The Picky Eaters of the Pacific

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Scientists have long designated the california sea otter a “keystone predator,” meaning what the animal eats has a large impact on its environment. The otters devour extraordinary amounts of sea urchins that otherwise would gobble up the kelp that grows in profusion off the state’s central coast, and kelp forests, in turn, are home to rockfish, perch and many other fish, as well as invertebrates galore, including crabs, barnacles and worms. New research by Tim Tinker, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California, shows that sea otters are not only voracious but highly specialized eaters, organizing themselves into groups that zero in on different

Wild Things: Wildcats, Pigeons and More...

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Cleaner wrasse fish, black widow spiders and even bananas made the news recently as part of the latest wildlife research

A New Species Bonanza in the Philippines

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:06:11 GMT

After six weeks in the Philippines trawling the ocean floor, canvassing the jungly flanks of volcanoes and diving in coral reefs, scientists believe they have discovered more than 300 species that are new to science. Their research constituted the largest, most comprehensive scientific survey ever conducted in the Philippines, one of the most species-rich places on earth. The survey, led by the California Academy of Sciences, brought scores of bizarre and unexpected creatures into the annals of life as we know it. It revealed more than 50 kinds of colorful new sea slugs, dozens of spiders and three new lobster relatives that squeeze into crevices rather than carry shells on their backs. T

Ask an Expert: Do Animals Get Sunburned?

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:53:08 GMT

Unfortunately, despite our best defenses, sunburn is a common summer malady for humans. But do animals get sunburned? And what do they do to protect themselves? I posed the questions to Tony Barthel, curator of the Elephant House and the Cheetah Conservation Station at Smithsonian’s National Zoo. He oversees the daily care of these and other large mammals. “Most any animal that has exposed skin is susceptible to sunburn,” says the biologist. Whereas birds are protected by feathers and reptiles by scales (if reptiles overheat, they will die before sunburn is a factor), mammals such as elephants and rhinos, even freshly shorn sheep, as you might imagine, are particularly v

The Next West Nile Virus?

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:05:16 GMT

In Kenya in 2004, spring became the rainy season that wasn’t. March turned into April, and then May, and still the rains didn’t come. The once lush countryside began to parch and drinking water slowly evaporated. Women used to fetch small buckets of water from nearby streams and ponds, but the drought forced them to travel farther. To save themselves from trudging for hours each day in the blazing equatorial heat, women began to gather several days’ worth of water in multi-gallon containers, which they stored outside their homes. What the women didn’t know was that these vessels would spark a worldwide outbreak of a viral disease unfamiliar to most Westerners—

The Giant Squid: Dragon of the Deep

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:36:17 GMT

There are few monsters left in the world. As our species has explored and settled the planet, the far-flung areas marked “Here Be Dragons” have been charted, and toothy terrors once thought to populate the globe have turned out to be imaginary or merely unfamiliar animals. Yet some elusive creatures have retained their monstrous reputation. Foremost among them is Architeuthis dux—the giant squid. The creature—likely the inspiration for the legendary kraken—has been said to have terrorized sailors since antiquity, but its existence has been widely accepted for only about 150 years. Before that, giant squid were identified as sea monsters or viewed as a fancifu

The Top Ten Deadliest Animals of Our Evolutionary Past

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:57:15 GMT

If you live in a developed country, odds are you are going to die of a heart attack, stroke, cancer or an accident. But it was not always this way. For most of our evolutionary history as primates, one of the most common causes of death, perhaps the most common cause, was, well, being eaten. Starting with the first primates, which evolved about 65 million years ago, our ancestors were about the size of a monkey, if not smaller. Larger apes evolved about 13 million years ago, eventually producing today’s gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos and us. Hominids, including our direct ancestors, split from chimps and bonobos about seven million years ago, and our own species, Homo sa

Wild Things: Tarantulas, Jellyfish and More...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Hummingbirds, attacking bears, ancient hominids and other news updates in wildlife research

What is Killing the Bats?

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Inside the gaping mouth of Mammoth Cave, hibernating bats sleep in permanent twilight, each huddled in its own limestone crevice. Every fall, these big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) squeeze their furry bodies into nooks in the cave walls, where they enjoy protection from the bitter wind and the waterfall that sprays across the entrance. But there’s little a snoozing bat can do about a persistent scientist. “Just...let...go...with...your...feet,” coaxes Brooke Slack, a biologist at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, as she stands on tiptoes and reaches with gloved hands to pry a bat from the wall. The bat, visible by the light of her headlamp, lets o

Understanding Orca Culture

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Orcas have evolved complex culture: a suite of behaviors animals learn from one another. They communicate with distinctive calls and whistles. They can live 60 years or more, and they stay in tightknit matrilineal groups led by older females that model specific behaviors to younger animals. Scientists have found increasing evidence that culture shapes what and how orcas eat, what they do for fun, even their choice of mates. Culture, says Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, “may be very important to them.” Some of the first evidence of cultural differences among orcas came from studies of vocalizations in whales that frequent the coastal waters of Bri

Luna: A Whale to Watch

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:00:00 GMT

What if you found a story right in front of you, and it had the best real-life hero you’d ever met and a story line you could never have imagined on your own? What if it filled you with amazement and joy and sadness and hope? What if you could not resist telling everyone you met until someone said it ought to be a movie because the studios are just remaking superhero movies these days and need something fresh, and you thought, yes, that’s right? And what if the studios weren’t interested, and you took advantage of a technological revolution and set out to make the movie yourself? Then what if, against all odds, you finished your movie and people liked it but the theaters

Making the Best of Invasive Species

Wed, 25 May 2011 08:25:03 GMT

The lowly garlic mustard had never seen so much love. This prolific invasive plant—cursed by home gardeners and park and wildlife managers alike—is routinely wrenched from the ground or spritzed with herbicide in an attempt to keep it from taking over. But on April 14 at Cleveland’s Shaker Lakes Nature Center, garlic mustard was the guest—or rather, pest—of honor. “Pestival 2011” featured seven of Cleveland’s most notable chefs making garlic mustard a gourmet treat. They rose to the occasion deliciously: garlic mustard sauce over thin slices of roast beef, garlic mustard pesto on pork tenderloin crostinis, garlic mustard chutney on wonton-s

North America’s Most Endangered Animals

Fri, 20 May 2011 03:36:09 GMT

Snails, marmots, condors and coral reef are among the many species on the continent that are close to extinction

Swimming With Whale Sharks

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

At the moment, Rafael de la Parra has but one goal: to jump into water churning with whale sharks and, if he can get within a few feet of one, use a tool that looks rather like a spear to attach a plastic, numbered identification tag beside the animal’s dorsal fin. De la Parra is the research coordinator of Proyecto Dominó, a Mexican conservation group that works to protect whale sharks, nicknamed “dominoes” for the spots on their backs. He slips off the fishing boat and into the water. I hurry in after him and watch him release a taut elastic band on the spear-like pole, which fires the tag into the shark’s body. De la Parra pops to the surface. “Mach

Wild Things: Yawning Chimps, Humpback Whales and More...

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Leaping beetles, Pacific salmon, prehistoric mammals and other news updates in wildlife research

What Animal is the Best Mother?

Wed, 04 May 2011 02:30:00 GMT

Parenting styles have been and always will be a subject of hot debate. But rather than judge who among our own kind is the fittest mother, we turn our gaze to the entire animal kingdom and ask, what animal is the best mother? Props could certainly go to elephant mothers who endure staggering 22-month pregnancies. Also, polar bears. A female polar bear has to double her weight or else her body might absorb the fetus. (Both animals made Animal Planet’s list of “Top 10 Animal Moms.”) Then there are lions, who make especially benevolent mothers. In fact, each lactating mother in a pride will allow any offspring, including other females’ cubs, to nurse from her. With s

The Mystery of the Singing Mice

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

In late 1925, one J. L. Clark discovered an unusual mouse in a house in Detroit. It could sing. And so he did what anyone might have done: he captured the mouse and put it in a cage. There it produced a lyrical tune as if it were a bird. A musician named Martha Grim visited the mouse, commented on the impurity of its tones and left, musical standards being high in Detroit. Clark gave the mouse to scientists at the University of Michigan. The scientists confirmed that the mouse could sing and then bred it with laboratory house mice. Some offspring produced a faint “chitter,” but none inherited the father’s melodic chops. These observations were all noted in a scientific ar

Wild Things: Spider Monkeys, Fire Ants, Hagfish and More...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Dinosaur "thunder thighs" and fast-flying moths

Reporting from the Serengeti

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:44:06 GMT

Abigail Tucker came across imperiled zebras, dusty savannahs and perilous roads while researching the Tanzanian lions

Zebra Tracking

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:44:41 GMT

Researcher James Bradley studies how the zebras travel across the great expanse of land

The Untold Story of the Hamster, a.k.a Mr. Saddlebags

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:11:56 GMT

There are many ways to be immortal. Israel Aharoni, a Jewish biologist working in Turkish-controlled Jerusalem, imagined that his enduring legacy would come from giving Hebrew names to the animals of the Holy Land. Sometimes, especially for little-known animals, this meant making up new names. More often, it meant matching descriptions in the Torah with the species in and around Jerusalem. What, for example, was a rěēm? It is described as a clean animal with impressive horns that could cause injury. Aharoni thought it to be the aurochs, ancestor to all domesticated cows. This interpretation, like many others, seems to have stuck. But the Hebrew names of animals were not his only enduring l

The Secret Lives of Animals Caught on Camera

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:54:54 GMT

Great photography is about being in the right place at the right time. But to capture the most candid shots of wild animals, perhaps the right place to be is far away—out of sight, hearing and scent of them. That’s the concept behind camera trapping, a niche of wildlife photography that has been around for nearly 120 years. It was invented by George Shiras, a one-term congressman working in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who rigged a clunky camera with a baited trip wire. All types of animals—raccoons, porcupines and grizzly bears—tugged on the wire, which released the camera’s shutter, ignited a loud magnesium powder flash and snapped a portrait of the st

Wild Things: Mongooses, Bladderworts and More...

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Fairy-wrens, wasps, and a nearly 3,000 year old big toe

The DMZ's Thriving Resident: The Crane

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Choi Jong Soo and I are driving down a two-lane highway surrounded by rice fields, acres and acres of them, lying fallow for the winter. A few miles in the distance are mountains that seem too steep and jagged for their modest heights. We pass checkpoints, roadblocks. Heavily armed soldiers eye us from small huts. Every so often, helicopters sweep overhead. We are in the Cheorwon Basin, a little more than two hours northeast of Seoul, South Korea, and less than one mile from the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, the 2.5-mile-wide no man’s land that separates North and South Korea. Choi, my guide, nods at the mountains. “North Korea,” he says. “Very close.” A couple

Attack of the Giant Pythons

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Carla Dove, head of the National Museum of Natural History’s Feather Identification Lab, is working on a mystery. Surrounded by racks of embalmed birds in jars, she digs through the contents of a red cooler, pushing aside paper and ice packs and finally opening a plastic garbage bag. Inside are ten samples of stomach contents from Burmese pythons captured in the Florida Everglades. The majority of Dove’s work involves identifying birds hit by planes, a long-standing problem for aviation. “I mean, Wilbur Wright had a bird strike,” Dove says. Using DNA analysis and feather identification, she helps airports figure out which species to deter. Dove identified Canada ge

Wild Things: Giant Pandas, an Ancient Ibis and More...

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

Panda-friendly forests, one bizarre bird and foxes on junk food

Nothing Can Stop the Zebra

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:00:00 GMT

James Bradley pirouettes slowly on the roof of his Land Rover. A 13-foot-long aluminum pole with an antenna on top is sticking out of a front pocket of his shorts. The radio in his hand crackles with static. Bradley makes three tight circles, sweeping the air with the antenna, until the radio finally beeps. “I’ve got her,” he says. “It’s Rainbow.” Rainbow is one of an estimated 20,000 plains zebras that wander across Botswana’s Makgadikgadi Pans, a bleached expanse of grasslands and blinding white salt flats in the Kalahari Desert. She is also one of ten mares outfitted with a radio collar, providing Bradley with valuable insights into southern Af

Wild Things: Great Whites, Tree Snakes, Drongos and More

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

These animals redefine life as we know it

Tracking the Elusive Lynx

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

In the Garnet Mountains of Montana, the lynx is the king of winter. Grizzlies, which rule the wilderness all summer, are asleep. Mountain lions, which sometimes crush lynx skulls out of spite, have followed the deer and elk down into the foothills. But the lynx—with its ultralight frame and tremendous webbed feet—can tread on top of the six-foot snowpack and pursue its singular passion: snowshoe hares, prey that constitutes 96 percent of its winter diet. Which is why a frozen white bunny is lashed to the back of one of our snowmobiles, alongside a deer leg sporting a dainty black hoof. The bright yellow Bombardier Ski-Doos look shocking against the hushed backdrop of snow, sha

Survival Training, Ferret Style

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 07:00:00 GMT

In an outdoor enclosure, two juvenile black-footed ferrets pounce and somersault, tumbling over each other in a playful fight. The loser breaks free and rushes into a tunnel lined with a plastic tube. The victor tosses its long neck back and forth in a jubilant display of the ferret’s war dance. These two pen mates at the National Black-Footed Ferret Conservation Center near Carr, Colorado, are members of a species once thought to be extinct. Disease, habitat loss and eradication of the ferrets’ main prey, prairie dogs, nearly wiped out this Great Plains species. Then, in 1981, they were rediscovered in Wyoming. A few years later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captured al

A Plague of Pigs in Texas

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

About 50 miles east of Waco, Texas, a 70-acre field is cratered with holes up to five feet wide and three feet deep. The roots below a huge oak tree shading a creek have been dug out and exposed. Grass has been trampled into paths. Where the grass has been stripped, saplings crowd out the pecan trees that provide food for deer, opossums and other wildlife. A farmer wanting to cut his hay could barely run a tractor through here. There’s no mistaking what has happened—this field has gone to the hogs. “I’ve trapped 61 of ‘em down here in the last month,” says Tom Quaca, whose in-laws have owned this land for about a century. “But at least we got some

The World's Worst Invasive Mammals

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Animals as common as goats, deer, rabbits or mice can have a devastating effect on other wildlife

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Flamingos, T. rex Tails, Burmese monkeys and more...

How Did Whales Evolve?

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:18:53 GMT

What springs to mind when you think of a whale? Blubber, blowholes and flukes are among the hallmarks of the roughly 80 species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) alive today. But, because they are mammals, we know that they must have evolved from land-dwelling ancestors. About 375 million years ago, the first tetrapods—vertebrates with arms and legs—pushed themselves out of the swamps and began to live on land. This major evolutionary transition set the stage for all subsequent groups of land-dwelling vertebrates, including a diverse lineage called synapsids, which originated about 306 million years ago. Though these creatures, such as Dimetrodon, looked like repti

A Quest to Save the Orangutan

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Darkness is fast approaching at Camp Leakey, the outpost in a Borneo forest that Biruté Mary Galdikas created almost 40 years ago to study orangutans. The scientist stands on the porch of her weathered bungalow and announces, "It's party time!" There will be no gin and tonics at this happy hour in the wilds of Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province. Mugs of lukewarm coffee will have to do. Yes, there's food. But the cardboard boxes of mangoes, guavas and durians—a fleshy tropical fruit with a famously foul smell—are not for us humans. "Oh, there's Kusasi!" Galdikas says, greeting a large orangutan with soulful brown eyes as he emerges from the luxuriant rain forest su

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Drought crises, Florida panthers, humpback whales and more...

How Male Elephants Bond

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

While sipping tea one morning and enjoying the expansive view of a water hole from my 25-foot-tall research tower, I could see a storm of epic proportions brewing. My colleagues, students, volunteers and I were at Mushara, a remote water source in Namibia’s Etosha National Park, to study the dynamics of an all-male society, bull elephant style. I’d been coming to this site for 19 years to study elephants, and the complexity of the bulls’ relationships was becoming more and more striking to me. Male elephants have a reputation as loners. But in Amboseli National Park in Kenya, where the longest-running studies on male elephants have been conducted, bulls have been observ

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Caterpillars, Bonobos, European Songbirds and More...

The Scariest Zombies in Nature

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:30:45 GMT

Once the fungus invades its victim’s body, it’s already too late. The invader spreads through the host in a matter of days. The victim, unaware of what is happening, becomes driven to climb to a high spot. Just before dying, the infected body—a zombie—grasps a perch as the mature fungal invader erupts from the back of the zombie’s head to rain down spores on unsuspecting victims below, starting the cycle again. This isn’t the latest gross-out moment from a George A. Romero horror film; it is part of a very real evolutionary arms race between a parasitic fungus and its victims, ants. One zombie by itself is not necessarily very scary, but in B movies fro

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Caterpillars, Frogs, Big Birds and More...

Thinking Like a Chimpanzee

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The Primate Research Institute sits on a hill in Inuyama, Japan, a quiet city that rambles along the Kiso River and is renowned for a 16th-century castle. Handsome homes with traditional curved roofs line Inuyama’s winding streets. The primate facility consists mostly of drab, institutional boxes from the 1960s, but it has one stunning architectural feature: an outdoor facility that includes a five-story-high climbing tower for the 14 chimpanzees currently in residence. Chimps frequently scamper to the top of the tower and take in the view; they tightrope across wires connecting different parts of the tower and chase each other in battle and play. When I walked out onto a balcony ov

A Close Encounter With the Rarest Bird

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of the most extraordinary birds ever to live in America’s forests: the biggest woodpecker in the United States, it seems to keep coming back from the dead. Once resident in swampy bottomlands from North Carolina to East Texas, it was believed to have gone extinct as early as the 1920s, but sightings, confirmed and otherwise, have been reported as recently as this year. The young ornithologist James T. Tanner’s sightings in the late 1930s came with substantial documentation: not only field notes, from which he literally wrote the book on the species, but also photographs. In fact, Tanner’s photographs remain the most recent uncontested p

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Orchids, Baboons, Ancient Reptiles and More...

Name That Butterfly

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:19:09 GMT

Counting butterflies is one of those things that sound easy but isn’t. Six of us are squinting and sweating in the morning sun, cameras and binoculars in hand, in the Peterson Butterfly Garden in Northern Virginia, and the butterflies are thick. Our goal today is to conduct a census of the butterflies in this garden and several neighboring fields. In order to count a butterfly, we first have to identify it. Jocelyn Sladen, our group leader, points to the first butterfly of the day. “That is exactly the problem,” she says. “That little black butterfly could be one of any number of species.” What’s more, the trouble with counting butterflies in a butterfl

Weird Creatures From the Deep

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:50:26 GMT

A massive census of the oceans has turned up a trove of strange marine wildlife, from jellyfish to octopuses to anemones

Extreme Jellyfish

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:09:10 GMT

There are some 2,000 species of jellyfish. Some are tasty, others will kill you with the tap of a tentacle. Here are nine varieties that really stand out

Five Species Likely to Become Extinct in the Next 40 Years

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Experts estimate that one-eighth of all bird species, one-fifth of mammal species and one-third of amphibian species are at risk

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Cobras, sharks, lemurs, hermit crabs and more...

Jellyfish: The Next King of the Sea

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

On the night of December 10, 1999, the Philippine island of Luzon, home to the capital, Manila, and some 40 million people, abruptly lost power, sparking fears that a long-rumored military coup d’état was underway. Malls full of Christmas shoppers plunged into darkness. Holiday parties ground to a halt. President Joseph Estrada, meeting with senators at the time, endured a tense ten minutes before a generator restored the lights, while the public remained in the dark until the cause of the crisis was announced, and dealt with, the next day. Disgruntled generals had not engineered the blackout. It was wrought by jellyfish. Some 50 dump trucks’ worth had been sucked into t

Meet the New Species

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

One morning a few years ago, on a forested slope 6,200 feet above sea level in southwestern Tanzania, a team of wildlife researchers was tracking down reports about a strange primate. The scientists suspected that the animal, known to local hunters as kipunji, would turn out to be imaginary. Then someone yelled “Kipunji!” and everyone turned to gawk at what biologist Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society described afterward as “the most bizarre monkey I had ever seen.” It was about three feet tall, with a thick fur coat and brownish-gray hair fanned out around its black muzzle like a Victorian gentleman’s cheek whiskers. “Bloody hell!”

An Earth Day Icon, Unmasked

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, a mood of boisterous celebration filled the particulate-dense air of New York City. Mayor John V. Lindsay traveled around by electric bus. In a speech at Union Square he asked, “Do we want to live or die?”A crowd of 20,000 packed the square to catch a glimpse of Paul Newman standing on a raised platform. Stretches of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, closed to automobile traffic, were transformed into pedestrian seas, amid which office workers set down picnic blankets and girls handed out fresh daisies. Activists hauled nets of dead fish through Midtown streets. “You’re next, people!” they cried. “You’re next!&rd

By the Numbers: A Marine Advisory

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:00:00 GMT

16.1 billion pounds: total amount of fish that commercial fleets kill or fatally injure before discarding at sea each year 3 pounds: amount of wild mackerel or anchovies needed to produce one pound of farmed shrimp or salmon 82.4 percent: decline in the spawning population of western bluefin tuna since 1970 33 percent: amount of U.S. crude oil production from offshore sources 0.7 parts per billion: concentration of weathered crude oil in seawater that kills or damages Pacific herring eggs 100 percent: projected increase, by 2100, in the number of coastal dead zones, where bacteria spurred by pollution deplete oxygen from the water and make it impossible for marine animals to survive

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Hummingbirds, birch trees, queen bees, northern quolls and more...

A Puffin Comeback

Thu, 20 May 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Impossibly cute, with pear-shaped bodies, beak and eye markings as bright as clown makeup and a wobbly, slapstick walk, Atlantic puffins were once a common sight along the Maine coast. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries people collected eggs from puffins and other seabirds for food, a practice memorialized in the names of Eastern Egg Rock and other islands off the coast of New England. Hunters shot the plump birds for meat and for feathers to fill pillows and adorn women’s hats. By 1901, only a single pair of Atlantic puffins was known to nest in the United States—on Matinicus Rock, a barren island 20 miles from the Maine coast. Wildlife enthusiasts p

The Little Owls That Live Underground

Thu, 13 May 2010 04:24:16 GMT

It’s almost midnight and a lone white pickup truck sits atop a grassy hill on a remote tract of government land near Dublin, California, that is used as a military training base. In the driver’s seat, biologist Jack Barclay hunkers down over a night-vision scope that amplifies light 30,000 times. Barclay is watching two quarter-size pieces of glowing reflective tape that mark a trap he has concealed in low weeds 100 yards away. He has brought a truckload of equipment to this site to band some of its few remaining burrowing owls. Barclay sees a flicker of movement. Now. He presses a remote-control button, and a spring-loaded net arcs over the owl. Barclay sprints to the net and

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Running elephants, far-flying mosquitos, ancient crocodiles and more...

Saving the World's Most Endangered Sea Turtle

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Cape Cod Bay churns as a frigid gust flicks froth into the air and the surf claws at the beach. I find a tangle of black seaweed on the sand, lift a handful of the wet mess and glimpse the lines of a shell. I grab more seaweed and uncover what I’ve been searching for: a Kemp’s ridley turtle, a member of the world’s most endangered species of sea turtle. It’s a long way from the beach in Mexico where the turtles almost certainly hatched. It’s so still I doubt it’s alive. I pull off my gloves, lift the animal by its foot-wide shell and trot down the beach, holding it in front of me like a priceless porcelain vase. The turtle slowly raises its plum-size he

For Wildebeests, Danger Ahead

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 06:00:00 GMT

When the grass turns brittle and the streams run dry, the wildebeests grow restless. Milling in uneasy circles, scanning the horizon, sniffing the air for distant scents, the shaggy animals move slowly north, looking for the rains that bring new grass—and the promise of life for a population numbering some 1.2 million animals. “It’s amazing how keyed in they are to the rains,” says Suzi Eszterhas, an American photographer who has lived among the wildebeests for years to document their perilous annual journey, which covers about a thousand looping miles. From the broad Serengeti grasslands on the plains of Tanzania, the wildebeests trudge west through low hills towa

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Feathered dinosaurs, white-coated horses, giant redwoods and more...

Saving the Silky Sifaka

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Clustered in the mountains of northeastern Madagascar, they are known locally as “ghosts of the forest,” because they seem to flash through the trees. To scientists, silky sifakas are known as one of the world’s rarest mammals. There are fewer than 1,000 still alive, perhaps only 100, says Erik Patel, a PhD candidate at Cornell University who has spent years observing the animals in the island nation’s Marojejy National Park. A type of lemur, a silky sifaka weighs between 11 and 14 pounds and measures up to three-and-a-half-feet long. Silkies “fly like angels,” local people say, leaping as far as ten yards from tree to tree. “You could be fol

Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

In the blue shadows after dawn, the low hills in this stretch of South Dakota can look like a line of elephants trudging toward some distant water hole. It’s a geologic echo of the great herds of Columbian mammoths that used to wander here. They were like African elephants, only bigger. “A full-grown adult weighed ten tons. That’s as much as a school bus,” a guide tells the tourists on a sidewalk at the Mammoth Site, a paleontological dig and museum in the town of Hot Springs. She points out a set of brick-size teeth with corrugated surfaces like the soles of running shoes. With them, a mammoth ate 400 pounds of grasses and sedges a day. Directly below the sid

Beavers: The Engineers of the Forest

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:46:38 GMT

Our car rolls slowly down a dirt road in central Massachusetts. A leafy canopy of oak and red maple arches overhead, dripping from recent rains. Two broad ponds flank the road, and a beaver lodge rises in each one. The shaggy domes, each about ten feet across, are built from cut branches and sealed with mud. Between the ponds, the road lies under several inches of water. “They’ve plugged the culvert. The watershed managers won’t like that,” says Boston University biologist Peter Busher. His grin signals which side he’s on. We park and slosh forward on foot to investigate. Standing ankle-deep at the crime scene and peering down, we can see that beavers, probab

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Pollinating crickets, the longest migration, puffed up toads and more...

How Sleepy Are Sloths and Other Lessons Learned

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:16:29 GMT

Hoots, chirps and the guttural wails of howler monkeys fill the humid, earthy air as we trek deeper. From floor to canopy, the tropical forest is crawling with creatures, and my guide, Robert Horan, keeps a running commentary. Spider monkeys flounce in the tree branches. Two bats cling to the inside of a hollow tree. Stingless bees swarm around a honey-like goop oozing from a freshly cut log. Ant birds keep guard over a bustling ant highway, and a land crab scuttles out of the way of our plodding feet. Not to mention it’s chigger season on Barro Colorado Island. With all the wildlife vying for my attention, I just about pass the 130-foot radio tower, when Horan calls it out. I tilt

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Octopuses, Dinosaurs, Pandas and More...

Ten Plants That Put Meat on Their Plates

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

In addition to the well-known Venus flytrap, many other plant species feed on bugs or crustaceans

The Call of the Panama Bats

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:47:07 GMT

I’m sitting in a boat, anchored in a secluded cove of the Panama Canal, waiting for the sun to set. Occasionally, the mild aftershock of a freighter passing through the center of the canal rocks the boat. But for the most part, the muddy water is calm. My hosts, bat expert Elisabeth Kalko and Ben Feit, a graduate student studying under her tutelage, are setting up their sound equipment in the last remaining light. “The transition between day and night happens so fast,” says Kalko. She waxes poetic—on the cutout-like quality of the silhouetted trees and the rattling cicada orchestra. Her fine-tuned ear isolates the croaks of frogs and the croons of other creatures,

The Most Ferocious Man-Eating Lions

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

In encounters with the king of beasts, an unarmed person is “one of the most helpless creatures,” notes Charles Guggisberg in Simba: the Life of the Lion. “Man cannot run as fast as a zebra or a gazelle, he has not the horns of the sable antelope or the tusks of the warthog, and he cannot deal terrific blows like the giraffe.” People are, in other words, easy pickings. Even though Africa’s lion populations have been drastically reduced in the past decades, lions still regularly eat people; it’s not uncommon for them to kill more than 100 people a year in Tanzania alone. Many man-eaters are wounded or old; some have been deprived of natural prey sources;

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Vanishing dinosaurs, breeding birds, redback spiders and more

Man-Eaters of Tsavo

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

They are perhaps the world’s most notorious wild lions. Their ancestors were vilified more than 100 years ago as the man-eaters of Tsavo, a vast swath of Kenya savanna around the Tsavo River. Bruce Patterson has spent the past decade studying lions in the Tsavo region, and for several nights I went into the bush with him and a team of volunteers, hoping to glimpse one of the beasts. We headed out in a truck along narrow red dirt trails through thick scrub. A spotlight threw a slender beam through the darkness. Kudus, huge antelopes with curved horns, skittered away. A herd of elephants passed, their massive bodies silhouetted in the dark. One evening just after midnight, we came u

The Truth About Lions

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Craig Packer was behind the wheel when we came across the massive cat slumped in the shade beneath a spiny tree. It was a dark-maned male, elaborately sprawled, as if it had fallen from a great height. Its sides heaved with shallow pants. Packer, a University of Minnesota ecologist and the world’s leading lion expert, spun the wheel of the Land Rover and drove straight toward the animal. He pointed out the lion’s scraped elbow and a nasty puncture wound on its side. Its mane was full of leaves. From a distance it looked like a deposed lord, grand and pitiable. Since arriving in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park only that morning, I’d gaped at wildebeests on parade

The World’s Fastest Animal Takes New York

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:43:06 GMT

I’m standing a thousand feet above the streets of New York City, on the 86th floor observatory deck of the Empire State Building, looking for birds. It’s a few hours after sunset, and New York City naturalist Robert “Birding Bob” DeCandido is leading our small group. We can see the cityscape in every direction as the cool wind tousles our hair, but our gaze is focused up. Migrating songbirds, many of which travel by night to keep cool and avoid predators, are passing high overhead on their autumn journey. DeCandido has taught us how to differentiate the movement of small birds—“See how they flap-flap-glide?” he tells us—from the erratic motio

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Butterfly GPS, glowing mushrooms, bat-hunting songbirds and more

Ethiopia's Exotic Monkeys

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:52:48 GMT

Geladas are isolated, oddball monkeys that science has largely overlooked. They live in large herds in the towering Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. A few researchers studied the primates in the 1970s, but famine and political turmoil in the region made further investigations impossible. "Almost no one's heard of geladas," says Jacinta Beehner, a University of Michigan biological anthropologist in the midst of a ten-year gelada study, the most extensive ever conducted. "They kind of got lost in the shuffle." Yet—if you don't mind heights—geladas (Theropithecus gelada) make intriguing research subjects. With their falsetto cries, explosive barks and so

Crawling Around with Baltimore Street Rats

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:44:20 GMT

A trio of tiny rat statuettes stands sentinel in the center of Gregory Glass’s desk. The shelves above are stuffed with rat necropsy records and block-by-block population analyses. Huge, humming freezers in the lab across the hall are chockfull of rodent odds and ends. Now Glass, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, leads me out of his building and into the streets of Baltimore for a bit of impromptu fieldwork. He asks that I leave my jewelry and purse behind; after all these years of tramping the alleys in the rougher parts of town, the disease ecologist still gets nervous around sunset. Yet mostly he enjoys observing the “urban ecosystem,&rdqu

Peter Alsop on "Invasion of the Longhorns"

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:54:00 GMT

Peter Alsop is a science and environmental writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Formerly the managing editor of Tricycle magazine and senior editor of GOOD magazine, he has written for Salon, GOOD, and now, Smithsonian. What types of stories do you usually gravitate towards writing? I like suspenseful stories, and I tend to gravitate towards stories frequented by passionate (and occasionally obsessive) people. When these elements come together, as they did with this story, the work of reporting and writing is a pleasure. What drew you to this story in particular, about Asian longhorned beetles? I grew up not far from Worcester, near the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the

The Country's Most Dangerous Beetles

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Invasive beetles of various colors and sizes have infiltrated U.S. forests, despite efforts by government experts

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Geckos, tiny dinosaurs, cave man couture, and more

Invasion of the Longhorn Beetles

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:00 GMT

On a pleasant july evening Donna Massie steered her car into her driveway at the bottom of Whitmarsh Avenue in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her husband, Kevin, and his friend Jesse were huddled beside Jesse's car, a gold Hyundai Sonata, and were peering closely at one of its doors. They were staring not at a dent but at a striking black-and-white beetle, about the width of Donna's pinkie and half as long, with bluish legs and two banded antennas that curved back over the length of its body like the whiskers of a catfish. The beetle gently probed the surface of the car with its forelegs. None of the three was much of a bug person, and Donna was decidedly anti-bug, stipulating a death-to-inse

Denver’s Street-Smart Prairie Dogs

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:44:30 GMT

Prairie dogs start barking bloody murder and scramble for their burrows as a hawk glides fast and low over the colony. The emergency broadcast gives the rotund fur balls ample warning. For the raptor, it’s wishful thinking. “Whoa! Now would you look at that,” says Kevin Crooks, a biologist at Colorado State University. Crooks, tall and wiry with an easy grin, points to the north. A second raptor sweeps lazy circles under the morning sun, and a third perches atop a fake tree trunk that was erected here to attract prairie-dog-eating birds. We’re standing on a narrow strip of prairie running through the community of Highlands Ranch just south of Denver. Here, tucked

Five Giant Snakes We Should Worry About

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:24:07 GMT

Any report on invasive species is bound to have bad news, it seems, and a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey analyzing the threat from nine giant snake species is possibly even worse because we're talking about GIANT SNAKES (and I'm not generally scared of snakes). These snakes have already made their way here to the United States—as pets or hidden in cargo (Snakes on a Plane was NONFICTION?! -Ed.), usually—and pose a threat to the ecosystems where they might or have already become established. There are five identified as high risk (details below) and four medium risk species (reticulated python, DeSchauensee’s anaconda, green anaconda, and Beni anaconda). There

Top Ten Places Where Life Shouldn't Exist... But Does

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:02:52 GMT

10. Yellowstone's Hot Springs If you wanted to kill something, or maybe just dispose of a body, you couldn’t do much better than the conditions in Yellowstone’s hot springs. The springs are near the boiling point of water and acidic enough to dissolve nails. But some microbes thrive there, and the pigments they produce give the springs vivid, otherworldly colors. The heat-loving bacteria Thermus aquaticus is the most famous Yellowstone microbe; it makes an enzyme that researchers use in genetics labs to make copies of DNA. Other Yellowstone microbes eat hydrogen, and a few years ago scientists there discovered an entirely new phylum of photosynthesizing bacteria. Because the

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Toucans, Orchids, Monkeys and more

Return of the Sandpiper

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:00:00 GMT

The horseshoe crabs come from the deep, summoned by the big spring tides. Plodding and clumsy, the crabs plow along the continental shelf and through the silty waters of Delaware Bay, then drag themselves onto beaches to lay their eggs—with occasional detours to boat launches and coastal roads and waterfront parking lots. Easily flipped by waves or stranded by retreating surf, their bodies litter the shoreline like rusting artillery from a forgotten war. But their tails tick back and forth in the sand, like metronomes. They only look dead. The red knots descend from the sky. Plain, stocky sandpipers, they can fly a distance equivalent to a trip to the moon and back over the course o

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Hungry snakes, giant kangaroos, bat noses, and more

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Dog faces, the history of laughter, snakes, and bird warning calls

Mad About Seashells

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

When Phil Quinton got rolled under a log at a California sawmill some years ago, he crawled out and went back to work. It turned out that he had a crushed spine. After an operation the pain just got worse, Quinton says, and he learned to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. Eventually, his doctors put him on massive doses of morphine until he could no longer stand the side effects. Then a doctor told him about cone snails—a group of marine snails, beautiful but deadly—and a new drug, a synthetic derivative from the venom of one of them, Conus magus, the magician's cone. Quinton had actually seen cone snails kill fish in an aquarium and on television, and it was a kind of magi

The Cahaba: A River of Riches

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Randy Haddock stands on a muddy riverbank in central Alabama, looking over his favorite place on earth. Haddock, a slight, spectacled biologist with a trim beard, smiles as he hoists a canoe over his head, carries it to the water and launches it almost soundlessly into a calm stretch of the Cahaba River. Between brilliant-green margins of broad-leaved trees, the Cahaba flows from its headwaters near Springville through the suburbs of Birmingham and into the heart of the state. The river slips southward with barely a murmur, unnoticed by many who live nearby. But Haddock, who has plied it for 20 years, knows the Cahaba as one of the grandest places in North America. Biological splendor is

Stopping Sharks by Blasting Their Senses

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:39:39 GMT

Eric Stroud is in the business of spoiling appetites. His clients include some of the most voracious creatures on the planet—the tiger shark, the reef shark and the southern stingray, to name a few. Stroud, a research chemist who heads the New Jersey-based company SharkDefense, develops chemicals, metals and magnets that drive off sharks. Scientists think these materials work by overloading sharks’ senses. The repellents may someday be used to protect us from sharks, but they’re better suited to protect sharks from us. Fishermen from Maine to South Carolina don’t intend to catch the spiny dogfish, but the small, bottom-feeding shark frequently gets swept up in traw

The Hidden World of Ants

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:20:34 GMT

"The African ones have jaws like knives; they'll eat babies." The listener squirms. Next image. A grime-covered hunter is attacking its prey. "This one, you can just lean back in your chair with a beer to watch." Mark Moffett, 51, tilts his head when he speaks. The biologist is accustomed to the angle; he spends a lot of time on the ground, photographing the minutiae of nature, especially ant life, in vivid, almost glamorous detail—a skill he acquired largely by reading a how-to book on fashion photography when he was a 24-year-old grad student. "Turned out I was pretty good at it," he says—an understatement, given that he's won several prestigio

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Whale of a comeback, dancing cockatoos, sticky bees, and waltzing pond scum

The Magellanic Penguins of Punta Tombo

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:09:40 GMT

On a tiny peninsula in southern Argentina, nearly 400,000 penguins gather to breed and usher in a new generation of their species

Penguin Dispatch 1: Arriving in Punta Tombo, Argentina

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:04:23 GMT

On a mid-September evening off the southern coast of Argentina, throngs of Magellanic penguins dart and bob and weave in the surf. I watch as one dives underwater, flicks its wings and glides towards the shore, a swift shadow in a breaking wave. It pulls up with a neat, tight turn and hops onto the beach, where its feet promptly become entangled in a piece of kelp, and it falls on its face. Somewhat resignedly (or so it seems to me), it rights itself, shakes off and starts a slow, metronomic trudge up to the berm, joining hundreds of other penguins on their way to nests that may be more than half a mile inland. These birds have not set foot on land in almost six months, and it shows. I am

Penguin Dispatch 2: The Scientists of Punta Tombo

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:03:33 GMT

Dee Boersma is sweeping the desert. This might seem a thankless task at first, to sweep sand in a desert. Dee, though, has just installed a small scale along a major penguin highway. She hopes it will help her find out how much the birds weigh both before and after their foraging trips. (“Much easier than chasing them all down and weighing them individually,” she says.) But the scale is dainty. Sand piles up and distorts measurements, while wreaking havoc on the scale’s delicate innards. So Dee sweeps. “What’s so funny?” she asks tartly, as four members of her field crew watch her diligently if futilely swipe at the scale, which the wind is already re-b

Penguin Dispatch 7: Turbo, the Penguin Who Loved Humans

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:02:55 GMT

Early in the breeding season of 2005, a young penguin was very forcibly evicted from his nest by a stronger male—hardly a rare event at Punta Tombo. Perhaps to compensate for his perceived shortcomings, the young penguin moved under the Penguin Project’s enormous truck, a Ford F150 Turbo. There was a certain logic to this. The truck provided ample shade and its undercarriage was nice and snug. It was a good nest covering, save for its occasional tendency to drive away; that a penguin should choose to live beneath it was not worth more than a humorous aside. But then he took to visiting the researchers’ living quarters. He was not at all averse to human contact, and was gi

Penguin Dispatch 6: The First Trip into the Ocean

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:02:03 GMT

It is a mid-January morning, and I am perched on an outcropping of rocks that overlooks the northern stretch of Punta Tombo. Below me, hundreds of Magellanic penguins begin their daily mass exodus, when adults leave their nests and come to the sea to forage or clean themselves, or simply to mill around on the shore in loose assemblage. They arrive in orderly lines, and along the miles of beach I can make out the colony’s major highways by the penguins spilling out of them. Dee calls this spectacle “the suits’ morning commute.” But the comings and goings of adults are not what I’m most interested in at the moment. For two months now, we’ve watched the ch

Penguin Dispatch 5: Picking the Cutest Newborn Chick

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:01:39 GMT

It’s barely 9:30 on a late-November morning, but the temperature is already 88 degrees Fahrenheit. A hot, dry wind is plastering grit to my face. I am in the middle of the day’s area checks, visiting nests and noting the presence of eggs (or their absence, if something has made off with them). It is a routine, and a comfortable one save for the heat and dust. But it is about to change. At a nest under a quilumbai bush, the female’s comportment is somehow different, although I can’t immediately say why. Her stance, maybe? She seems more nervous than usual, and is straddling something rather than sitting on it. When I peer in, I see that two halves of serrated egg sh

Penguin Dispatch 4: How to Study a Penguin Egg

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:01:14 GMT

Antarctic skuas are close relatives of gulls, albeit larger and a good deal more menacing. I first saw them in late September doing lazy circuits around the colony fringes. They seemed not to fly so much as scull the air with dark blade wings. Now, a couple of weeks into October, they move with a swifter purpose, streaking low over my head in twos and threes, here quick and then gone. I am terrestrially bound and move more slowly, but we are searching for the same thing: penguin eggs. A female Magellanic penguin will lay a clutch of two eggs. Each is about half again as large as a big chicken egg, and, I’m told, has a subtle fishy flavor. For his part, the male penguin has keenly an

Penguin Dispatch 3: Penguin Wrangling

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:00:21 GMT

Over the course of her career, Dee Boersma has authored or co-authored more than a hundred scientific papers, book chapters, articles and reports. Almost every sentence she utters, every casual observation she makes as she walks through the field, has as its foundation a blizzard of data points. The most common data point comes from a flipper band, a stainless steel teardrop that gives a penguin its unique scientific identity. Dee and revolving crews of field workers have banded close to 60,000 penguins during her quarter century at Punta Tombo. These bands explain how, when she walks up to a particular nest, she usually knows the penguin standing next to it and can recall its particular h

Richard Conniff’s Wildlife Writing

Wed, 27 May 2009 01:44:21 GMT

Richard Conniff has been writing professionally since 1969, and for Smithsonian magazine since 1982. In that time, he has intentionally crossed paths with cheetahs, leopards, snapping turtles, ptarmigans, hummingbirds, wild dogs, ants, jellyfish, spiders and scores of other animals, plus the people who study them, all for the sake of explaining how the natural world works. He has won the National Magazine Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, among other honors. With the publication of the latest collection of his work, Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals, we prevailed upon him to come inside for a bit and answer a few questions. You grew up in the c

Wild Things:
Life as We Know It

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:00 GMT

Flight of the hummingbird, termite cloning and the rise of the octopus

Going Buggy at the New Audubon Museum

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:13:47 GMT

The historic U.S. Custom House in New Orleans is teeming with pests—ants, termites, beetles, spiders and more. The place is infested, but in this case most folks couldn’t be happier. A year ago, a section of this 160-year-old Greek revival building on Canal Street was transformed into the Audubon Nature Institute’s goal is to exalt these tiny creatures and show how vital they are to our ecosystem. “If all were to disappear,” famed entomologist Edward O. Wilson wrote in 1992, “humanity would probably not last more than a few months. …The land surface would literally rot.” Insects dispose of our waste; they pollinate our crops. They aerate th

Invasion of the Lionfish

Fri, 08 May 2009 03:23:43 GMT

It took as few as three lionfish to start the invasion. Or at least, that's the best guess. Genetic tests show that there weren't many. No one knows how the fish arrived. They might have escaped into Florida's waters in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew capsized many transport boats. Or they might have been imported as an aquarium curiosity and later released. But soon those lionfish began to breed a dynasty. They laid hundreds of gelatinous eggs that released microscopic lionfish larvae. The larvae drifted on the current. They grew into adults, capable of reproducing every 55 days and during all seasons of the year. The fish, unknown in the Americas 30 years ago, settled on reefs, wrecks and

Abigail Tucker on “In Search of the Mysterious Narwhal”

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:09:19 GMT

Abigail Tucker is a staff writer at Smithsonian magazine. She recently ventured up to Greenland to report on narwhal research, and her story “In Search of the Mysterious Narwhal” appears in the May issue. What drew you to this story? Can you describe its genesis a bit? I read a news item about scientists attaching temperature sensors to narwhals. The story wasn’t much more than a blurb, but it alluded to a lot of things I’d never thought about—like what, exactly, a narwhal was, and how on earth a person would tag one. So I called Kristin Laidre, the American scientist working on the project, and when she started talking about the amount of work, and waiting