International Wildlife articles from November 1994

International Wildlife archives from November 1994

Aliens in the treetops.
November 1, 1994... THERE'S A BIG, NOISY PRIMATE in the trees above my head. He's propped on his haunches, fingering a nut. Suddenly, the nut drops. A raucous call peels across the rain-forest canopy. "HEY DAN! I DROPPED MY LAST 7/16 NUT! CAN YOU SEND ME UP SOME...

Den mothers and their cubs. (polar bears)
November 1, 1994... EACH YEAR, 150 TO 200 PREGNANT POLAR BEARS Congregate along Canada's Hudson Bay on a tiny oval patch of tundra southeast of Churchill, Manitoba. Their purpose: to dig dens. A polar bear den is a hole in the snow no larger than a phone booth,...

$20,000 for one fish? Bluefin tuna may be worth too much for their own good.
November 1, 1994... Bathed in the dazzling glare Of the lights, the tunas seem As if they're floating. Kozaburo Omura (Translated from his collection of Japanese tuna poetry) IN THE PITCH BLACK OF NIGHT, a queue of trucks waits, engines...

Have wings, can't fly. (ostriches and other non-flying birds)
November 1, 1994... THE ODYSSEY OF THE EGG began on a Madagascar hillside. Washed from its nest by torrential rains, the egg tumbled into a raging stream where its thick shell bounced off rock after rock on a wild ride to the sea. The second leg of the egg's...

I married a croc man. (Romulus Whitaker)
November 1, 1994... When Zai married Rom, she might have expected children--but what about those 10,000 crocodiles in the backyard? LATE ONE HOT JUNE NIGHT in 1974, my husband Romulus Whitaker and his friend Rajamani, an Irula tribesman from southern India,...

When 32 artists went to Poland.
November 1, 1994... They came from 15 countries to try to help save Europe's last best wetland FROWNING AND SHAKING his head, the Polish boy made it clear to the sculptor from Stahlstown, Pennsylvania, that the rooster he was modeling was not quite right. The...

Secret of the hawks. (Veracruz, Mexico raptor migration flyway)
November 1, 1994... A YELLOW WASH of morning light floods the Mexican savanna, alive with the hoots of Inca doves and the promise of another searingly hot October day. Biologist Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza squints against the are and searches the sky to the north, where...

Sweet shadows. (how animals seek refuge from the heat of the sun)
November 1, 1994... SHADE IS A STRAY FRAGMENT of darkness cast along the ground, a sliver of night that lives by day. Shade also may rank as the Holy Grail of the overheated and overlighted. The sun is a life-giving star, but it is also a killer. In warm...