Natural History articles from April 2001

Natural History archives from April 2001

One Girl's Life.
April 1, 2001... Surely it is difficult for any of us to understand how someone else experiences the world. Stuck in our own skins, limited to a given time and place in history, we are evolved to be healthily self-absorbed. To appreciate a life lived in another...

LETTERS.
April 1, 2001... Analyzing Freud In "Nature's Infinite Book" (2/01), Jared Diamond undertakes to compare and contrast the legacies of Darwin and Freud while missing a fundamental difference between the two. Darwin developed a scientific theory susceptible...

Erratum.
April 1, 2001... In the 2/01 issue, we mistakenly identified the home institution of author Robert T. Mason ("Serpentine Cross-Dressers") as the University of Oregon. He is on the faculty of Oregon State University in Corvallis. We regret the error. ...

FATAL ATTRACTION.(amoebic parasite Toxoplasma gondii can cause rats to lose their inherited fear of cats)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Rats have evolved a strong, innate aversion to the smells of their predators. Healthy rats--even those bred for hundreds of generations in the laboratory--show distinct anxiety around feline odors. When the amoebic parasite Toxoplasma gondii...

FLOOD RELIEF.(bamboo-nesting ants fight flooding)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Ants that nest in underground colonies have developed various strategies to cope with flooding, including the formation of living rafts and the sealing of nest entrances. To deal with rain, arboreal ants often build their nests of waterproof...

CRABS: A LANDMARK STUDY.(homing behavior)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Some crabs find their way back home the same way people do--by observing and memorizing landmarks. Biologist Stefano Cannicci, of the Department of Animal Biology and Genetics at the Universita degli Studi di Firenze, and colleagues studied the...

Wonderful WEST VIRGINIA.(Cranberry Botanical Area, New River Gorge, and other interesting sections of West Virginia)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... NATURALLY WlLD... SOMETIMES UNUSUAL WEST VIRGINIA HAS A REPUTATION FOR awe-inspiring natural beauty, and for good reason, This scenic state offers visitors majestic mountains that show ever-changing scenery throughout all four seasons....

The Rise of Phoenix.(archaeological remains of the Hohokam people can be found throughout Phoenix, Arizona)
April 1, 2001... The capital of Arizona owes its birth to the handiwork of the ancient Hohokam. THIS LAND In 1868, when the name "Phoenix" was chosen for what would become the capital city of Arizona, the reference to a creature reborn from its own...

Found Object.(Saturniidae silk moth cocoon)
April 1, 2001... Beautiful winged things come in small packages. The snow on the steep, south-facing slope of Raven Ridge, near my house in Vermont, was melting quickly in the April sun. I was scrambling up toward the ravens' cliff nest to check on its...

Deaths of Languages.
April 1, 2001... Six thousand languages are spoken today. By the end of the century, we may be down to two hundred. In this magazine, the phrase "tragic loss of diversity" usually refers to the current disappearance of biodiversity, with its big, though...

AMAZING THAILAND.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... The beauty of nature and the treasures of an ancient culture THROUGHOUT 700 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE, THE THAI kingdom has displayed an amazing continuity, underpinned by the people's adherence to Buddhism and the monarchy. Thailand contains a...

BELIZE ADVENTURE.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Belize is known for the warmth and hospitality of its population. ONLY A TWO-HOUR PLANE RIDE FROM the United States, Belize lies directly south of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and borders the Caribbean Sea. Fly into Belize City and you're off...

EAGLE OPTICS.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Nature observation requires the best performance and value optics. EAGLE OPTICS OFFERS A WIDE SELECTION of equipment from every major manufacturer of visual optics, They feature only those models that, in their experience, represent the...

WILD SCOTLAND.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Nowhere else can you enjoy so many special experiences. SCOTLAND PROVIDES A WONDERFUL opportunity to enjoy wild and untamed scenery, fascinating history and culture, and friendly people who are waiting to show you their own special version...

GUIDED TOURS.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... IF YOU WANT TO TAKE PART IN A UNIQUE vacation, but don't want to plan, organize, arrange, or make reservations, leave your vacation planning and itinerary to the professionals. If a cruise is what you are looking for, Swan Hellenic offers...

Hot Times in the Bighorn Basin.
April 1, 2001... A modern desert provides dues to an ancient period of global warming. To most people who drive through, hurrying west to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming's Bighorn Basin is nothing but a vast sagebrush plain crossed by two lanes of...

Wyoming's Garden of Eden.
April 1, 2001... The rich fossil record from the early Eocene Bighorn Basin includes the remains of the most ancient primates, hoofed animals, and carnivores. Today Wyoming's Bighorn Basin, home to pronghorns and prairie dogs, coyotes and rattlesnakes, is...

Tete-a-Tete.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Can one animal tell another how it feels? Eloquently. FRIENDSHIP In Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve, a group of elephants makes its way down the plain to the Mara River during the dry season. Two adults detach themselves from the line...

Colonies in Space.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... As an entomologist interested in how ants live underground, I have long wished I could see into the earth and examine every detail of their nests and tunnels. The next best thing, I decided, would be to use their nests as a mold for casting...

Other Stars Than Ours.
April 1, 2001... Aztec astronomers had their own reasons for sky watching. The Aztecs saw in the heavens the sustainers of life--the gods they sought to repay, with the blood of sacrifice, for bringing favorable rains, for keeping the earth from quaking,...

WORKING GIRL.
April 1, 2001... For many young girls in Andean Ecuador, life involves labor. For Rosa, the tradition continues--with some adjustments. Rosa was another blessing and another pair of hands when she was born in 1988. Her home was an adobe-and-thatch structure...

Plenty of Nothing.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... And nothing is plenty for some sky watchers. Devoting a column that's supposed to be about what you can see in the night sky to something you can't see may seem to make no sense. But then, there's a lot about black holes that seems to make...

THE SKY IN APRIL.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Mercury is out of sight almost all month, reaching superior conjunction (and slipping behind the Sun) on April 23. But this quick little planet reappears a week later, just above the northwestern horizon at dusk. Venus has a busy and...

The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging.(Review)
April 1, 2001... The Quest for Immortality: Science at the Frontiers of Aging, by S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce A. Carries (W. W. Norton, 2001; $25.95) Living to a very advanced age is unlikely, the authors argue. But are they right? Although the dangers...

Gigalopolis.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... I have always enjoyed time-lapse photography--you know, flowers opening, seeds sprouting, clouds racing across the sky as the sun arcs toward the western horizon. By distorting time, these films seem magical, allowing us to see what before we...

BOOKSHELF.(Review)(Brief Review)
April 1, 2001... The Universe Unveiled: Instruments and Images Through History, edited by Bruce Stephenson, Marvin Bolt, and Anna Felicity Friedman (Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum/Cambridge University Press, 2000; $29.95) Since the late fifteenth...

Upwardly Mobile.
April 1, 2001... A Museum scientist analyzes what's inside volcanoes to predict how high they'll blow. In the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth is a ten-foot, grayish black cube: a cast of part of a debris flow from Mount Vesuvius that helped bury Pompeii in...

Coral Stables.(pygmy seahorses in Muricella coral)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... Horses are sometimes confined to corrals, but Bargibant's, or pygmy, seahorses are confined to corals--in fact, to a particular genus of gorgonian coral called Muricella, found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Australia. A relative of the...

What We Do Best.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2001... What makes us human? A large brain, an upright stride, coherent speech, shared cultures? All of these, of course, and something else. Something that does not command as much admiration as high encephalization, bipedal locomotion, symbolic...