Natural History articles from December 2006

Natural History archives from December 2006

Get along, little doggies.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Last winter a pair of coyotes, napping on a fresh pallet of snow in Yellowstone National Park, were roused by the far-off howl of a fellow coyote. The male stood up, shook the snow off his fur, and bayed loudly in response, while the female...

The long view.(UP FRONT)
December 1, 2006... Our annual double-month issue that brackets the holidays takes the long view this year--26,000 years long. That's the time the Earth needs to do its impersonation of the one-second wobble of a spinning toy top beginning to slow down (see "Turn,...

Jaws--or lips?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... R. Aidan Martin and Anne Martin ("Sociable Killers," 10/06) claim to differ with my theory that white sharks avoid feeding on people because they prefer fattier prey. But the Martins offer no reason a shark would not eat a human it has...

Running man.(hunting practice)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Couch potatoes may disagree, but people are fairly well built to run in the heat. We sweat more per unit of body surface area than any other animal, and our upright posture exposes less body surface to the sun than would walking on all fours,...

No joy in Mudville.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... The freshwater mussels of North America are in trouble. Of 300 native species, some 70 percent are extinct, endangered, or declining. Invasives such as the zebra mussel have been, er, muscling them out of lakes and streams; development and...

Litter bugs.(SAMPLINGS)
December 1, 2006... You may feel more secure when your skeletons are hidden in the closet, but a young assassin bug is safest when the carcasses of its victims are conspicuously arrayed across its back. Investigators have interpreted such "corpse camouflage" as a...

Baked eggs.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... All sea-turtle eggs can develop into either male or female hatchlings; which gender depends on the temperature of the sand where the eggs are buried to incubate. Now, it seems, tourist development is leaving so much hot sand in its wake that...

Four-winged migration.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Think of a migratory flier, and chances are a bird comes to mind. But at least nine species of dragonfly in North America head south in the fall, too. Until recently, though, migratory dragonflies could not be tracked because radio transmitters...

Enemy at the gates.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Plants have pores on their leaves called stomata, which let carbon dioxide in and oxygen and water vapor out during photosynthesis. That function would seem to make each stoma a portal for invaders, too, such as disease-causing bacteria....

New planets on the block.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Planets outside the solar system keep popping up in the Milky Way. Two "exoplanets" were discovered 26,000 light-years away, the farthest yet detected--by a team of astronomers led by Kailash C. Sahu of the Space Science Telescope Institute in...

Don't blame the Sun.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... The theory that the Sun, not human activity, is responsible for most of the warming of the Earth in the past century has been debated for many years. According to that theory, the Sun has increased in brightness, and the brightening accounts...

Broken refrigerator.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... In the forests of Ontario, Canada, rising temperatures have caused a decline in gray jays and may eventually eliminate the species in the southern parts of its breeding range. Thomas A. Waite, an ecologist at Ohio State University in...

Warm-weather friend.(SAMPLINGS: THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Good news is rare in research on global warming, but here's a hopeful discovery. Certain species of coral may be able to cope with warming seawater with a little help from their microscopic friends. In return for a safe place to live, in...

Turn, turn, turn: in addition to its daily spin and its annual trip around the Sun, the Earth wobbles--affecting the seasons, the "north star," and human history.(PERSPECTIVES)
December 1, 2006... Winter brings the year's longest nights--extra hours of darkness in which to watch the stars wheel their ways around our basic point of reference in the sky: a star named Polaris. Known today as the North Star (for its unique status as the star...

The jaws that jump: trap-jaw ants have smashed the record for fastest predatory strike on Earth, with mandibles that double as spring launchers.(BIOMECHANICS)
December 1, 2006... Dressed in shorts and wetsuit booties, I was out for a late evening walk in south Florida. Suddenly I felt a dozen little stabbing pains in my foot. Thinking I must have stepped in a stinging nettle, I carefully backed one foot out of range,...

Big bird: the kori bustard, the world's heaviest flyer, depends on the rain on the Namibian plain for its breeding, success.
December 1, 2006... We stood under a broiling sun in the middle of Halali Plain, a sea of baked earth and yellowed, knee-high grass in Etosha National Park, in northern Namibia. A hundred feet away, paying us no mind, stood a large male kori bustard, the world's...

Dig it! An air-lubber surveys the pleasures and perils of the burrowing life.
December 1, 2006... Peter J. Nicholson sneaked out of his Australian hoarding school bedroom one night and ran into the nearby forest. The moon was slight and the clouds were heavy, but he knew where he was going. Once there, he took out his flashlight and lowered...

Happy birthday, Linnaeus: the great biological classifier celebrates his 300th birthday in 2007, while Buffon, born the same year and Linnaeus's greatest rival, has been forgotten. Are we celebrating the wrong birthday?(Carl Linnaeus)(In memoriam)
December 1, 2006... Come and stand here," said a guide in a room on the second floor of the house where the naturalist Carl Linnaeus lived with his wife, five children, several monkeys, parrots, and a pet raccoon. The house, in Uppsala, Sweden, is now the Linnaeus...

Salt of the Earth: hidden among Florida's sand pine scrublands is a diverse host of other habitats.(THIS LAND)
December 1, 2006... Visitors to central Florida who drive through Ocala National Forest without leaving the main roads may get the impression that the region is one giant sandy area with scattered pine and shrubby thickets. That habitat, known as sand pine scrub,...

And for the coffee table.(Pollen: The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers)(Seeds: Time Capsules of Life)(Wild Borneo: The Wildlife and Scenery of Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and Kalimantan)(Little Polar Bears)(The World of the Polar Bear)(Postcards From Mars: The First Photographer on the Red Planet)(Saturn: A New View)(100 Caterpillars: Portraits from the Tropical Forests of Costa Pica)(Butterflies of the World)(Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon)(Yosemite: Art of an American Icon)(Book review)
December 1, 2006... Pollen: The Hidden Sexuality of Flowers, by Rob Kesseler and Madeline Harley (Firefly Books; $60.00) Seeds: Time Capsules of Life, by Rob Kesseler and Wolfgang Stuppy (Firefly Books; $60.00) Artist and visual arts professor Rob...

The good Earth.(nature.net)
December 1, 2006... The soil underfoot rarely gets its due. As a geologist, I viewed soil--when I considered it at all--as an impediment, an annoying, transient layer hiding the interesting bedrock beneath it. Nevertheless, when I worked at the American Museum of...

The sky in December and January.
December 1, 2006... Just before sunrise from December 7th until the 14th, Jupiter (magnitude -1.7), Mercury (-0.6), and Mars (1.5) cluster low in the east-southeast sky. The best time to look for this intriguing pre-Christmas gathering is around 6:30 A.M. local...

Sensory trade-off.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... In his article "Broken Pieces of Everyday Life" (10/06), Sean B. Carroll suggests that trichromatic vision is tied to reduced olfactory perception. "The fraction of fossil olfactory receptor genes," he writes, "is significantly higher in all...

Origami Holiday Tree.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... The orange elephant has arrived from Pune, India. So have the blue and cream-colored pachyderms and the silver giraffe. From across the country and around the world, the safari gathers, fantasy folds that make the shapes of lions and tigers and...

Maria Diana: Lieutenant Department of Security and Safety.(PEOPLE AT THE AMNH)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... You might say Maria Diana was born to handle crowds and kids. Twelfth in a family of 13 children, she is happiest working Halloween when the halls are jammed with double strollers, or the Friday after Thanksgiving, the single busiest day in the...

Last chance!
December 1, 2006... Don't miss these three wonderful exhibitions, now in their final weeks: Voices from South of the Clouds Villagers in southwestern China use evocative photographs and storytelling to document their world. Through January 2. Lizards...

The museum at your fingertips: www.amnh.org.(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... With a few clicks at your computer, immerse yourself in all the Museum has to offer without leaving home. Simply visit www.amnh.org for detailed information about public programs, cutting-edge scientific research, and more, including our...

Can you guess what this is?
December 1, 2006... Students in classrooms around the country took their best guesses to decipher this mystery photo in a recent issue of Scholastic's Science World[R] and Super. Science[R] magazines, which featured an article about American Museum of Natural...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
December 1, 2006... EXHIBITIONS Gold Through August 19, 2007 This glittering exhibition explores the captivating story of the world's most desired metal. Extraordinary geological specimens, cultural objects, and interactive exhibits explore and illuminate...

Fearful symmetry.(ENDPAPER)(lion-tailed macaques)
December 1, 2006... It's a warm afternoon in southern India, and the bus is hot and dusty. After six bumpy hours on rough mountain roads with numerous hairpin turns, my bones are weary. And frankly, I'm feeling sorry for myself. After years in the class--room and...