Natural History articles from February 2008

Natural History archives from February 2008

The natural moment vegetarian carrion.
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Expect blow flies, flesh flies, coffin flies, and other kinds of carrion flies to come calling not long after death does. Female blow flies usually arrive first, driven to lay their eggs in the still-juicy flesh of a...

Fishy picture.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2008... The legend for a photograph accompanying the article by Eleanor J. Sterling and Merry D. Camhi ["Sold Down the River," 11/07] identifies a large fish as the endangered Mekong giant catfish (Pangasius, or Pangasinodon, gigas). It is actually a...

Follow the water.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2008... As a rancher who works with soil and water conservation districts across the country, I was troubled by some of the statistics cited by Sharon P. Nappier, Robert S. Lawrence, and Kellogg J. Schwab ["Dangerous Waters," 11/07]. The authors write...

Follow the money.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2008... The special issue "Water: The Wellspring of Life" [11/07] did a commendable job of highlighting a topic that deserves more attention. But let's confront financial and economic realities. Cash strapped governments don't have the resources to...

Language savers.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Letter to the editor)
February 1, 2008... I read Sarah Grey Thomason's "At a Loss for Words" [12/07-1/08] with great interest since I am familiar with an organization that shares similar goals. SIL International (formerly, the Summer Institute of Linguistics) was founded in 1934,...

Erratum.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Correction notice)
February 1, 2008... Seventh-grader Sydney Moore in Vancouver, Washington, caught a factual error in Laurence A. Marschall's review of The Pompeii Pop-Up ["And for the Coffee Table," 12/07-1/08]. Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, not 79 B.C. as eyewitness Pliny the...

The blob.(nature.net)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Last summer, while cruising Alaska's fjords with the family, I kept an eye trained on the water in hopes of pointing out killer whales and dolphins to my children. We saw both, but passing by in the dark green, sunlit waters was, above all, an...

The secret life of weeds.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... "I bend, and break not," the reed, in fable, tells the oak. Break not, indeed. During the past 150 years a European strain of the common reed, Phragmites australis, has spread throughout the northeastern United States. It pushes aside other...

Of two minds.(SAMPLINGS)(memories)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ever remembered with certainty something that never actually happened? Most people have, but how the brain produces such devilishly convincing, yet false, memories has long eluded neuroscientists. During recall...

Hybrid headstart.(spadefoot toad's hybridization)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... The spadefoot toad, Spea bombifrons, makes a habit of the unthinkable: mating with members of another species. Interbreeding often produces few or no offspring, or offspring with reduced fertility, so biologists usually assume that...

Good morning, honey.(pipefishes' sexual behavior)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Messmate pipefish, Corythoichthys haematopterus, form strong monogamous pairs that normally endure from year to year. In most other long-term monogamous fish species, couples live together year-round, but not the messmate pipefish; mates of...

Emergency broadcast system.(SAMPLINGS)(iguanas' alarm signals)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Marine iguanas may not be big talkers-in fact, they don't vocalize at all--but at least they're good listeners. A new study shows that the wary reptiles tune in to the alarm calls that Galapagos mockingbirds broadcast (for the benefit of their...

Spider insider.(using X-Ray Computed Tomography to study fossil spiders )(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Examining the guts of fossil spiders millions of years old sounds farfetched, but a technique originally developed for medical diagnostics has been repurposed to do just that and with strikingly clear results. ...

Spring timing.(global warming's effect on plant buds during sprinh)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Spring green-up--when plant buds burst open at winter's end--has been arriving ahead of schedule in the northern United States for the past twenty-five years, as a result of global warming. In fact, spring has been springing progressively...

Warm and fuzzy.(global temperature changes)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... For thirty years, study after study has shown that doubling the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) by the burning of fossil fuels should ultimately raise average global temperatures between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit....

Seafood shack.(Homo sapiens' coastal lifestyle )(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Today more than half the world's population lives near an ocean, but what about our ancestors? The remains of shellfish dinners dispatched 164,000 years ago and recently discovered in a South African cave show that...

Hearts and flowers: the herbal remedy foxglove joined the ranks of modern medicine, thanks to its eighteenth-century champion, Dr. William Withering. Would we be better off without it?(curing edema)
February 1, 2008... Dropsy is an old word for an older problem. Afflicted, you begin to swell--first your ankles, then your legs. Walking gets difficult, even sitting becomes painful. Then the swelling gets so bad your skin splits open. The commonest cause is...

Jaws two: Moray eels grab scientific attention--and more--with their jaws.(moray eels' aggression)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Moray eels, to my certain knowledge will bite if provoked. They belong to a family of elongated bony fishes with an impressive dental battery (Muraenidae), and my right hand has distinct impressions to prove it. My...

Fish out of water: human ailments as varied as hernias, hiccups, and choking are a legacy of our "fishy" ancestry.(Cover story)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HUMANS MAKE MUCH of what distinguishes us from the apes, but we actually share so much with fish that the comparison with apes feels almost trivial. Once you see our similarities to fish, all mammals start to look...

A change in the weather: for generations Inuit have survived by closely observing the natural world. As the Arctic environment changes, their insights are informing science.
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Toku and I sat silently on the wooden sled, listening to the swish of snow under the runners and the panting of happy sled dogs. Whiteout conditions and blowing snow made for poor visibility. It was the end of March,...

Far from the forests of the night: in spite of their staggering liabilities as pets, tigers and other "exotics" have become hefty commodities in the United States, in part because of inconsistent state laws.(exotic animals and animal welfare)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Three times a year the small town of Mount Hope, Ohio hosts a three-day sale of exotic animals. For a modest entrance fee of five dollars, visitors can meander among the crates, shopping for bearded dragons, Fennec...

Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, Basic Books, 2007;$26.95 Consider the steel and glass towers of Dubai or Singapore, the spare elegance of...

Citrus: A History.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Citrus: A History by Pierre Laszlo, The University of Chicago Press, 2007; $25.00 Can one describe a work of nonfiction as being happy? Well, this one is. Pierre Laszlo, a retired chemistry professor turned...

A Natural History of Time.(Book review)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A Natural History of Time by Pascal Richet, translated by John Venerella. The University of Chicago Press, 2007; $29.00 Looking at the sandy New England pond outside our summer house, I can readily imagine the...

Skylog.(calendar)(Calendar)
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] An annular solar eclipse takes place February 7, visible within a 3,500-mile-long, 360-mile-wide swath that sweeps through the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Moon, which was at apogee (its farthest point from...

From the ends of the earth.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(International Polar Year )
February 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] How big is a baby polar bear? What size is a penguin egg? Do you have what it takes to be a polar explorer? These are just a few of the fascinating questions--and answers--awaiting participants in the second annual...

A time to remember.(At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... The Savoy Ballroom opens in Harlem. Jazz drummer Chick Webb forms his own big band. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and others bring distinctive new voices to the world of American letters. It is the 1920s and the height of a flourishing...

Message in a bottle.(bottled water and tap water)(Brief article)
February 1, 2008... Why buy a bottle when you can get tap water virtually for free? That's a question more and more people are asking themselves, as the potential environmental impact of producing, distributing, and disposing of plastic water bottles has come...

At the museum: American Museum of Natural History.(Water: [H.sub.2]O = Life )
February 1, 2008... EXHIBITIONS Water: [H.sub.2]O = Life Through May 26, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Live animals, hands-on exhibits, and stunning dioramas invite the whole family to explore the beauty and essence of water and reveal one of the...

Chewing the rat's tail.(ENDPAPER)(on Babiana ringens)
February 1, 2008... We call it a rat's tail," the woodcutter said, sticking the plant stalk in his mouth. He chewed a soft, succulent end, letting the rest--which did look disconcertingly like a rat's tail--hang from his mouth. Soon he spat it out and grunted,...