Natural History articles from June 2004

Natural History archives from June 2004

Calm before the song.(The Natural Moment)
June 1, 2004... An insect's age is typically measured in days or weeks, not years. Yet the periodical cicada ("locust" is a common misnomer), like the one poised here atop its recently shed "skin," lives alone in the soil for many years. Underground in their...

Unwelcome distraction.(Up Front)
June 1, 2004... And the locusts sang off in the distance, Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody. --Bob Dylan, "Day of the Locusts" Two generations of "locusts" (actually, seventeen-year periodical cicadas--see "The Natural Moment," page...

The heat is on.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... Robert Ehrlich ("Heat Exchange," 4/04) criticizes the global warming projections based on assumptions built into the computer models. But his view, that there is no present need to take action to slow global warming, seems based on his own...

Losing Nemo?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... Melanie L. J. Stiassny ("Saving Nemo," 3/04) is basically optimistic about the marine ornamental trade in clownfish, because market forces should encourage local fishers to maintain and protect the reefs and their associated fish. That makes...

Hobby horses.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... In his "Biomechanics" column "Meddling with Pedaling" (3/04), Adam Summers writes, "The first Bicycle... debuted in 1817 as a toy, rather than as transport." But the bicycle historian Hans-Erhard Lessing would surely object to this. He points...

The wrong stuff.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... In his "Universe" column, my good friend Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that astronauts are needed to explore the solar system because preprogrammed robots cannot react to the unexpected ("Launching the Right Stuff," 4/04). But this argument...

In hot water.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Seawater is always on the move, traveling across the planet as if a giant conveyor belt were pulling it along, and the colder, saltier, and denser the water is, the lower it sinks. Most of the water at the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean has...

How to spread diversity.(Samplings)
June 1, 2004... Why do some plant families blossom forth with a wealth of species, whereas others have so few? What contributes to the emergence of new plant species? One factor, according to Risa D. Sargent, a zoologist at the University of British Columbia...

Pass the dinner rolls.(Samplings)
June 1, 2004... It's not likely to grace the table of your favorite restaurant anytime soon, but a greasy substance known as "bog butter" has long been found buried in some of the better peat bogs of the British Isles. Burying it seems to have been popular...

Bear beware.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Between July and mid-November, polar bears lounge on the shores of Hudson Bay, living off their own fat while they wait for the sea to freeze up. Once the ice is thick enough to support their thousand-pound bulk, the bears can resume hunting...

Whiter and brighter.(Samplings)
June 1, 2004... When a Florida cottonmouth snake sinks its fangs into prey, an enzyme in the snake's venom dissolves the blood clots normally present in the prey's system and thus enables the venom to spread throughout its body. So Devin limoto, a chemist at...

Sumo star.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... How big is too big? Nature puts size limits on stars, just as it does on animals, but what was once thought to be the stellar max has just Deep dramatically surpassed, according to Stephen S. Eikenberry, an astronomer at the University of...

Invasion of the giant blobs.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... This past February, the beaches of southern Chile looked like the aftermath of some interplanetary conflict, as hundreds of large, bizarre-looking bodies washed ashore. The only thing extraterrestrial about them, though, was that the European...

Public information.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... In the forests of West Africa, Diana monkeys make one kind of bark when they spot a crowned eagle, another when they see a leopard. Both animals prey on Dianas, and so the distinctive warnings provide crucial information to troopmates. Now Hugo...

Cryptic creatures.(Samplings)
June 1, 2004... Only three of these pictures are close-ups of the same animal. Which one doesn't belong? [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] d

Need for speed.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Here's a consummately unequal partnership for you: male cobweb spiders (genus Tidarren) weigh in at only about 1 percent the weight of the females. Not surprisingly, that creates a few problems. The male has two copulatory organs known as...

Dirty little secrets: "dress for success" is the key to the mating, game among Arctic ptarmigan.(Naturalists At Large)
June 1, 2004... Most birds act as if cleanliness really is next to godliness. Watch any bird for a while, and you will see that it spends a lot of time preening its feathers and bathing in water or dust. Feathers are essential for flight, waterproofing, and...

As the whale turns: the shape of the humpback's flippers might hold the secret to more maneuverable submarines.(Biomechanics)
June 1, 2004... The humpback whale, that mighty leviathan of the briny deep, hardly strikes one as a marvel of agility; on the contrary, it seems the very embodiment of stateliness and power. Each the size of a school bus, these awesome mammals cruise, mouths...

Age and beauty: kin to both irises and onions, orchids have a long history and a large repertoire of enticing tricks.
June 1, 2004... Ask a glamorous older woman her age and the secret to her beauty, and you're likely to get a Mona Lisa smile and a deft change of subject. Until recently, botanists have met with similar impenetrability when asking these questions about...

A transit of Venus: early on the morning of June 8, the silhouette of Venus will slip across the Sun. The event, last seen in 1882, was once the key observation in determining the size of the solar system.
June 1, 2004... Catching sight of celestial spectacles requires more than patiently sitting at a telescope set up in your backyard. Birdwatchers can pursue their passion almost wherever and whenever they choose. Flower and plant aficionados have only to stroll...

Golden moldies: treasured by aficionados, fungi remain mostly anonymous subjects of distant kingdoms, underappreciated for their role as recyclers.
June 1, 2004... Fungi tend to be inconspicuous, growing under a log, on a peach skin, inside a building wall. The gallery of photographs on display here highlights a few strikingly beautiful species, as visual reminders that there are entire kingdoms of...

Where have all the frogs gone? Biologists have examined a rogue's gallery of possible culprits. A leading suspect is an infective fungus.
June 1, 2004... Think of an outdoor place where you like to walk. Take a moment and picture what you expect to see: familiar trees and flowers, perhaps singing robins or squawking jays. Think of your favorites, the plants and animals you look for, the pleasure...

Mono mania: you can't drink the water, but brine shrimp and alkali flies prosper in a mineral-rich California lake.(This Land)
June 1, 2004... As my wife Beverly and I drove down U.S. Highway 395, heading south toward Lee Vining, California, we crossed over the crest of a pass and found a large, silvery lake spread before us. Covering sixty-six square miles, the waters of Mono Lake...

Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization by Richard Manning North Point Press, 2004; $24.00 Don't get him wrong. Richard Manning, who lives on seventy acres of unspoiled land in western Montana, is not suggesting that...

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind--Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... A Pirate of Exquisite Mind--Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier by Diana and Michael Preston Walker & Company, 2004; $27.00 Piracy--both buccaneering and privateering--was a viable career choice in...

The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean by Trevor Corson HarperCollins, 2004; $24.95 It takes about eight seconds for a pair of lobsters to copulate; it takes a lot...

Animals by ear.(nature.net)
June 1, 2004... An avid birder recently invited me to join him on a spring walk. His ability to rattle off" the names of the species flitting through the scrub was uncanny. "Because my vision is so poor," he told me, "I can barely see them, so I've trained...

A desert no more: astronomers have finally learned how to see the hidden galaxies in a murky epoch of ancient cosmic history.(Out There)
June 1, 2004... If a galaxy glows, but no astronomer notices, does it give off light? This celestial version of the classic tree-falling-in-the-forest conundrum comes to mind whenever I think about the "redshift desert." As its name implies, the desert is a...

The sky in June.
June 1, 2004... Mercury is obscured throughout June by the glare of the Sun. Superior conjunction, the configuration in which Mercury is behind the Sun from the perspective of Earth, takes place on the 18th. Venus is close to the western horizon at sunset...

Tanks but no tanks.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... The caption to a picture in Zainab Bahrani's excellent article ("Lawless in Mesopotamia," 3/04) identifies the vehicle standing guard at an entrance to the Iraq Museum as a "U.S. tank." The vehicle is in fact an M-109A6 155mm self-propelled...

Amphibian alert!(At the museum: American Museum of Natural History)
June 1, 2004... Frogs live almost everywhere--from tropical forests to frozen tundra to scorching deserts. This summer, hundreds of them will be taking up temporary residence at the American Museum of Natural History. Opening May 29, Frogs: A Chorus of Colors...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
June 1, 2004... EXHIBITIONS Vital Variety: A Visual Celebration of Invertebrate Biodiversity Through Spring 2005 Invertebrates, which constitute more than 80 percent of Earth's known species and play a critical role in the survival of humankind,...