Natural History articles from March 2004

Natural History archives from March 2004

Your move?(The Natural Moment)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... If Rudyard Kipling had written a Just So Story titled, "How the Giraffe Got His Neck," Kipling might have begun his fable with sparring males not unlike the two pictured here. Male giraffes often vie for dominance by intertwining, twisting, and...

Fact-checking.(Up Front)
March 1, 2004... A couple of months ago I took a turn as a panelist on a TV talk show, looking back at some of the top science stories that broke in 2003. My fellow panelists were all seasoned science journalists, terrifically bright and well informed. If you...

Whale watch.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Like the whales in the Antarctic ["Good Whale Hunting," by Robert L. Pitman, 12/03-1/04], orcas in the Pacific Northwest also seem to occur as distinct populations: "resident" and "transient." The former subsists on fish, primarily salmon,...

Monitor arithmetic.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... In "The Lizard Kings" [11/03], Samuel S. Sweet and Eric R. Pianka leave us hanging when they write that white-throated monitors "can count up to six." How do we know? And why only to six? Jeff Orleans Princeton, New Jersey SAMUEL...

Throw backs.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... In his review of two books about the evolution of bipedalism ["Stand and Deliver," 11/03], Ian Tattersall does not say whether either book addressed this question: How could small, ape-brained hominids have survived leaving the safety of the...

The view from Mars.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... Has anyone ever determined how bright Earth would appear to an observer oil Mars, as a morning or evening "star"? Would the Earth appear brighter from Mars than Venus does from Earth? Fred W. Chesson Waterbury, Connecticut JOE RAO...

Dubious species?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... In "Evolutionary Anthems" ["Biomechanics," 10/03], Adam Summers reports the work of Jeffrey Podos and his colleagues, which suggests that the songs of Darwin's finches might be responsible for the group's rapid speciation. He counts fourteen...

Running the numbers.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... It's well known among primatologists that the number of males within a group of, say, baboons, chimpanzees, or lemurs is related to the number of females. Patrik Lindenfors, a zoologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and two...

Hobson's choice.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Conservation usually involves compromises, and not always between nature and people. A case in point is Urocyon littoralis, an endangered fox species that lives on the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. About ten years ago,...

Sunburn.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... People generally think of fossil fuels as energy sources, but of course they're also storehouses for some of the prehistoric solar energy it took to grow the plants that eventually gave rise to the fuels. Jeffrey S. Dukes, an ecologist at the...

Clear and present danger.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... When insects munch on plants, some of the munchees call 9-1-1. The way the plants do that is to make chemicals that waft through the air, beckoning to predators. And when the predators arrive on the scene, they grab the plant-eaters for their...

How flies show off.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Erebomyia exalloptera, a newly discovered species that lives in Arizona, is not your run-of-the-mill fly. It has a thin body and long legs, and one wing of the male fly has a concave edge, making it 6 percent smaller than the other. Two...

Five easy pieces.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... For decades, physicists have been seeking exotic particles, fundamentally different from the particles that make up "ordinary" quark matter. Until last spring, all known assemblages of quarks occurred in twos and threes: the baryons (among...

Cryptic creatures.(Samplings)
March 1, 2004... Only three of these pictures are close-ups of the same animal. Which one doesn't belong? [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Answer to "Cryptic Creatures" puzzle (page 13): c

Smoke signals.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... According to one account, what finally led to the demise of dinosaurs were global wildfires, triggered by the huge heat blast of a six-mile-wide meteorite that struck Earth near the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. In that scenario, the...

New Brunswick.(Special Advertising Section)(canada)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... Today I left my footprints on the ocean floor... Tomorrow I'll open the door to a world of natural wonder next door in New Brunswick, Canada! You're welcome here... beneath the towering flowerpot rocks, carved by the world's highest...

Bermuda.(Special Advertising Section)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... Bermuda is famous for its pink sand beaches, lush gardens, and perfect weather--but birders in the know actually come to this gorgeous subtropical island for world-class birding. After a morning relaxing on a sun-kissed beach, spend the rest of...

West Virginia.(Special Advertising Section)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... In Wild and Wonderful West Virginia, nature is always nearby. With 1.6 million acres of public lands and 316 species of birds, the state is a haven for birds and birders alike. Sprawling Monongahela National Forest, encompassing almost a...

New foundland & Labrador: millions of birds. No zoom lens required.(Special Advertising Section)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... Gannets, murres, kittiwakes. Storm-petrels, ospreys, gulls. Razorbills, ravens and "foxy toms." More than 350 species of birds. Newfoundland and Labrador is the seabird capital of North America. Quite likely the best place in the world to view...

Little St. Simons Island.(Special Advertising Section)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... Virtually untouched for centuries, Little St. Simons is a private 10,000-acre barrier island along the Georgia coast. Pristine beaches, maritime forests, shimmering marshes, and tidal creeks await your exploration. Accessible only by boat,...

Going to great lengths.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Here's one for the Guinness Book of World Records, in the yet-to-be-created category of "longest body-part extension": small clams that stretch their single foot out to thirty times the length of their shell. Some species of clams in the...

French school, 300th century B.C.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... About 140 miles southwest of what is now the city of Paris--and more than 32,000 years before Picasso noticed the resemblance between an upside-down bicycle seat and the head of a bull--an observant Neanderthal passing time in a cave beside the...

Green means go.(Samplings)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... If moviemakers ever need a new insect to star as, say, a living traffic light in a sequel to Antz or A Bug's Life, they could do worse than to cast the Jamaican click beetle. Unique among bioluminescent animals, Pyrophorus plagiophthalamus...

Nebulous categories: the many species of galaxies turn out to be close kin.(Universe)
March 1, 2004... Two and a half centuries ago, before the English astronomer Sir William Herschel built the world's first seriously large telescope, the known universe was little more than the stars, the planets, the Sun and Moon, and the Galaxy, forming a...

Maryland.(Special Advertising Section)(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... From the Appalachian Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, from the Potomac and Patuxent Rivers to the Atlantic Ocean, the beautiful state of Maryland boasts a vast assortment of outdoor activities, unique attractions, and historical landmarks. In...

Meddling with pedaling: even as bicycle designs have improved, all bikes have been well matched with the peak power output of the muscles that drive them forward.(Biomechanics)
March 1, 2004... I live in the fantasy world of southern California, where an uninterrupted stream of pastel-colored, fat-tired, two-wheeled beach cruisers swan down endless miles of flat pavement next to the Pacific. A few miles away, the steep canyons of the...

Lawless in Mesopotamia: Iraq's antiquities were looted mostly by professional thieves, not by random hooligans. Archaeological sites are still imperiled by looters, as well as by hastily planned reconstruction.(Excerpt)
March 1, 2004... Standing in the storerooms of the Iraq National Museum one morning last summer, I found myself surrounded by the appalling chaos left by looters. Everywhere manuscripts were strewn about, mixed with modern catalogue cards and broken bits of...

Better living through chemistry: an entomologist recounts a lifetime of adventures exploring the secret defenses of bugs.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... For Love of Insects by Thomas Eisner Harvard University Press, 2003; $29.95 If you were starting out in science any time after the mid-twentieth century, the typical formula for career success was to identify a narrow research topic and...

Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Stephen J. Bown St. Martin's Press, 2004; $23.95 The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, golden years for European imperial sea powers, were ghastly times for sailors. Ships' quarters were crowded, tours of duty stretched on for months...

This Is Not a Weasel: A Close Look at Nature's Most Confusing Terms.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Philip B. Mortenson John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004; $16.95 Here is a reference book for those who can't tell an ass from a burro. The designation "ass," for Equus asinus, includes a large number of horselike breeds of mammal, from the...

The Curious Life of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London.(Book Review)
March 1, 2004... by Lisa Jardine HarperCollins, 2004; $27.95 According to Robert Hooke's diaries, in the first five days of September 1672 he invented a musical instrument; constructed a device to view the upcoming passage of the Moon in front of a star;...

It's elemental.(nature.net)
March 1, 2004... Dwindling fossil fuels, declining biodiversity, overtaxed freshwater supplies--what's next? Well, what about the reserves of the chemical elements, the basic building blocks of matter? Is there enough chromium, cobalt, helium, and...

Readerservice.(Advertisement)
March 1, 2004... For free information from the advertisers listed below, circle the corresponding numbers on the attached postage-paid card. Mail card, fax it to 239-213-2199, or visit us at www.mediabrains.com/ Client/AmericanMoNH/LM1/lm. If the card is...

Ghosts of suns past: Quasar hunters have accidentally discovered the largest planetary nebula ever seen in the night sky.(Out There)
March 1, 2004... When our Sun dies, it won't go quietly. Sometime not so soon, after it lives out an adult life of relative serenity, it will swell to become a red giant star, nearly 100 times its current size, swallowing Mercury and Venus and sterilizing Earth...

The sky in March.
March 1, 2004... From March 15 through April 5, all five of the planets readily seen without a telescope will be visible simultaneously in the early evening sky. Throughout that period, about an hour after sunset, they will be stretched across the sky, in this...

Computer model predicts chameleon distribution in Madagascar: satellite data and museum specimens can accelerate efforts to complete species inventories, aid in the design of future reserves, and help find new species.(At the museum: American Museum of Natural History)
March 1, 2004... Christopher J. Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Vertebrate Zoology, and six colleagues have developed a modeling approach for studying biodiversity that combines satellite data with specimen...

Museum events: American Museum of Natural History.(Calendar)
March 1, 2004... EXHIBITIONS Exploratorium/AMNH Through August 15 This exhibition invites visitors to explore fundamental concepts and phenomena in the natural sciences. Hands-on displays clustered around themes such as motion, light, and rotation...