Natural History articles from November 2008

Natural History archives from November 2008

A study in salmon.(THE NATURAL MOMENT)(Kamchatka brown bear and salmons)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE NATURAL EXPLANATION Every bear has its own of fishing. So says photographer Sergey Gorshkov, who has spent hundreds of hours over the course of four years observing brown bears on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in...

Northern exposure.(nature.net)( Lewis Pugh )(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] TALES OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION have always fascinated me, so I was intrigued when I heard British adventurer Lewis Pugh was attempting to kayak from Spitsbergen, Norway, to the North Pole. Until recently, the thought...

All due credit.(WORD EXCHANGE)(Correction notice)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The credit line for the image of a schistosome that appeared on the cover of the June 2008 issue. shown above, should have credited preparation of the microscopic specimen to Ezequiel R. Rivera of the University of...

Big mamma, little papa.(SAMPLINGS)( Cook Strait giant weta)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... When a female Cook Strait giant weta, a four-inch-long insect resembling an overstuffed cricket, pairs up with a male--usually half her size--they surely make an odd couple. Such disparity, or dimorphism, between sexes is common and fascinates...

Bacterial banquet.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Photosynthesis is the hallmark of the do-it-yourself crowd. Organisms that rely on it need only light, carbon dioxide, and some inorganic nutrients to grow. There are exceptions, of course, such as carnivorous plants that live in low-nutrient...

The ancients' antiques.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Inhaling bowls--shallow vessels with two adjacent spouts--are artifacts found on many Caribbean islands. Early Amerindians probably used them to snort hallucinogens, liquid or powdered, through the nose. Now...

Whose Poo?(SAMPLINGS)(Eurasian eagle owl)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... With a four-foot wingspan, the Eurasian eagle owl is a big bird with a big appetite--and a fetal output to match. Yet the owl's body waste does not always go to waste. New research suggests that breeding eagle owls defecate strategically, using...

Fear factor.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... One whiff of an alarm pheromone sends figurative shivers down a mouse's little spine. Animals in distress release such pheromones, which serve as warnings to others of their kind. But just how mice--or other mammals--detect the chemicals has...

Early life lessons.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Some say it's never too late to learn new things, but can it be too early? Apparently not, if the behavior of wood frogs is any indication. Those amphiloians can learn to identify predators while still in the egg, according to new research by...

Big bird brains.(SAMPLINGS)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Having a big brain can open all kinds of doors, even evolutionary ones, it seems. First formulated in the 1980s, the "behavioral drive" hypothesis posits that intelligence can influence the course of evolution. The idea is that intelligent...

Warmer and weedier.(SAMPLINGS)(Crabgrass)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Crabgrass will get a strong assist from global warming in its campaign to take over your lawn. That's the unexpected finding of a study investigating a very different aspect of lawn biology: Neeta S. Bijoor, her graduate advisor Diane E....

Cooking up males?(THE WARMING EARTH)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Many reptiles have no sex chromosomes. Instead, their gender is determined by temperature. In crocodiles, for example, males are hot: eggs incubated in sand above a certain "pivotal temperature" almost always hatch males. That could spell...

Death beds: the eighteenth century was a time when a mother, not her baby, needed to be delivered.(MEDICAL EXAMINER)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Have you ever had that stubborn feeling that the natural world reflects your mood and your mind? The sun shines when you are happy and disappears when you are glum. Your own vitality--or lack of it--seems reflected...

Return of the knight.(INSTALLATIONS)(Charles R. Knight)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FORTY MILLENNIA AGO, in what is now southwestern France, Neanderthals fashioned stone tools in a rockshelter overlooking the River Vezere. Their technique was to carefully shape a stone "core" on both sides until a...

The curious, bloody lives of vampire bats: among the most highly specialized mammals on the planet, vampire bats display a host of fascinating adaptations to their blood diet.(Cover story)(Reprint)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EVERYDAY, I and my undergraduate assistant Kim Brockmann fed a Snapple bottle full of cow's blood to our captive vampire bats. Our colony consisted of twenty-two animals--eleven common vampire bats (Desmodus...

Ice on the edge: what's happening beneath West Antarctica's ice shelves? The warmth and flux of water there may determine how far sea level rises.
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The ice shelf, a thick hp of floating ice extending beyond the ice-bound continent beneath us, came into view through my window on the Twin Otter plane. Undulating and deeply crevassed, the shelf was a welcome sight;...

Top of the Gunks: rocky ridges in the Empire State draw climbers, falcons, and highland rushes.(THIS LAND)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] New York State's Shawangunk Mountains--locally pronounced SHONG-gum, and often called "the Gunks"--are the northeastern extension of an Appalachian ridge that, under other names, runs south through New Jersey,...

Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo by Kate Jackson Harvard University Press, 2008; $27.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As a travel book, Kate Jackson's account of snake collecting in the tropics is...

The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston by John Hanson Mitchell Beacon Press, 2008; $24.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] To stroll down the streets of any of the great cities of the world is to journey back...

The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces.(Book review)
November 1, 2008... The Lightness of Being Mass, Ether, and the unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek Basic Books, 2008; $26.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nobel Prize--winning theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek's latest contribution to the...

Skylog.
November 1, 2008... The Taurid meteors, sometimes called the "Halloween fireballs," show up between mid-October and mid-November, but the night of November 5 is likely to be the best time to look for them this year, taking into account both their peak of activity...

Picturing history.(At the Museum: AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY)(Website overview)
November 1, 2008... A dinosaur tail hauled past exhibits, a diorama of nesting flamingoes no longer on display, a teeth-cleaning job for a Killer Whale replica: it's all just part of the rich photographic history of education and exhibition at the American Museum...

Art and Anthropology at the 2008 Mead Festival.(At the Museum: AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Edward S. Curtis, an artist and ethonographer, was one of America's best known photographers of Native American culture. In his lifetime, he produced more than 40,000 photographs of different tribes. His passion for...

Museum in miniature.(At the Museum: AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... When the Origami Holiday Tree is unveiled this month, it will not only kick off the holiday season but also serve as a unique celebration of the Museum itself. Following the chosen theme, "Folding the Museum," the 13-foot tree will be covered...

At the Museum: American Museum of Natural History.
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EXHIBITIONS Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future Through August 16, 2009 This timely new exhibition explores the science, history, and impact of climate change on a global scale,...

A mini Seto sea.(ENDPAPER)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ecologists must often compress the scales of space to better understand the impact of humans on nature. I experienced a beautiful illustration of this method a decade ago in Japan, when I was invited to give a...