Last week, a friend tagged me in a post about a weird bird. I’m used to it—as a known bird guy, friends are constantly making me aware when some new study comes out or a rare bird shows up. But this post was different. From a Facebook page called “Route 370—Newfoundland News & Weather,” the …
A whale shark (Rhincodon typus) is eating plankton on the surface. Rhincodon typus is a filter … [+] feeder. It swim slowly at the surface filtering plankton through their enormous gill slits. Getty Images Recent studies have illuminated predictable relationships between these majestic creatures and their surroundings, hinting at their heightened sensitivity to environmental changes. …
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/2c/b2/2cb2194b-261e-4765-9a9c-8e322004bd2a/spectacled-cobra-in-a-farm_web.jpg "An Inside Look at the Effort to Curb Deadly Snakebites in India | Science")
Kamala Thiagarajan, Undark As far back as he can remember, Kali Chockalingam, now 53 and living in Echur, a village in South India, has loved snakes. He often got in trouble with his teachers for hiding them in his schoolbag. “As a young boy, I thought they looked like little dolls,” he said. Chockalingam hails …
A shark having babies? Not always newsworthy. But a shark having babies after the mother shark in question had not been in the company of a male shark since her arrival at the facility back in 2019? More newsworthy. This epaulette shark pup hatched Aug. 23, 2023, at Brookfield Zoo, born from what staff believe …
Sharks have been navigating our oceans for million years (they appear before trees, to put it into perspective). And during this timespan, Earth and its inhabitants have experienced monumental transformations, but sharks have remained remarkably consistent in both their biology and body shape. This unchanging nature has long puzzled scientists, but a groundbreaking international research …
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Sarah Kuta Daily Correspondent I hear them long before I see them. As I clamber out of my car in the parking lot near Point Piedras Blancas just off California’s Highway 1, the grunting noises of dozens of elephant seals fill the air. I walk quickly to the wooden viewing platform, lean up against the …
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Photographs selected by Jeff Campagna Text by Tracy Scott Forson Although gorillas are the largest primates, weighing up to 440 pounds, their size has not made them impervious to human contact and climate change, which have sharply reduced populations. In 1989, only about 620 mountain gorillas remained, an order of magnitude lower than historic population …
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Anthony Ham Freelance writer The armed men aren’t supposed to be here. We are several miles inside Buffalo Springs National Reserve in northern Kenya, and the driver I hired for this reporting project and I are checking out a rumor that the reserve’s elephants may have gone missing. Nearly 8,000 elephants have inhabited the broader …
Topline The Biden Administration plans to announce the cancellation of oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, according to multiple reports, a move that comes more than two years after the administration suspended the leases. A polar bear walks through an icy area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo by Sylvain …
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Ben Goldfarb Author of Crossings When alien archaeologists exhume the rubble of human civilization, they may conclude that our raison d’être was building roads. Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the Earth, from the continent-spanning Pan-American Highway to the hundred thousand miles of illegal logging routes that filigree the Amazon. Our planet is burdened …