In a recent paper, scientists wrote that a small population of polar bears living off Greenland and Arctic Canada increased by 1.6 times when they compared the numbers from the 1990s to 2013 and 2014. They concluded that lighter sea ice might have benefitted the animals. That’s because sunshine penetrates thinner ice better, which stimulates […]
Imagine being a moose in late May: You have just survived 200 days of cold and darkness by munching the equivalent of a large garbage bag full of frozen twigs each day. Now, billions of salad greens are unfolding from those same woody plants, providing a scent and texture savored for an instant before one […]
EAGLE — As the late evening sunshine poured in from the northwest, a dozen residents of Alaska’s farthest upstream town on the Yukon River watched their winter race past in floating chunks of ice. Eaten into by the warm air of spring, the Yukon River’s solid sheets were breaking into smaller pieces. The big river […]
A scientist from Ohio once pondered why moose have such big noses. Why might a scientist from Ohio care? It can tell a person about evolution, says Lawrence Witmer. Witmer is a biologist and professor of anatomy at Ohio University. As part of a study of unusual noses on dinosaurs and modern animals, Witmer and […]