While walking the streets of Washington, D.C., last month, a pleasant sound stopped me. A male robin was singing, high in a sidewalk sycamore. It was December, months away from when that bird would use the same voice to declare his breeding territory. I wondered why he practiced now, as I stood amid the urban […]
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t the approach of a canoe, the wolverine tears into the woods, its claws spitting mud. Seconds later, ravens explode from what resembles two branches reaching from a driftwood log After the animals flee the Fortymile River gravel bar, the driftwood turns into chewed velvet antlers the size of a folding chair. A fleshy backbone […]
A scientist from Ohio once pondered why moose have such long noses. Why, one might ask, does a scientist from Ohio care? It can tell them about evolution, said Lawrence Witmer, a biologist and professor of anatomy at Ohio University. As part of a study of unusual noses on dinosaurs and modern animals, Witmer and […]
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he frozen cliffs of Drew Point, Alaska, (population zero) are tumbling to the ocean faster than perhaps any other location in the Arctic. The sea has eaten house-size chunks of tundra at a rate of more than 50 feet per year recently. Ben Jones has watched pieces of Alaska’s northern coast disappear since 2003. […]