Flirting is fun, but it can be costly – at least, when you try too hard. In the case of one rather unfortunate North African bird, too much flirting actually causes faster aging. The more the spunky male Houbara bustards use their flamboyant mating tactics – which involve flared-up feathers and somewhat manic running around – the …
Wildlife
Why the Apes Aren’t Going to Rise
The new film The Rise of the Planet of the Apes—a title with way too many prepositions—asks us to accept an absurd premise: James Franco as a genius neuroscientist. Oh, and it also expects us to accept the possibility that apes could become super-smart, enabling them to overthrow humanity as the dominant species on the planet, …
Exploding Bacteria, Self-Fertilizing Bugs and Other Cool Critters
No matter how jaded you become, there is always room to be awed by the little shimmers of magic nature deals us on a regular basis. There’s something just plain cool about a world that offers up coral shaped like organ pipes, peppermint shrimp, and monkeys feasting on fermented leaves. A handful of unrelated studies this week added a few …
Fish Food Chain Flounders – and Finds Its Way Back
As we reported last month, one of the biggest obstacles to sustainable fish farming is that raising big, popular carnivores such as salmon and tuna requires us to fish – and overfish – far down the food chain, in the ranks of smaller species like anchovies. Those are the little critters the bigger fish like to eat — and they …
Why Indonesia Still Can’t Say No to Palm Oil
If you’re eating a food that came in a wrapper while reading this, you probably eating palm oil — at least there’s a 50/50 chance you are. About half the packaged food found in a supermarket contains palm oil, according to the World Wildlife Fund, and a lot of that product comes from the lush archipelago of Indonesia.
In 2007, I …
Melting Arctic Ice Takes Its Toll on Polar Bear Cubs
Sometimes I wonder how the polar bear became the poster animal for climate change. These are ferocious beasts—they’ve even be known to engage in a little cannibalism when food gets tight. They’re far from the only animals that may be suffering because of climate change—just ask the Panamanian golden frog—and few of us will ever …
How Human Beings Are Downgrading Life on Planet Earth
We live in the Anthropocene, as some scientists have come to call our new geologic era. The term acknowledges the fact that human beings—nearly 7 billion strong and growing—have so much influence over the life, geography and even chemistry of planet Earth that we’re now essentially responsible for the whole show. For good and for …
How Climate Change Is Whittling Down the World’s Species
With all the climate conversation currently littering the Internet, and the myriad ways that extreme weather is linked to global warming, it’s hard not to get confused about climate change sometimes – and given the sheer volume of muddled information out there, you might even be forgiven for being unconvinced by the arguments …
Another Oil Spill, as ExxonMobil Fouls Montana
Amid the fireworks, parades, and hot dogs of this past Fourth of July weekend was that sinking feeling of déjà vu when news broke that yet another oil spill was oozing across once-clean waters. This time, it wasn’t the Gulf of Mexico, it was Montana; and it wasn’t BP, it was ExxonMobil. On Friday, 1,000 barrels of crude oil (42,000 …
Meet the Loudest Animal in the World
With so much talk about how Africa’s rhinos and Russia’s tigers are steadily vanishing from our planet, it’s easy to forget that other, smaller species – apple snails, dung beetles, tree frogs – are worthy of attention as well, even if they aren’t as charismatic. Some of these creatures are as remarkable as they are …
