In search of cranes
After 6 months in Tennessee, I’m still a little overwhelmed by the number of beautiful overlooks and natural spaces within a short drive. So we’re already compiling a mile-long mental list of places we’ll want to visit, particularly to take a peek at the various animals that live there. But the tricky thing about going [...]
In search of manatees
Though my current home is in the Big Apple, I was born and raised in the Sunshine State and return on occasion to visit my family. This time our trip south also included an animal-based day trip to Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park in search of manatees. In the area around Crystal River, particularly this [...]
From the Petri Dish to the Backyard Grill
Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t buy test-tube hot dogs for your Memorial Day barbecue, but maybe in a decade or so we’ll all be noshing on barbecued goodies raised in the sterility of a laboratory near you. Doesn’t that sound tasty? Or yucky? For me, it’s a little bit of both. I’m fascinated [...]
San Diego Zoo mother & baby snapshots
In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to share a few snapshots from our trip to the San Diego Zoo last month. Here’s a giraffe calf and mother: Capybaras are the largest living rodents: there’s mom and a young upstart. Capybara mom and baby at the San Diego Zoo And the best for last: hippos [...]
Biology on a Dinosaur Scale
Last week, along with a group of other journalists, I got a sneak peek at The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, an exhibit that opened on April 16 at the American Museum of Natural History and will be open until January 2. This exhibit departs from the traditional dino-formula of towering skeletons by asking questions about the [...]
Whales in NY Harbor, Part III
In our corner of Brooklyn, we’ve been waiting for our local whale sighting. But it looks like it just might be a matter of time. According to a NY Daily News article, local boat owners are already making money off a revenue stream that seemed confined to calmer waters: whale watching tours. I’ve posted before about [...]
Close encounters of the bird kind
Last Saturday started out as a low key weekend adventure: just a little local beach without having to fight too much weekend traffic. So we crossed the Verrazano bridge to Staten Island. In Great Kills Park, we spotted plenty of your expected birds– plovers and gulls of varying shapes and sizes. But then my husband, [...]
Count-em, three, quirky animal stories
[slideshow] Quirky animal stories are big fun, but three in a month is a new record for me. The most recent one, hot off the presses in C&EN’s Environmental SCENE, looks at how arctic seabirds provide a convenient way to track persistent pollutants in marine environments.The researchers measure the chemicals in stomach oils, a concentrate [...]
Brilliantly beautiful bee nests
I tend to think of bees in hives, but three out of four species of these pollinators strike out on their own. A newly discovered species, O. avosetta, lines its underground nests with flower petals. Two teams of researchers found these unusual nests in Turkey and in Iran. From the American Museum of Natural History [...]
