Introducing Material of the Week: Spider Silk
Followers of this blog might have noticed that the Molecule of the Week (MotW) feature took a summerish hiatus. I’ve decided to expand the feature to include interesting materials, which are often more complex mixtures, either of synthetic or naturally-made compounds. So, I’m adding Material of the Week (MatotW in blogospheric shorthand) to help round [...]
Whales in NY Harbor: Update
In my post last week about blue whales singing in NY Harbor, I mentioned that I had an email out to the Cornell Bioacoustics Research Program to find out the current status of the NY harbor listening project. I heard back yesterday from Connie Bruce at Cornell: The current status is that we have terminated [...]
More animal giggles: primates this time
Tickling Techniques from Science News on Vimeo. Last month, I posted about laughing rats. Well, here’s the follow-up: chortling chimps, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos. From the article posted on Science News’s website: Don’t try this at home, but tickling a gorilla, orangutan, bonobo or chimp can inspire bursts of grunting sounds. Yes, that’s laughter, says [...]
Whales in New York Harbor
They’re the largest animal to ever live on Earth, and for the first time researchers have confirmed that blue whales have been singing off the coast of Long Island. (These animals are almost unfathomably huge. If you’re in NYC sometime, check out the blue whale model suspended in the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall [...]
Summer is (almost) here
Fleeting moments between spring and summer are magic in my little corner of NY harbor. Bikes and rollerblades speed by– walkers, joggers, and marathoners-in-training drink in the cool breeze laced with sweetness (honeysuckle?). And the hardy fishermen (with an occasional woman) cluster in cultural pockets, speaking Chinese, Spanish, or Brooklyn-drenched English. At another fisherman’s pocket, [...]
Looking out for her rats
Rats and mice clearly don’t get the cute and cuddly points that most other animals get. Check out this video that accompanies this Wall Street Journal article published last weekend about improving conditions for research rodents. I interviewed Amber Alliger last year for an article I wrote for Science Careers about the challenges and moral [...]
Cat fashion statement
Our recovering diabetic is not having a good weekend. She’s licking and chewing on her back legs until they’re raw. But if we gave her steroids to deal with those problems, we could send her pancreas into a tailspin. So we’re stuck with the bad fashion statement and letting her back leg heal over the [...]
The best part about my job
Is talking to enthusiastic scientists with a story to tell. When I was at the AMNH Extreme Mammals preview on Tuesday, I talked with Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, one of the scientists who discovered this fossil, Puijila darwini. It’s an exciting find: a pre-pinniped (pinnipeds are a group of [...]
Mammals to an extreme
I’ve been making the rounds of interesting New York City science events this week. Yesterday morning– along with a bunch of other journalists– I got a preview of the American Museum of Natural History‘s Extreme Mammals exhibition, which opens on Saturday, May 16. Walking through the exhibit, it’s interesting to think about what we consider [...]
Laughing rats
Did you know that rats laugh when you tickle them? (I learn all sorts of interesting things from living with an animal behavior guy). Not only that, they vary the intensity of their laugh response depending on their level of enjoyment. Humans can’t pick up these high pitched giggles and guffaws without a bat-range listening [...]
