New Yorkers don’t scare easily. They are blasé about crime, absurdly aggressive behind the wheel, and generally indifferent to even the biggest rats. Even vampires don’t inspire fear. I once saw a pair on the N train in Queens, and no one (but me) batted an eyelash. Blood sucking insects, however, are an entirely different […]
Nature
Have you ever looked at a chicken? I mean really looked, and not the kind that comes safely shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray? There’s something in the eyes, something still-wild, almost menacing—no, really menacing. Given a little room to move around and enough conspecifics to elicit social behaviors, the animals are aggressive, territorial, and relentlessly […]
In 2000, the last Pyrenean ibex died. These were mountain goat-like mammals with fierce black horns that scampered around the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Some cells had been taken from that last animal, and in 2009 the world learned that scientists had been able to clone the creature: a Pyrenean ibex kid was […]
I don’t like guns. I’m almost universally opposed to killing things. So why then, did I spend a recent weekend learning how to handle a shotgun and rifle? What possessed me to take the hunter safety exam necessary for obtaining a hunting license?
As journalists, we are trained to be neutral, to never betray any hint of bias or emotion. There are exceptions, of course — the 9/11 tragedy was so universally devastating, and so deeply unfathomable, that journalists were permitted to show a sense of loss — in fact, it would have been unthinkable not to. But […]
My friends like to joke that I have a problem when it comes to carnivores, not of the human variety but of the order Carnivora. I’m the first to admit an inordinate fondness for predators (to paraphrase the possibly apocryphal trope attributed to evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane), particularly of the Felidae family. But my fascination […]
The University of Victoria conservation field class is rapt. A blowtorch has just been ignited, oomph, and Patrick Keeling, champion of eukaryotes and microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, feeds a straw-thin glass capillary pipette through the hot blue flame. He removes the pipette from the flame and stretches it apart into spun hair. […]
One of the well-thumbed books in our house is Gary Larson’s There’s a Hair in My Dirt!, which chronicles the adventures of a daffy maiden who sees nature through a rose-colored magnifying glass. She cuddles up to invasive squirrels, delights over frolicking fawns, and beats the heck out of a snake as it tries to […]
