Evolution
Where Little Fiddler Crabs Like to Hide
Life can be tough for a fiddler crab. So many other creatures find them tasty: migratory birds, shrimp, fish, raccoons, turtles, even other species of crab. Adults, at least, can dig themselves a burrow and fight off predators. But juveniles don't—or can't—seek shelter in the sand. They can hide be...
November 10, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Comparing Apples and Oranges
The phrase "comparing apples and oranges" is often invoked when a person compares two items that are thought to be so different as to make any comparison invalid. But are apples and oranges really that different? According to TimeTree.org, Malus x domestica (the apple) and Citrus sinensis (the nave...
November 02, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The World's Oldest Living Organisms
Just how long has the world's oldest living thing been on this planet? That would be Siberian actinobacteria, and they've been here for some 400,000 to 600,000 years, longer than our species has existed.Photographer Rachel Sussman is keeping track of these ancient specimens. She's been photographin...
September 15, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Cootie Catchers Say Lice Reveal Lots About Early Humans
Children all over America are returning to school this fall and I’m sure parents have done all they can to prep their youngsters—which hopefully involves any and all vaccines and boosters. But not even the most diligent efforts toward preventative health care can save your child from the bug that h...
September 13, 2010 |
By admin
The Mimic Octopus
The mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) has some interesting ways to keep from being eaten. The brown-and-white stripes on its arms resemble the patterning on venomous sea snakes and the coloring of spiny lionfish. And it can vary its shape and positioning to look like a variety of different under...
August 27, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Flowers May Adapt Faster than Thought to Climate Change
One of the big worries about climate change is that organisms will be unable to migrate or adapt quickly enough to deal with all the coming changes to their environments, which could lead to a lot of extinctions. But a new study led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which appears in Molecular Biol...
August 13, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What Monkeynomics Can Tell Us About Us
A couple of years ago, the magazine profiled Yale psychologist and primate researcher Laurie Santos and her work studying a colony of rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico (read "Thinking Like a Monkey").She has built a growing and impressive list of publications ...
August 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Cat-Like Crocodile from the Cretaceous
This artist's rendering of the newly discovered Pakasuchus kapilimai, a crocodile that lived around 100 million years ago in Africa when it was part of Gondwana, is rather scary on first glance. A leaping croc? They're frightening enough without being able to jump several feet into the air to catch...
August 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Koalas and Kangaroos Have South American Roots
Many of the poster animals of Australia—kangaroos, koalas, wombats and wallabies, to name a few—are marsupials, animals best known for carrying around their young in a pouch. Marsupials can also be found in the Americas; in the United States, the Virginia opossum is the only one, but there are doze...
July 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Is That Man a Bonobo or a Chimp?
Bonobos and chimpanzees may look alike, but behaviorally they are very different. Chimps are aggressive and warlike, and males dominate. Bonobos are more peaceful and tolerant and females rule. These two primate species are our closest living relatives (we share nearly 99 percent of our DNA), and h...
June 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Humans and Neanderthals Interbred
It's one of the great questions of human evolution: Did Homo sapiens interbreed with Homo neanderthalensis? The two species had many similarities: they lived in caves, used similar types of tools and hunted the same prey. And they lived in the same place for long periods of time, most notably in Eu...
May 07, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Newest Member of the Human Family Tree
Poor Rick Potts. He just put the finishing touches on the National Museum of Natural History's new Hall of Human Origins a few weeks ago, and it's already out of date. Now there's a new branch on the human family tree—Australopithecus sediba—and we can thank a 9-year-old kid for its discovery.Throu...
April 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Accepting the Idea of Extinction
Some scientists say that we are living in a new epoch of geological time—one they call the Anthropocene—that is marked by what may be the sixth mass extinction in the history of our planet. A scary number of creatures have gone extinct in recent human memory, some of them even in my lifetime. No on...
March 31, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Sculpting Evolution
A series of statues by sculptor John Gurche brings us face to face with our early ancestors
March 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
When the Soviet Union Chose the Wrong Side on Genetics and Evolution
Science cannot long remain unfettered in a social system which seeks to exercise control over the whole spiritual and intellectual life of a nation. The correctness of a scientific theory can never by adjudged by its readiness to give the answers desired by political leadership.--Charles A. Leone, ...
February 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Creation, a Missed Opportunity
When the movie Creation, about Charles Darwin, opened in British theaters last September, it looked as if Americans might never see the film on the big screen. It had difficulty picking up a distributor here in the United States, and there was speculation that the country might be too religious for...
January 07, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Nine Science Stories You Should Have Read This Year
It's also been a good year for science stories in Smithsonian magazine, including our special issue, Exploring the Frontiers of Science. Here are nine you should read if you haven't already:Gene Therapy in a New Light: A husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewi...
December 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Evolution in Two Minutes or Less
Discover magazine has announced the winners of their Evolution in Two Minutes or Less contest. The video above, by Stephen Anderson of Texas, won the viewer's choice. Other videos, including the official winning video and an explanation from judge PZ Meyers, can be found on the contest web site. Wh...
November 11, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
White Coat on a Black Bear
Generally, having white fur is only good if you live in a white environment. The arctic fox, for example, would probably be eaten pretty quickly if it lived in Florida. Likewise, black bears that inherit two copies of a recessive gene for a white coat tend not to live very long, becoming victims of...
November 09, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Falklands Wolf: A Darwin Mystery Solved
When Charles Darwin's reached the Falkland Islands on his famed voyage, he discovered there a "large wolf-like fox" found nowhere else in the world. "As far as I am aware," he would later write in The Voyage of the Beagle, "there is no other instance, in any part of the world, of so small a mass of...
November 04, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
