Native American Heritage Month (November) is when we reflect on the heritage of the first people in the Americas and honor their traditions and ancestors.

North America before the time of contact with Europeans five hundred years ago was a mosaic of extraordinary human diversity. Hundreds of tribes had their own cultures, political systems, art forms, spiritual beliefs--and languages.

Tribal policeman Jim Macy dances to keep his traditions alive, Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Oregon (undated).

NGS stock photo by David Boyer

By the late 19th Century all that had changed. Most tribes had been restricted to reservations. Many of their children were taken to boarding schools where they were required to speak only in English as part of a program to assimilate Native Americans into the white culture. Native American languages were mainly dead or dying.

By the late 20th Century, more than half the Native Americans in the U.S. were living in urban areas, where English was their everyday and home language. The few remaining Native American languages still in use were increasingly spoken only by the elders.

But there has been a resilience among the first people of North America in the 21st Century, and many of them have been determined to hang on to their heritage. Others are looking for ways to revitalize traditional cultures, spiritual values--and languages.

Native North American holding an artifact up toward the sky.

NGS stock photo by Chris Johns

One organization that has been established to record the disappearing languages around the world, including those of North America--and perhaps to help revitalize those that are on the brink of extinction--is the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Living Tongues has linked up with the National Geographic Society to form the Enduring Voices Project, which strives to preserve endangered languages by identifying language hotspots--the places with the most unique, poorly understood, or threatened indigenous languages--and documenting the languages and cultures within them.

Under the Enduring Voices Project, linguists journey to meet with last speakers, listen to their stories, and document their languages with film, pictures, and audio to help communities preserve their knowledge of species, landscapes, and traditions before they vanish, according to the project's Web site.

"In addition, the Enduring Voices Project, where invited, will assist indigenous communities in their efforts to revitalize and maintain their threatened languages. By using appropriate written materials, video, still photography, audio recorders, and computers with language software, as well as access through the Internet where possible, the Enduring Voices Project will help empower communities to preserve ancient traditions with modern technology," the Web site adds.

I spoke to Dr. Greg Anderson, director of Living Tongues, about the disappearing languages of the U.S. and what's been done to document, if not save them.

Why should we care about preserving languages?

Whether for heritage or scientific reasons, languages need to be recorded.

Every language is useful as a means to identify a group. It codifies the history and world view of a people. It's clear that it's important to many people that they have their language that identifies them uniquely as a group.

Most native communities in the U.S. want to have as good and accurate record of their language as possible, in a format to be enjoyed by as many people as possible. There is great interest in documenting this heritage.

Documenting a disappearing language is so important, but it's possible only to really begin to appreciate all the subtleties and complexities of language if you have some speakers left to give you the dynamics and social context. If a language goes then it can't find new life without recorded materials.

"Every language furthers and refines our understanding of cognition, communications systems, the nature of the mind and the different ways people categorize our collective human experience."

From a scientific perspective it is also imperative to document languages while they are still alive. Languages are markers of identity and group cohesion. Linguists will tell you that every language furthers and refines our understanding of cognition, communications systems, the nature of the mind and the different ways people categorize our collective human experience.

For scientists, who knows what benefits there will be down the line that we don't even know about now yet. Certainly there will be uses for the data. But you can be sure it won't be used if it's not documented.

Tell us about the language hotspots in North America

In the Enduring Voices project, we focus on the situation of languages in hotspots. Several hotspots have been identified in North America, most notably in Oklahoma. It is where we find a concentration of unique languages that are vanishing. These are the priority areas for future work in language documentation.

The idea is to create areas where efforts need to be concentrated, where the number and different types of languages have consequences that are greater collectively for humanity.

Source for Language Hotspots map: Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

Each language is of course equally valued, but we have a finite number of people, dollars, and time to do this work, so we need to maximize our efforts and resources.

In North America there are 150-170 languages that still have at least one speaker. Many of these languages have fewer than a hundred speakers. There are very few languages that have decent prospects of surviving without significant effort on the part of their communities to continue to find a use for them.

Oregon was probably the most diverse region of languages in the U.S. California might have the claim, but it is much larger, so the award for density of linguistic diversity goes to Oregon.

"At the time Lewis and Clark arrived in what's now Oregon 200 years ago there were 14 language families, more than in all of Europe combined."

At the time Lewis and Clark arrived in what's now Oregon 200 years ago there were 14 language families, more than in all of Europe combined. Today only five families of languages exist, and most of them have only a handful of speakers.

There is only one language family that has more than a hundred or two hundred speakers, and that's Northern Paiute, in southeastern Oregon, where the elders can still speak it when they get together. For most of the rest of the people there the everyday language is English.

The vast majority of the remaining languages in Oregon are known only by very few elders. The language diversity of that region has fallen off a cliff.

A Klamath Indian in Oregon  putting on his regalia for a restoration celebration. (Undated)

NGS stock photo by David McLain

There has been some documentation of these languages, but mostly just as text, and often a hundred years old. The complexity of the setting of these texts, and the sounds of the languages have often been lost.

With the loss of the languages, all kinds of wonderful things that the speakers did with their languages have also vanished, for example, some of the greatest works of oral literature ever produced--the multilingual performances with different characters speaking different languages that was found in the Pacific Northwest.

The highly elaborate dances that accompanied the oral tradition are frequently also gone.

Large amounts of local knowledge about fauna and flora, ecosystem management, local place names, spiritual values, and so on are all submerged, altered or gone because the original languages that expressed these concepts are gone or no longer well understood.

 How is this situation being addressed?
 
Two directions. We have tried to do a little through the Enduring Voices program, which has been quite effective at raising public awareness about the issue of language endangement. A longer-term arrangement is through Living Tongues, where we plan and execute larger scale projects. These are the main ways we engage the communities and help them to document and revitalize their languages.

Through Enduring Voices, we have been helping the Winnemem Wintu, one of the indigenous peoples of north central California. We have given them a technology kit and are providing training to help them compile video and audio recordings, with the purpose of producing language revitalization materials for their language.

Winnemem Wintu representatives are going to take part in an Enduring Voices workshop in Santa Fe next April. They will be joined by representatives of the Sac and Fox tribes, who are also interested in maintaining their Sauk language.

Our workshop takes people step by step through the raw data they collect and shows them how to produce a book or audio or some other product they can use to document their language and/or to teach others to speak it.

Otoe Indians in Oklahoma wearing traditional clothing stand in front of a tipi. (Undated)

NGS stock photo by B. Anthony Stewart

There is a long process between raw data and usable material. But the communities themselves must want to collect the data and do something with it. This is really the only way that languages will survive into the future, if activists in the communities are interested in maintaining their language.

How communities use their language is up to them. It can be informal, such as by producing a reader, or formal, such as a course taught in schools. Languages can be revitalized by finding new users and creating new uses for them.

Some communities outsource this work to us. We have been working with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in Oregon and helping them build a talking dictionary. It now has many thousands of words. Only the tribe has access to it. It is knowledge they want to keep to themselves, which is their right.

Children wear headdresses and beaded buckskin to perform dance, Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Oregon, 1969.

NGS stock photo by Bates Littlehales

Once a language is dead it is pretty hard to imagine how it could be brought back. When you are down to only a few speakers you can find ways to build speaker communities, such as happened successfully in Hawaii, where they have created new speakers.

Language nests have been built in other native American communities with some success. The Cherokee in Oklahoma have shown great success in generating new speakers with their immersion school.

Ceremonial dancer Ron Moses, an American Indian of Cherokee, Creek, and Pawnee descent, wears ceremonial dress including paint and feathers while attending th e Cherokee National Holiday Powwow.(Undated)

NGS stock photo by Maggie Steber

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, a casino-funded tribe, has resources and the will to support language regeneration programs, and have successfully generated new speakers of Chinuk Wawa, the lingua franca of many Oregon reservations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This shows that it is possible to reclaim languages.

If you have five speakers of a language and you start immersion schools you can produce 25 speakers. Then you can multiply those again. The Cherokee can be thinking of thousands and tens of thousands of speakers of their language on this basis ultimately. It is a model that has worked.

Children are sponges and absorb languages easily. If they are placed in a language immersion situation where everyone is speaking the language they will become fluent.

Preserving languages should be of interest to everyone, right?

Enduring Voices is promoting the key hotspots issue in your backyard. Sure there are vanishing languages around the globe, but your neighbors might be speakers of one of them. Most people appreciate that diversity is good. You wouldn't want to be allowed to eat only one kind of ice cream flavor or only one type of food always and forever with no options. 

"The loss of any language is a loss for us all. We lose part of the human genius, and with the disappearance of a language also goes a lot of spiritual concepts, art, and so on."

The loss of any language is a loss for us all. We lose part of the human genius, and with the disappearance of a language also goes a lot of spiritual concepts, art, and so on.

There is also the concept that you don't have to be tied to one language, or worse, be forced to learn one over another. You don't have to give up one language for another. People are capable of learning and appreciating more than one language. Multilingualism is the norm in many parts of the world. 

How do you find languages to rescue?

We wait for people to come to us. Native American communities tend to be cautious with outsiders. They are also perfectly capable of finding the information through the media and public information sources, and through word of mouth, if they want to do something about preserving their language.

We will work with any North American community, no matter what the size or the state of their language (unless it has no speakers and was never recorded of course), to see what kinds of solutions might be possible.

If there is a will to maintain the language, we seek to find the way to make it happen. Interested community activists are welcome to contact Enduring Voices or Living Tongues to start the discussion.

Female orangutans are forced to copulate against their will more frequently than has been observed in any other mammal. Scientists have generally believed that this is because females spurn mating with inferior "unflanged" males. Rejected males have no chance to mate unless they use coercion--or so it was thought.

But new studies, using the first hormonal data from wild orangutans, collected noninvasively from the urine of females, suggests that orangutan sex may be a lot more subtle than meets the eye.

Although coerced to mate by most males they encounter, the females may have evolved advantages in their mating interactions to influence who gets to father their offspring and to protect the resultant babies from being killed by the males who didn't.

"Rather than being helpless victims of forced sex, female orangutans employ subtle counterstrategies," says Cheryl Knott, a Boston University anthropologist and National Geographic emerging explorer, who led the research.

Photo by Tim Laman

In the orangutan world males with flanges--or cheek pads--are also the dominant males. They defend territories and emit loud "long calls" to attract receptive females. The cheeky ornaments are perhaps attractive to females because they show that the orangutan has 'made it' to flanged male status, which perhaps indicates better genetic quality, and thus make those that have them good candidates to sire healthy offspring.

"Using the first hormonal data from wild orangutans, we show that around ovulation females preferentially encounter and mate with prime males whose impressive size and ornamentation are probable indicators of genetic quality," Knott and others write in their research paper, which was published by the biological research journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 

But when not ovulating, females mate willingly with unadorned males and those past their prime, the scientists discovered.

Knott and her team came to this conclusion after observing hundreds of encounters between male and female wild orangutans in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The 220,000-acre (90,000-hectare) sanctuary contains a resident population of 2,500 wild orangutans.

Photo of Cheryl Knott in the field by Tim Laman

Orangutan mating is often lengthy and can include elements of both coercion and cooperation, the researchers noted. Nonetheless, by devising a method to rate sexual behavior, the scientists were able to determine when the females were primarily resistant to the males and when they were primarily receptive.

Almost a thousand urine samples were collected on filter paper from 10 of the females involved in the encounters, enabling the researchers to determine their reproductive status.

By combining all the data, the researchers found that ovulating females mated almost exclusively with prime males, perhaps in part because they engineered encounters with prime males by responding to the long calls made by those males.

Photo by Tim Laman

Unflanged males do not make long calls, so rather than "sit and wait" for mates as the prime males do, they must search for potential partners. When they find them, the data show, they often have their way, but typically and unbeknown to them when the females are not fertile and have little or no chance of becoming impregnated.

"Females mated most frequently with unflanged males overall, but they did so exclusively when conception risk was low," the scientists concluded. "A single peri-ovulatory [period of fertility] mating with a past-prime male was highly resisted, while non-periovulatory matings met less resistance, and pregnant matings were not resisted at all," they observed

Strategy of paternity confusion

Lowered mate selectivity outside of the peri-ovulatory period is consistent with another form of risk avoidance, the researchers said--"the anti-infanticide strategy of paternity confusion."

"This strategy, wherein females mate with potentially infanticidal males in order to increase their perception of paternity probability, is common in...primates as well as some species of carnivores and rodents," the researchers noted.

Photo by Tim Laman

Although infanticide has not been observed in wild orangutans, the scientists say that willingness to create confusion about paternity by mating during pregnancy, and avoidance of long calls from strange males, all indicate female strategies to reduce infanticide.

So while to the observer female orangutans are often indiscriminately forced to mate by any males that encounter them, what this research suggests is that the females ultimately may have more control over who gets to pass his genes on to future generations. 

Said Knott, "Because orangutan don't have sexual swellings [a signal of fertility to potential mates in other female primates], we couldn't tell just by looking at them when they were ovulating. Now, with this new hormonal data, we see that females can use this lack of a visual signal to their advantage in their mating interactions."

The research paper Female reproductive strategies in orangutans, evidence for female choice and counterstrategies to infanticide in a species with frequent sexual coercion, was published by by Cheryl Denise Knott, Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Melissa Emery Thompson, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Rebecca M. Stumpf, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Matthew H. McIntyre, Department of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando.

The research was sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

The photos on this page are courtesy of Tim Laman. You might like to see more of his pictures of orangutans on the National Geographic Magazine Web site Orangutans in the Wild.

Watch this National Geographic video about Kalimantan's orangutans:

Chimpanzees in the wild use specialized "tool kits" to forage food, it is known.

Scientists reported earlier this year that chimps raiding beehives used several tools in a single tool-using episode and could also use a single tool for many different purposes.

Now the same researchers report that not only do chimps use specialized tool kits to forage for army ants, but they are selecting tools and techniques that will not overly disturb and cause the ants to abandon the area--a sustainable method of harvesting that secures a renewable source of food.

Photo courtesy Sanz/Morgan, Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, Republic of Congo

Behaviors like these are fascinating because they hint at tool choices and strategies that might have been used by common ancestors of chimps and humans.

The latest chimp tool study was published earlier this month in the American Journal of Primatology. The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

A team from the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, led by Crickette Sanz, a biological anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, studied several communities of chimpanzee throughout the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo.

"After spending a collective 111 months in the Goualougo Triangle, the team recovered 1,060 tools and collected 25 video recordings of chimpanzees using them to forage for army ants," said a statement about the research by Washington University.

"It is already known that chimpanzees use tools when foraging for honey or collecting termites. However, the variation in techniques and the relationship between the ants and the chimpanzees has perplexed scientists for decades," the university added.

Photo courtesy Sanz/Morgan, Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, Republic of Congo

"The use of tool sets is rare and has most often been observed in great apes," Sanz said . "Until now there have been no reports of regular use of more than one type of tool to prey upon army ants.

"In other studies, based across Africa, chimpanzees have been seen to prey on army ants both with and without tools, and it was inexplicable why some chimpanzees used different techniques to gather the same prey."

The average number of tools recovered by the team at each site was 3.37, while 36 percent of recovered tools sets contained two types of tools, nest-perforating tools like (woody saplings) and ant-dipping probes (such as herb stems).

Ant-dipping probes are the most commonly observed method of catching army ants, the scientists found. "The chimpanzee inserts a probe into a nest or column of ants and gathers the individuals who stream up the tool."

Perforating tools are used to open nests so the chimpanzee can gather the ants within.

Adult male chimpanzee uses a tool set when visiting an army ant nest. He first uses a sapling with leafy branches intact on the unused end to perforate the nest, and then follows with an herbaceous dipping wand.

Video Credit: Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, Republic of Congo.

"While the tools sets observed during this study were similar to other recorded tools, this research suggests that chimpanzees are selecting tools depending on the characteristics of the ant species they are foraging," Washington University said.

"There are several varying species of ants found throughout the triangle, but their characteristics can be divided into two categories, epigaeic or intermediate.

"Epigaeic ants have longer legs so can run faster and can inflict a more painful bite. They forage on the ground and in the vegetation and when attacked the workers counter-attack in large swarms.

"Intermediate species forage only in the leaf litter and withdraw into underground tunnels or into the leaf litter when attacked."

Preventing an ant counter-attack

Chimpanzees that harvest ants simply by raking a nest open with their hands cause a massive counter-attack from the ants, Washington University said. "This results not only in bites but the attack may provoke the ants to migrate and build a new nest at a different location.

"However, by using the perforation tools the chimps can entice the ants out and can allow the insertion of the second tool for dipping.

"This not only reduces the ant's aggressive behaviour but may also be a 'sustainable harvesting' technique as the ants will stay in that location allowing the chimpanzees to revisit this renewable source of food."

Tool set used by chimpanzees to prey upon army ants in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. The top two tools are herbaceous dipping probes. The bottom tool is a perforating tool with the leafy branches intact at one end. Above the perforating tool is a measuring tape totaling about 8 inches in length.

Photo courtesy Sanz/Morgan, Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, Republic of Congo.

The chimpanzees practise recycling by recognising tool forms and re-using tools which have been discarded by other individuals during previous visits, Washington University added..

"It has only recently been discovered that these particular chimpanzees use several different types of tool sets which could be their cultural signature of sorts," concluded co-author David Morgan, research fellow at Lincoln Park Zoo. "There is an urgency to learn about these behaviours as the existence of the apes in the Congo Basin is threatened by commercial logging, bushmeat hunting, and emerging diseases."

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,  Columbus Zoological Park, Brevard Zoological Park, and Lowry Zoological Park.

Rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, compounded by lax laws is wiping out the unique toothless anteaters from their native habitats in Southeast Asia, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, said today.

Undercover photo courtesy TRAFFIC

"Illegal trade in Asian pangolin meat and scales has caused the scaly anteaters to disappear from large swathes of Cambodia, Vietnam and Lao PDR," TRAFFIC said a panel of experts had concluded.

The investigation was funded in part by Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and the National Geographic Society's Conservation Trust. (A description of the research grant can be read at the bottom of this page.)

"China has a long history of consuming pangolin as meat and in traditional medicine," a TRAFFIC report on the investigation states. "Due to continual demand and the decreasing Chinese wild population, in the past few years pangolin smuggling from Southeast Asia has resulted in great declines in these producing countries' wild populations, as well."

Undercover photo courtesy TRAFFIC

Although the animals are protected under national legislation in all Asian range states, and have been prohibited from international trade through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 2002, this legislation is having little impact on the illicit trade, TRAFFIC said in a statement.

Watch this National Geographic video "What in the World is a Pangolin?"

Pangolins are the most frequently encountered mammals seized from illegal traders in Asia, and are highly unusual in not possessing teeth, TRAFFIC said.

"Pangolins, like the laws designed to protect them, lack bite," said Chris Shepherd, acting director for TRAFFIC Southeast Asia.

"Pangolin populations clearly cannot stand the incessant poaching pressure, which can only be stopped by decisive government-backed enforcement action in the region,"  Shepherd added.

Undercover picture of pangolins courtesy TRAFFIC

According to pangolin hunters and traders, there are so few pangolins left in forests throughout Cambodia, Vietnam and Lao PDR, they are now sourcing animals from their last remaining strongholds in Southeast Asia and beyond, TRAFFIC said.

"Recent large seizures back up these reports. They include 24 tonnes of frozen pangolins from Sumatra, Indonesia, seized in Vietnam this March and 14 tonnes of frozen animals seized in Sumatra this April. There have also been recent instances of African pangolins seized in Asia."

"Pangolins save us millions of dollars a year in pest destruction ... we cannot afford to overlook their ecological role as natural controllers of termites and ants."

"Pangolins save us millions of dollars a year in pest destruction," says Simon Stuart, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. "These shy creatures provide a vital service and we cannot afford to overlook their ecological role as natural controllers of termites and ants."

Pangolin photo by Bjorn Olesen/TRAFFIC

The key to tackling the pangolin crisis is better enforcement of existing national and international laws designed to protect pangolins, better monitoring of the illegal trade, and basic research to find where viable pangolin populations still exist and whether ravaged populations can recover given adequate protection, according to TRAFFIC

The experts on pangolins consulted in the investigation included scientific researchers, government law enforcement officers from most Asian pangolin range States, CITES management and scientific authorities and animal rescue centres, who convened at a workshop hosted by Wildlife Reserves Singapore at the Singapore Zoo.

Watch this TRAFFIC video "Pangolins in peril":

National Geographic Grant

The National Geographic Conservation Trust contributed to the funding of the TRAFFIC investigation with a grant made in 2007.

Here is the project description:

Regardless of there being no legal trade permitted under national or international regulations, pangolins are the most numerous mammal species found in confiscated cargoes throughout Southeast Asia.

Photo of traditional medicines using pangolin body parts courtesy TRAFFIC

The majority of these shipments are bound for China, for use in traditional medicines and for consumption as wild meat and tonic food.

The bulk of the pangolins currently in trade are likely Manis javanica sourced from Malaysia and Indonesia, as populations in most other range countries have already been decimated.

Undercover photo of pangolin scales courtesy TRAFFIC

Middlemen in Singapore are likely to play a significant role in directing trade, but pangolins have been seized regularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam en route to end-use markets.

However, very little is known of the actual dynamics of this trade, making focused interventions difficult.

TRAFFIC aims to examine and document the trade in detail and work closely with relevant authorities to take action to save pangolins from further illegal exploitation.

More about pangolins from TRAFFIC:

The full report, "Proceedings of the workshop on trade and conservation of pangolins native to South and Southeast Asia" can be downloaded at http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals51.pdf

There are four species of pangolin in Asia; Thick-tailed pangolin (Manis crassicaudata), Philippine pangolin (M. culionensis), Sunda pangolin (M. javanica) and Chinese pangolin (M. pentadactyla).

All pangolins in illegal trade are wild-sourced as they cannot be captive bred on a commercial scale.

Photo of pangolin courtesy TRAFFIC

In the wild, pangolins breed slowly, producing just one young at a time, making populations particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation.

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature. TRAFFIC is a joint programme of IUCN and WWF.  

Undercover photo of pangolins courtesy TRAFFIC

Maize was domesticated from its wild grass ancestor more than 8,700 years ago, according to biological evidence uncovered by researchers in Mexico's Central Balsas River Valley.

This is the earliest dated evidence -- by 1,200 years -- for the presence and use of domesticated maize.

The researchers, led by Anthony Ranere of Temple University and Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, report their findings in the March 24 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

 

Balsas teosinte, a large wild grass that grows in the Central Balsas River Valley of Mexico, is the closest relative to maize.

Photo courtesy Anthony Ranere/Temple University  

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An epidemiologist, an aquatic ecologist, a geo-archaeologist, an ethnobotanist, and an urban planner, are among ten visionary, young trailblazers from around the world that have been named to the 2009 class of National Geographic Emerging Explorers, the National Geographic Society announced today.

"National Geographic's Emerging Explorers Program recognizes and supports uniquely gifted and inspiring adventurers, scientists, photographers and storytellers making a significant contribution to world knowledge through exploration while still early in their careers," the Society said in a news release.

Emerging Explorers may be selected from virtually any field, from the Society's traditional arenas of anthropology, archaeology, photography, space exploration, earth sciences, mountaineering and cartography to the worlds of art, music and filmmaking.

"National Geographic's mission is to inspire people to care about the planet, and our Emerging Explorers are outstanding young leaders whose endeavors further this mission," said Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice president for Mission Programs. "We are pleased to support them as they set out on promising careers. They represent tomorrow's Edmund Hillarys, Jacques Cousteaus and Dian Fosseys,"

Each Emerging Explorer receives a U.S. $10,000 award to assist with research and to aid further exploration. PNY Technologies is a presenting sponsor of the Emerging Explorers Program and a National Geographic Mission Partner for Exploration & Adventure. The program is made possible in part by the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, which has supported the program since its inception in 2004.

The 2009 Emerging Explorers are urban planner Thomas Taha Rassam Culhane, currently a UCLA Ph.D. student living between Essen, Germany, and Cairo, Egypt; ethnobotanist Grace Gobbo of Tanzania; geo-archaeologist Beverly Goodman, currently of Hebrew University of Jerusalem; zoologist Kristofer Helgen of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History; conservationist Shafqat Hussain of Pakistan; wildlife biologist and conservationist Malik Marjan of Sudan, currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; behavioral ecologist Katsufumi Sato of the University of Tokyo, Japan; aquatic ecologist and biogeochemist Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; cultural anthropologist and media ecologist Michael Wesch of Kansas State University; and epidemiologist Nathan Wolfe of Stanford University.

Comprehensive profiles of the explorers and their activities can be found on the Emerging Explorers Web site. The new Emerging Explorers also are introduced in the February 2009 issue of National Geographic magazine.

National Geographic News stories about Emerging Explorers:

"Emerging Explorer" Hooked on Mysterious Leviathan

"Emerging Explorer" Uses DNA to Unlock Our History

8-Foot Giant Catfish Caught in Cambodia

NASA Tool Helps Track Whale Sharks, Polar Bears

Low Sperm Counts Blamed on Pesticides in U.S. Water

Mongolia Gold Rush Destroying Rivers, Nomadic Lives

 

Photos of Aimee, the rescued baby chimp, courtesy Jill Pruetz

This story began last Sunday when Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State University, sent out a frantic email: "I just got a phone call from Johnny, my field assistant in Senegal, who told me he thinks that an infant chimp from the Fongoli community was taken by people near the southern end of the range," she wrote.

The initial report was that the baby had been found by two men who had been out hunting when their dogs startled a group of chimpanzees. The apes fled, leaving the baby behind, according to their story.

Pruetz jumped into action. She consulted Janis Carter, who has worked with sanctuary chimps for years in the Gambia and also has ongoing conservation projects in Guinea and Senegal, and then briefly with a vet at Iowa State University about topical medicines for the baby chimp's scrapes and eye injuries, evident in the photo above.

Then she jumped on a plane to Senegal. We didn't hear from Pruetz again until today, when she emailed the good news that the baby chimp was reunited successfully with its mother.

Watch Pruetz in this video tell the story of how she reunited the baby chimp with her mother (added to this blog entry on February 6):

The Fongoli chimps -- named after a river that runs through their range -- were made media stars by Pruetz.

In 2007 she and colleagues reported that, for the first time, great apes -- the Fongoli chimps in Senegal -- had been observed making and using tools to hunt mammals. The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society and was featured in National Geographic Magazine and in a NOVA/National Geographic Television documentary.

Also in 2007, Pruetz reported that the Fongoli chimpanzees take shelter from the scorching heat in caves. "The discovery has raised chatter among primate researchers, who say it's the first known case of regular cave use by an ape species," National Geographic News reported.

In recognition of her pioneering work, Pruetz was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer last year.

So when Pruetz sent out her urgent email on Sunday, many people were naturally concerned.

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Photo of Brady Barr with giant salamander courtesy National Geographic Channel

Brady Barr, we once reported in National Geographic News, is a man whose work bites.

"I've had so many bumps, bruises, and broken bones, it's sometimes hard to get out of bed in the morning," he told me earlier today.

He's also been bitten a few times -- including last year, when a 12-foot-long python plunged its fangs into his leg.

Herpetologist Brady Barr (46) is the star of National Geographic Channel's "Dangerous Encounters." Four new episodes airing in the United States this month include encounters with sharks, giant salamanders, crocs, and 22-foot-long snakes.

Sometimes known as "Gator Doc," he's being doing this work for National Geographic for 21 years and has appeared in more than 70 National Geographic films, including in the earlier series "Reptile Wild With Dr. Brady Barr."

I asked Barr what he thought was the most dangerous moment in a career of wrestling crocs and catching giant snakes by the tail.

"It's a really tough question," he said, "because it always seems like the most recent experience was the most dangerous."

 

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Photo by Leslie Babonis/UF Department of Zoology

Some species of sea snake need freshwater to survive, a University of Florida zoologist has discovered.

Harvey Lillywhite says it has been the "long-standing dogma" that the roughly 60 species of venomous sea snakes worldwide slake their thirst by drinking seawater, with internal salt glands filtering and excreting the salt.

"Experiments with three species of captive sea kraits captured near Taiwan, however, found that the snakes refused to drink saltwater even if thirsty -- and then would drink only freshwater or heavily diluted saltwater," he says.

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Photo Joel Sartore/NGS

In a remote neck of Canada's backwoods the deer catch a break during the fall. That's when the wolves go fishing.

"Although most people imagine wolves chasing deer and other hoofed animals, new research suggests that, when they can, wolves actually prefer fishing to hunting," researchers from the University of Victoria and the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Canada, announced this week.

The study, published in the journal BMC Ecology and funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, shows that when salmon is available, wolves will reduce deer hunting activity and instead focus on seafood.

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National Geographic grantee Cagan H. Sekercioglu and a colleague were on a night-time mission in Costa Rica last week, in quest of photographing a rare owl. Instead, they were attacked by a machete-wielding mob who thought they were thieves.

Cagan, a senior researcher at Stanford University, California, and colleague Jim Zook, one of Costa Rica's leading ornithologists, survived the attack, although Zook was cut in the hand and bruised, and their car was badly damaged by big rocks.

At the height of the drama, the elusive screech-owl flew into view, and Sekercioglu, "while my heart was pounding ... managed to focus on the owl in near complete dark."

Read Sekercioglu's story and see his photos in the extended entry.

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Image courtesy NASA

But not everyone waits for a solar eclipse to come to them. The total eclipse that will be observed in parts of the Northern Hemisphere this week (August 1) is another opportunity for people who specialize in traveling to obscure parts of the globe to experience them.

Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer who has observed nearly four dozen solar eclipses in person, is one of them.

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