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November 2008 Archives

Photographer Pays Tribute to America's Monumental Southwest

Posted on November 26, 2008 | 0 Comments

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The rock towers, canyons, basins, petrified dunes, stone arches, sand pipes, and other geology formations of America's desert Southwest are a marvel of the planet.

Spread over hundreds of thousands of acres and encompassed for the large part in numerous parks and monuments -- including icons such as the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and Canyonlands -- the region is a wonderland of interaction between rocks and water and time.

And it is all presented by Nature in astonishing color. One of the most famous early explorers of the canyonlands, John Wesley Powell, wrote, "Here the colors of the heavens are rivaled by the colors of the rocks. The rainbow is not more replete with hues."

It is this kaleidoscope of fantastic shapes and colors that photographer Jon Ortner has captured in his newest book, "Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest."

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Waterfall-climbing Fish Showcased in Puerto Rico Study

Posted on November 24, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Photo of Sirajo goby by Patrick Cooney, NC State University

The first comprehensive study of Puerto Rico's freshwater fishes and their habitat has raised awareness of some "hidden gems that have largely been ignored," according to researchers from North Carolina State University.

The research is "a huge first step in conserving and protecting these fish and their habitat," says NC State biology professor Thomas Kwak, who led the study. "Many of these fish are very charismatic -- they are unique and really worthy of conservation," he said in a statement.

For example, Kwak points to Puerto Rico's native Sirajo goby -- "a brilliantly colored fish that has evolved sucker-like pelvic fins that allow it to climb steep waterfalls and even the sheer faces of some artificial dams."

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Sea Eagle May Fly Over England Again

Posted on November 23, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Photo by Chris Gomersall

Britain's largest bird of prey, the sea eagle, may be re-introduced to England next summer, nearly a century after being persecuted to extinction.

Natural England, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and Anglian Water, have been investigating the feasibility of re-introducing the bird, also known as the white-tailed eagle, to East Anglia, a part of England rich in wetlands adjacent to the North Sea.

The fourth largest eagle in the world, the sea eagle is a scavenger and generalist predator that feeds on fish, birds and rabbits.

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IBM Seeks to Build a Computer That Mimics the Brain

Posted on November 22, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Image courtesy IBM
IBM and university collaborators are developing a "cognitive computer" they hope will mimic the brain's abilities for sensation, perception, action, and interaction while rivaling the brain's low power consumption and compact size.


The goal is a computer "with a new intelligence that can integrate information from a variety of sensors and sources, deal with ambiguity, respond in a context-dependent way, learn over time and carry out pattern recognition to solve difficult problems based on perception, action and cognition in complex, real-world environments," IBM said in a statement yesterday.

Watch the IBM video for an explanation of how this will work:

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Adventurers of the Year Named by National Geographic Adventure Magazine

Posted on November 21, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Photo by Martin Hartley
"Not really a great moment for us," is how Rob Gauntlett (in the photo on the right) described his fall through sea ice into the Arctic Ocean.

It was one of a number of scrapes with death that he and James Hooper, British teenagers fresh out of school, encountered on a 409-day odyssey from the north geomagnetic pole to the south geomagnetic pole.

The 26,000-mile journey by skiing, dog sledding, cycling, and sailing won them recognition by National Geographic Adventure magazine as 2008 Adventurers of the Year. They were presented with the award last night here at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. ► Read This Entire Post

"World's Oldest Polar Bear" Dies in Winnipeg Zoo

Posted on November 20, 2008 | 0 Comments

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"It is with great sadness that Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Zoo must advise that Debby the polar bear -- one of the world's most-famous and loved bears -- was euthanized ... surrounded by her caring zookeepers and veterinarians," the zoo announced this week.

An exam indicated multiple organ failure.

Born in the Russian Arctic in 1966, and arriving at the Assiniboine Park Zoo as an orphaned cub in 1967, Debby was entered into the 2008 Guinness Book of Records as the oldest living polar bear. She was 42. "Many children who admired Debby in her youth, later brought their own children and grandchildren to meet this great ambassador of the North," the zoo said in a statement.

"Debby played a dominant role in the Winnipeg zoo's animal family for over four decades, generating great public appeal and important contributions to the zoo's interpretive programs," the statement said. "She epitomized what one orphaned animal can achieve in promoting the conservation of her species and other wildlife in light of mounting ecological and environmental challenges like global warming."

The zoo said it was unable to acquire a new polar bear without a new enclosure being built to meet conservation standards.

Photo courtesy Assiniboine Park Zoo

Toilet Reading for Today

Posted on November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Today is World Toilet Day -- and as it happens, there has been a flush of toilet news all week.

First, there was the world's most expensive toilet: the second sanitation unit for the International Space Station (ISS) that was lifted into orbit by Space Shuttle Endeavor last week.

Needed for the planned expansion of the ISS from three to six crew members in 2009, the new toilet (photo above, courtesy NASA) was reported to have cost $19,000,000, which probably makes it the world's most expensive potty.

But this is no ordinary toilet; it will be able to automatically transfer urine to a device that can generate drinking water.

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Iron Age Monument to the Soul Discovered in Turkey

Posted on November 18, 2008 | 0 Comments

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The soul of a royal official in the service of  King Panamuwa of the eighth century B.C. was believed to reside in this carved stone.
Photo by Eudora Struble, University of Chicago

Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body, University of Chicago researchers announced.

The Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago found the 800-pound basalt stele at Zincirli (pronounced "Zin-jeer-lee"), the site of the ancient city of Sam'al.

The inscription reads in part: "I, Kuttamuwa, servant of Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber(?) and established a feast at this chamber(?): a bull for [the storm-god] Hadad, ... a ram for [the sun-god] Shamash, ... and a ram for my soul that is in this stele."

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Photojournalist Reza Reflects on Conflict and the Human Soul

Posted on November 17, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Pakistan, 1986: Jubilant supporters throw rose petals at Benazir Bhutto during her election campaign.
Photo by Reza

Award-winning photojournalist and humanitarian Reza has devoted his career to covering wars, revolutions, uprisings, and natural disasters.

"The most brutality and cruelty you can ever see is in war," Reza told me recently, while he was here at National Geographic headquarters in Washington to finalize the launch of his new book "Reza War + Peace."

"I have also seen the sometimes incredible human relationships and friendship," he added. "People ... wanting to sacrifice themselves for their friends, for their families, showing the incredible soul that is inside the human even in the worst time of war." (Watch Reza discuss this in the video below.)


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Orangutan Clyde Is Ambassador for Great Ape Awareness

Posted on November 14, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Clyde, a 315-pound orangutan, studies the oregano he found in his habitat yesterday at the San Diego Zoo.

Herbs were scattered around his exhibit as part of enrichment activities to celebrate Great Ape Awareness Days at the zoo. Enrichment is the term used by zoos to refer to the creation of a stimulating environment that allows animals to make choices and demonstrate species-specific behavior.

San Diego Zoo created Great Ape Awareness Days to increase public awareness about what can be done to save orangutans and the other species of great apes -- bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas -- from extinction in the wild.

Apart from enrichment activities, the zoo has scheduled Keeper Talks about the apes at the zoo and issues causing population declines in the wild. Topics include the bushmeat crisis, habitat loss due to illegal logging, slash-and-burn farming practices, and the removal of rain forests for palm oil plantations.

Visitors will be told how cellular phone manufacturing has contributed to the widespread demise of gorillas in Central Africa, and how simply recycling old cellular phones can make a difference.

Photo by Ken Bohn,San Diego Zoo.

Four Field Photographers Who Defined National Geographic

Posted on November 13, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Young boy in fur holding mask, Alaska, 1958

Photo by Thomas Abercrombie/NGS

These men are still spoken about in hushed tones here at National Geographic: Maynard Owen Williams, Luis Marden, Volkmar Wentzel, and Thomas Abercrombie.

Together they spanned almost a hundred years at National Geographic, their pioneering work as field photographers contributing much to defining this great institution. The stories and anecdotes about them are the legends of this place.

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NatGeo News Contributor Stefan Lovgren Wins Top Award

Posted on November 12, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Stefan Lovgren (right) and Zeb Hogan in Mongolia, holding a taimen.

Photo courtesy Stefan Lovgren

National Geographic News contributor Stefan Lovgren is the winner of this year's AAAS Science Journalism Award in the online media category.

Presented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society, the award was given to Lovgren for a three-part series of articles about the Megafishes Project, an effort led by conservation biologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Zeb Hogan to study and document the world's largest freshwater fish.

Lovgren traveled with Hogan to Mongolia, China, Cambodia, and other locations to better understand the river titans that are critically endangered due to overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution and global warming -- and what can be done to protect these amazing creatures.

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Vietnam's Rhino Ratsnake Hatched in a European Zoo for the First Time

Posted on November 12, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Keepers capture the moment a rhino ratsnake (Rhynchophis boulengeri) emerges from its shell at ZSL London Zoo -- the first time this species of snake has been bred in a European Zoo.

ZSL London Zoo's Reptile House produced a clutch of eight snakes, three of which have been exchanged with other European zoos in a program to increase the captive population of this species, which originates from the mountains of Vietnam.

The reptiles, which are often nicknamed "green unicorns" because of their hornlike features, will turn green when they reach around one year of age. They will reach about 40 inches (one meter) long and feed on geckos, frogs, and rodents.

Note: I will be adding photos from zoos to my blog from time to time. Zoos play a vital role in teaching urban people about animals and nature, which hopefully will encourage support for conservation of the same species in the wild. Increasingly, zoos are also serving as arks to shelter endangered species from the global extinction crisis.

Photos by Ferry van Stralen/Courtesy ZSL London Zoo

Coral Triangle Rescue Plan Gathers Momentum

Posted on November 11, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Photo courtesy ARC Centre of Excellence

Spread across a vast swath of ocean spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and the Solomon Islands -- an area half the size of the United States -- the Coral Triangle has the highest diversity of marine life of any area on Earth.

This "Amazon of the Seas," as it has been called by the WWF, contains three quarters of the world's known coral species, a third of the world's coral reefs, more than 3,000 species of fish, and the world's richest mangrove forests.

Home to more than 150 million people, the Coral Triangle generates billions of dollars in sea products each year, supporting the livelihood of more than two million fishers. The region is a major spawning ground for tuna, yellowfin and other valuable species that contribute to a perhaps as much as a third of the regional economy.

But all this is at risk from overfishing (including destructive fishing using dynamite and cyanide), coral bleaching and ocean acidification, tourism (including scuba diving), pollution, and sedimentation due to coastal development.

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Quarter of Northeast Atlantic Sharks and Rays Threatened With Extinction

Posted on November 10, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Porbeagle shark Lamna nasus (Global Red List Assessment: Vulnerable;

Sub-population Red List assessment for the Northeast Atlantic: Critically Endangered)

Photo © Steven Campana

Joining the long list of species heading toward extinction are 26 percent of northeast Atlantic sharks, rays and chimaeras, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Another 20 percent are in the Near Threatened category.

"The total number of threatened species may well be higher as there was insufficient information to assess more than a quarter (27 percent) of the species," according to a report released today by the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG).

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Many Octopuses Share Antarctic Ancestors, Research Finds

Posted on November 9, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Megaleledone setebos, a shallow-water Antarctic octopus, is the closest living relative to the ancestor of deep-sea octopuses. 

A large proportion of deep sea octopus species worldwide evolved from common ancestor species that still exist in the Southern Ocean, Census of Marine Life (CoML) scientists report today.

"Octopuses started migrating to new ocean basins more than 30 million years ago when, as Antarctica cooled and a large ice sheet grew, nature created a 'thermohaline expressway,' a northbound flow of tasty frigid water with high salt and oxygen content," scientists said as part of a report that will be released officially at the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, in Valencia, Spain.

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Rise and Fall of Chinese Dynasties Linked to Asia's Monsoon

Posted on November 7, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Image of inside of Wanxiang Cave courtesy of Science/AAAS

A stalagmite found on the floor of a Chinese cave suggests that several Chinese dynasties may have been connected to the varying strength of the Monsoon, seasonal winds that bring heavy summer rains to much of Asia.

Sweeping up moisture from the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the Monsoon affects nearly a third of the world's people, particularly those in eastern and southern Asia who depend on seasonal harvests to make a living. Variations in the Monsoon can result in feast or famine.

"The 1,810-year climate record gleaned from the Wanxiang stalagmite suggests that dependence on the Monsoon was no less critical hundreds of years ago," Pingzhong Zhang of China's Lanzhou University and colleagues reported in today's issue of the journal Science.

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Sea Snakes Need Freshwater to Drink, Scientists Discover

Posted on November 6, 2008 | 0 Comments

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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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Warming is Killing Yellowstone's Amphibians, Researchers Find

Posted on November 5, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Disappearing ponds, lakes, and wetlands in Yellowstone National Park have caused a catastrophic decrease in the world's oldest nature reserve's frog and salamander populations, Stanford University researchers say.

Colombia spotted frog (Rana luteiventris), in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by Lauren Palumbi.

"Precipitous declines of purportedly unthreatened amphibians ... indicate that the ecological effects of global warming are even more profound and are happening more rapidly than previously anticipated," they wrote in a research paper published on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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An Amateur Naturalist Guide to New England's Liverworts

Posted on November 4, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Frullania asagrayana leaf photo by Mary S.G. Lincoln

LBJs (little brown jobs), an avid birding colleague once explained to me, are the more obscure birds that to all but the most discerning eye look the same.

I've been in the company many times with the birders on the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration. They can hang around beneath a tree for twenty minutes or more while they debate at length whether an LBJ high above them is one or another species.

It can be very frustrating to someone like me who prefers the differences between bird species to be dramatic and easy to distinguish.

Anyone with reasonable eyesight can tell the difference between a red cardinal and a blue jay. To tell the difference between LBJs needs more work: the subtle variance in the shade of the feet, the position of a spot on the throat, the song, perhaps even the way it flies can all be important.

I got to thinking like this when I received an email from the New York Botanical Garden about its new book about liverworts.

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Rare Early Audubon Drawings Published for First Time

Posted on November 3, 2008 | 0 Comments

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Northern Shoveler by John James Audubon/Courtesy Harvard University Press

John James Audubon has been described as America's most famous artist/naturalist. His drawings for "The Birds of America," published in the late 1830s, hang in the best museums. Plates from the earliest edition, original hand-colored prints, are sold on the Internet for $100,000 or more apiece.

A little-known, seldom-seen collection of Audubon's earlier drawings of birds is in the Harvard University's Houghton Library and Museum of Comparative Zoology. Now they are being made available for wider public appreciation.

"Like a rare bird only infrequently sighted, the drawings ... have never been seen by the general public," the university says in a news release announcing its new book, "Audubon: Early Drawings" (Harvard University Press; September 30, 2008; $125).

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