In July 1937 Amelia Earhart’s plane vanished somewhere over the southern Pacific in the general vicinity of New Guinea. Neither the plane nor her and her co-pilot’s bodies were found during the massive search operation that followed. But two years after her disappearance scattered skeletal remains, later identified as those of a tall woman of…
Category: Invertebrates
Mozambique Diary: Photoshop or not?
One of the more entertaining consequences of posting images of obscure, rarely seen animals on this blog or on my Facebook page is that I am sometimes accused of faking them, especially if a Google search by those who doubted the veracity of my photos did not produce similar pictures taken by other photographers. This…
Mozambique Diary: How to kill an assassin
I often lament the fact that humans are freakishly gargantuan next to nearly all other animals, and thus unable to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the majority of smaller life forms that share the world with us. Yet, at the same time I am thankful that we do not need to contend with the…
The Greatest Show on Earth, happening now
I am still in Mozambique, and will be here for a few more weeks, but I simply must take a quick break from describing African nature to highlight a spectacular phenomenon that is taking place right now along the eastern coast of North America – the mass spawning of the Atlantic horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus)….
Our top predator
As the days grow shorter and colder, I find myself paying more and more attention to the organisms that I took for granted throughout the entire summer. Suddenly, cricket songs punctuate the unexpectedly chilly nights with hesitation, moths coming to the light on our deck are getting smaller and rarer, and spindly centipedes trapped in…
Galapagos: A most unexpected find
Like virtually all geologically young, small oceanic islands and archipelagos of volcanic origin, the Galapagos should not have certain groups of organisms. Neither amphibians, for example, nor freshwater crabs are found in such places. This is because these freshwater-dependent organisms are extremely unlikely to survive an oceanic voyage needed to colonize remote islands, and even…
The Smaller Majority 