When a Weddell seal, native to Antarctica, plummets 400 meters beneath the ice on one of its hour-long dives, an ensemble of adaptations come together to keep it alive. The seal’s…

The air was warm as the skies grew dark over Diego Garcia. As the nearly full moon reached its highest point, a green sea turtle scuttled her way onto the sand. The ocean giant was…

If anyone knows about going fungal, it’s Paul Stamets. I have often wondered whether he has been infected with a fungus that fills him with mycological zeal—and an irrepressible…

Fishing for eels was a primal childhood experience for Patrik Svensson. On summer nights his father would take him down to a small stream near their home in Sweden. It was a magical…

Science can be a peculiar source of joy—the joy, largely unique to human beings, of understanding the universe in which we live. For some, the joys of science are readily accessible;…

Dennis Carroll doesn’t mean to sound callous when he says the coronavirus outbreak was predictable. And he doesn’t. He sounds sympathetic to people frightened by the outbreak.…

Eugene Schieffelin was the eccentric ornithologist who in 1890 shipped 60 starlings from London to New York City and set them free in Central Park. The next year he released 40 more,…

Human “exceptionalism” is for many people an unquestioned assumption. For the religious, it is a God-given fact; for humanists, it is a celebration of our unique mental capacities.…

Living in the flat, arid landscape of the Kalahari, meerkats are one of the most cooperative species of mammal on the planet. The scarcity of food and few places to hide from predators…

As they often do after a rainstorm, butterflies had gathered around puddles on Pigeon Mountain in northwest Georgia. Nets in hand, James Adams and his friend Irving Finkelstein watched…