The emergency surgery took place in the back of a modified pickup truck in a McDonald’s parking lot in Pikeville, Ky. This scrappy plan to rescue a species of mussel on the edge of extinction made perfect sense: Meet somewhere between Indian Creek in Virginia, where the last known wild golden riffleshells lived, and Kentucky’s
The Golden Riffleshell’s Appalachian Roadtrip Read More »
RODNEY WOODSON never set out to be a pig trapper. He joined the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency because he was passionate about conserving water birds. But that was before the hogs rocked up, with their high libidos and low cunning. Across the world, and especially in the southern US, feral pigs are a problem. Marauding hordes
To humans, falling rain usually amounts to little more than a minor inconvenience. After all, we are big and raindrops are small – they splatter on our heads and sleeves, and we end up a little wetter. But a mosquito’s mass is only 2–3 μg and the largest rain- drops may weigh up to 100μg.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TENN. — The world’s first artificial bat cave is expecting the arrival of its first winged visitors. The nearly 80-foot-long concrete chamber was built to protect bats against white nose syndrome, a disease named for a white fungus that infects the skin of the muzzle, ears and wings of hibernating bats.
Tennessee’s bat cave Read More »
Climate scientists concerned about global warming keep a close eye on Antarctica. There, some of the ice shelves that extend from the continent into the ocean are melting, adding freshwater that boosts sea level. Like other scientists, Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute wants to understand how that watery environment is changing.
If all goes according to Mark Post’s plan, he will appear on television in October and devour a hamburger that costs about twice as much as most houses do in the United States. Yes, as Charlotte the spider might have written, that’s some burger. “It’s not something you’d flip every day on the barbecue,” admits
Not all fruit flies are born equal. Some can skip 12 hours of sleep without missing a beat; others need their beauty rest to keep buzzing. In recent experiments on these two varieties of flies, scientists found that the bugs that skip zzzz’s pay a price to stay awake: They don’t fare as well as
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When playful pups skid across an icy pond or romp in a snowdrift, their paws plunge into frosty places. If people go barehanded and barefooted in such cold places, their skin may freeze in a painful condition called frostbite. Dogs frolic without fear of frostbite, and scientists from Japan say they’ve figured out why. Read
No frostbite for dogs Read More »
