Nature & Wildlife
How are you progressing on your New Year’s resolutions? If you’re like most people, you gave up on them surprisingly fast, with the second Friday in January often called “Quitter’s Day,” because many abandon goals by then. By the second week of February, an estimated 80% of people have scrapped their ambitions.
Travel Tips
Mountains, seashores, grasslands, wetlands, coral reefs and glaciers. Our national parks protect a multitude of terrains for every taste. And with more than 400 national park units across the country to explore, it can be daunting to choose which one you want to visit the soonest. Luckily, you have help.
Nature & Wildlife
We’ve just about reached the 2025 finish line. Father Time—that elderly, bearded man with an hourglass in one hand and a scythe in the other—will once again make his appearance on December 31 as the symbol of aging, the unstoppable passage of time and the inevitable end of things.
Nature & Wildlife
Migration is a wonderful word. It doesn’t merely mean a physical relocation but is an expression of strength, resilience, the universal desire for well-being and a movement toward hope. I have always thought of migrations as nature in motion.
Nature & Wildlife
Large herbivores—such as bison and elk—have continuously lived in the Yellowstone National Park region for at least 2,300 years, according to a new analysis of chemicals preserved in lake sediments. How have they made their livings and survived for so long?
Nature & Wildlife
From birds to flowers, the majority of the Earth’s species stem from a few evolutionary “explosions,” where new habitats or traits sparked rapid diversification. These bursts, in fact, explain most of the planet’s biodiversity. Some of those new habitats were ignited by glaciers.
Nature & Wildlife
At the end of the year, many of our holiday celebrations revolve around food, such as a Thanksgiving feast or a Christmas dinner. This food-intensive season reminds me of a new concept in nature studies: “nature’s chefs.” In essence, nature’s chefs are organisms that provide food—or the illusion of food—to other organisms.
Conservation
Plastics. It’s almost become an emotionally charged word. Today—no matter how you feel about their use—plastics provide us with both benefits and significant drawbacks. The strengths of plastics include durability, low cost and versatility, which have enabled medical advancements and modern conveniences.
Nature & Wildlife
I like to think of biodiversity as a symphony orchestra, where each note, each instrument—every single part—is needed to make the whole. In the concert called “biodiversity,” then, every species, from microscopic life to towering trees and vast oceans, plays a vital role.
Nature & Wildlife
Daylight savings time—the practice of advancing clocks to make better use of the longer daylight available during summer so that darkness falls at a later clock time—will end on November 2 this year. That means that we’ll set our clocks to “fall back” into standard time.
Nature & Wildlife
If I asked you to name a “Halloween animal,” the first answer you’d probably give me is bat.
Nature & Wildlife
The word birdbrain became a common slang term for a stupid person in the early 20th century. And while it’s still sometimes used as an insult, it’s a misnomer. In fact, the brains of birds are so large (relative to their body size) that scientists say they are practically braincases with beaks.
