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Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC; e.g., climate change or exotic species) has caused global species declines. Although behavioral plasticity has buffered some species against HIREC, maladaptive behavioral scenarios called ‘evolutionary traps’ are increasingly common, threatening the persistence of…
We have altered the environment in a vast number of ways, both small and large. And when animals try to read the cues from our human environment, they can get tricked. They can end up doing something that kills them, loses them the opportunity to reproduce, or simply wastes their time. Scientists call these situations…
With the hefty biomass created by a marsh, you can then build up land using some of your excavated materials, saved on the surface of the asteroid for this moment. Hills and mountains look great and add texture, so be bold! This process will redirect your water into new hydrologies, and this is the best time to…
Many species of terrestrial plants, including the skunk cabbage that sprouts in February in the woods of Princeton, New Jersey, where I live, are warm-blooded to a limited extent. For about two weeks the skunk cabbage maintains a warm temperature by rapidly metabolizing starch stored inside the part of its anatomy…
As humanists who see life and human history as a great adventure, we seek new worlds to explore, new facts to uncover, new avenues for artistic expression, new solutions to old problems, and new feelings to experience. We sometimes feel driven in our quest. and it is participation in this quest that gives our lives…
It's important to remember that arguments over evolutionary mechanisms often depend on the deeply held convictions of evolutionary biologists—after all, biologists are people, too! Almost everyone is reluctant to let go of deeply held convictions. Many biologists, in particular, are still attracted to teleological…
A few decades from now, we may make a brutal,calculated decision to totally eradicate a particular form of life. We already are 99 percent of the way along that path. Even conservationists, who publicly deplore the extinction of innumerable species of animals and plants through neglect, ignorance, or financial greed…
The starting point of Darwin's theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is…
The assumptions of population thinking are diametrically opposed to those of the typologist. The populationist stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world. What is true for the human species,–that no two individuals are alike, is equally true for all other species of animals and plants ... All organisms…
How near one Species to the next is join'd, The due Gradations please a thinking Mind; and there are Creatures which no eye can see, That for a Moment live and breathe like me: Whom a small Fly in bulk as far exceeds, As yon tall Cedar does the waving Reeds: These we can reach—and may we not suppose There still are…
If a man walked in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if he spends his whole day as a speculator shearing of those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is estimated as an industrious and enterprising citizen—as if a town had no interest in forests…
In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense—not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions…
Why Become Extinct? Authors with varying competence have suggested that dinosaurs disappeared because the climate deteriorated (became suddenly or slowly too hot or cold or dry or wet), or that the diet did (with too much food or not enough of such substances as fern oil; from poisons in water or plants or ingested…
Run the tape again, and let the tiny twig of Homo sapiens expire in Africa. Other hominids may have stood on the threshold of what we know as human possibilities, but many sensible scenarios would never generate our level of mentality. Run the tape again, and this time Neanderthal perishes in Europe and Homo erectus…
"Being able to reach out and touch the biggest tree of that species in the country is like shaking hands with a movie star or famous athlete"
Geology has its peculiar difficulties, from which all other sciences are exempt. Questions in chemistry may be settled in the laboratory by experiment. Mathematical and philosophical questions may be discussed, while the materials for discussion are ready furnished by our own intellectual reflections. Plants, animals…
In an age of egoism, it is so difficult to persuade man that of all studies, the most important is that of himself. This is because egoism, like all passions, is blind. The attention of the egoist is directed to the immediate needs of which his senses give notice, and cannot be raised to those reflective needs that…
Continually pushing out the empathy boundary is a life’s work. We can help our kids begin that critical work as early as possible not by preaching it but by embodying it. Allow your children to see poverty up close. Travel to other countries if you can, staying as long as possible until our shared humanity becomes…
A bewildering assortment of (mostly microscopic) life-forms has been found thriving in what were once thought to be uninhabitable regions of our planet. These hardy creatures have turned up in deep, hot underground rocks, around scalding volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean, in the desiccated, super-cold Dry…
The creativity behind social marketing can be alarming. A recent television ad depicted water disappearing into a storm drain as a voice warned that lawn fertilizer in the spring can wind up in the Chesapeake Bay. "No crab should die like this," the announcer opines. Later, the announcer appears on screen with a small…