There is, for example, the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), one of the mightiest trees in the world. It can grow more than 300 feet tall and live for many thousands of years. Its bark is soft, thick, and slow to burn. If you find one of these in a city park (and you can find them in many city parks all over the world), step right up to it and

Insects exploit laws of nature to protect themselves against freezing. They use sugars they produce naturally to create a kind of antifreeze, and they empty their gut to minimize their water content, because tiny amounts of water don’t freeze until temperatures fall far below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Five microliters of water (which is a vanishingly

Over the years, an undertone of emotion crept in, which was much more in line with my personal thinking. In other words, I relaxed and let my heart do the talking instead of my brain.

Researchers from the United States suspect that there are definite disadvantages to our powerful brain. They compared the self-destructive programming of human cells with a similar program run by ape cells. This program destroys and dismantles old and defective cells. Their comparison showed that the cleanup mechanism is a lot more effective in

This was the year wolves caught in Canada were released in Yellowstone to restore the park’s ecological balance. What happened in the years that followed, and continues to this day, is what scientists call a trophic cascade. Basically, this means a change in the entire ecosystem via the food chain, starting at the top. The wolf was now at the top

One simple standard definition is that nature is the opposite of culture—that is to say, everything that people have not created or changed.

In contrast to a human brain, a woodpecker’s brain sits firmly in its skull so that it doesn’t bounce back and forth while it’s using its beak to deal staccato blows to a tree. As an added precaution, there’s a special springy support behind its beak that cushions the blows before they travel to its skull. Despite this, fresh wood is simply too

There are two forces at work here. Sick or weak animals separate themselves from others of their kind to hide in the undergrowth, or on hot summer days they wander near or into small streams to cool any wounds they might have. Here, they wait for death. That makes sense, because this way they don’t endanger their kin—weak animals attract the

Fungi can be every bit as long lived as trees. Ancient honey fungus networks have been found underground in North America. The record holder is a fungus belonging to the species Armillaria ostoyae. It is 2,400 years old and has spread to cover 3.5 square miles.