The New York Times, February 16, 2017
Every continent save Antarctica is ringed by vast stretches of seagrass, underwater prairies that together cover an area roughly equal to California.
Seagrass meadows, among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth, play an outsize role in the health of the oceans. They shelter important fish species, filter pollutants from seawater, and lock up huge amounts of atmosphere-warming carbon.
The plants also fight disease, it turns out.
The New York Times, February 2, 2017
Over the years, scientists have come up with a lot of ideas about why we sleep.
Some have argued that it’s a way to save energy. Others have suggested that slumber provides an opportunity to clear away the brain’s cellular waste. Still others have proposed that sleep simply forces animals to lie still, letting them hide from predators.
A pair of papers published on Thursday in the journal Science offer evidence for another notion: We sleep to forget some of the things we learn each day.
Continue reading “The Purpose of Sleep? To Forget, Scientists Say”
Greetings! I have just a couple notes for you in this issue of Friday’s Elk.
1. Earlier this week, I published a column in the New York Times about the awful state of our fellow primates. Many species are dangerously close to extinction, due to human activity across the planet. If we want to save them, the time is now.
2. If you’re going to the Rancho Mirage Writers Festival this coming weekend, please join me on Saturday at 3:40 pm and on Sunday at 12:40 pm. I’ll be talking about the dangers of viruses, both old and new. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, January 22, 2017”
The New York Times, January 18, 2017
Our fellow primates are in trouble.
In a study of unprecedented scope, a team of 31 primatologists has analyzed every known species of primate to judge how they are faring. The news for man’s closest animal relatives is not good.
Three-quarters of primate species are in decline, the researchers found, and about 60 percent are now threatened with extinction. From gorillas to gibbons, primates are in significantly worse shape now than in recent decades because of the devastation from agriculture, hunting and mining.
Continue reading “Most Primate Species Threatened With Extinction, Scientists Find”
Happy 2017! (I confess, I had to correct that from “2016” just before sending this out.)
This week I wrote a column about migrations. There’s something endlessly fascinating about migratory animals: namely, the huge amount of things we don’t understand about them. We’re not sure how they manage to make the same journeys every year. Sometimes it’s hard to know why they bother. Sometimes we don’t even quite know the course they take. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, January 6, 2017”