2-minute read

Because we know you have burning questions about invertebrates…

If you head out for an end-of-summer seaside wander, you might come across a five-legged fellow commonly known as a starfish. And if you’re anything like this team of biologists from Stanford University, you might ask yourself, if a starfish wore clothes, where would it put its’ trousers? Naturally, you might say, on its legs since it has so many. But are those pointy appendages legs, or are they arms? Perhaps a sweater would be better? Or if some are arms and some are legs, which are which, and how can you tell?

According to scientists, most animals evolve with a three-part body plan and bilateral symmetry. There is a head end, a tail end, a trunk in the middle, and a symmetrical body on either side. Examining the body structures of cats or camels, dogs or donkeys, beavers or buffalo it’s easy to tell which is the tail end and where to place trousers, if need be. Although starfish start with body symmetry as larvae, unlike other animals, they don’t maintain that symmetry as they grow. The spiny sea creatures don’t have an obvious head or tail, so what gives? How are the piece parts of a starfish body organized?

Perhaps the brain occupies one arm, and the legs are on the opposite end? Or maybe each leg or arm has a three-part body plan duplicated five times that is joined at the head in the middle? To find out, the Stanford researchers mapped the gene expression of starfish to determine how they were configured. What they discovered is that the animal’s brain is in the center, extending out into five points, but there is no trunk, and those appendages are not legs or arms. As it turns out, a starfish is all head. So, according to the Stanford starfish detectives, if you are going to gift this invertebrate with apparel, your best bet is to go with a hat.

ICYMI Nature News

How Sea Lions See the Sea
Endangered sea lions wearing teeny-tiny cameras are helping Australian scientists map the ocean floor. See what they see under the sea.

These Bats’ Toes Glow as They Glide
As if using echolocation to navigate the night sky wasn’t the ultimate bat superpower, researchers have discovered that some free-tailed bats possess glow-in-the-dark toes they use to signal their next of kin as they search for food. Read about the toe glow here.

Never Underestimate the Intelligence of Horses
Long admired for their beauty, speed, and agility, it turns out that horses are also big on brains. According to new research, the elegant animals are able to plan ahead and act strategically to achieve an important goal—more treats. Learn more about the snack-savvy equines.

The Lobster Has the Blues
A very colorful crustacean was plucked from the sea in New Hampshire by a local lobsterman and scientists say it’s 1 in 100 million. The blue, pink, and purple-hued lobster’s “cotton candy” coloring is said to be a result of diet and genetics. We have to admit, he’s a beauty!

Dodos Were No Dummies
Dodos, the first animals recorded as driven to extinction by humans, have gotten a bad rap for being slow-moving, bumbling birds. However, new research shows that the iconic creatures were speedy and powerful! Here’s the real story about Dodos.

A 16ft Tall Pigeon in NYC?
In October, a super-sized pigeon named Dinosaur will be perched on the High Line elevated garden at 30th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. The 16ft sculpture created by Ivan Argote will keep a sharp eye on the comings and goings of us hustling, bustling humans for 18 months. Here’s a preview of the really big street bird.

3-minute read

Elephants are really big—on communication. To maintain their highly complex social networks, the clever mammals use a distinct system of trumpets, roars, and infrasonic rumbles to communicate essential elephant info related to survival and strengthen bonds between family and herd members. According to biologist Joyce Poole, a world authority on elephant behavior, within their tightly knit communities, the emotionally intelligent animals even call each other by unique names.

But what happens to those vocalization instincts when an elephant’s herd is made up of humans? Amazingly, in the case of Koshik, a male Asian elephant born in captivity in South Korea, whose primary interactions from the age of five were with caregivers, the determined pachyderm was capable of learning to mimic a language other than ele-speak to connect to his social group. Exposed daily to the speech of trainers, Koshik learned to produce sounds imitating six Korean words that were easily identifiable by native speakers.

Elephant Ingenuity
And what did Koshik have to say for himself? His six-word vocabulary was limited to “hello,” “sit down,” “no,” “lie down,” and “good”—what you might call trainer-speak. What is most remarkable about Koshik learning to repeat what he heard in his daily environment was that he had to alter his vocal tract to do it. For a variety of reasons, unlike some species of birds, elephants and other mammals don’t have a natural ability to imitate human speech. One reason is that the part of their anatomy that produces sound is not shaped like ours. To mimic the words that Koshik heard from his trainers every day, he taught himself to place his trunk tip in his mouth and raise his lower jaw to manipulate the structure of his vocal organs.

As far as animal behaviorists know, talking elephants like Koshik are extremely rare. Although a few Asian elephants have been described as producing whistling sounds, Koshik’s is the only recorded case of an elephant reproducing human speech. Although we may never know exactly what compelled the big talker to learn how to mimic the words that he heard every day, biologists believe the chatty elephant may have been motivated by the urge to create social bonds with those closest to him—his human caregivers.

Hear Koshik speak Korean (“annyong”, which means “hello”, and “anja”, which means “sit down”). The first voice is the trainer and the second is Koshik.

ICYMI Nature News

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Flying Hippo
They may not have wings, but according to a new study on hippo locomotion, the bulky trotters can achieve total lift-off in between strides. See how they fly.

Skilled Ant Surgeons
Florida carpenter ants with leg injuries are in good hands—teeny, tiny bug hands. German researchers have discovered that the innovative insects are the only other species besides humans that perform limb amputation to save the life of a comrade. No scalpel required.

Iron Toothed Dragons
What could be scarier than a Komodo dragon mouth full of teeth like serrated steak knives? A Komodo dragon mouth full of iron-coated teeth like serrated steak knives—that’s what. Take a look if you dare.

Perfectly Polite Apes
It turns out that chimps are pretty darn polite. Researchers in Scotland have discovered that like the structured back and forth of conservations between humans, chimpanzees take turns in communication interactions by gesturing and waiting for a response. Learn more from Smithsonian.

Storm Chasing Seabirds
Most birds steer clear of big storms for obvious reasons but Desertes petrals actually chase hurricanes to pluck out prey churned by high winds. Strategic seabirds.

17 New Condor Chicks
America’s critically endangered condors got a big boost this summer thanks to the efforts of the Los Angeles Zoo. A record 17 California Condor chicks were hatched in captivity this year bringing the world total to 578. Really big bird hatchling alert.

Big Picture People’s Choice Award
FYI, you have until Wednesday, July 31 to cast your vote in the first annual BigPicture Natural World Photography People’s Choice Award. Pick the most awe-inspiring nature pic here.

Favorite World Press Forest Update
And here’s the FWP forest carbon capture update from April 2022 through June 2024. The trees we’ve planted in partnership with Tree-Nation across 17 projects and 13 countries bring our carbon capture to 4,363 tons of CO2. That’s equivalent to 4,808,041 pounds of coal burned, or 189,498 bags of waste recycled instead of landfilled, or 11,157,925 miles driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle (that’s about 448 times around the Earth).

By Rachel Field

Butterflies didn’t always know
How to spread their wings and go
Gliding down the slopes of air
On their spangled wings and fair:
Never dared to leave the land
Till the elves took them in hand,
Made them bridle, bit and reins
Out of shiny cornsilk skeins;
Drove them through the long blue hours,
Introducing them to Flowers.

Now we see them, then
now we don’t these
tiny stars whose only hope
is that they will outlast

the night, if they stick
to it and burn, if they
blink again in the face
of the blind darkness.

from These Fireflies, by Sue Owen

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so this week, we’re going to let spectacular images of nature do the talking for Wild & Wondrous. Happy browsing!

The Big Pictures
Celebrating the diversity of life on Earth through the stunning work of photographers from around the world, the BigPicture Competition aims to inspire nature lovers to protect and conserve the beauty of the living world. Look at the winners!

The Tiny Pictures
If you’d like to see what a teeny tardigrade looks like or an extreme close-up of a bee’s eye or a slender sliver of a mosquito leg, scientific photographer Steve Gschmeissner has captured amazing images of tiny beauty with a scanning electron microscope. Courtesy of Nature, you can see them here.

The Bird Pictures
After reviewing 8,500 amazing entries, the eagle-eyed judges at the Audubon have announced the winners of the 2024 Photography Awards. Take a look at the best of this year’s batch of beautiful birds.

The Wall Pictures
If you like images of our feathered friends to be larger than life, the Audubon Mural Project in northern Manhattan now features 115 super-sized depictions of bird species impacted by climate change. You can see the big birds here.

The Tree Pictures
Nature photographer Beth Moon spent 14 years traveling across five continents to capture the mysterious beauty of Earth’s most majestic ancient trees and you can see her breathtaking black-and-white images here.

The Moving Pictures
In honor of Independence Day, a video celebrating the beauty of nature’s fireworks—bioluminescence.

Watch Firefly Experience

Every hour of every day
is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

Walt Whitman

Happy Summer Solstice!

FWP Summer playlist

When I am among the trees
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines
they give off such hints of gladness
I would almost say that they
save me, and daily.

from When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary Oliver

Happy World Environment Day!

With gratitude to the world, the environment, and the trees.

2-minute read

When it comes to providing big planetary benefits, of all the amazing creatures under the sea, corals are at the top of the dynamic doer list. Over half a billion people globally depend on the income-providing, food-provisioning, coastline-protecting sculptural animals for their daily existence. Maintaining the healthy functioning of corals is critical to people, wildlife, and the planet, but the underwater inhabitants are literally in hot water. Since the 1950s, global coral cover has halved, and on the current trajectory, by 2035, 75% of corals could be at risk.

As a case in point, according to NOAA scientists, right now, corals in every major ocean basin in the northern and southern hemispheres are experiencing a heat-stress-driven major bleaching event. Marine heat waves like the extreme event in Florida in 2023 are starting earlier, lasting longer, and occurring more frequently.

Helping Corals Take the Heat
As the world races against the clock to lower emissions and combat climate change impacts, dedicated marine scientists and conservationists are developing what they hope will be life-saving strategies that will enable corals to survive rapidly warming waters. Because corals propagated in nurseries and transplanted into reefs can also fall victim to bleaching due to record-setting heat waves, the innovative scientists at the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program in Australia are training corals to tolerate the heat through a process known as assisted evolution.

When corals are exposed to high water temperatures, they expel the symbiotic algae known as zooxanthellae that they need to survive, turning a dreaded ghostly white. To give corals a fighting chance, the Australian scientists are training lab-grown algae to adapt to the heat and stay put inside stressed corals as waters warm.

And how do they do it? For the past decade, researchers have been growing coral symbionts in a lab and slowly turning up water temperatures, increasing the algae’s resilience to rapid environmental change. The lab-grown algae can now tolerate constant water temperatures of almost 90 ℉, far higher than what is typical for the Great Barrier Reef. The newly evolved zooxanthellae will soon be transplanted into the reef to see how they fare during fluctuating warming cycles in the wild.

With emissions continuing to rise and millions of humans and marine species globally depending on the survival of reefs, repairing ecosystems by helping corals adjust to planetary warming is urgent. By training coral symbionts to remain where nature intended as water temperatures rise, leading-edge researchers are increasing the odds that the undersea world will continue to thrive in living color.

ICYMI Nature News

Spiny Lobsters Aren’t Giving Up Either
Scientists at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have discovered that spiny lobsters deter snails and worms from snacking on already distressed corals through—wait for it—frequent urination. Snails and worms love to eat coral, but they hate to be eaten by spiny lobsters. Where there is plentiful lobster urine, there are hungry lobsters. Apparently, the presence of the crustaceans’ body fluid in the water helps to protect corals from predators.

The Complexity of Ele-Chat
Biologists studying elephants’ communications in Zimbabwe have discovered that much like humans, the iconic African animals change their communication style depending on how well they know the elephant they are greeting.

Wildlife Walk This Way Please
There is long-awaited good news for California wildlife! The world’s largest wildlife crossing is currently under construction and expected to open in Los Angeles in early 2026. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will span 10-lane Highway 101, reconnecting the Santa Monica Mountains with the Simi Hills to provide all manner of native creatures, including bobcats, coyotes, and mule deer, with unobstructed access to a larger natural ecosystem. Read all about the lifesaving project here.

Clever Counting Crows
According to University of Washington researchers, not only can crows count, but they can also count out loud, cawing to signify numbers in response to visual and auditory clues. “One caw, two caw, three caw, four caw…”.

The Secret Language of Sperm Whales
If you need further proof of creature cleverness, scientists working on deciphering the communication of sperm whales believe the marine mammals’ vocal clicks aren’t just random signals but represent a complicated call-and-respond alphabet. Can you hear me now?

How Sea Otters Avoid the Dentist
Ask any sea otter: crunching on mollusk shells every day can wreak havoc on the pearly whites. According to marine scientists studying foraging behavior in sea mammals, otters that rely more often on tools to access prey not only expand their menu options but protect their teeth from damage, which increases their longevity. But do they floss?

Diversity in Nature is Better for You
We’ve written often about nature being good for you. According to a new study, the more diverse the nature, the better it is for you. In addition to biological diversity, keeping the natural world in good working order, the greater the variety of trees, plants, and wildlife in your environment, the greater the improvement in mental well-being. Another good reason to go wild.

Trees are poems
the Earth writes
upon the sky…

Kahlil Gibran

When you buy a book,
we plant a sky poem.

Thank you for reading with us!

xo Favorite World Press