Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2013 i National Geographic Magazine

Resurrection the idea of “de-extinction,” of bringing back a long-gone species like, say, a woolly mammoth, might seem the stuff of science fiction. But it’s almost real, explains author carl Zimmer in this month’s story “Bringing them Back to life.” the cool factor of such a zoological restoration is off the charts, but de- extinction also raises some interesting questions about human beings and our impact on the world. Many extinctions occur because of our thoughtlessness or carelessness. we want a better life. we want to make the unhabitable habitable. we want to fill our stomachs. Sometimes what gets caught in the cross fire of our wants is a species. you could say an extinct species is the collateral damage of human existence. Just because we might be able to…

United States An image of Wyoming’s Devils Tower monolith works as wordless signage for the Tower Stool Company of Faith, South Dakota. Local artist Norman Blue Arm painted the mural on the firm’s garage door. China Invisibility becomes art at a Beijing sawmill in an image from Liu Bolin’s “hiding in the City” series. For each photograph the artist sports painstakingly painted camouflage. Then assistants position his body so that he disappears from view. Finland A kitchen appears charged with energy— actually lines of LED light scribbled by the photographer during a 24-minute exposure. The supine figure on the floor moved away after a short time, leaving only her electric outline.…

When the tumbling stops in an avalanche, the place where a person comes to rest is critical. most deaths occur due to suffocation under snow—trauma is the other main cause—so landing near the surface boosts survival chances. Some skiers, snowmobilers, and other adventurers are adding a self-inflating device to standard avalanche safety tools like shovels. it resembles an air line flotation vest, but its purpose is to increase the amount of space a person occupies so that the wearer is shifted toward the top of cascading snow. “our latest research shows that these air bags can save lives,” says avalanche scientist Pascal Haegeli. “But they are not a magic bullet that can get you out of trouble all the time.” 1. If caught in an avalanche, an air bag wearer…

Since the 1950s U.S. rates of celiac disease—an autoimmune condition in which the body treats gluten as a toxin—have at least quadrupled. It now affects one in 141. Gluten overload in Western diets is a culprit, says the Mayo clinic’s Joseph Murray. No one can fully digest gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley. Early humans didn’t eat grains, so people didn’t evolve the ability to break it down. Most people can get rid of what’s left of gluten as waste and be fine, but for those with celiac disease, eating’s out. Modern wheat choices likely exacerbate the problem, Murray adds. Today’s farmers prefer protein-rich varieties that produce greater yields; breadmakers prize higher gluten content because it improves texture. Even more gets added to processed foods like pretzels…

Sawfish do actually saw fish. Surprising new observations show that these stingray relatives use their long, toothlined saws (below) to dismember prey. Previously scientists thought the seemingly docile fish used their saws—actually extensions of their skulls—to probe muddy bottoms. By watching captured specimens, sensory neurobiologist Barbara Wueringer discovered the opposite: The roughly 16-foot fish are active hunters that can swipe their saws up to four times a second. The “samurai of the sea,” as she calls them, can also split a fish in half, impale it, or sweep it onto the seafloor for easier eating. Wueringer found that the saws, which can grow up to several feet long, have pores that sense an animal’s electric field, giving the wielder a sort of fishy sixth sense.…

One last chance. Tat’s all the siberian hunter wants. For five months Karl Gorokhov has tracked his ancient prey across a desolate island in the East Siberian Sea, slogging 18 hours a day over the icy tundra. He is cold and exhausted, with a hunger so primal that he has been reduced to eating seagulls. Even the two polar bears that attacked his camp were famished; their stomachs, slit open after they were shot dead, were empty. Gorokhov, a 46-year-old with wind-chapped cheeks and a scraggly, reddish beard, heads out every day past the nine graves near his camp—the final resting places, he presumes, for unlucky souls who came to the island to escape the Soviet gulag. Gorokhov is running out of time. Late summer blizzards are howling across Kotelnyy…

ON A DREARY STRETCH of Interstate 95, shadowed by the corporate office towers of Wilmington, Delaware, an overpass spans a narrow valley. Passing motorists, zooming through on their way toward Baltimore or Philadelphia, might cross a hundred times and barely notice the gorge’s existence: hardly more than a wrinkle in the landscape, a glimpse of treetops vanishing in the rearview mirror. They would hardly guess at the little world enfolded within it, much less that it conceals what is arguably one of America’s great waterways. The Brandywine River is not, to be sure, the Mississippi, the Colorado, or the Hudson. It has inspired no epic novels, gouged no mighty canyons, carried on its bosom no famous ships. Indeed, in most places the Brandywine is navigable only by canoe or kayak,…

Mahogany is the crown jewel of the Amazon, soaring in magnificent buttressed columns high into the forest canopy. Its rich, red grain and durability make it one of the most coveted building materials on Earth, favored by master craftsmen, a symbol of wealth and power. A single tree can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the international market by the time its finished wood reaches showroom floors in the United States or Europe. After 2001, the year Brazil declared a moratorium on logging bigleaf mahogany, Peru emerged as one of the world’s largest suppliers. The rush for “red gold,” as mahogany is sometimes called, has left many of Peru’s watersheds—such as the Alto Tamaya, homeland of a group of Ashéninka Indians—stripped of their most valuable trees. The last stands…

The Right Stuff One of William L. Brown’s first assignments as a taxidermist was to preserve specimens that Teddy Roosevelt brought back from his 1909 expedition to Africa for the Smithsonian. In his 51-year career at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., Brown worked on almost every imaginable kind of animal, including this timber wolf in 1947. Some of Brown’s work is still on display at the museum. Of his favorite piece—a hippo with a hide made supple through a Russian tanner’s chewing—he wrote: “This was when I was best. 40 yrs old. As a taxidermist. I was the first person ever to mount a successful hippo and probably will be the last.” The museum’s most recent taxidermist, Paul Rhymer, said it was the best preserved animal…

Gaza Tunnels I remember first reading about the conflict in the Middle East in the early ’70s. I was a teenager, and my thoughts at the time were: How many people must be hurt and killed before this madness stops? After reading your powerful article, I was sick to my stomach thinking about a 12-year-old boy losing his sight. Who cares anymore who started this ridiculous war? It’s time to stop it, although I have no illusions that this will occur in my lifetime. It has been almost 40 years since I was first exposed to the “conflict in the Middle East.” Will there ever be room in Israel for both sides to live in peace? BEVERLY BOKOVITZ Medina, Ohio Israel and Egypt treat the Palestinians like insects. It is…

EDITORS’ CHOICE Eiko Jones Campbell River, British Columbia Jones was photographing water lilies from four feet under when he saw a “black cloud” in the corner of his eye. Countless tadpoles streamed by. “It went on for ages,” says the 41-year-old photographer. “It was like a huge flock of birds flying through a forest, but completely silent.” READERS’ CHOICE Zahoor Ahmed Bhalwal, Pakistan “I ’m deeply in love with birds,” says Ahmed, a wildlife photographer. He spent two months near a saltwater lake in Kallar Kahar to capture this shot of an Asian paradise flycatcher feeding its chick. Despite his fancy feathers, the male does the feeding and incubates eggs in the nest.…

Citizens of the roman empire had a habit of writing when they were wronged. they etched grievances into thin sheets of lead, which were rolled and pierced with nails, then buried in tombs or thrown into wells. A newly translated 1,600-year-old tablet (above) seeks to impart vengeance on a veterinarian named porcello. there was no gripe too small. Researchers have found more than 1,500 curse tablets, including 130 around Aquae sulis (now bath, England) seeking revenge for shoes and other items stolen while their owners were in the water. Some are signed; some depict the perpetrator. Many petition a deity with powers to befoul the suspect’s life. Why do such complaints matter? “They’re documents of the common people’s concerns,” says Celia Aánchez Natalías of Spain’s university of Zaragoza, “not Augustus’s…

How long do you have? It depends on gender and geography. In the U.S., women live longer—81 years on average, 76 for men—but a recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reveals a troubling trend. Though men’s life spans have increased by 4.6 years since 1989, women have gained only 2.7 years, perhaps because a larger percentage of women have lacked adequate treatment for high blood pressure and cholesterol. “This is a wake-up call,” says study co-author Ali Mokdad. Geographic gaps have also widened; parts of the South are a full decade behind places like coastal California. Public health initiatives like smoking bans and more sidewalks have made a big difference, says Mokdad. “People are living to 86, on average, in some parts of the world. Why…

Call it an encore. Fungi may be able to deliver the sounds of a Stradivarius. Violins work like this: bowed strings vibrate the bridge beneath them; the bridge moving against the violin’s body bounces sound. Stradivarius violins from the 1700s are said to move the notes around best. According to tree pathologist Francis Schwarze (above), applying two arboreal fungi—Physisporinus vitreus and Xylaria longipes—to a lesser violin can help it perform on a par with the famed maker’s instruments. The fungi work by thinning cell walls in norway spruce—the only wood used to make a violin’s top plates—and maple so that sound can move more freely. Less weight means louder and more resonant tones. It’s not all about volume, though. The fungi also double the dampening function of the wood, taking…

A HUNGRY GUIDE caught a foot-long catfish in a Suriname river in 2010 and began to gut it. But the fish didn’t turn into a fillet—rather, it turned out to be an undiscovered species. The guide was part of a Conservation International–led survey of a tropical forest. Scientists rescued the specimen just in time when they noticed its exceptionally long spines, likely meant to fend off giant piranhas. Unlike any catfish in reference books, the as yet unnamed fish was one of 46 candidates for new species status found within three weeks. “They’re all pieces of a big puzzle,” says expedition member Philip Willink. “The more we have, the better our understanding of how the whole world works.” In the 1730s Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus set out rules for classifying…

The welcome sign on the outskirts of Crystal River isn’t the kind you see every day: “Manatee Information: Tune to 1610 AM,” it reads. Ten, too, not many towns have a red-white-and-blue statue of an endangered marine mammal in front of City Hall. Stop to ask where you can see these aquatic celebrities, and you learn that a couple dozen local dive shops offer snorkeling tours in Kings Bay. Or you can rent a kayak and paddle to one of the warm springs where manatees hang out in winter. Or if you want to watch from dry land, you can head over to the canal west of Tree Sisters Springs. At the canal it takes only a few minutes before the first manatees cruise below, pale ghosts in the jade…

The 80s: The Dec ade That Made Us Whether it’s Ronald Reagan or Rubik’s cube, symbols of the 1980s call to mind a time of cultural fads, technological advances, and economic change. this month the national Geographic channel celebrates this influential decade in a new series, featuring interviews with icons from Jane Fonda to ted turner to Grandmaster Flash. EXPEDITIONS TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH national Geographic’s arctic and Antarctic ship expeditions put the polar realms within reach, providing opportunities for exploring icy landscapes by foot, kayak, and Zodiac. head north to Svalbard, the land of polar bears, icebergs, and the midnight sun. or set your sights southward to Antarctica, south Georgia, and the Falkland Islands, where penguins and seals await. View the itineraries at ngexpeditions.com/polar. LECTURE IN SEARCH…

Agustín Fuentes National Geographic Grantee EXPERTISE Primatologist LOCATION Borneo Orangutan to the Rescue this kind of getting lost doesn’t happen anymore; I would have a Gps with me now. But two decades ago at Camp Leakey, an orangutan research camp on Borneo inside Tanjung Puting, the rain forest was an unknowable place. I was trying to find the maroon leaf monkey. one day, after four hours of following marked trails, I thought I saw one. I risked it and went off the trail. forty-five minutes later, I was still wandering, no maroon leaf monkey in sight. I assumed the trail had to pick up somewhere near where I was, so I used my compass to make a guess. Another 30 minutes later, I wasn’t panicked, but I was definitely a…

Ozone, Interrupted “ The Montreal Protocol is working,” says chemist Mario Molina, who shared the Nobel Prize for his work on the effects of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). “CFCs are a global environmental problem that is being solved by society.” The international treaty, which opened for signature in 1987, created controls on the use of CFCs, gases used as coolants in refrigerators and to propel aerosols like hair spray out of cans. The problem was that CFCs spread out in the stratosphere, where they led to a hole in the ozone layer. When Molina started studying CFCs in the 1970s and discovered their role in ozone depletion, each U.S. household averaged 30 to 40 spray cans. Since the late ’90s, CFC production has all but stopped, making modern spray cans ozone safe.…

In some cultures over complimenting casts a curse. So does envy. Since ancient times such maledictions have been collectively called the evil eye. According to folklorist Alan Dundes’s book The Evil Eye, the belief’s premise is that an individual can cause harm simply by looking at another’s person or property. But protection is easy to come by—with talismans that can be worn, carried, or hung in homes, most often incorporating the contours of a human eye (like the Egyptian one, below). In Aegean countries people with light-colored eyes are thought to be particularly powerful, and amulets in Greece and Turkey are usually blue orbs. Indians, Muslims, and Jews use charms with palm-forward hands with an eye in the center; Italians employ horns, phallic shapes meant to distract spell casters.…

In terms of weight, a raindrop on a mosquito is like a car on a human—and the little suckers get hit every 25 seconds in heavy rain. How do they survive? By not resisting, say Georgia institute of technology engineers. “Imagine punching a balloon in midair. You won’t destroy it,” says lead researcher David hu. “Similarly, mosquitoes are so light that they offer very little resistance. they just go along for the ride.” a drop shoves the bug downward at 100 to 300 times the force of gravity—enough to crush a human, but mosquitoes have superstrong exoskeletons. They usually slide free in less than a second. Mimicking the mosquitoes could inspire designs for tougher aerial robots, to aid in search and rescue, says hu. “If a robot could be as…

On July 30, 2003, a team of Spanish and French scientists reversed time. They brought an animal back from extinction, if only to watch it become extinct again. The animal they revived was a kind of wild goat known as a Bucardo, or Pyrenean ibex. The Bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was a large, handsome creature, reaching up to 220 pounds and sporting long, gently curved horns. For thousands of years it lived high in the Pyrenees, the mountain range that divides France from Spain, where it clambered along cliffs, nibbling on leaves and stems and enduring harsh winters. Then came the guns. Hunters drove down the Bucardo population over several centuries. In 1989 Spanish scientists did a survey and concluded that there were only a dozen or so individuals left.…

Barrington Irving became the youngest person (and first African American) to fly solo around the world when the 23-year-old landed in Miami on June 27, 2007. The former high school football star had been studying aviation for only a year when he went after sponsors to help him assemble a single-engine plane for the 27,000-mile journey. Irving says he took on the trip to inspire young people to grow stronger by testing the limits of their capabilities. Today he is both a pilot and a teacher, using his experience to encourage kids in Florida to explore the skies. Why do you fly? What fires me up about flying is that you’re between heaven and Earth. Your life is suspended in midair. So much precision is required. There is nothing else…

A primal heart still beats in Europe. Deep beneath the gloss of cell phone sophistication lie rituals that hark back to harvests and solstices and fear of the winter dark. Monsters loom in this shadowy heart, but so does the promise of spring’s rebirth and fertile crops and women cradling newborn babes. It turns out that Europe—at least pockets of it—has not lost its connection to nature’s rhythms. That connection is rekindled during festivals that occur across the continent from the beginning of December until Easter. The celebrations correspond to Christian holidays, but the rituals themselves often predate Christianity. The roots are difficult to trace. Men—and until recently, it has almost always been men—don costumes that hide their faces and conceal their true forms. Ten they take to the streets,…

Tusk and Sunset A mammoth’s tusk spikes the Siberian sky on Bolshoy Lyakhov skiy Island. Tusks that are discovered with the mammoth’s skull still attached, like this one, are not considered more valuable, notes photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva. She spent two months on the island to document the hunt for ancient ivory. “They can’t sell the skull,” she says of the tusk hunters. “There is no need to saw off the tusk from the skull. They just pull it out, like pulling out a tooth.” BEHIND THE LENS You are originally from Siberia. Did you grow up close to where you photographed these tusk hunters? EA: I am from a town called Tiksi, not so far from where we were. People found mammoth tusks by accident near where I grew up.…