Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2013 i National Geographic Magazine

I met ecologist Craig Packer in 1988. I was a young photographer on assignment in the Serengeti for the first time, trying to feel my way around the craft of natural history photography. I think his first reaction to me was annoyance. He had good reason. I was green and untested in those days. Craig, who’d been director of the Serengeti lion project since 1978, was the scientist who knew lions. I was just beginning to learn. Craig is not an easy man to work around. He’s seen it all and isn’t reluctant to tell you so. But he is rigorous in the integrity of his science. For Craig it’s all about the data and getting the facts right. This made him and his team the keystone collaborators for this…

This page features two photographs: one chosen by our editors and one chosen by our readers via online voting. For more information, go to yourshot.nationalgeographic.com. EDITORS’ CHOICE Saori Baba Fukuoka, Japan During a ceremony to bless young children at Japan’s Sumiyoshi Shrine in Fukuoka, Baba, a graduate student, spied this minor assault with an artificial flower. Both brothers later laughed. READERS’ CHOICE Megan Lorenz Etobicoke, Canada On a photo excursion to Costa Rica, Lorenz wanted desperately to photograph red-eyed tree frogs. Just before dusk she got lucky: One approached a branch nearby. Unsteady, it grabbed a stalk of fungus to balance itself, then quickly climbed away.…

Jupiter spins so quickly that its rotation has altered its shape from a sphere to a squashed ball. Arizona’s Glen canyon Dam harnesses the Colorado River to provide electricity throughout the U.S. West—but it also blocks the 1,450-mile river from ferrying sediment downstream to the Grand canyon. That process is vital for building the canyon’s sandbars, which provide campsites and habitat that protects rare fish. So in November 2012 the U.S. Department of the interior released a controlled flood of 44,700 cubic feet per second from the dam for three and a half days. The flow rebuilt many sandbars. But the bigger deal, notes flood manager Jack Schmidt, is a new protocol that allows opening the dam’s floodgates when necessary. More frequent floods may help the Colorado, which, Schmidt says,…

Artificial coral reefs now come with more nooks and crannies, thanks to 3-D printing technology. The new sandstone structures (left) are built layer by layer on a printer the size of a small house. David Lennon, director of Sustainable Oceans International, helped design the 1,100-pound reefs. Last fall biologists deployed two off the coast of Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf. The numerous hiding holes attract more diverse communities than do reefs formed from concrete molds. —Jane J. Lee PHOTOS: MARK W. MOFFETT (TOP); REEF ARABIA. GRAPHIC: ÁLVARO VALIÑO…

They say that cats have nine lives, but they don’t say that about the Serengeti lion. Life is hard and precarious on this unforgiving landscape, and dead is dead. For the greatest of African predators as well as for their prey, life spans tend to be short, more often terminating abruptly than in graceful decline. An adult male lion, if he’s lucky and durable, might attain the advanced age of 12 in the wild. Adult females can live longer, even to 19. Life expectancy at birth is much lower, for any lion, if you consider the high mortality among cubs, half of which die before age two. But surviving to adulthood is no guarantee of a peaceful demise. For a certain young male, black-maned and robust, known to researchers as…

BOTTOM OF THE DRINK They had to go. The Coke machine, the snack machine, the deep fryer. Hoisted and dragged through the halls and out to the curb, they sat with other trash beneath gray, forlorn skies behind Kirkpatrick Elementary, one of a handful of primary schools in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Tat was seven years ago, when administrators first recognized the magnitude of the problem. Clarksdale, a storied delta town that gave us the golden age of the Delta blues, its cotton fields and flatlands rolling to the river, its Victorian mansions still beautiful, is at the center of a colossal American health crisis. High rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease: the legacy, some experts say, of sugar, a crop that brought the ancestors of most Clarksdale residents…

DARK AND MYSTERIOUS, deep caves have attracted explorers since the 1800s. Caving pioneer Édouard-Alfred Martel, a French lawyer, investigated more than a thousand caverns in Europe and the U.S. for three decades. A self-taught scientist, he measured, mapped, and photographed as he went. He also promoted caving as a hobby in his vivid lectures and reports. After an 1889 visit to a French cave called Rabanel, he likened one chamber to a church’s nave with “stalactites that hang like crystal tears.” To probe these cracks in the Earth, Martel relied on a rope rigged with pulleys, a winch, and a collapsible canvas boat (for subterranean rivers). By the 1950s most cavers were using cumbersome ladders made of steel cables. But Bill Cuddington, caving in the eastern U.S., worked out a…

Every month this page features our staff picks of National Geographic Society products and events. For more go to nglive.org. LECTURE Joel sartore Photographer Joel Sartore’s work for the Geographic has brought him face-to-face with animals of all stripes, like this veiled chameleon. Now he’s on a quest to photograph every endangered species on earth. For his speaking dates in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand visit nglive.org. PHOTOS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON INSTAGRAM Follow National Geographic magazine’s official Instagram feed and see what our globe-trekking photographers are up to. Daily updates include dispatches from the field and unpublished images. Search for the user name @natgeo. TRIPS ADVENTURE TRAVEL our adventure trips are designed for travelers eager to explore off the beaten path—on foot or on horseback, by kayak or even by…

De-Extinction Resurrecting extinct species just to see whether it can be done is not only impractical and wasteful but also borderline immoral. Humans continue to reduce the numbers of tigers, elephants, whales—you name it—through poaching and habitat destruction and take more and more of the planet for ourselves and leave less and less for other animals. To bring a species back only to force it to live in a zoo or research laboratory, or to release it to struggle for survival in an environment that can’t support it, is cruel and unnecessary but consistent with our human-centric view of the world. ALLISON MYERS Freeville, New York “What intrigues me is just that it’s really cool.” I wonder how many scientists on the Manhattan Project had similar sentiments. Just saying. RANDALL…

What happened when Florida declared open season on pythons? FLORIDA HAS DISCOVERED something the parents of teenage boys have known for in January the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission launched a Burmese python hunting tournament, the 2013 python Challenge, awarding cash prizes to the person who brought in the most dead pythons and the largest. Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states registered in two classes: licensed snake hunter and amateur. Contestants were advised to kill the snakes using a bolt gun, a firearm, or a machete. The contest’s goal, according to Frank Mazzotti, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida, was to contain the snakes, gain insight into their lives, and bring attention to the invasive species issue. Years: Snakes escape. For decades wholesalers in Florida have…

Most U.S. pipelines were designed to transport oil. What they weren’t meant to carry is bitumen, a product of tar sands, like those in Canada, that can also be turned into energy. Bitumen is substantially thicker, so to make it flow through pipes, engineers dilute it with chemicals. The resulting mixtures, called dilbit, are also cheaper than other crudes. Yet cleaning up when it spills is difficult. A leak in Michigan in 2010 of about 845,000 gallons proved more complex than oil to remove. “As the added chemicals evaporate, the thicker material stays put,” says geochemist Chris Reddy. Dilbit formulas vary, complicating assessments of spills’ effects on health. In pursuit of North American–based energy sources, producers say that precautionary cleanup plans can help minimize the impact of accidents.…

Asian carp have been tenacious in U.S. waters. Brought to America in the 1970s to help clean sewage water, several hundred carp have spawned millions. Adept at moving between rivers during floods, escaped carp are now on the verge of spreading into all five great lakes. Biologists worry that the all-plankton diet of species like bighead and silver carp will disrupt the food chain and collapse fragile ecosystems. The U.S. fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. geological Survey, among other agencies, are implementing a plan to manage the fish’s spread. Engineers have set up electrical barriers to limit access between rivers and the great lakes. New laws prevent fish transport across state borders. Several companies are even working on carp-specific poisons. There is some good news: carp in several rivers…

Lions are complicated creatures, magnificent at a distance yet fearsomely inconvenient to the rural peoples whose fate is to live among them. They are lords of the wild savanna but inimical to pastoralism and incompatible with farming. So it’s no wonder their fortunes have trended downward for as long as human civilization has been trending up. There’s evidence across at least three continents of the lions’ glory days and their decline. Chauvet Cave, in southern France, filled with vivid Paleolithic paintings of wildlife, shows us that lions inhabited Europe along with humans 30 millennia ago; the Book of Daniel suggests that lions lurked at the outskirts of Babylon in the sixth century B.C.; and there are reports of lions surviving in Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran until well into the…

On the edge of a small cornfield near the ruined Maya city of Chichén Itzá, in the sparse shade of a tropical tree, a voice ricochets wildly up the mouth of a well. “¡Lo vi! ¡Lo vi!” The shout proclaims. “I saw it, I saw it!” “¡Sí, es verdad! Yes, it’s true!” Leaning over the mouth of the well, underwater archaeologist Guillermo de Anda needs to make sure that this is what he has been longing to hear for so many months. “What is true, Arturo?” And his fellow archaeologist Arturo Montero, floating down at the bottom of the well, yells up again, “Te zenith light! It really works! Get down here!” Ten he whoops ecstatically. What de Anda has been waiting anxiously for his friend Montero to determine is…

SUNITA WILLIAMS assumed as a kid that The Jetsons and Star Trek signaled a future where space travel would be routine. She never dreamed she’d be one of the pioneers. The former Navy pilot, age 47, has spent 322 days in space and 50 hours walking in space—the most spacewalking of any female astronaut. She first met astronauts two decades ago during test pilot school—and discovered that with her flying experience, she could join them. Now, as a member of the astronaut corps, she draws upon her Navy background. Walking in space, she says, is like flying a helicopter with a battle group: You focus on your job but always know where the other guy is. What’s the most impressive thing about a space walk? The view—being way, way high…

Eyes on the Pride Nighttime was the right time for veteran National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols to take pictures of lions. The cats sleep most of the day, preserving energy for hunts after dark. To capture a pride’s pursuit of prey—or the sharing of bounty (below)—he used infrared light that is not disruptive to lions and produces black-and-white images. For close-ups, he affixed a camera to a small robot. “We never wanted to use equipment that would startle them or deny them a meal,” Nichols says. “We tried to treat them with honor.” —Daniel Stone BEHIND THE LENS You really did get up close and personal with the lions. MN: We did. We had incredible intimacy. Our car was closer than close, just a few feet away. We saw cubs…

Storm Tossed I was making a census of Pacific butterflies and was on the lookout for new species on the remote Lusancay Islands. there were five of us on a 23-foot dinghy I hired to move between islands— an operator, his two assistants, me, and a local Kawa chief who wanted a lift—when we were hit by a squall. Then the engine stopped. The storm was raging, and we started taking on water. We bailed out using the only thing at hand: coconut husk halves. A dinghy is hard to maneuver. It tends to turn broadside to the waves, making it dangerously unstable. We had only two oars, and the assistants were rowing furiously to keep the bow into the wind, but as soon as they stopped, the dinghy would…

Ever since the earliest recorded paintings were made on cave walls in northern Spain, humans have used visuals to communicate. Some of these message systems are just lists or calendars. Are any of them truly universal languages—with sentences— or are they just collections of universally understood icons? A language needs grammar. How can an organized arrangement of pictures be precise and subtle enough to convey metaphor? What do you “read” here: Does it say, “At night, a person goes home to bed and dreams of snakes”? Or could it be, “after cutting his (or her) nails, a person goes into a house but can’t get to sleep because the thought of snakes keeps him (or her) awake”? One problem (or one pleasure!) with pictures is that we read into them…

Magpies and pigeons are among the only known birds that can recognize themselves in a mirror. Slave-making ants on the U.S. east coast have a singular purpose: to sack neighboring ants’ nests and seize the pupae to serve as their drudges. Instinct outweighs lineage, so the enslaved ants start working where they hatch, foraging food and caring for the captors’ new brood and queen. They even feed the slave-makers— which are such specialized raiders that they can’t feed themselves. The captive ants are prone to periodic uprisings though, decapitating their imprisoners and tossing their eggs out of the nest to die of neglect. “In theory it only takes one rebellious ant to do the job,” says evolutionary biologist Tobias Pamminger. “Killing young is not hard.” Still, the vicious cycle seems…

Tall goldenrods aren’t sticking to what’s expected of plants: The gallflies that perch on their leaves (left) are the ones being smelled. Entomologists say it’s part of the larger arms race between plants and insects. In this case goldenrods are able to sniff out when a male fly—likely emitting mating messages—is around and produce toxins to deter egg laying. “Plants are winning mostly,” says Penn State’s Mark Mescher. “Insects are always trying to catch up.”…

Africa’s lions—formerly widespread across the continent, although their numbers in earlier eras are unknowable— have declined severely in both distribution and abundance. Lions live in 67 distinct areas—only 10 of them large and secure enough to be called strongholds. Most areas face an uncertain future, with unstable political situations, no protected status, or too few lions. The map shows a mosaic of opportunities, fading hopes, and lion habitat emptied of lions—all surrounded by people and their impact on the landscape. Lion conservationists differ as to how best to proceed.…

The pyramid at Chichén Itzá was planned with precision. Experts believe it is aligned to the March and September equinoxes, when the sun’s passage makes a serpent-like shadow slither down its side. Guillermo de Anda recently discovered that the structure also stands in the middle of four cenotes (where the white lines cross, right), probably symbolizing the sacred mountain at the center of the Maya universe. It was also oriented to the moments when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky (far right), further connecting it to the cycles of the heavens.…

THE ROYALTY OF INDIA—HINDU AND MUSLIM—UNDERSTOOD LONG ago that power was best wielded from the back of an elephant. Kings appeared before their dazzled subjects on elephants whose ivory tusks glittered with gold and silver and whose bodies shimmered in silk and velvet. “An elephant mounted by a king is radiant; a king mounted on an elephant is resplendent,” proclaims one historical manuscript. Tourists are now king, and so at the Elephant Festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan, instead of pomp there are elephant polo, elephant tug-of-war, and an elephant beauty contest. The participants in the festival are working animals, which spend most days ferrying tourists up to the Amber Palace, a historic site above the city that attracts visitors from all over the world. For the annual festival the elephants are…

Glove Story A metal-mesh glove “like a crusader’s gauntlet” protected photographer Luis Marden’s hand while he changed flashbulbs during a shoot in Mexico’s Yucatán. “Up From the Well of time,” the longtime Geographic staffer’s story on the region’s Dzibilchaltún cenote, appeared in the January 1959 issue of the magazine. Marden learned the hard way that such an accessory was necessary when working in the deep. (His dives at Dzibilchaltún reached depths of 144 feet.) According to notes that accompany the photo: “once while Marden was diving in the Mediterranean, a flashbulb imploded under water pressure and nearly cost him his thumb.”…