American robins and other wild creatures have to get creative if they want to quench a winter thirst (Photo: Ingrid Taylar, Creative Commons license). Which season comes to mind when you read these words? parched; desiccated; shriveled; arid; sere; If you’re a wild thing, the answer may well be winter. Sure, the heat of summer […]
Author: Kieran Lindsey
Kieran Lindsey loves looking for wild things in all the wrong places... so she became an urban biologist. Her quest to entice others to share this passion led to flirtations with (gasp!) the media—as a columnist for the Houston Chronicle; as host of KUNM-FM’s Wild Things; as producer of an Emmy® winning wildlife documentary; and at her Next-Door Nature blog. Kieran has way too much fun as official Animal-Vehicle Biologist for NPR's Car Talk, and she isn’t ashamed to admit it.
Long winter’s nap
Grab forty winks. Saw logs. For a species that’s habitually short on shut-eye, we humans sure have come up with myriad ways to talk about it. We also spend a lot of time and money studying sleep, or the lack thereof. Yet, in spite of decades of inquiry, researchers still don’t have a good fix […]
Runner-up
I don’t know what American grade school kids are being taught these days – I left Oakville Elementary a couple of decades ago (Okay, fine—several decades ago) and since I haven’t had kids of my own I don’t have access to 21st century homework assignments. But I’ll go out on a limb here and bet […]
Brewhaha
During late October, Shakespeare’s recipe for chaos and conflict comes to mind with the sudden appearance on our very doorsteps of all manner of terrifying witches, ghosts and goblins… and political advertising. The former can be bought off easily enough with bite-sized Butterfingers (a sticky booby trap that guarantees revenge for the extortion in the […]
The long-promised Volvo Animal Avoidance System interview…
Finally! (and I didn’t even have to learn Swedish!) If you’d like to know more about what’s ahead in collision prevention technology—potentially a real life-saver for both human and non-human animals—navigate on over to the Car Talk website and check out my guest blog post.
Size matters
A scientists’ work is never done. That’s because there’s always another layer to peel away, another stone to turn, another angle from which to view the situation. Case in point—nearly 200 years ago, Charles Darwin made the connection between the size and shape of a finch’s beak and the availability of the seeds they eat; […]
Damsels and dragons… but no prince
She (Or maybe he. This is a modern fairly tale.) explored the lovely little pond from which s/he had recently emerged after having spent most of life underwater as a nymph. Who would have guessed during that awkward adolescence, when growth spurts had him/her (speaking of awkward… let’s just stick with “her” from here on […]
Social network
Mark Zuckerberg would not be one of 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world without the help of wasps. I mean the six-legged kind (whether or not two-legged WASPs should get any of the credit is something for attorneys to discuss and will not be addressed here). It’s a lengthy timeline but easy […]