Ecology & Zoology

Sea Cucumbers Are Ecologically Critical But Asian Food Market Demand Puts Them At Risk

Tiger blood, rhino horns, any number of natural supplements, including from endangered species, are used in the alternative medicine spheres- and that market is dominated by Asia. Sea cucumbers are used in Chinese folk medicine but are also a luxury food p ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2022 - 3:52pm

Some Parts Of Borneo Have Landscape Similar To The Pliocene Epoch, 5.3 Million Years Ago

Conservation in modern times is a misused term that trial lawyers often invoke to win lawsuits against companies before progress can commence but Brunei on the island of Borneo, which is about the size of the state of Delaware, has a great reason for all c ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Apr 30 2022 - 10:33pm

Mariculture: How The Ocean Can Be Sustainably Cultivated To Provide Food For Developing Countries

One of the odder disconnects in western culture is people who claim to care about the environment but will only eat fish that is caught in unsustainable ways- in the wild. I suppose I get the appeal of knowing laborers risked their lives for your food and ...

Article - Hank Campbell - May 3 2022 - 12:22pm

Orconectes Sheltae: Crayfish Thought Extinct Didn't Get The Memo

The general public sees terms like 'endangered', 'rare', and even 'extinct' used so interchangeably it's easy to believe there is little science involved. There isn't. While most of the science community has used a p ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 1 2022 - 10:13am

A Species ‘Stock Market’ To Put A Price Tag On Biodiversity

The value of bees in pollination is overstated, outside the on-demand almond grower market the pollination done by bees would be taken up by 400,000 other species if bees disappeared tomorrow, but that doesn't mean they are not an important part of th ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jun 20 2022 - 10:15am

An Extinction In Progress

In over 15 years of blogging, in this and previous sites, I have mostly stayed away from the topic of climate change, the environmental catastrophe we are creating with our "perennial growth" myths and our disdain of our planet and the other spec ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Aug 24 2022 - 10:13am

Pulses, And Why Whales Don't Get Sick Swimming

Land mammals such as horses experience ‘pulses’ in their blood when galloping, where blood pressures inside the body go up and down on every stride. In all mammals, average blood pressure is higher in arteries, or the blood exiting the heart, than in veins ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 26 2022 - 6:08pm

Like Plants? Thank Mass Extinctions

One of the largest mass extinctions ever is bad. Six marine extinctions is even worse. That all happened in one period now known as The Devonian Period, 419 to 358 million years ago. Yet that is also when the world got the trees and complex land plants sim ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 12 2022 - 7:32am

Chocolate: When Money Did Grow On Trees

Advent calendars with hidden chocolatey treats, huge tins of Quality Street and steaming cups of hot chocolate festooned with whipped cream and marshmallows are all much-loved wintry staples at Christmastime. But how many of us stop to think about where c ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 24 2022 - 8:02am

Muskie: You Don't Need 10,000 Casts, You Need Science And Then 10,000 Casts

If you fish you know that catching a muskie (muskellunge), the “fish of 10,000 casts”, is like hitting a hole-in-one in golf. You will talk about it a lot. But it doesn't need 10,000 casts because that would mean having one strike is random. Instead, ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2023 - 5:30pm