Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i National Geographic Magazine

‘IF YOU TAKE CARE OF THE BIRDS, YOU TAKE CARE OF MOST OF THE BIG PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD.’ That’s what Thomas Lovejoy says, and he should know. The famed biologist and conservationist, a National Geographic–funded scientist, helped introduce the term “biological diversity” to the world. And he long predicted that by early in the 21st century, the Earth would start losing a dramatic number of species—a prediction, unfortunately, that is turning out to be spot-on. We were taken with Lovejoy’s quote about birds and decided to use it as a launchpad for what we’re calling the Year of the Bird. In this 12-month multiplatform exploration—with our partners from the National Audubon Society, BirdLife International, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology—we’ll examine how our changing environment is leading to dramatic…

The caracaras of Guadalupe only became valuable once they’d nearly vanished. Abundant on the Mexican island in 1876, the raptors were systematically shot and poisoned as pests. By the late 1800s the endemic birds of prey had become extremely rare—and of interest to collectors. People started trapping them, hoping to sell the live birds to the highest bidder. They went extinct anyway—which makes them an appropriately ironic subject for Laurel Roth Hope. Years ago Hope, a self-taught artist who once worked as a park ranger, found herself observing urban pigeons. “I started thinking about the way we ascribe value to things that are rare and denigrate things that are common, and how that affects the way we see wildlife,” she says. “I wanted to put the two together.” Hope began…

Last January on Unalaska Island, Suzi Golodoff poured herself a hot cup of coffee, pulled on her boots, and stepped outside. She was immediately assaulted. “I’m pretty sure they were watching me leave the house, saw I had something in my mug, and waited,” she said. “I could have lost a finger.” But she didn’t. She was one of the lucky ones. Her assailants were bald eagles, Haliaeetus leucocephalus—or Dutch Harbor pigeons, as they’re known around this fishing port in the Aleutian chain on the edge of the Bering Sea. Especially during fishing season, hundreds of eagles come to scavenge and nest in the area, which is home to about 4,400 human residents. The birds make their presence known from atop telephone poles and stoplights. They accost people who wander…

Birds lay eggs of surprising variety, and scientists have long wondered why. Could it be that certain shapes protect eggs from shattering? Or perhaps allow them to fit snugly in a nest? Or was Aristotle correct when he asserted that long, pointy eggs contained females while rounder eggs held males? (He wasn’t.) To crack the mystery about egg shapes, Princeton University evolutionary biologist Mary Caswell Stoddard and her colleagues examined almost 50,000 eggs from more than 1,400 species. They classified the eggs based on their asymmetry and ellipticity, discovering that the more pointy or oval shaped an egg, the more likely it came from a strong flier. “We were shocked to see that one of the best explanations for egg-shape variation was flight ability,” says Stoddard. Common murres, for instance,…

Secretary bird Sagittarius serpentarius With its outlandishly long legs and fierce demeanor, the secretary bird of the African savanna looks like a cross between a crane and an eagle. Its hooked beak is all raptor. White-headed duck Oxyura leucocephala Endangered, the whiteheaded duck is native to Spain, North Africa, and Central Asia. The flat beaks of ducks typically have soft edges for sensing food in the water and comblike lamellae inside to sieve out insects, seeds, and other morsels. King penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus Perfect for spearing small fish and squid, a king penguin’s beak sports orange or yellow patches that reflect ultraviolet light we cannot see, but they can. Males and females share this trait and appear to judge prospective mates in part by the intensity of the UV light…

If birds left tracks in the sky, what would they look like? For years Barcelona-based photographer Xavi Bou has been fascinated by this question. Just as a sinuous impression appears when a snake slides across sand, he imagined, so must a pattern form in the wake of a flying bird. But of course birds in flight leave no trace—at least none visible to the naked eye. Bou, now 38, spent the past five years trying to capture the elusive contours drawn by birds in motion, or, as he says, “to make visible the invisible.” First he had to shed the role of mere observer. “Like a naturalist, I used to travel around the world looking at wildlife,” he says. He began exploring photographic techniques that would allow him to express…

We see evidence of the kill first: a shockingly broad spread of scarlet, probably the blood of a ringed seal, on snow-covered sea ice. Then the polar bear appears. She’s big, maybe 500 pounds, trailed by a single cub. They’ve just jumped into a lead—a long fissure of open water in the frozen sea. In seconds they’re out of the water again, running across the ice, spooked by the approach of our helicopter. Prolonged running can harm polar bears: Fat and fur insulate them so well they risk overheating. François Létourneau-Cloutier, our 33-year-old Québécois pilot, takes us higher, and the mother and cub slow to an amble. After following them for several minutes, Létourneau-Cloutier sets the helicopter gently onto the ice a few hundred feet away and cuts the engine.…

“I identify the victims of wildlife crime— if the victim is a bird.” That’s how forensic ornithologist Pepper Trail (above, at his Ashland, Oregon-based lab) summarizes his job. The position is so rare that he’s one of just two people in the United States to hold it. The work is inherently macabre. First Trail picks through the evidence— bagged bones and feathers, or even whole carcasses, that wildlife law enforcement agents send him from the field. Next he performs an analysis. Sometimes he recognizes the species right away; if he doesn’t, he conducts a prolonged examination that involves building a theory from details such as size and plumage pattern. Once Trail has identified the species, his job is usually done. His colleagues—scientists who, like Trail, are U.S. Fish and Wildlife…

Malayan peacock pheasant Polyplectron malacense Nearly half of a male Malayan peacock pheasant’s 20-inch average length is devoted to its tail, which it raises and spreads out in a splendid fan to impress females. Its range and numbers have declined dramatically as its lowland forest habitat has been cleared for cultivation. Birds were not the first to evolve head ornamentation—both dinosaurs and even more distant relatives, the pterosaurs, had them. But today’s birds display a remarkable variety of crowns and crests, used to attract mates and intimidate rivals. Left to right, from top: red-fan parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus), blue crowned pigeon (Goura cristata), Major Mitchell’s cockatoo (Cacatua leadbeateri), palm cockatoo (Probosciger aterrimus), and black crowned crane (Balearica pavonina). Vermilion cardinal Cardinalis phoeniceus Like its North American cousin, the vermilion cardinal of…

‘Run!’ María Magdalena Padilla’s brother yelled to her mother. “This time it’s for real. Get away right now!” María Magdalena, a 10-year-old known as Mayito, could see the black smoke coming from farther down the hill as the paramilitares, criminals with a right-wing ideological bent, advanced on the town of El Salado, setting fire to her neighbors’ houses as they approached. Mayito’s mother emptied all the corn out of a burlap bag so the chickens would have enough to eat, threw some clothing into it, and climbed on the back of the family donkey with Mayito, as her two older brothers walked alongside. For a full week they hid, with little water and almost no food, in the shacks that campesino families keep in their fields here. “I remember that…

ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION The Northern Hemisphere is warming faster than the planet as a whole—and the Arctic is warming nearly twice as fast. Temperature change (land and marine) compared to the 1961-1990 average ACCELERATING MELT As Arctic sea ice melts, the exposed ocean absorbs more sunlight, amplifying the warming of the air above and causing even faster melting. Summer sea ice extent (September) Millions of square miles (mi²) Transpolar Drift Stream The polar edge of this broad current pushes ice toward land, where it gets trapped between currents and compressed to form the Arctic’s thickest ice. Beaufort Gyre Sea ice in this clockwise current can circulate and thicken for years until it gets pulled into the Transpolar Drift Stream. Projected data Scientists estimate sea ice extent before the satellite era from ship and…

October 1, 2017 | Las Vegas, Nevada | 58 killed, 546 injured December 14, 2012 | Sandy Hook Elementary School | 27 killed, 2 injured June 12, 2016 | Pulse nightclub, Orlando, Florida | 49 killed, 53 injured June 7, 1998 | Huff Creek Road, Jasper, Texas | 1 killed From the kitchen window of her mobile home in Auburn, Illinois, Ashley Aldridge had a clear view of the railroad crossing about a hundred yards away. When the 19-year-old mother first saw the man in the wheelchair, she had just finished feeding lunch to her two children, ages one and three, and had moved on to washing dishes—one more in an endless string of chores. Looking up, Aldridge noticed that the wheelchair wasn’t moving. It was stuck between the tracks.…

Taiwan “Rubber Duck,” a 59-foot-tall inflatable sculpture created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, was on display for a month in Kaohsiung. The installation drew large crowds and inspired a tribute, performed by costumed young girls. Ronit Singh Bhullar Mumbai, India Bhullar had read that birds flocked near one of New Delhi’s Yamuna ghats, stairs that lead down to the river. One evening a man in a boat fed the birds, which brought them together in Bhullar’s frame. “The sun was about to set, so I was aware of the perfect color the sky would give me,” he says. Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.…

For the care and feeding of its offspring, the common cuckoo outsources. When she’s ready to lay an egg, a female Cuculus canorus swoops to the unattended nest of a smaller species. She then swallows one of the eggs that’s been laid there and lays one of her own—a behavior known as brood parasitism. Sometimes potential victims revolt. The parents that inhabit the nest may mob the cuckoo mom, preventing her from dropping off her egg; they may push out cuckoo eggs before they hatch, or they may even abandon the nest. But often the cuckoo mom gets away undetected, leaving her parental duties behind, and the nest’s owners return none the wiser. C. canorus is known to have passed its eggs on to more than 100 host species, according…

Superb lyrebird Menura novaehollandiae Australia’s superb lyrebird is a masterful mimic. To attract a mate, a male riffs on the calls of other birds in the forest while shaking its splendid tail feathers overhead. Captive birds have been recorded aping the sounds of chain saws, car alarms, and camera shutters. Kirtland’s warbler Setophaga kirtlandii Central Michigan’s rare Kirtland’s warbler depends on natural fires to promote the stands of young jack pines it needs for nesting. Males arrive first at their usual breeding grounds in spring and begin to sing, to establish territories and attract incoming females. Painted bunting Passerina ciris Looking as if it has splashed around for a while in a child’s watercolor box, the painted bunting is a fairly common songbird in Mexico and the southeastern United States.…

Cape vulture Gyps coprotheres Vultures are hardly the most lovable birds—they’re big and ugly, and they eat disgusting things in disgusting ways. But without them to clean up carrion, insect populations would soar—and diseases with them. This trio of Cape vultures is native to southern Africa.…

Decades of displacement The total number of internally displaced people in Colombia has swelled to more than seven million, one of the largest such crises in the world. For years they have crowded into cities and away from embattled rural areas. EXTERNAL FLIGHT In 2016 hundreds of thousands of Colombians were refugees in neighboring countries, mostly in Venezuela and Ecuador. Many are now returning. URBAN-RURAL DIVIDE Artificial light brightens roads, industry, and cities, where the state presence is strong. Elsewhere, instability and lawlessness can prevail. DEMINING CHALLENGES More than 11,400 people have been injured or killed by land mines since 1990. Uncleared minefields remain an obstacle to development and resettlement. CASH CROP Growing coca continues to be lucrative for farmers awaiting subsidies to switch to legal crops. The UN estimates…

On Fridays residents of the Khwaja Rawash apartment complex on the outskirts of Kabul climb to their rooftops to fly kites. But on one recent afternoon they stood watching a more ominous sight: white smoke curling skyward after Taliban mortar shells launched from the mountains to the north hit the airport nearby. Khwaja Rawash, in a neighborhood called Qasaba, opened in 2017. It’s home to some 9,000 tenants from an Afghan middle class that has been bolstered since 2001 by foreign aid and military contracts. For many residents the appeal is safety: With the departure of foreign troops, downtown Kabul is under growing threat from Taliban insurgents. These new apartments have running water and central heating, unlike the city’s ubiquitous slum dwellings with their polluting woodstoves. Outside in Qasaba, women…

The Empathy Circuit Highlighted areas have distinct roles in how the brain responds to others. ◼ Viscerally reacting to others’ physical pain ◼ Mirroring people’s actions and emotions ◼ Reading the eye expressions and movements of others ◼ Imagining thoughts of others (right side only) How the circuit is activated Biological Genetic variations enable some people to recognize facial expressions better or produce more of an enzyme related to lower aggressiveness. Psychological A nurturing childhood can potentially transform someone who is genetically predisposed to lack empathy into a social, nonviolent citizen. Social Watching a friend cry or hearing a dog whimper, for example, can evoke empathy and a desire to end what is perceived as shared suffering. THE AMYGDALA Extremely altruistic people have more neural activity in their enlarged amygdalas—…