Innholdsfortegnelse for DECEMBER 2016 i National Geographic Magazine

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Take “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” multiply it by several hundred, and you’ve got what’s billed as the World’s Largest Santa Convention, held this past July in Branson, Missouri. At the five-day trade show, Kris Kringle impersonators attended workshops on makeup and marketing, beard care and Santa ethics. More than 550 Santas answered a survey about playing the jolly old elf. Here are some of the results. Average age: 63.5 years, with a youngest Santa of 29 and a senior Santa of 94. Average weight: 252 pounds, ranging from lightest Santa (130) to heaviest (450). Is that “bowl full of jelly” belly real? 78% said yes. Is that your real beard? 93% said yes. Who has pulled your beard to be sure it’s real? 67% said mostly children; 25%…

‘ Sometimes I feel like I’ve chosen the most difficult thing in the world to study,’ Cheryl Knott tells me as we sit beneath the rain forest canopy at her orangutan research station in western Borneo. The high-pitched, dentaldrill sound of cicadas fills the air, at times forcing us to pause our conversation. As we talk, Knott’s associates are at work in the surrounding forest of Indonesia’s Gunung Palung National Park with GPS units and iPads, following orangutans in their daily wanderings, recording what they’re doing, what they’re eating, and how they’re interacting with others of their species. Unlike gorillas and chimpanzees—fellow great apes that live in groups and can be followed and observed relatively easily—orangutans live mostly solitary lives. They spend nearly all their time in the treetops, they…

Vladimir Putin is widely viewed at home as the man who tamed a tumultuous post-Soviet Russia and the first leader in decades willing to stand up to the West. His strong personality, combined with near-total control over the Russian media, has helped him keep his standing, especially among the young. If reelected in 2018, he’ll be Russia’s second longest serving leader, trailing only Joseph Stalin’s 30-year reign. Standard of Living Makes Gains Putin benefited from tough economic reforms adopted by Boris Yeltsin and his predecessor, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as from increased oil revenue as prices rose beginning in 2003. Gross domestic product (GDP) per person has grown 70 percent under Putin, compared with 17 percent in the European Union. Stability Returns to the Job Market Soviet leaders claimed that…

What happens if there are no more glaciers in Glacier National Park? In 2016 we have focusedin the magazine and digital platforms on parks in the United States and worldwide. We did so to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service—and because parks are a fascinating lens through which to explore changes and challenges in our planet’s environment, wildlife, and climate. Though “protected,” parks clearly are not immune from the man-made and natural forces that are altering their landscapes and the habitats of the animals that live within their borders. Take glaciers. In 1850 there were about 150 massive ones in what is now Glacier National Park (above), near the Canadian border in Montana. Today just 25 remain, and scientists believe even the largest of them will…

The pilgrim wasn’t sure he’d make it to the Chapel of Grace. It was agony to walk at all, let alone endure the 70 miles that thousands of believers trek each year to behold an enshrined wood statue: the Black Madonna of Altötting. Richard Mödl had recently broken his heel, but in 2003 he was determined to complete his first pilgrimage from Regensburg to Altötting, Germany. He figured if the pain got too bad he could always hitch a ride. But he had a deep faith in the Virgin Mary’s ability to deliver him. So he walked. And walked. “When you are on your way to Altötting, you almost don’t feel the pain,” he says. Today, at 74, Mödl has a warm smile and a wiry frame that looks as…

THIRST QUENCHING Orangutans sometimes drink by dipping a hand into water and then dripping it into their mouths, but they get most hydration from food. Variation Some squeeze wet leaves like a sponge Variation Some bite the bottom of a pitcher plant and suck out rainwater. Variation Some use leafy twigs to get water from very deep tree holes. LEAF WIPING Orangutans have been observed wiping their chins, eyes, and bodies with leaves. Sometimes this is to remove sticky residue left by food, but often the purpose is unclear. TERMITE FEEDING Orangutans eat termites, from nests on the ground or in the forest canopy, by tapping the insects into their hands or sucking them out. UMBRELLA MAKING Orangutans make umbrellas to shelter from the rain, holding leaves over their heads…

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA Glacial retreat Sunrise lights up the Garden Wall, a spine of rock shaped by Ice Age glaciers. Grinnell Glacier once filled the basin below the wall, but like most glaciers in a warming world, it’s shrinking: Since 1850 it has lost more than 75 percent of its surface area. OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON Warming ocean Surrounded by giant green anemones, a lone ocher sea star feeds on mussels and barnacles. Since 2013 sea stars along the Pacific coast have been dying in unprecedented numbers. Scientists suspect that warmer seas are weakening the species’ resistance to disease. SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA Heat, drought High in the Sierra Nevada, floodlit giant sequoias tower into the night sky. They can live 3,000 years, but California’s historic drought has tested…

Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo holds the distinction of being South America’s largest lake by area, but the skies above it also are record setting. There, lightning flashes most nights of the year, new research shows—and perhaps no other place on Earth experiences more lightning annually. The phenomenon is tied to topography, says University of São Paulo meteorology professor Rachel Albrecht, who analyzed high-resolution satellite data to determine where lightning flashes most frequently. Lake Maracaibo sits in a valley at the northern end of the Andes and connects to the Gulf of Venezuela. All those mountain winds converging with warm sea breezes, plus high humidity, add up to near-constant nocturnal thunderstorms. Of the 500 lightning “hot spots” that the data revealed, more than half are situated in Africa, and of the…

Expectations and conditioning from past experiences continue to shape how we feel pain. For some, a strong belief that a treatment will heal an ailment can prompt the brain to tap into its own pharmacy, flooding the nervous system with medicating neurotransmitters and hormones. This is the placebo effect. Its inverse, the nocebo effect, can be activated if a patient anticipates a negative experience; this expectation can cause pain to increase. PAIN From the body to the brain A painful sensation travels from the site of injury in the body through the peripheral nervous system and along the spinal cord to reach the brain. RELIEF From the brain to the body Pharmaceutical treatments trigger the brain to release hormones and neurotransmitters into the central nervous system, modulating the pain signal.…

He doesn’t know where to take me when I meet him at the hotel by the train station, so we just start to walk down the dusty summer streets of Nizhniy Tagil, a sputtering industrial city on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains. His name is Sasha Makarevich, a 24-year-old cement worker, a blond ponytail falling down his back, a Confederate flag stitched onto his cutoff denim vest. “I thought it just meant independence,” he explains when I ask about it. We walk past a small, one-story cube of a building covered with images of red Soviet stars and the orange-and-black St. George’s ribbon that holds imperial, Soviet, and Russian military medals. “We could go in here,” Sasha shrugs. “But it’s full of people who survived the Nineties.” Sasha…

On a hilltop in northeastern Tanzania, high up in the Usambara Mountains, memories are tangible things. Modernist buildings litter the lush jungle. European trees and medicinal plants, affixed with Latin labels, mingle with local species. Scientific instruments and a fully stocked library are poised for use. This is what’s left of the Amani Hill Research Station—a past vision of the future, suspended in time. It’s also what brought Siberian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva to East Africa two years ago. Her aim? To document the nostalgia that lingers here and create images that “bring back the atmosphere of this dark, magical place.” Arbugaeva worked closely with Wenzel Geissler, an anthropologist at the University of Oslo. For the past several years, he and his team—an international consortium of scientists, historians, and artists—have…