National Geographic Magazine - UK August 2020

IT’S APPARENTLY humankind’s fate never to stop writing the history of pandemics. No matter how often they occur—and they do occur with great frequency—we collectively refuse to think about them until circumstances demand it. Then, when the immediate crisis passes, we put it out of our minds as quickly as possible. And so we again are unprepared when the next contagion—in this case, COVID-19—bursts upon us. Richard Conniff traces this alarming cycle in “How Pandemics Change Us,” this month’s cover story. It examines our long relationship with infectious diseases, from the hard lessons we’ve been forced to learn to the brave, and often difficult, characters who’ve risked their lives to save us. Smallpox taught us that we could prevent disease through inoculation and, as the 1700s ended, vaccination. By the…

STEPHEN WILKES IS a photographer, TED speaker, and creator of fine art. But at his core, he’s a New Yorker. Wilkes was born in the city, and most of his life has unfolded on its streets and avenues. This identity brought extra heartache in the spring when New York earned unenviable distinction as a global hot spot and the U.S. epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The “city that never sleeps” finally did—for weeks, and then, for months. As the city went on lockdown in late March, Wilkes asked for clearance to fly over the famously protected nerve center of American commerce and culture. Officials said yes, and Wilkes and his longtime friend, pilot Al Cerullo, took a helicopter high above the avenues and subway stops. They peered down at a…

MY FIRST NAME COMES from the children’s books about Thomas the Tank Engine, The Railway Series. My eldest brother had been reading the books, and Oliver the Western Engine was one of his favorites. My mother thought the name was beautiful, and so I was named after a train. The name also served a poetic purpose: I was born an identical twin, which placed me onto a set of parallel tracks with my brother, Ethan. If you’ve known twins, you’ve heard a version of this story before. We were dressed in matching outfits, our hair cut into identical shiny black bowls. We looked the same and were treated the same, always together. As we grew, Ethan and I were eager to establish separate identities. We made different friends, wore different…

A PICTURE OF THE EXTINCT, flightless bird that has inspired artists and tall tales for centuries is slowly coming into sharper relief. Modern scientific tools and newly discovered bones, in combination with historic sightings and previously studied specimens, are giving scientists fresh insights into the mysterious bird’s anatomy and life cycle on Mauritius, where it once thrived. A YEAR IN THE LIFE Recent discoveries help explain how the dodo—smarter and sleeker than once thought—had adapted to its cyclone-prone environment. Then in 1598, Europeans, rats, and pigs arrived in Mauritius and drove dodoes to extinction.…

PEPPERED MOTHS ARE MASTERS of camouflage. In the larval stage, they can change the color of their skin to blend into their settings—even without seeing those surroundings, a new study found. After raising more than 300 peppered moth larvae, U.K. researchers obscured the vision of some with black paint (which the larvae later shed, unharmed). The larvae were placed in boxes containing white, green, brown, or black sticks, and given time to adapt. When the researchers opened the boxes, they found that nearly all the caterpillars, with or without vision, had changed their body colors to match the sticks in their box. The researchers then moved the caterpillars into new boxes containing sticks of two different colors, and about 80 percent of the insects chose to rest on sticks that…

The process for making cement creates so much greenhouse gas that if it were a country, it’d be the third largest emitter on Earth. That statistic is from MIT, where scientists devised a process that would produce cement using electricity, rather than by burning fossil fuels. In a water electrolyzer (below), current to the electrodes creates hydrogen and oxygen gases, an acid, and a base. When limestone is added to the acid, it’s dissolved and decarbonated—loses its CO2—and then can be used to make a key cement ingredient.…