Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i National Geographic Magazine - UK

WE EXPERIENCE THE WORLD through our senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Among the five, the sense of touch is singularly important, a growing body of research confirms. As contributing writer Cynthia Gorney explains in this month’s cover story, “Human beings require the physical presence of others, the comforting touch of others, in order to stay healthy.” At the School for Creativity in Andria, Italy, students learn that lesson at an early age. “The culture of touch in that school is daily,” says longtime National Geographic photographer Lynn Johnson. “Moment by moment. It’s very physical. They’re always hugging and kissing.” In the photo above, the children play a game in which a blindfolded student tries to recognize a classmate just by touch. Invariably they got it right, Johnson says.…

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SCIENCE AND INNOVATION Call it a net win for marine life Attaching green-colored LEDs to fishing nets called gill nets greatly reduces the amount of marine life caught in them by accident, recent tests showed. Illuminated nets need less repairing because sea turtles, sharks, and other species can see and avoid them. The lights reduce bycatch deaths and don’t hurt hauls of targeted fish. —HW At up to 10 feet in diameter, the floating leaves of giant water lilies (genus Victoria) are the largest on Earth. They are found in South American waterways, where they thrive and crowd out other plants. Some are sturdy enough to support the weight of a small child—a concept that a new paper in Science Advances illustrates literally,…

ONE AFTERNOON in September 2018, six years after the work accident that destroyed his left forearm and hand in an industrial conveyor belt, a North Carolina man named Brandon Prestwood stood in front of his wife with an expression on his face that was so complicated, so suffused with nervous anticipation, that he looked torn between laughter and tears. In the little group gathered around the Prestwoods, someone held up a cell phone to record the curious tableau: the pretty woman with long hair and glasses, the bearded guy with a white elbow-to-fingertips prosthetic, and the wiring running from a tabletop electrical device up under the guy’s shirt and into his shoulder. Right through the skin, that is, so that Prestwood—his body, not his prosthetic—was, for the moment, literally plugged…

IN JUST 20 YEARS, THE IBERIAN LYNX HAS GONE FROM THE WORLD’S MOST ENDANGERED FELINE TO THE GREATEST TRIUMPH IN CAT CONSERVATION. In 2002 fewer than a hundred of these bobtailed, golden-eyed predators slunk through the Mediterranean scrublands of the Iberian Peninsula. Since then, the population has grown tenfold, with at least 1,100 animals scattered across Spain and Portugal. The dramatic turnaround is the result of the all-out effort to breed the cats in captivity, the lynx’s status as a natural treasure, and the animal’s innate scrappiness, which has surprised even conservationists. When the European Commission’s Life program first brought together more than 20 organizations in 2002 to rescue the lynx, the species had all but disappeared. Widespread hunting and a virus had wiped out most of the peninsula’s European…

Human vertebrae threaded on sticks may have been Indigenous people’s attempts to reconstruct ancestors’ bodies after graves were looted during Spanish rule in Peru some 500 years ago. Archaeologist Jacob Bongers studied 192 sets of the spine bones; he says dating shows they were first buried in the early 1500s and threaded on sticks about 40 years later. Descendants likely were “picking up the pieces of their dead and trying to put them back together” to restore the integrity of burials or bodies, he says.…

IT’S HIGH TIDE on the Delaware Bay, and Atlantic horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) are clambering ashore to mate. For this shield-shaped arthropod, assignations are typically a group affair: one female, one male, and a lot of male hangers-on. The trysts sometimes begin underwater. A male angling for fatherhood uses his boxing glove–like front legs to clasp onto a female’s abdomen and hitch a ride directly behind her through the surf. So situated, he stands ready to contribute sperm the moment she begins laying her eggs on the sand. However, “there’s a lot more competition on the beach,” says Jordan Zimmerman, a horseshoe crab biologist at Delaware’s natural resources agency. For reasons still unknown to science, some females are so appealing that, even if they’re already otherwise engaged, more males seek…

Today’s most advanced experimental prosthetics are designed not only to move with precision but also to feel. This robotic arm, created by researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, is surgically attached to bone and interacts with nerves in the arm to relay touch to the brain. THE BODY’S NATURAL SYSTEM Muscles receive signals from the brain to interact with the physical world. In response, sensors in human skin called mechanoreceptors, which detect touch, pressure, vibration, and stretching of the skin, send information back to the brain via the main nerves of the arm. NERVES The median nerve links to the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger. The radial nerve stimulates the triceps, back of the hand and thumb, and back of the middle and ring fingers. The ulnar nerve connects…

THE MIDDLE FORK of the Flathead River is born in the high, rocky country of western Montana, near the roof ridge of North America. For dozens of miles it rolls through green wilderness, taking in the snowmelt from Muskrat Pass and Slippery Bill Mountain and a half dozen creeks as it grows into one of the beloved waterways of the American West. On a warming midsummer morning, the waters curled like a cat around the shins of a short woman wearing polarized sunglasses and a trucker’s hat pincushioned with fishing flies. Hilary Hutcheson is a fly-fishing guide and climate activist who speaks to audiences across the nation. Her summer fishing season in western Montana is brief, which means frenetic, and by late July her voice, lightly scuffed at the best…

BY THE NUMBERS 26,545 HEIGHT OF ANNAPURNA I, IN FEET 13,550 ALTITUDE AT BASE CAMP, IN FEET 1977 YEAR THE ANNAPURNA REGION OPENED TO FOREIGN TREKKERS COMPARED WITH THE MORE well-known trek to Everest’s Base Camp, the hike to Annapurna’s staging area offers lower elevations and fewer fellow trekkers. And unlike the popular Annapurna Circuit, it allows hikers to head deep into the Annapurna range, rather than going around its perimeter. RETURN TO TOURISM With some of the world’s tallest summits, Nepal is a top trekking destination. A devastating 2015 earthquake and the pandemic have kept travelers away for the past few years, but now adventurers are coming back. “It feels intimate because the mountains feel really close,” says photographer Emily Polar about the Annapurna Base Camp trek, which provides…

ON A CLOUDLESS SPRING DAY in southern Mexico, I follow four cavers over a hill studded with pine trees, down 49 dirt steps, and across a grassy field. We approach a towering rock face on the side of a mountain so enormous that it’s difficult to take in all at once. But what drew me here, along with 69 world-class cavers from nine countries, lies at its base. Beyond a gash that cuts low across the rock face is Sistema Cheve—a cave with the potential to be the deepest on Earth. As the geologic cathedral comes into full view, I hear a quiet expletive escape Corey Hackley, the caver just ahead of me. This is his fifth year exploring Cheve, and its grandeur still fills him with awe. “The scale…

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer David Doubilet since 2012. Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes document both the beauty and devastation in our oceans. I AM CROSSING A DESERT, BUT NOT ONE MADE OF SAND. I AM SWIMMING THROUGH A WASTELAND OF RUBBLE, THE PULVERIZED REMAINS OF A CORAL REEF. ITS BARRENNESS STARTLES ME. ELSEWHERE IN THE PHILIPPINES I have been dazzled by jewel boxes of coral splendor. This region of the Indo-Pacific, known as the Coral Triangle, is the planet’s richest trove of marine diversity. More than 500 species of coral are found here—three-quarters of all those known. The reefs they have built would cover an area the size of Ireland. The creatures that live in these submarine cities are beyond counting.…

FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO A Rome-based photo-journalist focused on the stories of people and places WHERE Outside Itatira, in the Brazilian state of Ceará WHAT Canon EOS 5D Mark II with a 35mm lens For centuries, donkeys helped develop northeast Brazil, hauling water, crops, and building materials. Urbanization led to out-of-work donkeys, thousands of which were slaughtered and their hides sent to China, where they’re used in traditional medicine. In February a federal regional court granted the donkeys a stay of execution. While covering this long-simmering story in 2015, Cohen heard about Boneco, above, whose inventive owner repurposed him as a beekeeper’s assistant, complete with custom-made uniform. National Geographic is the most popular brand on Instagram, with more than 287 million followers. This page showcases images from our accounts: @natgeo,…