Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i National Geographic Magazine - UK

“As I was scouting over Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, I saw the most BEAUTIFUL PATTERNS in the water below. The perspective was challenging, but finally a herd of goats began walking up the river’s edge, and I knew I had subject for scale.”PAUL NICKLEN, photographer Lençóis means “bedsheets” in Portuguese, referring to the rippling sand dunes that dominate this Brazilian park. Named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2024, it’s famous for the lagoons that form during the rainy season.…

Homo sapiens are the only humans left on Earth today, but at one point we shared the planet with other species of ancestral humans, collectively known as hominins. As climates and ecological opportunities shifted, hominins migrated out of Africa, reconnecting and interbreeding with the descendants of their relatives who had made similar journeys thousands of years before. European influence Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, lived and moved in a broad range of environments, from Europe to Siberia. Evidence in Grotte Mandrin, a cave in the south of France, suggests they interbred with H. sapiens. African dispersal A Homo sapiens fossil was found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and dated to around 300,000 years ago, implying that early populations were scattered throughout Africa. Species origin Hominins originated in Africa, diversifying into several species occupying…

ADVANCED LABORATORIES Work in the research labs was conducted by civilians and military personnel alike, experts in fields such as geology, glaciology, and seismology. AN ICY MAIN STREET The primary access tun enough for large vehicles as the major artery for It was maintained by dedicated staff who cleared snow scraped walls to prevent from accumulating as ice. ARCTIC SUSTENANCE An abundance of cold helped with providing double rations. Hearty combated the extreme and the extra liquids they instructed to drink pre dehydration in the dry climate. SPACE-AGE WATER SUPPLY Developed by Camp Century engineer Raul Rodriguez, this well dropped a steam-heated element into the ice, creating a reservoir that provided the base with 10,000 gallons of water a day. Today NASA is exploring “Rodwells” for water extraction on Mars.…

WI LDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER Ingo Arndt discovered his first enormous ant mound as a child exploring the forest with his father near their home in Germany almost 50 years ago. They were bird-watching and came around a bend in a densely wooded area when there it was: a five-foot-tall mound, jutting upward like a large stalagmite. The mound was covered with a thick layer of spruce needles and throngs of tiny red ants. Arndt wanted to investigate more closely, but a very particular smell suggested he rethink that impulse. The air felt thick and pungent, stinging his nostrils like vinegar. “All my life,” he says, “I could remember the smell.” As an adult, Arndt has spent much of his career traveling to photograph animals like the pumas of Patagonia and kangaroos…

CULTURE “Through the picture we see the resourcefulness in Bangladesh, where livelihoods, traditions, and values are shaped by the unique landscape and challenges of the RURAL ENVIRONMENT.”SYED MAHABUBUL KADER, photographer Rice paddies can provide two sources of income. After the grain is harvested, the leftover straw can be used as cattle feed, fuel, and thatch. Here, workers near the village of Kazipur unload a large bundle to sell along the Jamuna River.…

Laurent Ballesta, p.56 The French diver, photographer, and marine biologist spent weeks living in a pressurized chamber that enabled him to withstand more time at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea for this month’s story about puzzling rings that have formed there. An Explorer since 2022, he’s drawn to both the wonder of the ocean and its “timeless mysteries.” Justin Jin, p.14 An Explorer since 2024, the Hong Kongborn photographer traveled to China’s Gansu Province to photograph the excavation of a newly discovered species of hominin in a sacred cave. Our cover story surveys human ancestors and the exciting developments that are offering a more complete picture of our evolution. Ingo Arndt, p.110 The German wildlife photographer captured rare images of red wood ants for a story on the hidden…

High on the frigid Tibetan Plateau during the late Pleistocene lived another species of human, the Denisovans. Fragments of bones and tools found in the Baishiya Karst Cave are clues to how this now extinct species survived. Traces of their DNA in humans today inform us they adapted to survive high altitudes and that they mixed and mingled with our ancestors, as in this scene depicting a Homo sapiens mother with a clan of Denisovans.…

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, ships full of workers sailed to islands off the coast of Peru to mine a precious resource: bird excrement, or guano, deposited by seabirds like cormorants, pelicans, and boobies. The chalky white material was sold as fertilizer to farmers around the world but at an environmental cost. As trade increased, more people disturbed the birds’ habitat, contributing to severe population declines on the order of tens of millions. The steep drop in numbers inspired photographer and National Geographic Explorer Thomas Peschak to resurrect “the ghosts of seabirds past into the modern-day landscape,” he says. In these archival photographs, he projects images onto now diminished areas of the islands to share a unique perspective of the seabird crisis. Guano Islands, Islets, and Capes National Reserve System…

THE ANCIENT ART of bonsai may look deceptively simple, but its practice requires care, contemplation, and consistency over long periods of time—especially if you’re growing an entire miniature forest, like the famous living artifact known as Goshin (pronounced go-SHEEN). This bonsai was started more than 70 years ago, when Japanese American bonsai artist John Naka cut the top off a mature juniper tree and planted it in a pot. Over the next two decades, he surrounded it with 10 more trees, one to honor each of his grandchildren. He named this miniature forest Goshin, which means “protector of the spirit” in Japanese. Today Goshin is on display at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, part of the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., with the important distinction of being one of…

New adults emerge from cocoons relocated to the nest’s warmest layer. Their exoskeletons harden and gain color within a few ays. In separate chambers in the cooler core of the nest, hundreds of queens lay eggs, with support from workers. Larvae hatched from eggs are moved closer to the warmer exterior; they seal themselves in cocoons to grow into pupae. Nurse ants carry eggs to a warmer zone, where they lick them to keep them from drying out. Worker ants collect their main energy source, a sweet substance called honeydew that’s excreted by aphids. Powerful, wide-opening jaws help workers in charge of nest maintenance haul items 10 times their weight. Protein-rich prey, such as caterpillars, spiders, and worms, are carried to the nest and turned into pulp to feed larvae…

“I decided to show these flies in a clean place to elevate the dialogue on using insects as SUSTAINABLE FOOD. Only by showing a way forward can we inspire people to abandon a bleak worldview and fight for a better one.”MAURIZIO DI PIETRO, photographer Black soldier flies land on scientist Laura Gasco as she collects a box of fly eggs. Gasco leads an Italian research project exploring how protein alternatives, such as insect larva flours, could lead to the creation of more sustainable food for livestock.…

DEEP INSIDE COBRA CAVE, IN THE REMOTE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHEASTERN LAOS, THE BEAM FROM ERIC SUZZONI’S HEADLAMP BOUNCED ACROSS BARREN ROCK UNTIL IT flashed on something unusual: dozens of bones and teeth protruding from a layer of sediment and rock. Suzzoni, a tall, 50-year-old caving specialist with a tiger tattoo on his arm, yelled out to his partner, Sébastien Frangeul. This was the French explorers’ first foray into Cobra Cave. They had just scaled 65 feet of limestone cliff, ascending from the forest floor to the cave’s entrance with their unlikely companions: a pair of local teenagers in flip-flops. The Hmong boys knew the terrain vvaround the cave and the namesake cobras that sometimes lurked inside. Today the snakes were nowhere to be seen. But soon after climbing into the cave,…

Homo sapiens are a terminal species, meaning we are the only ones left from a group of multiple species that occasionally coexisted and sometimes even interbred. These separations and rejoinings of our various lineages have led some scientists to think of human evolution as less of a traditional family tree and more of a meandering “braided stream.” Australopiths lived in many habitats, stretching from grasslands to forests, and eventually gave rise to hominins in the genus Homo. Woodland dwellers called ardipiths, occasionally bipedal and with opposable big toes, yielded to australopiths as savannas encroached on forests. Robust australopiths had strong jaws and large molars specialized for foods like grasses that were available in open habitats. Homo sapiens are the only remaining humans. Our genus, Homo, features relatively larger brains, full…

ON A BRIGHT, HOT DAY in mid-September 2011, a marine biologist named Christine Pergent-Martini was hunkered down inside the cabin of a small research vessel, a 97-footlong catamaran, cruising through the Mediterranean Sea about 12 miles off the coast of Corsica. Outside the ship’s windows, the sun glinted off the dark-blue water, but Pergent-Martini ignored the waves. She was more interested in what lay beneath them. A monitor in front of her displayed images from the vessel’s onboard sonar system, which was emitting a series of short acoustic pulses to reveal the underwater topography about 400 feet below. The ocean scientist was nearing the last day of a month-long mission: With a small crew, including her husband, oceanographer Gérard Pergent, and a graduate student from the University of Corsica Pasquale…

ON A FREEZING DAY IN OCTOBER A TEAM OF U.S. ARMY technicians toiling at the top of the world stood in the belly of a glacier, making the final preparations that would bring a nuclear reactor to life. It was an experimental model, smallish and fickle, and these, of course, were the early years of atomic energy; the men knew that a single burst of radiation could kill them. They were surrounded by walls of glistening snow that muffled their voices, reflected the beams cast by their lights, and absorbed the tick-tick-ticking of their Geiger counters. Far above their heads arched a ceiling of corrugated steel. Beneath their feet lay a mile-thick slab of ice so old it reached back to the Pleistocene. When the chain reaction finally began, there was…

TELEVISION A FAMILY DISH passed down through the generations is usually delicious—it survived that long for a reason—and can be a profound connection to where we come from. It can also tell us where we’re going, and in the new show No Taste Like Home With Antoni Porowski the answer is all around the world. The six-episode National Geographic docuseries follows along as Porowski takes celebrities around the globe to explore their ancestral culinary heritage in our ever evolving world. In the episodes above (clockwise from top) actress Florence Pugh samples tea and sponge cake in London, Porowski and actress Issa Rae make a traditional Senegalese dish, and actor Henry Golding and Porowski look on as a chef prepares a classic meal of freshwater ikan semah fish in Malaysian Borneo.…