Thanksgiving is in two weeks…but for many people… the preparation has already begun. Inviting family & friends, menu planning, grocery shopping, cooking and CLEANING.  At our house, it’s time to do a bit of dusting.  It’s amazing how quickly dust can collect on the furniture. That’s also true for the dust that collects on other living things. Take butterflies, for ...

It was the pun that first caught my attention – “Twitter Principles of Social Networking Increase Family Success in Nesting Birds”.  OK, so it wasn’t a great pun.  But it does illustrate that since the first “tweet” was sent on March 21, 2006, tweeting (among humans, not just birds) has become so popular that now even scientists are making puns about ...

Shifty eyes, beady eyes, bat an eye – we have many ways to describe how our eyes express our emotions and character.  But we come at this from the perspective of an animal with forward-facing eyes.  What if we were creatures with lateral-facing eyes, eyes at the sides of our heads?  What would change?  What would stay the same?   ...

For those of you who remember the pre-cellphone era: have you ever scanned a crowd to find someone?  Perhaps a friend you were supposed to meet.  Perhaps a child who wandered away from your group?  Can you remember how your eyes transitioned from a “wide area scan” to a narrow focus when you thought you’d found them?  Well, it turns ...

Remember the old saying, “You can never be too rich or too thin”?  Well you can be.  Too nutrient rich, that is.  Especially if you’re a salt-water marsh.  Scientists working at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory recently reported “that nutrients—such as nitrogen and phosphorus from septic and sewer systems and lawn fertilizers—can cause salt-marsh loss.” They conducted a study of salt marsh landscapes at ...

Remember the old saying, “You can never be too rich or too thin”?  Well you can be.  Too nutrient rich, that is.  Especially if you’re a salt-water marsh.  Scientists working at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory recently reported “that nutrients—such as nitrogen and phosphorus from septic and sewer systems and lawn fertilizers—can cause salt-marsh loss.” They conducted a study of salt marsh landscapes at ...

This is a “Best of Wendy Langhans” Report. What exactly is a hairpencil?  Is it some sort of stick-shaped hair ornament?  Nope.  Hairpencils are cross between (1) lighting a scented candle and (2) spreading pixie dust with a magic wand.  Let me explain. Entomologists use the word “hairpencil” to describe a brush-like structure on the abdomen of some male butterflies ...

In order to get a driver’s license in the state of California, you must have a visual acuity (keenness of vision) of 20/40. By those standards, rats would not be able to drive.