Natural History
Five Hundred Ship Wrecks
Mauritania’s Nouadhibou Bay is home to some of the world’s last Monk Seals. It’s also the resting place of around 500 derelict ships; most of which have been abandoned and reported as sunk to insurance companies. The ships are gradually rusting away, polluting the surrounding ocean with diesel and oil, and creating a hazard for [...]
Lion Burgers and Camel Cutlets Anyone?
A restaurant in Arizona got more publicity than it bargained for when it promoted lion burgers in its newsletter as a tie-in to the football world cup in South Africa: bomb threats. But reporters found a more intriguing story when they tried to find the source of the lion meat – via a butcher called [...]
The Perfection of Pollen
Jonathan Drori, the first Head of Commissioning for BBC Online, has taken to waxing lyrical about the wonders of pollen. Watch the video or read the transcript to find out “why it’s not just something that gets up your nose”:
Weird Weather
In Orissa, India, there used to be six distinct seasons, each lasting two months; today there are just two. John Parker reports that people around the world are noticing that their seasons are shifting or shrinking and explores the effect this is having on people and wildlife, and discovers that whole food chains are being [...]
Gorrillas Doomed?
Bad news for gorillas, according to CNN, which reports that logging, mining, poachers and the Ebola virus mean that gorillas may be extinct in central Africa by 2025. Read a United Nations report on the situation: The Last Stand of the Gorilla – Environmental Crime and Conflict in the Congo Basin
The Cove Team Takes on LA
Whilst waiting to collect their Oscar, it seems that Louie Psihoyos, director of feature-length dolphin slasher documentary The Cove couldn’t help but indulge in a little more activisim, this time in a Santa Monica sushi bar call the Hump, which was suspected of serving illegal whale meat. Louie and his team turned up for dinner [...]
Brooklyn Brainery
Brooklyn Brainery is a new kind of night school. It hosts peer-to-peer classes on everything from Applied Meteorology to Paper Arts via Beauty School Dropout (the history and politics of make up), which are described as “book clubs on steroids”. Whilst class tutors know about the subject, their role is more one of guidance than [...]
Streetlight Storm
Artist Katie Paterson was commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create an art work on the theme of re-inventing British classics. Paterson took a British seaside town as her inspiration and created an evocative work for Deal Pier. Along the length of the pier, out to sea, the lights flicker in time with lightning storms as [...]
iSpot
iSpot is a Lottery funded Open University project that allows people to upload their photos of wildlife sightings and discuss them or ask for help in identification. One of the latest observations is an albino squirrel in Hastings and grey seals near Falmouth. The site is UK focused but does accept worldwide sightings (although it [...]
Chimps in Mourning
National Geographic Magazine published a photo of a group of chimps at a sanctuary in Cameroon apparently mourning the death of one of their own, a female chimp in her late 40s called Dorothy, who died of congestive heart failure. Read the story behind the photo here.
