Brandon Keim
We Are About to Start Mining Hydrothermal Vents on the Ocean Floor
Forty years ago, scientists found alien life. Not on another planet, but on Earth, in the deep sea, in places where plumes of steam and nutrients heated by volcanic activity fed entire ecologies of creatures adapted to harness chemical energy rather than energy from the sun. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or […]
A Butterfly’s Beauty Comes From Organized Chaos
This classic Facts So Romantic post was originally published in June, 2013. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Take a look at a butterfly’s wing, and you can learn a lesson about life. Not that it’s beautiful, or fragile, or too easily appreciated only when it’s fading—though all that […]
Chimps and the Zen of Falling Water
There is a waterfall in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Maybe 12 feet high, it’s fairly modestly sized, though even a modest waterfall is quite a magical thing. And it’s here that chimpanzees come to dance. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . You can watch a video online, narrated by […]
Forget the Ordinary Honeybee; Look at the Beautiful Bees They’re Crowding Out
All of the images in this post are borrowed from the amazing Flickr feed of the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Any day now, the apple trees on my deck will bloom, bringing with them the first honeybees of spring. It’s a […]
The Hated, Invasive Parasite That’s Actually a Key Part of Its Ecosystem
Sea lampreys showing off their unusual mouthsJoanna Gilkeson/USFWS Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Several years ago, a young man bow-fishing on New Jersey’s Raritan river spotted a long, thin creature in the murky water. He shot the animal through the neck, reeled it in, and posed for photographs. […]
Wild-Winter Whodunnit—Climate Change Over the U.S. With a Slow Jet Stream?
This map produced by NOAA shows the land-surface temperature anomaly: how the temperature deviated from normal, on average, over the month. The darkest red areas were 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, while the darkest blue areas were 12 degrees Celsius below average.NOAA Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join […]
To Bring Back Extinct Species, We’ll Need to Change Our Own
Passenger pigeon eggs at the Maine State MuseumBrandon Keim; displayed courtesy of Paula Work, registrar & curator of zoology at the museum Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . The last passenger pigeon died just over a century ago, though they’ve lived on as symbols—of extinction’s awful finality, and also […]
The Wild, Secret Life of New York City
Get back to nature, right in your own neighborhood.
Evolution’s Contrarian Capacity for Creativity
The easily confused willow tit and black-capped chickadeef.c.franklin via Flickr / Brandon Keim Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . One of my favorite pastimes while traveling is watching birds. Not rare birds, mind you, but common ones: local variations on universal themes of sparrow and chickadee, crow and mockingbird.I […]
Decoding Nature’s Soundtrack
The health of an ecosystem in the Earth’s own words.