Eight years ago, while flying 800 feet above the grasslands of southern New Mexico, an unlikely observation changed the course of my life. As I was leaning out the window of a small…

In his latest book, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters, Sean B. Carroll tells us the remarkable story of Robert Paine, who revolutionized…

Last spring I came to know a pair of pigeons. I’d been putting out neighborly sunflower seeds for them and my local Brooklyn house sparrows; typically I left them undisturbed while…

In Ithaca, New York, a virtual machine in a laboratory at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sits in the night, humming. The machine’s name is Bubo, after the genus for horned owls.…

I go to the country to watchthe zunzuncito climbingthrough the air, and airthe misfortunes of yesterday;so much flying and returningthrough the delirious green,free, trembling for…

The first time I saw a free-living giraffe was in Tanzania’s Arusha National Park, where I was astounded by a yellow-and-brown head gliding gracefully and, it seemed, impossibly…

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 anthology featured Nautilus’s story, “Ants Go Marching,” originally published in the “In Transit” issue. For that story,…

You have just been appointed Conservation Czar. But there is a catch. You can only save three animals. Look at the 12 animals below and click on the three that you would save. After…

We think our own relationships are wrought with lies and intrigues, but this is nothing compared to the lengths animals will go to in their efforts to pass on their genes to the next…

Toronto resident Simon Treadwell wheeled a garbage bin onto a snow-bound lot next to his property one evening this past winter. Inside the bin was a smelly mixture of wet and dry cat…