Going Again to the Moon, Researching Chickadee Hybrids and Understanding Dependancy

Going Again to the Moon, Researching Chickadee Hybrids and Understanding Dependancy

By Laura Helmuth

There’s one thing particular about chickadees. They’re curious (they’ll come examine for those who make a pish-pish-pish sound), they’re sensible (they stash seeds to eat over the winter), they usually’re so stinking cute. I recognize a chook that tells you what it’s: Whip-poor-will! Bob-white! Chick-a-dee-dee-dee! And there’s a whole lot of hid­­­­den drama in chickadees’ world, as creator Rebecca Heisman relates.

A number of species of chickadees dwell in North America, and it may be powerful to inform them aside. To complicate issues, they don’t all the time make a lot of a distinction: Carolina Chickadees and Black-capped Chickadees recurrently mate within the East, as do Black-caps and Mountain Chickadees within the West. (I hope that is some consolation to anyone who has struggled to determine a chickadee’s species utilizing a area information.) Analysis on hybrid chickadees is revealing how species keep their boundaries, how birds are specialised for his or her habitats, and the way reckless pairings can happen when a brand new species strikes into one other’s territory.

Our cowl story this month began with what appeared like a easy query: Why is it so laborious to get again to the moon? I imply, clearly rocket science is rocket science—complicated, harmful, pitiless. However we figured it out greater than 50 years in the past, which is eons in the past in laptop years. Scientific American contributing editor Sarah Scoles explores the shocking technological and social causes that the Artemis II flight, scheduled to raise off subsequent yr (however don’t mark your calendar), appears a lot more difficult than the Apollo missions.

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