Natural Selections

(Feb 21, 2019) While the North Country is not exactly the tropics, we do have our share of exotically-colored birds. Blue creatures, for example, are rare in nature but we have the bluebird, the blue jay and the indigo bunting.

Then there are the goldfinches and the cardinals, the ruby-throated hummingbird and more. Martha Foley and Curt Stager celebrate a little of the local color in colder climes.

Rarely seen during the day, flying squirrels don't actually fly, but use flaps of skin that connect their fore and hind legs that enable them to glide up to a hundred feet, between trees and from tree to ground.

(Feb 7, 2019) The battle for survival among insects is not always carried out with mandible and stinger. This branch of the animal kingdom also employs chemical warfare.

(Jan 31, 2019) While much of this winter's extreme weather has been blamed on polar vortex weather systems reaching farther south into North America, there is a another polar vortex in the Antarctic.

(Jan 24, 2019) Opossums may be thought of as a southern animal, but they are becoming more common in the North Country as they expand their range north and west. They are the only marsupial, or pouched mammal, in North America.

Martha Foley tells Curt Stager that they look a little weird, as if they were made from parts of other animals: the tail of a rat, the pouch of a kangaroo, funny little hands.

(Jan 10, 2019) Fresh ice, sometimes called black ice, can be nice and clear and great for skating, but after a while ice gets kind of funky.

(Jan 3, 2019) While genetically modified crops are the result of the intentional introduction of "foreign" genes by humans for a specific agricultural purpose, it turns out that nature uses the same trick all the time.

(Dec 27, 2018) Contrary to longstanding theories, the human sense of smell is roughly as acute as that of other mammals, with an equivalent amount of neural hardware devoted to the detection of odors. So why do we seem to be so nose-blind compared to the family dog?

Martha Foley quizzes Curt Stager about a sense that often operates unnoticed by our conscious minds.

(Dec 20, 2018) Flowers get pollinated, bees get nectar; that's supposed to be the deal. Except that some plants cheat. Known as "food decepters," they advertise rewards they don't deliver. Orchids are notorious for variations on bait and switch, with fully one-third of species giving bupkis to the hard-working insects that help them to propagate their kind.

The modern supermarket holds a bewildering variety of oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines and more. But they are all the product of 4,000 years of selective breeding by humans to tease out tastier, larger, sweeter and juicier variations and hybrids from four ancestral Asian fruits. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley climb back down the citrus family tree to look at the Mandarin orange, the pomelo, the citron and the papeda.