Natural Selections

In some places, winter is just too long to ignore. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley explore some ways to have fun in extreme cold, everything from throwing hot water up into the air to guessing the temperature by the facial-hair scale.

Porcupine quills are hollow, like feathers, and are made from the same material, but then so are hairs, and fingernails, and claws and scales. The quill is a unique adaptation of one of nature's commonest substances and it varies even among porcupines.African porcupines can weigh as much as 60 pounds and have quills as thick as soda straws. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about "prickly" matters.

Martha Foley poses the classic child's question. According to Dr. Curt Stager, the answer lies in the composition of the atmosphere, and in the refractive qualities of different wavelengths of light.

Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley gaze into the crystal ball to imagine the Adirondack Park in 300 years. The effects of invasive species may be more noticeable than those of global warming. Three of the commonest trees face disease threats — most severely, the beech. Southern hardwoods like hickory and oak will not likely move in, even with an increase in temperature, and native maples may do even better with a longer growing season.

The Eastern Snapping Turtle can reach a size of three feet long and weigh 50 pounds. Martha Foley and Curt Stager introduce us to this large and testy reptile found throughout the eastern United States.

Do we all hear the same thing? Is middle C on a piano the same for you as it is for someone else? Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss how we hear what we hear.

Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager continue a discussion of animal extinction that began with a look at the book, "The Ghosts of Evolution," by Connie Barlow.Before the last Ice Age, North America was more like Africa is today and contained many species of megafauna including three kinds of mammoths, giant ground sloths, native horses, camels, and rhinos.All of them disappeared very shortly after Neolithic hunters crossed the land bridge from Asia.

There are plants that produce fruits that are too large for anything in their habitat to eat, and other common fruits that nothing seems to eat. The book "Ghosts of Evolution" speculates that those animals went extinct; large mammals like the mammoth or the ground sloth, and more recent victims like the passenger pigeon. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss plants that have outlived the animals they co-evolved with.

Birds may have "social mates" that they are always seen with, but may also have breeding partners who are not the same. Some species appear to be truly faithful to social mates, but they are the minority of species we think of as monogamous. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss the manners and morals of avian mating.

A really big asteroid is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. But that great die-off pales in comparison to the Permian extinction event around 250 million years ago. More than 80 percent of ocean species and about 70 percent of land species disappeared for reasons that are still not clear.Curt Stager catalogs what survived and what died and runs down the three leading theories about its cause with Martha Foley.