Natural Selections

What is laughter? Is it exclusive to humans? Is it different for women and men? Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager discuss "the best medicine."

Birds we think of as quiet will sometimes raise a ruckus. And Curt Stager noted that European birds seem to have a wider and more improvisational range of songs than their American cousins. Martha Foley and Curt Stager discuss the vocabulary of birds.

Once so numerous they darkened the sky for days while migrating, passenger pigeons arrived in this region in early May each year. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley remember this once ubiquitous species wiped out by human hunting in the nineteenth century.

Everyone is familiar with how bees and insects distribute pollen from one flower to another, but that's not the only way to get the job done. Some night-blooming plants are pollinated by bats, when bright floral colors are invisible. And hummingbirds might just get their nectar without picking up any pollen. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss the unusual strategies some plants can use to attract and hold the interest of the unusual animals that pollinate them.

Some flowers open quickly, and some are even spring-loaded

Turtles breathe backwards; that is, when they relax their diaphragms, they inhale rather than exhale. Martha Foley and Curt Stager discuss the oddities of anatomy that arise from living in armor.

The sound environment has a big effect on animal behavior. The prevalence of low-pitched machine sounds in an urban environment may cause male birds to raise the pitch of mating calls. And birds in an environment where the sounds of predators are common will be less successful in breeding and nesting. Martha Foley and Curt Stager discuss soundscapes.

Most color in nature is the result of pigments that reflect a particular wavelength of light, but some of nature's brightest offerings are created by physical structures within skin, scales and feathers that scattter and interfere with light.Martha Foley and Curt Stager talk about one of nature's flashier displays

Martha Foley talks with Dr. Curt Stager about his ongoing quest for a pristine Adirondack Lake