My new life goal: find things I’m bad at and use them to my advantage. Take card games. In the house I grew up in, several decks of cards with rubber bands around them were kept in a big steamer trunk in our den along with other games like Battleship…
Author: Wendy Herrmann Smith
Snakes See in the Dark
This is the fifth and final installment in the series my cat has dubbed, “The Many Ways Humans are Inferior.” We have covered hummingbirds, sea turtles, elephants, and bumblebees. Each of these animals has some ability that humans do not, such as perceiving magnetic fields, hearing infrasonic sounds, and balancing…
What an Elephant Can Hear
In my previous emails we have discussed hummingbirds who can see colors that humans can’t, bumblebees who detect electrical charges, and sea turtles’ ability to perceive magnetic fields. My cat has dubbed this series, “The Many Ways Humans Are Inferior.” Today we will hear about elephants and infrasound — soundwaves…
Sea Turtle Magnetism
In my previous emails, we covered hummingbirds and bumblebees. Today’s amazing animal is the sea turtle. These turtles navigate the ocean guided by Earth’s magnetic field. This involves a light-detecting protein called “cryptochrome.” It reminds me of a song called “Kodachrome” by Paul Simon. Last night I watched a 1977…
Bumblebees and Electricity
If you read my email last week, you learned that hummingbirds can see colors that humans cannot. This week’s amazing animal is the bumblebee. Bees build up a positive electric charge as they fly. I’m tempted to touch bumblebees because they look so fuzzy and soft. But if they have…