Life on Earth
Photographic exploration of the abyss
Whoa! Boggling, bizarre and beautiful, the creatures evolving in the remote depths of the world's oceans really are a trip. This book's crisp close-ups allow astounding detail to pop out from the blackness: gorgeous mugshots of translucent octopi, technicolor jelly fish, and feathery pink iceworms (also seen in the previously-reviewed Ecology of the Deep Sea Vents). I missed the book when it came out last spring; I'm thrilled it didn't pass me by any longer than it did. Seventy years ago, explorer William Beebe put it this way: "Anyone who has actually seen this universe will keep an image of it in his memory forever; for its isolation, its cosmic cold, its eternal obscurity -- and above all, for the indescribable beauty of the denizens of those regions." Amen.
-- Steven Leckart
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian
2007, 256 pages
$30
Available from Amazon
Sample Excerpts:
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
Coral Reef Guides
EcoCosm/EcoSphere
Natural Reef Aquariums
Exploring hidden extremes of life
In the search for the world's tallest trees, a renegade band of nerdy, obsessive tree-finders discovered patches of wilderness in California and Washington that had never been explored. These areas were so rugged, so blocked with fallen timbers, and so useless otherwise, that they very likely have never been visited by humans before. The nerds began finding trees taller than any known, but no one believed them. In order to prove their claims, they invented ways to climb and examine these giants, and to measure them using lasers. Not only were these indeed the tallest trees in the world, but there was an entirely unknown arboreal ecology in these canopies, including other smaller trees that rooted only in the tops of the tallest trees. Eventually a bunch of maverick biologists joined the pursuit, and they lived, slept, and made love in the tops nearly 400 feet above ground. And sometimes they would fall out of the trees. Richard Preston, the author of the heart-thumping bestseller about the Ebola virus (Hot Zone), manages to tell this story of biological discovery as a summer page-turner. Who will die next? Fast-paced, exhilarating, enlightening -- an intense biological thriller.
-- KK
Wild Trees
Richard Preston
2007, 320 pages
$16
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
A small part of the crown of Iluvatar.
*
Lowman used a Magic Marker to write numbers on the leaves of some Australian trees, and then she climbed up into the trees every so often to see how many numbered leaves were still hanging there. "I'm from upstate New York, and I figured maybe six months, and then the leaf would fall off," she said. Nineteen years later, entering middle age, Lowman found leaves with Magic Marker numbers on them that she had written on the leaves as a younger woman. The leaves had remained alive and unchanged for almost two decades. This illustrates the difficulty humans can have in seeing what's happening in a forest canopy. Humans don't live long enough to see many events in trees unfold. Lowman had spent much of her career trying to observe the fall of a leaf.
*
A forest-canopy biologist at the University of California, Berkeley named Todd Dawson installed sensors in the tops of redwoods that grow around Santa Cruz, and in Sonoma and Humboldt counties. He and his colleagues discovered that a redwood that's bathed in fog can take moisture in through its needles and send the water downward into its small branches. Todd Dawson suspects, but so far hasn't been able to prove, that redwoods can also send water from their needles all the way downward into their trunks. In other words, redwoods can reverse the flow of water inside them when it suits their needs. This is one reason why a redwood can grow so tall -- it doesn't have to depend entirely on water that it gathers from the ground and pulls up to its top. It can gather water from the air. Redwoods feed on the sky.
*
Notes from Iluvatar. Two pages from Steve Sillett's climbing notebook, drawn in 1999, showing his developing map of one section of Iluvatar's crown. This is a sketch of an eight-and-a-half-foot-thick-trunk that gives rise to ninety-eight other trunks.
*
It is a slow-moving infection. A piece of Lobaria the size of a child's hand might take ten years to grow to that size. (Lobaria is a comparatively fast grower. Some lichens can take twenty years to become the size of a dime.) It can take years or decades for some species of lichens to spread from one tree to the next. "If a whole mountainside has been cut, it will be a very long time before the Lobaria comes back," Antoine said. "You start to see it after about two hundred years. But you don't see big, juicy, drippy abundances of these lichens for centuries. You only see it now in old-growth Douglas-fir forests that are over five hundred years old."
A stand of Douglas-firs may be three hundred years old, older than the United States of America, but it will still be a young patch of forest, devoid of many species of lichens. A stand of trees in a temperate Pacific Northwest rain forest that began growing at the time of the Magna Carta (1215) will only now be reaching a fullness of biodiversity. It will be loaded with a variety of lichens and mosses that don't occur in younger forests, and it will also contain a much greater variety of animal life, large and small.
*************************
Based on a mention in Wild Trees, I tracked this incredible monograph down. It features scientifically exact pen and ink portraits of about 100 specific giant trees of various species. The locations for each branch were done from laser measurements since there is no way to stand back and see (or photograph) such giants. It's a maniacal labor of love. Each tree is extremely individualistic, very Ent-ish. There's a wonderful story about each Ent.
-- KK
Forest Giants of the Pacific Northwest
Robert Van Pelt
2001, 200 pages
$27
Available from Amazon
Notice the scale of the people (specks) at the base of the trunks.
Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:
The Woodbook
The World Without Us
Ecology of the Deep Sea Vents
Exploration of deer and humans in America
The intersection between deer and humans is tangled with emotion and economics in the US. Though it was published a decade ago, this exhaustive look at the ecology and history of that relationship is still the best primer on the subject I've found. When I spent two months researching and writing about the deer debacle in California's Point Reyes National Seashore (there are controversial plans to eradicate white fallow deer), Nelson's insight was priceless, especially to a neophyte. A cultural anthropologist and hunter, Nelson looks at deer management mishaps, from contraception on New York's Fire Island to predator introduction on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. His own hunting ethos echoes the mindful conservation of the Alaskan Koyukon people, with whom he traveled for several years: from tongue to testicles, he wastes nothing. The book opens with an unarmed Nelson stalking a doe on a remote Alaskan island and closes with the author witnessing the birth of a fawn on the same island. Nelson visits sprawling game ranches in Texas Hill country where hunters can pick off deer from stands strategically placed by feeders. He joins a group of anti-hunting activists in the Wisconsin woods as they sabotage those in camouflage on opening weekend, when some 650,000 hunters fan out in the forest hoping to bring home fresh venison. And along the way, Nelson continues to drop great historical tidbits: the etymology of American slang "buck" for the paper currency is a legacy of the rise of market hunting in the 1830s when an entire deer carcass would sell for about a dollar. Whether you're a hunter or someone who enjoys theories of wilderness and writing in the spirit of John McPhee, this book will no doubt change how you feel the next time you spot a deer.
-- Zachary Slobig
Heart and Blood: Living with Deer in America
Richard Nelson
1998, 416 pages
$21
Available from Amazon
More...
Postpeople hypothesizing
The world is a feat of engineering. Beyond nature's glorious design, as this book recounts, our hands and minds have worked to shape, build, plant and populate as much of this planet as, well, humanly possible. With meticulous history and imaginative speculation, Weisman deconstructs progress across time and space. From concrete jungles in the West to ancient underground cities in Turkey to Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation, he both challenges and emphasizes the permanence of all our creation(s). The echoes of human impact, he concludes, will fade quickly in some arenas, but perpetuate radically in others. Remarkable, disheartening and inspiring, the book illustrates that we've inherited an immense, complicated and beautiful world from ancestors who were both ingenious and ignorant. Ultimately, how we choose to think, invent, and act will be what differentiates us from them.
-- Steven Leckart
The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
2007, 336 pages
$15
Available from Amazon
[It's worth taking a look at the Multimedia page on the book's web site for some intriguing time lapse artist renderings -- sl]
Sample excerpts:
Among the myriad species loosed on the world by humans that have surged beyond control, eucalyptus joins ailanthus and kudzu as encroachers that will bedevil the land long after we've departed. To power steam locomotives, the British often replaced slow-maturing tropical hardwood forests with fast-growing eucalyptus from their Australian Crown colonies. The aromatic eucalyptus oils that we use to make cough medicine and to disinfect household surfaces kill germs because in larger doses they're toxins, meant to chase off competitive plants. Few insects will live around eucalyptus, and with little to eat, few birds nest among them. Lusty drinkers, eucalypti go wherever there's water, such as along shamba irrigation ditches, where they've formed tall hedgegrows. Without people, they'll aim to colonize deserted fields, and they'll have a head start on the native seeds blowing down the mountain. In the end, it may take a great natural African lumberjack, the elephant, to blaze a trail back to Mount Kenya and expel the last British spirits from the land for good.
If humans were to go tomorrow, enough wild predators currently remain to out-compete or gobble most of our domestic animals, though a few feral exceptions have proved impressively resilient. The escaped wild horses and burros of the American Great Basin and Sonoran Desert essentially have replaced equine species lost at the end of the Pleistocene. Dingoes, which polished off Australia's last marsupial carnivores, have been that country's top predator for so long that many down under don't realize that these canines were originally companions to Southeast Asian traders. With no large predators around other than descendants of pet dogs, cows and pigs will probably own Hawaii. Elsewhere, dogs may even help livestock survive: sheep ranchers in Tierra del Fuego often swear that the shepherding instinct is do deeply bred in their kelpie dogs that their own absence would be immaterial.
Ruins of high-rises echo the love song of the frogs breeding in Manhattan's reconstituted streams, now stocked with alewives and mussels dropped by seagulls. Herring and shad have returned to the Hudson, though they spent some generations adjusting to radioactivity trickling out of Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, 35 miles north of Times Square, after its reinforced concrete succumbed. Missing, however, are nearly all fauna adapted to us. The seemingly invincible cockroach, a tropical import, long ago froze in unheated apartment buildings. Without garbage, rats starved or became lunch for the raptors nesting in burnt-out skyscrapers. Rising water, tides, and salt corrosion have replaced the engineered shoreline, circling New York's five boroughs with estuaries and small beaches. With no dredging, Central Park's ponds and reservoir have been reincarnated as marshes. Without natural grazers - unless horses used by hansom cabs and by park policeman managed to go feral and breed - Central Park's grass is gone… Long before, the wild predators finished off the last descendants of pet dogs, but a wily population of feral house cats persists, feeding on starlings. With bridges finally down, tunnels flooded, and Manhattan truly an island again, moose and bears swim a widened Harlem river to feast on the berries that the Lenape once picked. Amid the rubble of Manhattan financial institutions that literally collapsed for good, a few bank vaults stand; the money within, however worthless, is mildewed but safe. Not so the artwork stored in museum vaults, built more for climate control than strength. Without electricity, protection ceases; eventually museum roofs spring leaks, usually starting with their skylights, and their basements fill with standing water. Subjected to wild swings in humidity and temperature, everything in storage rooms is prey to mold, bacteria, and the voracious larvae of a notorious museum scourge, the black carpet beetle. As they spread to other floors, fungi discolor and dissolve the paintings in the Metropolitan beyond recognition. Ceramics, however, are doing fine, since they're chemically similar to fossils. Unless something falls on them first, they await reburial for the next archaeologist to dig them up. Corrosion has thickened the patina on bronze statues, but hasn't affected their shapes. "That's why we know about the Bronze Age," notes Manhattan art conservator Barbara Appelbaum. Even if the Statue of Liberty ends up at the bottom of the harbor, Appelbaum says, its form will remain intact indefinitely, albeit somewhat chemically altered and possibly encased in barnacles.
More...
Animals that might be
A wonderful series of cinematic speculations on what animals could evolve into in the next, oh, 500 million years. The same skill and techniques that resurrected dinosaurs of old and made them seem real and natural (see Walking With Dinosaurs ) are applied here to possible animals millions of years into the future. It's a fabulous job of scientific imagination and a great lesson in following the logic of evolution.
-- KK
The Future is Wild
2003, 3-Disc Series, 328 min.
$27
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Motion-sensing cameras
I live adjacent to a national recreation area where we enjoy a year-round parade of wildlife past our house. I can track wildlife with a remote camera triggered by an animal’s movement. Right now I am trying to capture a mountain lion in the hills behind our house on film. I’m using trail monitors, which combine a motion detector and a point and shoot camera (with auto exposure and focus) into one unit that is set up along a trail.
Detector-enabled cameras are becoming a key tool in conservation work. Because they are unobtrusive, eternally patient, and immune to sleep or bad weather, they see things observers keep missing. Trail monitors are enabling field biologists in Africa, Asia, and South America to detect species of animals in areas no one knew they inhabited. Once an animal’s existence is proven by film, it becomes easier to find other evidence of its precense.
 
Hunters also use these gadgets to track bigger game. I have used several types and for my purposes I am currently happiest with a game-hunting device called Cam Tracker. This a completely self-contained weatherproof unit that straps to a tree or post. I like it over others because it is simple, camoflauged, and easy to program. The beefed up battery system also lasts longer if you use the night/flash mode, which I do. They also make a digital version which I have not tried yet.
For rangers, Trailmaster makes several models of infrared wildlife monitors. These battery-operated devices detect movements that can easily be used to trigger a camera, but many folks purchase the monitor alone as a counter. Biologists taking censuses of animal populations, or hunters tracking game are typical uses. The advantage of this system is that the motion detection system is a separate unit which can be placed perfectly (even away from the camera) and tweaked to detect, say, only large animals, or only fast moving animals, so it can be used to selectively distinguish certain animals. It is also cheaper. I purchased a Trailmaster passive monitor camera kit ($180), which is geared to sensing all wildlife in a wide field of vision, to try to catalog all the animals active on the trails in the hills behind our house. It’s not as weatherproof as the Cam Tracker but we got pictures of fox, coyote, and bob cat, but alas, no panther yet. (It takes some experience to aim the set up effectively).
The coolest thing is the way getting film back from the processor is like Christmas every time. You open up the envelope with no idea what you’ve got. It certainly has broadened my view of the neighborhood.
-- KK
CamTrakker
$400
800-654-8498
Available from CamTrakker
Trailmaster Trail Monitor
TM35-1 Camera Kit
$290
800-544-5415
Available from Trailmaster
Best case for Big Foot
I confess that I believe in Big Foot. My belief is based on no personal witness. On the contrary, my claim that a large bipedal North American ape exits is based on the huge mounds of consistent evidence I've seen from other researchers, many of them scientists. In other realms of inquiry this level of evidence would be sufficient for confirmation, but I admit that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. This investigative documentary contains the best scientific case for Big Foot in America (such as it is). It includes the four compelling video clips of alleged Big Foots that are the most persuasive so far; three of the clips have not been widely seen, the fourth is seen in crisp digital quality not available before (only degraded analog copies of copies were shown before). These movies are more than adequately analyzed in creatively skeptical ways. Other kinds of data are examined as well, including body prints and hair samples. One of the reasons I like this DVD is that they conclude that certain samples do NOT support their hypothesis. There is of course a LOT of flakiness around Big Foot beliefs but this documentary --structured as a court to try evidence about the existence of this elusive animal -- keeps the woo-woo out and all the possible science in. This DVD is as good as the argument will get at the moment. I can't promise it will change your mind, but it does shift the debate to where it should be: is there sufficient extraordinary evidence?
-- KK
Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science
DVD
$30
Available from BFRO
Are You Really Here Now?
You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. (See the world eco-region map ). At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital.
The following exercise in watershed awareness was hatched 30 years ago by Peter Warshall, naturalist extraordinaire. Variations of this list have appeared over the years with additions by Jim Dodge, Peter Berg, and Stephanie Mills among others. I have recently added new questions from Warshall and myself, and I have edited or altered most of the rest. It's still a work in progress. If you have a universal question you think fits, submit it to me.
I am extremely interested in hearing from anyone who scores a 25 or better on the quiz on their first unassisted try. I'd like to know how you got your Big Here education. I have a few small prizes for anyone who scores (on the honor system) a perfect 30, without Googling.
The intent of this quiz is to inspire you to answer the questions you can't initially. I'd like to collect and then post the best step-by-step suggestions about how to answer a particular question. These are not answers to the quiz, but recommended paths on how one might most efficiently answer the question locally. Helpful websites which can provide local answers are wanted. Because of the severe specificity of local answers, the methods provided should be as general as possible. The emerging list of answer-paths will thus become the Cool Tool.
Post your methods in the comment section for each question linked in red to my Help Wanted page. I will award a copy of the next paper-book version of Cool Tools to the person providing what I consider the best solution method(s) for each question.
-- KK
30 questions to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live:
1) Point north. [Recommendations for answer methods]
2) What time is sunset today? [Recommendations]
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap. [Recommendations]
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water? [Recommendations]
5) How many feet above sea level are you? [Recommendations]
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here? [Recommendations]
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours? [Recommendations]
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt? [Recommendations]
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves? [Recommendations]
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available. [Recommendations]
11) From what direction do storms generally come? [Recommendations]
12) Where does your garbage go? [Recommendations]
13) How many people live in your watershed? [Recommendations]
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood? [Recommendations]
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice? [Recommendations]
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move? [Recommendations]
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water? [Recommendations]
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past? [Recommendations]
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)? [Recommendations]
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put? [Recommendations]
21) What was the total rainfall here last year? [Recommendations]
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from? [Recommendations]
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today? [Recommendations]
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here? [Recommendations]
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years. [Recommendations]
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable? [Recommendations]
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated? [Recommendations]
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go? [Recommendations]
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it? [Recommendations]
30) How many days till the moon is full? [Recommendations]
The Bigger Here Bonus Questions:
31) What species once found here are known to have gone extinct? [Recommendations]
32) What other cities or landscape features on the planet share your latitude? [Recommendations]
33) What was the dominant land cover plant here 10,000 years ago? [Recommendations]
34) Name two places on different continents that have similar sunshine/rainfall/wind and temperature patterns to here. [Recommendations]
A hundred butterflies typing
I've had one version of this poster on my wall for years. Its creator, a maniacal Swedish photographer, spent years uncovering letters hidden in butterfly wings and collected more than one full alphabet from his quest. To make the challenge more difficult, all his snapshots are from live butterflies (better color). He now has a small cottage business selling posters of his work, including alphabets and numbers found in other realms of nature. They are beautiful yes, but for me the enduring attraction of his work is his fanatic amateur over-the-top enthusiasm, which this poster emblemizes.
-- KK
Butterfly Alphabet #2
$18
Available from
Butterfly Alphabet
Bug stuff
Bioquip.com is the best supplier of professional grade entomology tools there is. Everything you could want to collect/examine insects and other small creatures.
As a teacher with a strong interest in science, I've owned two of their collapsible pocket butterfly nets for many years. The hoop rims are made of a narrow band of spring steel. When twisted, they result in three smaller loops which are secured with the net bag. A full 12 inch folding net thus fits nicely in my pants pocket while birding in the forest. I just cut a piece of bamboo to make a temporary handle.
-- Mike Brady
Pocket Net
$13
Available from Bioquip
Bioquip Catalog
No maintenance micro-world
As I write, a dozen brine shrimp dart about in the bowls on my desk. They nibble on green algae coating the rocks inside. I have never fed them, nor cleaned the bowl, nor aerated their water. In fact their home is sealed airtight in a glass globe; nothing goes in or out. They are completely carefree pets, living in a completely self-sustaining world. The algae produce food and oxygen from room light, the shrimp and snails make carbon dioxide for the plants. Together all three organisms support each other with no input from me, other than admiration. Their globes are little sustainable planets of sorts, a balanced ecosystem that could in theory continue indefinitely. One of my spheres thrived for many years before accidently being smashed.
I keep these micro-worlds for three reasons: 1) as a lazy-man's aquarium (vacation? You could leave for a year and they wouldn't care), 2) for the constant reminder of how we humans are kept alive by other species, and 3) for the inspiration of a self-sustaining whole system.
My 8-inch EcoCosm next to my printer
You can purchase a ready-made small 4-inch Ecosphere filled with about three shrimp, one snail and a bit of algae, sealed airtight in a perfect glass sphere for $65. The same producer has other larger models, but this one is about the size of a softball. The best place to get one such is at Brookstones store; they are cheaper here than from the manufacturer and Brookstones has a more generous return/exchange policy. The latter is important because a system this small is very sensitive to room conditions, and it is easy to kill off the inhabitants before you find the optimal place in a room -- which is warm but (surprisingly) not brightly lit. With this off-the shelf option you get an instant world (works as a gift), but one with few individuals and a somewhat delicate balance.
For the same price you can assemble a much larger -- and better-- eco-habitat at home by purchasing a small kit from EcoCosm in Hawaii and upgrading the bowl. Order the smallest size micro-habitat ($40), which will give you about a dozen or more Hawaiin brine shrimp, a few snails, and a beautiful bit of porous rock and gravel seeded with algae, all afloat in sea water and packed with a small plastic hexagonal container. Discard the container and substitute a glass fish bowl. I found the best and cheapest spherical bowls are not sold in pet stores but in art stores for use in decorating, holding glass marbles and the like. I got a 8-inch globe for $4. I put in the creatures, the rocks, and then added brine water (1 part sea water to 2 parts fresh water) to top it off. I cut a small circle of plastic to seal the top. The shrimp (about 1/2 inch long when mature) are amazingly visible and active during the day. They constantly distract in a good way.
The question many owners of these brine shrimp/algae worlds want to know is, how long will they live and can the shrimp reproduce? While an individual shrimp can live for up to 5 years, unlike most marine invertebrates, the endemic Hawaiian red brine shrimp (Halocaridian rubra) reproduce very sparingly. This is why they are expensive to culture (and why it is illegal to use wild brine shrimp from the rare anchialine ponds). There are reports of Ecospheres hatching shrimp fry, but they are rare enough to offer little hope yours will. However, even if the shrimp die, the algae will continue to live for decades or longer -- an additional ecological lesson.
From my observations of the micro-habitats that friends and I have owned it is clear that the usual cause of decline is too much light. Room light, even dull overhead fluorescent in a Dilbert cubicle, is all the light these worlds need. The tiny orbs of self-sustaining life are great instructional aids. If you like living things nearby but don't like the slavery of upkeep, these are perfect pet/gardens, and ideal office mates.
May you be a fine god!
-- KK
EcoCosm Shrimp Microhabitat
$40 (plus $25 fedex)
Stockly's Aquariums
4" EcoSphere
$58
Available from Amazon
Or $65 from Brookstone
Manufactured by EcoSphere
Database of Anomalies
Frequently, insight begins with an unexplained anomaly -- a novel phenomenon which upon diligent pursuit leads to a new way of doing or understanding. On the other hand most anomalies are just that -- unexplained exceptions of no lasting import. Telling the difference is what science is about. But first these odd things must be acknowledged, and better, documented. This is what the Sourcebook Project does. William Corliss, a maniacal archivist working alone has steadfastly cataloged all reported anomalies in biology, chemistry, geology, archeology, physics, and the atmosphere. He lists everything: ball lightening accounts, out of sequence fossils, ancient glass lenses, geological deposits where they shouldn't be, weird ruins, musical sands, unexplained radioactivity, out of place historical artifacts, unusual ancient buildings, strange weather formations, and anything odd that has no easy explanation.
An animal resembling a mastodon. Pipe found in Iowa, USA
From "Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts"
Corliss clips primarily from old scientific journals, expedition reports, and society proceedings. The observers have some credibility. The anomalies are presented without interpretation -- that is up to you. The work can easily be appropriated by cranks (and has been) but it is equally useful to others searching for new science frontiers.
A few words from William James, reproduced on the title page of Anomalies in Geology:
"Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.... Anyone will renovate his science who will steadily look after the irregular phenomena. And when this science is renewed, its new formulas often have more of the voice of the exceptions in them than of what were supposed to be the rules."
For most of us this remarkable series of volumes will be a constant source of wonder, amazement, and re-thinking. Because each observation is offered without explanation ("just the facts ma'am") in such volume (thousands and thousands), one quickly realizes the extent of our ignorance. So far Corliss has compiled 34 volumes, all items indexed according to his classification scheme. Confusingly these volumes overlap, and it is not easy to determine which are the latest, but those in his "catalog" series seem to be the most recent.
Corliss adds 1,200 new reports a year, and has only published 40% of the material he has compiled. Obviously this Catalog of Anomalies should be on the web, as an open source project. But for now these amazing tomes are only in paper, self published by Corliss himself, available via Amazon.
-- KK
You can't go wrong with the following volumes:
Ancient Structures: Remarkable Pyramids, Forts, Stone Chambers, Cities, Complexes, $25
Ancient Infrastructure: Remarkable Roads, Mines, Walls, Mounds, Stone Circles, $25
Biological Anomalies--Birds: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies, $28
Biological Anomalies, Mammals I: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies, $22
Neglected Geological Anomalies: A Catalog of Geological Anomalies, $19
Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological: A Catalog of Geological Anomalies, $19
Rare Halos, Mirages, Anomalous Rainbows and Related Electromagnetic Phenomena: A Catalog of Geophysical Anomalies, $17
Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights, and Related Luminous Phenomena: A Catalog of Geophysical Anomalies, $17
Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts, $24
Excerpts:
*
The Laos Jars are mostly fashioned out of sandstone, although a few were laboriously carved from much harder red granite. Besides the 250 jars at Ban Ang, there are about 80 more at Lat Sen, 155 more at Ban Soua, 34 at Na Nong, and still more at Ban Hin, the latter group is made from red granite.
The natives in the areas where jars are located know nothing definite of their origin. It is customary to say the jars were made to celebrate a great military victory 1,500 yeas ago. Modern professional opinion is that they are funerary urns probably made more than 1,500 years ago.
From "Ancient Infrastructure: Remarkable Roads, Mines, Walls, Mounds, Stone Circles"
*
Blundellsands, England. June 5, 1902. "The evening was dull and grey, a strong northwesterly wind was blowing in from the sea and the tide was flowing in. In the distance we first saw smoke with frequent jets of fire bursting forth from the mud of a shallow canal. Drawing near, we perceived a strong sulphurous odour, and saw little flames of fire and heard a hissing sound as though a large quantity of phosphorous was being ignited. It was impossible to detect anything which caused the fire, only the water where the flames appeared had particles of a bluish hue floating on the surface. The area over which the tiny flames kept bursting forth was about 40 yards. A gentleman present stirred up the mud with his walking stick, and immediately large yellow flames nearly 2 feet in length and breadth burst forth. The phenomenon lasted some time, until the tide covered the part and quenched the fire."
From "Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological"
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August 17, 1876. Ringstead Bay, England. "Between 4 and 5 p.m. two ladies who were out on the cliff, saw surrounding them on all sides, and extending from a few inches above the surface to two or three feet overhead, numerous globes of light, the size of billiard balls, which were moving independently and vertically up and down, sometimes within a few inches of the observers, but always eluding the grasp; now gliding upwards two or three feet, and as slowly falling again, resembling in their movements soap bubbles floating in the air. The balls were all aglow, but not dazzling, with a soft, superb irridescence, rich and warm of hue, and each of variable tints, their charming colours brightening the extreme beauty of the scene. The subdued magnificence of this fascinating spectacle is described as baffling description. Their numbers were continually fluctuating; at times thousands of them enveloped the observers, and a few minutes afterwards the numbers would dwindle to perhaps as few as twenty, but soon they would be swarming again as numerous as ever. Not the slightest noise accompanied the display.
From "Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights, and Related Luminous Phenomena: A Catalog of Geophysical Anomalies"
How to see the unseen
Mark Elbroch is a young tracker quickly gaining a reputation for his obsessive devotion to craft and comprehensive style of seeing. He once spent a whole New England winter tracking a single red fox -- which wound up tracking him! More than stories, Elbroch offers an astounding encyclopedia of observed animal signs and visualizations that are the most helpful I've ever seen. Pages and pages of life size paw prints, a whole long chapter of diverse specialized burrows, dens, nests, and cavities -- many in life size -- and all photographed. Elbroch is not only an ace naturalist, but a fabulous communicator. He must sleep with his camera because he captures every nuanced disturbance on film. There's distinguishing scat, urine and other secretions, by species. And most wonderful of all, several hundred pages on feeding patterns left by each mammal on vegetation and prey. This immense guide (almost 800 pages of full color illustrations and images) is by far the most ecological of any tracking guide ever written. It shows you how to see animals through their effects upon the other living organisms around them. The amount of knowledge, respect, and insight packed into this brick of a book is stunning. I'm sure it will become a classic.
Equally astounding is a companion book on bird signs. Imagine going birdwatching without looking at birds. All you inspect are the ripples each bird makes as it disturbs the environment in its daily routine. At first the ripples are faint, but soon with practice they swell in size and plenty until they seem a wave that all but shouts out the bird's identification. That's the Elbroch way of seeing.
These fat books, lovingly published by Stackpole Books, will change the way you walk in the woods.
-- KK
 
Mammal Tracks & Sign
A guide to North American Species, by Mark Elbroch, 2003, 792 pages
$30
Amazon
Bird Tracks & Sign
A guide to North American Species, by Mark Elbroch adn Elearnor Marks, 2002, 464 pages
$24
Amazon
Excerpts:
Negative space. The spaces between the toes, between the toes and palm pads, and between the individual interdigital pads form shapes that are incredibly useful to track detectives. I often look for an X, H, or C shape to help distinguish feline and canine tracks. The front tracks of gray foxes and domestic dogs tend to show an H, while those of red foxes and coyotes show an X. Look for a C in the front tracks of cats.
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Finding a hair. This is an exercise I have practiced over the years to help myself look deeper. Whenever I sit down in the woods, I won't allow myself to stand until I've found a hair within approximately an 8-inch-square patch of earth. When I'm relaxed, it's a short exercise, but when I'm tense, it may last 30 minutes. When I'm struggling, it's usually just after I've proclaimed that I've finally found the first piece of earth devoid of animal hair that I find the first one. The second one is easy.
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A great horned owl has swooped and picked up a mouse.
How to see
I've had meager success in tracking animals using other guide books. This one employs color photography which matches what I see on the trail much closer that black and white sketches. Also it emphasizes animal scat and browsing patterns. It includes primarily North American mammals.
-- KK
Tracking & the Art of Seeing
Paul Rezendes
1999, 336 pages
$18
Harper Perennial
Amazon
Excerpt:
Since white-tailed deer have only bottom incisors, they leave rough, torn, or squared-off cuts when browsing.
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White-tailed deer beds may show a lot of detail. In this one, the impression of the deer's rump is to the lower left, the hind leg is to the lower right, and the two folded front legs are to the upper right. You can determine the size of the deer by measuring the bed from the center of the lower folded front leg diagonally across to the rump. A large deer's bed measures 41", a small deer's 25".
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The scat of snowshoe hares (left) and cottontails (right) is not always this dissimilar. Notice that one of the cottontail pellets looks exactly like those of the snowshoe hare. You cannot rely on scat to differentiate between most of the rabbit family members.
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A comparison of cat and dog tracks highlights the asymmetrical shape of the cat's track. The toes point in a different direction from the heel pad, and the two inner (front) toes have one slightly ahead of the other, as with the two outer toes. In contrast, the dog track is more symmetrical.
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Red squirrels opened these hickory nuts, leaving large, jagged holes. When gray squirrels open hickory nuts, they chip away at them, creating a ragged appearance, and often break them into small fragments. Red squirrels and flying squirrels leave the shells more intact.
Intense underwater gardening
The folks who know the most about reef ecology are the amateur reefers. These passionate hobbyists explore the essentials of marine life by creating artificial salt-water reefs at home. They can cram an amazing diversity of species - sponges, coral, mollusks, fishes -- in a few square meters. The coolest residents are the invertebrates.. So much of this craft is like high-performance gardening. You've got grow-lights, pumps, salts, and lots of technical gear. Technology makes the chores not much more difficult than keeping fish. To handle this complexity, though, and the whims of dazzlingly strange creatures, veteran amateurs point to this book as the most helpful. The author stresses using the proper mix of reef organisms to filtrate the water without unneeded mechanics. He guides novices easily through sophisticated methods, keeping it as "natural" as possible. Because home reefer enthusiasts are so attuned to the life cycles of their captives, I learned more about marine life from here than any other source.
-- KK
Natural Reef Aquariums
John H. Tullock
2001, 336 pages
$24
T.F.H. Publications
Amazon
Excerpt:
Your grandfather, perhaps 100 years ago or so, could only imagine what wonders the world beneath the sea might contain. Your father could follow the exploits of the first explorers of the undersea realm and could just begin to see and experience the explosion of life on a coral reef. But you and I, we can not only visit this world whenever we wish, but we can also capture a small part of it in an oceanic microcosm of our own making in our own homes.
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Even in the most northerly regions, an aquarium placed in direct sunlight can overheat. Aquarists should avoid placing the aquarium in a sunny window, as seasonal fluctuations in temperature in such a location will make maintaining the correct water temperature a challenge. Artificial lighting, for most home situations, is the better choice, being more controllable, predictable, and programmable for the most convenient viewing period.
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Alternatively, organisms from deeper waters, or specimens that have languished for too long in dim light, may have ceased production of protective pigments. When these specimens are then placed under bright lights, the effect is similar to that experienced by someone who, having spent a long winter indoors, rushes out on the first sunny day and spends an afternoon sunbathing. I believe that the alleged burning of corals by metal halide lights can be attributed to a lack of understanding of how these organisms respond to light and not to any inherent detrimental effect of the lights themselves.
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One of the more vexatious challenges, even for experienced reef keepers, is the appropriate placement of corals within the aquarium. Finding just the right level of light intensity and water motion can mean the difference between a specimen that thrives and grows, showing full polyp extension and brilliant coloration, and one that leads a lackluster existence, with polyps retracted or shrunken, dull coloration, and no growth.
Open (top) or closed polyps, as in this Palythoa colony, can be an indicator of water conditions. Constantly closed polyps are a sign of trouble.
Metal halide pendants provide intense illumination while permitting easy top-down viewing of the clam reef. A convenient acrylic sump houses the skimmer, heaters, pouches of activated carbon, and phosphate remover.
Strangeness of life on earth
Alien life discovered on earth! To see what life could be � to imagine its fullest possibilities � descend to these burning underwater fissures where an entirely unknown world of distinctly different organisms is now being noticed. This scholarly anthology has the latest reports. Anyone who says we know life is wrong. My goodness, how strange life is.
-- KK
The Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents
Cindy Lee Van Dover
2000, 424 pages
$50
Princeton University Press
Amazon
Methane hydrate habitat of the ice worm, Hesiocaeca methanicola, on the Louisiana Slope in the gulf of Mexico.
Time-series images of community development at Biomarker #9 following the April 1991 eruption at 9°50'N on the East Pacific Rise. (top) April 1991: Flocculent, bacterially generated material in the water column within 15 m of biomarker #9 immediately following the eruption (within days to weeks)...(mid) December 1993: The giant vestimentiferan tubeworm (Riftia pachyptila) has colonized the site, growing rapidly and overgrowing the population of Tevnia jerichonana...(Bottom) November 1995: The Riftia pachyptila population is now in excess of 2000 individuals and tubes are stained with rust-colored, ferrous oxide precipitate coincident with increased concentrations of iron in the diffuse, low-temperature vent fluids.
Other kinds of creatures
You want life weird and strange? It's in the deep a mile down. You don't know life at all until you've met these spectacularly different creatures. I mean way different. Totally bizarre, totally awesome. Guaranteed to alter your consciousness. The filmmaking is superb and jaw-dropping. The disk you want is Part 2 of the acclaimed BBC Blue Planet series. The rest of the series is okay, but not extraordinary; the other episode on Part 2, "Open Ocean," is one of the better of the series; so you can order just this one disk (or tape)
-- KK
The Blue Planet
Part 2: Open Ocean/ The Deep
Narrated by David Attenborough
$13 DVD
Netflix
Amazon
How to see birds
Our contemporary Audubon, David Sibley, will mentor you in how to see birds. This is not one of his legendary field guides; instead it's a masterful course on how birds work, distilled into a small compact book, and illustrated with his impeccable drawings. Even if you've been birding all your life, every page will illuminate the art of seeing them. How can you tell just from a flitting glance in the dark that was a white-throated sparrow? Sibley the grand master tells how he does it. It will be a very long time before anyone else understands and communicates this hard-won knowledge better.
--KK
A Purple Finch with representative feathers from different parts of the body.
Western Sandpiper in fresh (left) and worn (right) alternate plumage, with representative scapular feathers from each, showing the striking changes that take place gradually, over a period of about four months, with no molt. Most field guides can show only one example of each plumage, so they illustrate an "average" bird, somewhere between these extremes.
Excerpt:
The making of hissing, shushing, and squeaking noises (known among birders as "pishing") is done in imitation of the scolding calls of certain small songbirds. It is often combined with imitations of the calls of a small owl in order to simulate the sound of an owl that has been discovered by songbirds. Birds approach to see what's going on and to join in scolding the predator. Pishing is most effective when you are somewhat concealed within vegetation. The birds need to be able to get close to you without leaving their cover, and ideally there should be an open spot for them to sit when they do reach you. Curiosity will bring the birds in and then draw them to a perch where they can take a clear look at you.
The visible outline of a bird changes with feather movements: bird with puffed out (left) and sleeked down (right).
Sibley's Birding Basics
David Sibley
2002, 168 pages
$12
Amazon
Key to alien life underwater
A few summers ago I spent a week snorkling in the Bahamas. Descending underwater, I had an out-of-the-planet experience. Minute by minute I realized that I was encountering creatures whose general business in life I couldn't identify. How did they make their living? Animal, plant, or alien? I couldn't tell. Life is simply far stranger than we can imagine, and no where is that more evident than in the compressed diversity of a coral reef. I needed a Who's Who to introduce me to the characters of this underworld. The best beginner's orientation I found was in Peterson's Guide to Coral Reefs. It's fine for a start.
Then a diver tipped me off to Paul Humann's work. Working with 50 professional biologists, Humann has collected pictures and descriptions of Caribbean marine life into three color bursting field guides: Reef Fishes, Reef Creatures, and Reef Coral. These are working identification books used by divers, biologists and taxonomists themselves. (Comes in durable plastic protection cover; includes species life-check list.) Many of the species ID'd are little known. Most are weird. All are beautiful and wonderful. The guides contain a sufficient critical mass of species that you can be confident you actually saw what you think you saw.
The other way I use these: I sit late at night and page through them. My favorite is Reef Creatures, with back up by Reef Coral. I boggle at WHAT'S DOWN THERE. I read the bios. I swoon over the shocking images in full color. I stare. I re-read the bios. I feel holy, blessed.
Humann (and Peterson for that matter) covers the west Atlantic. There is no equivalent portable guide for waters in the rest of our ocean globe that I am aware of. Like Audabon's masterpiece of birds in North America it can be used and appreciated in other locals.
--KK
Reef Fish Identification (3rd Edition), 2002, $25, Amazon
Reef Creature Identification (2nd Edition) 2002, $24, Amazon
Reef Coral Identification (2nd Edition), 2002, $27, Amazon
Reef Set Boxed Set (3 volumes) $76
All by Paul Hamann and Ned Deloach
Amazon
More...
How to hear the natural world
What a rare gem: a how-to book that changed my mind. Or at least my hearing. Audio recordist Bernie Krause has captured the sounds of ants eating, of sand dunes shifting, of frogs croaking in duets with airplanes, and the winds sweeping over prairie grass. This subtle yet omnipresent universe of natural sound was something I had mostly ignored. Krause's practical guide is a fantastic re-education. Using a tiny digital recorder (see review of the Olympus Digital Voice Recorder) as my new ears, under his guidance nature is reborn into ever-changing radio-stations of novel sounds. His how-to advice is among the best how-to I've read; smart, specific, just the right level of detail and backed by 30 years of doing it. Since sounds often trigger more memories than snapshots, recording soundspaces should be as easy and satisfying as photography, and with Krauses' advice it is. His book is dense with sonic adventures in the wild, and a 55-minute trophy CD. It's the ultimate guide: every page compels you to get up and do it. See with your ears!
Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World
Bernie Krause
2002, 168 pages, with CD
$14
Amazon
Presents the full diversity of life
This 8-part (4 DVD set) series is a National Science Foundation/PBS production that is the most taxonomic of any presentation I've seen. The Shape of Life addresses the 8 major categories of animal life -- phylum by phylum. Starts with sponges, heads toward round worms, and so on. You get the full diverse view of life -- all intelligently organized around a taxonomic framework (without the vocabulary), and expertly illustrated with great (mostly undersea) BBC-type footage. Despite the wonderful nature photography, the creators work really hard to convey the innovations offered by each phylum, and it works. This series cured me of a rather vague notion of animal diversity, despite my work at All Species. I'd love to ingest the same mind-opening treatment for the plant world, as well as the other 3 kingdoms.
Four discs, $80
From Amazon
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