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NCPR Programs: Natural SelectionsEach week join Martha Foley and Professor Curt Stager from Paul Smith's College as they discuss various topics from the world of nature. You can hear Natural Selections on Thursdays at 8:35 am, and on Sundays at 8:55 am.
This has been a good year for the signature wildflower of the northern forest spring. The trillium is a long-lived perennial that may grow 15 years before it puts out a short-lived bloom. Curt Stager and Martha Foley discuss this fleeting ornament of the forest floor.
We know about the "birds and the bees," but how about the bats? One flower encourages bats to pollinate them by forming perfect sonar reflectors, a sort of bat mirror. Jewelweed flowers are perfectly shaped to accommodate a hummingbird's bill. Martha Foley and Curt Stager explore pollination.
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.
Chipmunks aren't exactly shy—their metabolism runs too high to turn down a free lunch—but neither are they social among themselves, once beyond the nest. Dr. Curt Stager and Martha Foley talk about this aggressively territorial backyard fixture.
Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about the role of individuals once they are past fertility. Elders help hold communities together by acting as the living histories and resource libraries.
An astonishing variety of warblers return with the northern spring from tropical climes. Some cross the Gulf of Mexico without a rest stop. Martha Foley asks Dr. Curt Stager, why? What do we have here that can't be found in Mexico or Martinique?
Homo floresiensis, left, and Homo Sapiens
Dr. Curt Stager and Marth Foley talk about a new hominid species, Homo floresiensis, whose 18,000-year-old remains have been unearthed on an Indonesian island. The diminutive stature of this close relative of modern humans has earned it the nickname "hobbit."
Herring doing the deed.
Naturalists have observed telltale bubbles emitted by some fish and have even provided recordings. Others have detected secret alarm sounds in the cries of ground squirrels. Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager talk about the hidden sounds of nature.
Natural Selections tackles questions about the origins of life—from a tree to an entire planet. How does life start? Are the beginnings biological, chemical or something else? Martha Foley and Dr. Curt Stager wonder if we will recognize it when we see it.
Giant beaver skull compared with modern specimen.
During the last Ice Age North America was home to many varieties of "super-sized" mammals, megafauna. Giant beaver, 'possums, bear, sloths and other creatures joined the more familair wooly mammoth in the land bridge migration. Dr Curt Stager and Martha Foley look at the question, "Why so big?"
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(7/18/02)
Natural History
