When Frogs Sing Their Evening Song, Listen for Nature’s Greatest Lesson

Spring Peepers Hijack My Brain With an Arrhythmic Chorus About Chance and Survival

For some people, spring begins with the sound of birds. For me, it’s frogs.

All winter, frogs crouch hidden in the leaves, their outsides frozen so hard they’d make a “clink” if you dropped them. They survive because the interior of their cells are propped up by a sugary antifreeze peculiar to frogs. As the weather warms up, they unfreeze and reanimate, like something from a fairy tale. And then they find themselves a nice muddy spot and begin singing.

Frog songs are meepy and beepy, some clattery, others deep. …

Could Nanotechnology Spark Another ‘Silent Spring’?

A Biologist Investigates How the Booming Demand for Microscopic Materials Could Threaten Fragile Ecosystems

Nothing can compare to the first night in a rainforest. In Honduras, in 2007, I hung my hammock beneath a lavish tree canopy, closed my eyes, and let insect chirps, …

Albert Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and Me

Why Astrophysicists Were So Desperate to Catch a 'Whopping Big Signal' from the Universe

Like nearly every other physicist in the world last week, I was glued to my computer screen watching the recent press conference jointly called by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory …

E. Coli Is Your Oldest Friend

The Evolutionary Genius of This Shifty Bacteria Is Giving Scientists New Healing Superpowers

It’s hard to find a fan of E. coli—especially since last October, when 55 people in 11 states got sick after eating at Chipotle—but we can see a reflection of …

Methane Is Invisible, Ubiquitous, and More Powerful Than We Imagined

A California Gas Leak Is Revealing the Outsize Punch of an Underestimated Molecule

Made of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms, lighter than air, methane is a democratic molecule. You make it, I make it, cows and coal mines emit it, as do …

The Slimy Underworld That Emerges After the Rain

After a Good Soak, the City Comes Alive with Rare Snails, Poisonous Mushrooms, and Slug-Like Molds.

Zócalo’s editors are throwing it back to some of our favorite pieces from the archive. This week: Urban nature explorer Lila Higgins revels in …