Cara Byington

The headline read: “Tiger Shark Regurgitates Echidna.” I clicked the link so fast, I should have burned my fingers. Tiger shark? Regurgitated echidna? I had so many questions. The first being: Wait? Echidnas can swim? Yes, they can. In fact, I learned that echidnas—small monotremes (egg-laying mammals) native to Australia and New Guinea—swim quite well.

Fire is essential to tallgrass prairie health, but different fire frequencies benefit different species. This study shows there is no universal burn regime—effective conservation requires varied, landscape-level fire and grazing strategies. Tallgrass prairies—once among North America’s most expansive ecosystems—survive on disturbance. Fire and grazing maintain open grasslands, prevent woody encroachment, and sustain biodiversity. But not all fires have the same ecological impact.

Migration is perhaps one of the most well-recognized phenomena of the natural world. From the wildebeest traversing your television screen in  wildlife documentaries, to the warblers in your backyard, we’ve always been fascinated by animals on the move. Tens of thousands of years ago, knowledge about the movement of animals would have been critical to our own species’s survival. Today we can simply sit back and wonder at the spectacle. But not all migrations are obvious.