Jason Goldman
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Science journalist. Wildlife reporter. Expedition leader. Bylines @SciAm @Biographic @BBCEarth @NatGeo & more. @GoScifari @SciCommCamp @NerdBrigadeLA co-founder
Articles by Jason Goldman
Evolution’s Favorite Fish Diversify through ‘Noncoding’ Genes
Proliferating cichlids may specialize using regulatory DNA East African cichlid species. Credit: Javier Millán Photography Getty Images Darwin's finches are perhaps the best-known examples of adaptive radiation—the evolutionary phenomenon in which one ancestral species rapidly diversifies into several new ones, each with unique adaptations for surviving in its own environment. But these Galápagos birds have nothing on the cichlids of East Africa.
Lovebirds Adore Our Inefficient Air-Conditioning
Lovebird perched on a tree branch in Arizona. Credit: Getty Images The rosy-faced lovebirds that live in Phoenix appear to be free riding on our urban climate control. “For probably most of a decade, it seemed to be during the hot summertime where my students would come back into the building and knock on my door and say, ‘Hey, did you see the lovebirds on the windows and the vents?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, I have.’ And they’d say, ‘What do you think they’re doing? Why are they there?
Imperiled Freshwater Turtles Are Eating Plastics—Science Is Just Revealing the Threat
Red-eared slider entangled in a plastic six-pack ring. Credit: Alamy We know a lot about how sea turtles are threatened by our trash, but new research has just uncovered an underreported threat hiding inside lakes and rivers. “So what happened is: I started cutting open these specimens that had been preserved and sitting in the museum collection for five or six years. I took a Dremel tool, cut off the shell, opened it up, looked at the stomach contents.
Kangaroos with Puppy Dog Eyes
Red kangaroo. Credit: Getty Images New research shows that when faced with an impossible task, the marsupials look to humans for help. Let’s say you have a dog. Or maybe you’re watching a friend’s pup. You have a treat in your hand, so you have the dog’s attention. Then you put the treat into a doggy-proof box and let them figure it out. What do you think the dog will do? If you’re a dog owner, you probably know. Spike or Spot or Ms. Fluffy will probably try in vain for a while.
Bromances Could Lead to More Romances for Male Hyenas
Spotted hyenas inside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. Credit: Alamy Spotted hyena males do not fight for mates, so how are certain males shut out of the mating game? Jason Goldman: Morning in Tanzania. The sun rises over the Ngorongoro Crater. The spotted hyenas are beginning their day, while Eve Davidian from Germany's Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research sits nearby in a truck, watching and waiting.
How Sea Turtles Find Their Way - Oceans on Nautilus
The air was warm as the skies grew dark over Diego Garcia. As the nearly full moon reached its highest point, a green sea turtle scuttled her way onto the sand. The ocean giant was more than a meter wide and nearly as long from nose to tail. Her carapace, mottled with splotches of green and black, was slick with salt water. Turtles glide through the sea with a certain reptilian elegance, but on land their awkward, plodding movements evoke a wind-up toy in need of a few more cranks.
Bees Use 'Bullshit' Defense to Keep Giant Hornets at Bay
Asian honeybees gather around the dung-plastered entrance to their hive. Credit: Heather Mattila The prospect of death by giant hornet has pushed some Asian honey bees to resort to a poop-based defense system [Honey bee sounds] Matilla: They'll basically crush or pop the head off of any worker who tries to attack them. If you’re a honeybee, a hornet attack could be the last thing you ever experience.It's a gory, violent process. And honeybees have had to adapt to stay alive.
How to Avoid Becoming a Meal for a Cheetah
A cheetah in central Namibia. Credit: Jan Zwilling, Leibniz-IZW Researchers help farmers in Namibia avoid costly cattle losses by tracking big cat hangouts The cheetah is the rarest big cat in Africa. Less than 7000 adults remain on the planet. Think of it this way: for every cheetah on the planet there are more than four Starbucks coffee shops. The most important cheetah stronghold is in Central Namibia. But the cheetahs there don't live within national parks. They live on privately owned farmland.
The Timeline of Fear | Hakai Magazine
Just keep looking over your shoulder, bandicoot. Photo by Dave Watts/Alamy Stock Photo Two populations of bandicoots show that learning to fear a new predator can take quite some time. Authored by by Jason G. Goldman Wordcount October 11, 2016 | 500 words, about 2 minutes This story is over 4 years old.
Winter 2021/Issue 14
Publisher’s Note: Art, Beauty, and Passion By Will Hearst Rethinking Prisons By Lydia Lee Poetry: “Proof” • “Prefaceto a Photograph—Delano, CA 1976” By James Cagney Watching Birds as They Watch Us By Jason G.
How the Wolves Change the Forest
This is 60-second science, I'm Jason Goldman. GABLE: "We literally get down on our hands and knees and start slowly sifting through the leaf litter, looking through bits of hair or a little chunk of bone… Tom Gable is tracking a predator. In fact, he’s tracking a whole pack of them. GABLE: It's very much like a crime scene investigation…. [Sounds of Voyageurs wolves] Since 2015, the University of Minnesota conservation biologist has used GPS collars to track 30 wolves inside Voyageurs National Park.
How Sea Turtles Find Their Way
The air was warm as the skies grew dark over Diego Garcia. As the nearly full moon reached its highest point, a green sea turtle scuttled her way onto the sand. The ocean giant was more than a meter wide and nearly as long from nose to tail. Her carapace, mottled with splotches of green and black, was slick with salt water. Turtles glide through the sea with a certain reptilian elegance, but on land their awkward, plodding movements evoke a wind-up toy in need of a few more cranks.
How Sea Turtles Find Their Way
Join ADVERTISEMENT Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. or Join now . Zoology Whether you’re a sea turtle or a ship’s captain, you’ll need two tools—a map and a compass. Sign up for the free Nautilus newsletter: The air was warm as the skies grew dark over Diego Garcia. As the nearly full moon reached its highest point, a green sea turtle scuttled her way onto the sand. The ocean giant was more than a meter wide and nearly as long from nose to tail.
How Sea Turtles Find Their Way
The air was warm as the skies grew dark over Diego Garcia. As the nearly full moon reached its highest point, a green sea turtle scuttled her way onto the sand. The ocean giant was more than a meter wide and nearly as long from nose to tail. Her carapace, mottled with splotches of green and black, was slick with salt water. Turtles glide through the sea with a certain reptilian elegance, but on land their awkward, plodding movements evoke a wind-up toy in need of a few more cranks.
Echolocation Drains Bats Traveling through Noise
Bats have to leave the safety of their roosts every night to find food. That takes energy: their insect prey must provide them with enough fuel to offset the cost of hunting in the first place. Because bats use the same chest and abdominal muscles for both flying and producing echolocation calls, many researchers thought vocalizing while airborne would not consume significantly more energy than flying alone. But a new study has thrown that idea into serious doubt. The results were published in .
Frog Vocals Lead to Small Preference
The concave-eared torrent frog's unusual ear anatomy lets it hear high-frequency calls, which gives a mating advantage to the littler males that sing soprano. In the shadow of Huangshan Mountain in southeastern China lives a beige frog with black stripes. The concave-eared torrent frog, or Odorrana tormota, gets its name from its unusual hearing apparatus. "It has kind of [an] ear canal-like structure like humans, and like most mammals.
Why it feels so good to scratch an itch
Why it feels so good to scratch an itch (Image credit: iStock) It’s the unpleasant feeling that makes us instinctively scratch and scratch and scratch. So why does a fingernail almost instantly make an itch feel better? J J R Traver began to itch around her 40th birthday, and would continue to scratch away at her skin until her death some 40 years later.
River Ecosystem Restoration Can Mean Just Add Water
Dragonfly spotted on the banks of the Santa Cruz River in Arizona on day one of the release of water into the river. Credit: Courtesy of Michael Bogan Planners returned water to the dry bed of Arizona’s Santa Cruz River in 2019, and various species began showing up on the same day. In the 1800s, many rivers in the American West were diverted for irrigation or dammed for generating electricity. So rapidly expanding cities began tapping into groundwater.
Humans Make Wild Animals Less Wary
Wild animals are equipped with a variety of techniques to avoid becoming lunch for a bigger, toothier animal. The most well-known methods include the classic “fight” and “flight,” as well as “freeze.” A team of researchers wondered how proximity to people might impact those survival strategies. “We often see that animals are more tolerant around us in urban areas, but we don't really know why.” U.C.L.A. evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein.
Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 and Failure of Humoral Immunity: a case report.
View ORCID ProfileJason D. Goldman, Kai Wang, Katharina Roltgen, Sandra C. A. Nielsen, Jared C. Roach, Samia N. Naccache, Fan Yang, Oliver F. Wirz, Kathryn E. Yost, Ji-Yeun Lee, Kelly Chun, Terri Wrin, Christos J. Petropoulos, Inyou Lee, Shannon Fallen, Paula M. Manner, Julie A. Wallick, Heather A. Algren, Kim M. Murray, Yapeng Su, Jennifer Hadlock, Joshua Jeharajah, William R. Berrington, George P. Pappas, Sonam T. Nyatsatsang, Alexander L. Greninger, Ansuman T. Satpathy, John S Pauk, Scott D. Boyd, James R.
These Small Mammals Snort To a Different Tune
Credit: Getty Images Hyraxes, which live in Africa and the Middle East, punctuate their songs with snorts. And the snorts appear to reflect the animals’ emotional state. Jason G. Goldman reports. They grow to about twenty inches long and weigh less than ten pounds. So you might not think they’d be the closest living relatives to elephants. Meet the rock hyrax, sometimes called the rock rabbit or the dassie, common in rocky areas of Africa and the Middle East.
When Predators Collide | Hakai Magazine
Elasmobranch? More like Elasmobrunch. Photo by Chris Fallows South African seals are feasting on blue sharks. Authored by by Jason G. Goldman Wordcount April 28, 2015 | 700 words, about 3 minutes This story is over 5 years old. Share this article Share this: Share on Flipboard Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Article body copy In 2004, Chris Fallows noticed something peculiar in the open ocean south of Cape Town, South Africa.
The One Simple Trick to Being a Highly Successful Plover Parent | Hakai Magazine
Western snowy plover chicks and eggs blend right into this gravely terrain. Photo by Michael Kern/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis (That ravens and crows don’t want you to know!) Authored by by Jason G. Goldman Wordcount September 29, 2015 | 550 words, about 2 minutes This story is over 4 years old.
Big Bad Dottybacks | Hakai Magazine
A dusky dottyback in its brown coloration. Photo by Cristopher E Mirbach Predatory fish dress like their prey. Authored by by Jason G. Goldman Wordcount May 13, 2015 | 400 words, about 2 minutes This story is over 5 years old. Share this article Share this: Share on Flipboard Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Article body copy In the classic fairy tale, the Big Bad Wolf dons Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s clothes to fool the girl into coming close enough to eat.
Why Pet Pigs Are More Like Wolves Than Like Dogs
Credit: Getty Images Given an impossible task, a dog will ask a human for help, but a wolf will not seek help--and neither will a pet pig. It's a classic television trope: Timmy has fallen down a well! Lassie can't save him herself, so she runs to find help. Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show, but the idea that a dog could seek help from a human for help does have a solid basis in science.
Nat Geo Wild's Radical Approach to Science TV: Being Truthful
Science television in America has had a rough few years. We've been told that mermaids exist (they don't) and that Megalodon lives (it doesn't). Investigative journalists have discovered that some wildlife shows mistreat animals. But Nat Geo Wild has largely bucked the trend of misleading or lying outright to viewers. How does Nat Geo Wild achieve that sort of relative success in a landscape dominated by nonsense?
White Rhinos Eavesdrop to Know Who’s Who
Credit: Getty Images The finding could potentially help wildlife managers keep better tabs on their herds. Jason G. Goldman reports. Rhinos have notoriously poor eyesight, so they mostly rely on their noses to understand the world around them. But there’s one interaction in which sound plays a key role. Southern white rhino males can either be dominant or subordinate. And only the dominant males hold and defend territories.
Aardvarks Are Ailing amid Heat and Drought
Credit: Getty Images Climate change is expected to bring more frequent droughts and heat waves to Africa’s Kalahari Desert. And aardvarks might not be able to cope. Jason G. Goldman reports. The aardvark is a rare animal—alphabetically, at least, where it’s the first creature listed in English-language dictionaries. And they’re usually rarely seen in their African home. But that’s because they’re nocturnal, solitary and live in underground burrows. They’re actually fairly common.
Aardvarks are Ailing Amidst Heat and Drought
Credit: Getty Images Climate change is expected to bring more frequent droughts and heat waves to Africa’s Kalahari desert. And aardvarks might not be able to cope. Jason G. Goldman reports. The aardvark is a rare animal—alphabetically at least, where it’s the first creature listed in English language dictionaries. And they’re usually rarely seen in their African home. But that’s because they’re nocturnal, solitary and live in underground burrows. They’re actually fairly common.
Foxes Have Dined on Our Leftovers for 30,000 Years
Credit: Getty Images Analysis of fox fossils found evidence that they scavenged from wolf and bear kills until H. sapiens supplied plenty of horse and reindeer remains. Foxes hunt small animals. And when other predators, including us, kill large animals, foxes are known to scavenge on the leftovers. Now a study of their scavenging shows that foxes have slyly relied on people for food for tens of thousands of years. "I saw that foxes benefit a lot today from humans.
California’s Lone Wolf Pack - Alta Online
It’s impossible to know what the wolf was feeling as she awakened from a deep slumber on that warm summer day in 2006. Did the silver-gray beast notice the radio tracking collar now adorning her neck, affixed by biologists while she was unconscious? Either way, when the drugs wore off, she simply lumbered away into the distance. Nobody could have known that the animal from then on called B-300 would make lupine history as the matriarch of a family tree that spans Idaho, Oregon, and California.
Three Ways You Can Do Bird Science From Your Couch
News Researchers could use birders' sharp eyes to help with these digital community-science projects. By Jason G.
How and why do we pick our friends?
“Friendship," wrote CS Lewis, “is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.’” He wasn't the only one. Plato wrote "similarity begets friendship" in his 360 BCE play Phaedrus. And Aristotle had the same idea when he wrote, "some define it as a matter of similarity; they say that we love those who are like ourselves." Friendships blossoming on the basis of similar ideas, outlooks or tastes may seem intuitive, but that intuition is deceiving.
Predicting the next zoonotic spillover
Predicting the next zoonotic spillover To anticipate future threats to public health posed by zoonotic diseases, researchers have mapped the distribution of their mammalian hosts. A vexing problem facing epidemiologists is predicting where a novel disease might emerge from animals and begin to infect humans. Could they have known in advance how and when MERS would make the initial jump to humans, or when familiar zoonoses suddenly appear in an unexpected places, as with Ebola in West Africa?
Why Some Birds Are Likely To Hit Buildings
Credit: Getty Images Those that eat insects, migrate or usually live in the woods are most likely to fly into buildings that feature a lot of glass. About a billion birds die from flying into buildings each year in North America. Suspicions have been that birds may perceive the open areas behind glass as safe passageways. Or they may mistake the reflected foliage for the real thing.
Beluga whale sighted off San Diego coast mystifies scientists Original
It was a balmy Friday morning in June when Domenic Biagini, whale-watching tour captain and wildlife photographer, steered his 25-foot boat out of San Diego's Mission Bay with six clients on board. The plan was to find some whales—perhaps a migrating blue whale—so he radioed Lisa LaPointe, another tour captain, to see if she’d seen any that day. “Dom, we just saw a pearly white, 15-foot animal that didn’t have a dorsal fin,” he recalls her saying over the radio.
Beluga whale sighted off San Diego coast mystifies scientists
ByJason G. Goldman Published July 10, 2020 • 6 min read It was a balmy Friday morning in June when Domenic Biagini, whale-watching tour captain and wildlife photographer, steered his 25-foot boat out of San Diego's Mission Bay with six clients on board. The plan was to find some whales—perhaps a migrating blue whale—so he radioed Lisa LaPointe, another tour captain, to see if she’d seen any that day.
Bat Says Hi as It Hunts
Velvety free-tailed Bat (Molossus molossus). Credit: Alamy Velvety free-tailed bats produce sounds that help them locate insect prey but simultaneously identify them to their companions. Each night, small groups of a species called velvety free-tailed bats emerge from their roosts in the Panamanian rain forests to hunt for their insect prey using echolocation. “When bats are hunting, especially when they’re in open areas, they produce two really distinct call types.
Young Great White Sharks Eat Off the Floor
We're gonna need a bigger idea about what great white sharks eat. Credit: Getty Images The stomach contests of young great white sharks showed that they spend a lot of time patrolling the sea floor for meals. The image of a dorsal fin cutting through the sea surface is iconic. But scientists studying the stomach contests of young great white sharks off the coast of Australia were in for a surprise when they learned that the predators seem to spend a lot of time patrolling the sea floor.
Don't Let Your Halloween Candy Kill Orangutans
Sumatra and Borneo are the only places in the world where orangutans – the so-called "red apes" – live in the wild. Both species are endangered, the Sumatran one critically so. And your Halloween candy could be, at least in part, to blame. Above: Sumatran orangutan via Lip Kee/Flickr The Palm Oil Problem Wild orangutans are losing their habitat as the rainforests in which they live are being cleared to produce timber and to expand palm oil plantations.
Whale Protections Need Not Cause Lobstering Losses
Right whales, other whales and turtles get caught in lobster trap lines, but fewer lines can maintain the same lobster catch levels. There’s a lot of cash crawling on the sea floor. American lobsters bring in more money than any other U.S. fishery—a record $670 million in 2016, mostly through Maine and Massachusetts. The fishery relies on traditional lobster harvest techniques—a series of traps are dropped to the ocean floor with a long rope attached to a floating buoy.
What is #BlackBirdersWeek and why does it matter
You may have seen the video by now: a confrontation in Central Park involving a birdwatcher who asked a woman to leash her dog only to have her call the police claiming that ‘an African American man’ was threatening her. The man was Christian Cooper, and the encounter shone a spotlight on what many already know: it can be dangerous for Black people to explore public outdoor spaces. "This is a story beyond one person, a story beyond that park.
Bioluminescence Helps Prey Avoid Hungry Seals
Credit: Getty Images Prey animals flash biochemically produced light to confuse elephant seals hunting in the dark. But at least one seal turned the tables. Deep in the inky depths of what’s called the ocean’s mesopelagic zone, more than 500 meters below the surface, the main source of light is not the sun—even during the day. Most of the light comes instead from bioluminescent organisms, creatures that produce their own light.
Remdesivir for 5 or 10 Days in Patients with Severe Covid-19
24 References 193 Citing Articles Related Articles Abstract Background Remdesivir is an RNA polymerase inhibitor with potent antiviral activity in vitro and efficacy in animal models of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Methods We conducted a randomized, open-label, phase 3 trial involving hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, oxygen saturation of 94% or less while they were breathing ambient air, and radiologic evidence of pneumonia.
Malaria Mosquitoes Are Biting before Bed-Net Time
Indian nomadic shepherd arranges a mosquito net as she prepares a bed at her camp. Credit: Getty Images Mosquitoes that like to bite at night are being thwarted by bed nets, leading to the rise of populations that prefer to bite when the nets are not up yet. More than 200 million people get malaria each year. And about half a million die—mostly in Africa, many of them children. And those staggering numbers are an improvement. Malaria deaths have been cut in half since 2000.
Malaria Mosquitoes Biting Before Bednet Time
Mosquitoes that like to bite at night are being thwarted by bednets, leading to the rise of populations that prefer to bite when the nets aren't up yet. More than 200 million people get malaria each year. And about half a million die—mostly in Africa, many of them children. And those staggering numbers are an improvement. Malaria deaths have been cut in half since 2000.
How the Coronavirus Has Changed Animals’ Landscape of Fear
Mountain goats roam the streets of LLandudno on March 31, 2020 in Wales. The goats normally live on the rocky Great Orme and are occasional visitors to the seaside town, but a local councillor told the BBC that the herd was drawn this time by the lack of people and tourists due to the COVID-19 outbreak and quarantine measures. Credit: Christopher Furlong Getty Images A family of lions takes a midday nap in the middle of a road in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
Barn Owl Babies Can Be Helpful Hatch Mates
Credit: Getty Images Food sharing is mainly found in adult animals as a part of social bonding. But in a rarely observed behavior in birds, older barn owl chicks will share food with younger ones. Robin Hood famously stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Young, newly hatched barn owls do something similar. On average, barn owls raise six chicks at once—and sometimes as many as nine.
Barn Owl Babies Can Be Helpful Hatchmates
Credit: Getty Images Food sharing is mainly found in adult animals as part of social bonding. But in a rarely observed behavior in birds, older barn owl chicks will share food with younger ones. Robin Hood famously stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Young, newly hatched barn owls do something similar. On average, barn owls raise six chicks at once. And sometimes as many as nine.
Lemur Flirting Uses Common Scents
Credit: Getty Images To entice female ring-tailed lemurs, males rub wrist secretions, which include compounds we use in perfumes, onto their tail and then wave it near the gals. When preparing for a date, a human might use a small spritz of cologne or perfume. And male ring-tailed lemurs also splash on some cologne to impress the females. The only difference is they secrete their own scents from glands near their wrists.
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