Nature
-
Wild About Wonder
“It is a country to breed mystical people, egocentric people, perhaps poetic people. But not humble ones…Puny you may feel there, and vulnerable, but not unnoticed. This is a land to mark the…
-
Wild About Spring
As I’m writing this, it’s snowing—big, fat flakes that come in spring storms, when we’re too tired of winter to appreciate how pretty it is. As a date on the calendar, spring begins…
-
Wild About Megafauna
Beavers the size of a fridge. Elephants covered in fur. Giant camels that roamed western North America. If you go to any ice age exhibit at a natural history museum, you may wonder…
-
Wild About Scientific Illustration
Illustration has been an important part of scientific research and discovery for centuries. Today, while photography can capture images from the scale of the universe down to individual cells, this level of precision…
-
Wild About Keystone Species
The temperate rainforests of British Columbia’s central coast are a complex ecosystem filled with towering trees and lush vegetation. Home to grizzly bears, wolves, and a host of other species, the diversity of…
-
Wild About Plant Communication
If a tree speaks in the forest, can anybody hear? When it comes to communication, we tend to think of species on a continuum. We view ourselves as the ‘best’ communicators at one…
-
Wild About Deception and Mimicry
A number of years ago, I had a dog who lied. If we refused to play with her, she would sit by the door, asking to go outside. As soon as we got…
-
Wild About Ephemeral Art
Step inside any major museum or art gallery and you’re likely to see art from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, carefully conserved and held in situ for us to learn from…
-
Wild About Mutualism
It sounds like a pitch for a children’s book: a coyote and a badger roam across the prairie, working together to hunt ground squirrels. In reality, it’s an example of mutualism, where two…
-
Wild About Bird Names
In 2017, after a close-fought vote by more than 50,000 Canadians, the Royal Geographic Society of Canada declared the gray jay (Perisoreus canadensis) as our national bird. Although it has not received official…
