Alex Champagne

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt.

Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Will Byers leaning on a tree with horizontal rows of holes that are a telltale sign of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.

Very excited to see Yellow-bellied Sapsucker holes on this tree during season 5, episode 1 of Stranger Things. Will this tree’s counterpart in the Upside Down still have sapsucker holes? 🤔

LOTR would have ended very differently if Frodo had encountered one of these spiders.

I sent a calendar invite for a “TLC Marathon” to my research student today. We’re either running thin layer chromatography plates or binge-watching “My 600 lb Life”.

If birds were actually government drones, then there wouldn't have been any birds during the shutdown.

It's over.

7 basic science discoveries that changed the world Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

Scientists point to a long list of findings that emerged out of fundamental research, the type of studies the US government is cutting, and went on to change the world. Nature lists a few of their examples. 🧪

A meme with two panels. The top panel shows trees at night completely wrapped in bright white Christmas lights, making the area glow intensely. The bottom panel shows a man in bed with his eyes half-closed and red, looking pained and exhausted as if unable to sleep. The caption across the bottom image says, “The bird trying to sleep in its nest be like.” The meme humorously suggests how birds might feel if their tree is covered in blinding holiday lights.

It’s that time of year when this meme becomes relevant again… 🫣

Humans vs. the machine! 💪>🦾

odonates, mosquitoes, craneflies, and selected turtles have entered the chat

It's a black and white paper header for a short communication, and I've copied the text below. Please stop reading if you don't want the literal copy to be read to you. "Naturwissenschaften (2003) 90:495–500 DOI 10.1007/s00114-003-0473-9 SHORT COMMUNICATION B. M. Rothschild · D. H. Tanke · M. Helbling · L. D. Martin Epidemiologic study of tumors in dinosaurs Received: 16 June 2003 / Accepted: 29 August 2003 / Published online: 14 October 2003 Springer-Verlag 2003"

One of the amazing things about science is we will never run out of mysteries.

Take "Naturwissenschaften (2003) 90:495–500", which performed a survey of 10,000 dinosaur fossils for evidence of tumors in the bone.

I was prepared for yes, no, but what I wasn't prepared for was:
"only in hadrosaurs."

It all makes sense. The Bills nickname refers to bird beaks.

Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.

A Hummingbird Clearwing Moth nectarine on a thistle.

On National Hummingbird Day, a reminder of how cool convergent evolution is.

Cannot stop laughing at this

Watch Out!

Diabetic Man With Gene-Edited Cells Produces His Own Insulin—No Transplant Drugs Required A proof-of-concept study finds that donated insulin-producing cells can be genetically modified to avoid provoking the recipient's immune system.

Diabetic Man With Gene-Edited Cells Produces His Own Insulin—No Transplant Drugs Required

A proof-of-concept study finds that donated insulin-producing cells can be genetically modified to avoid provoking the recipient's immune system.

gizmodo.com/diabetic-man...

This desert beetle runs to cool off After a sprint, the temperature of the beetle Onymacris plana drops. Efficient running, a body built for cooling and a little bit of lift all help.

This paper was published 40 years after the original fieldwork was conducted. It’s never too late to share cool research!

Yesterday the Pew Research Center released a report based on the internet browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults which found that Google users who encounter an Al summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than use 's who don't encounter an Al summary. To be precise, only [my emphasis] 1 percent of users who encountered an Al summary clicked the link to the page Google is summarizing.

Hey is it bad if google AI search results stop people from leaving google dot com 99% of the time? All our news and information creators can survive just fine with one percent of their previous search traffic right? I’m sure it’s fine. www.404media.co/googles-ai-i...

Perfect representation of scientific papers. 😅

Table from Friedlingstein et al, Global Carbon Budget 2024 Emissions 1750-2023 - fossil CO2 emissions 490 +- 25; land-use change emissions 255 +- 75; total emissions 745 +- 80 (in billion tons of carbon) Source: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/20113/

Did you know that since 1750, land-use change is responsible for about *one-third* of total CO2 emissions released to the atmosphere?

About 255 billion tons of carbon, or nearly *a trillion tons of CO2e*, have been emitted.

That's basically the ghosts of *2 billion hectares of forests* in the sky.

Read news, op-eds, and analysis, not AI summaries. Create your own art (even if it's messy) or hire an artist to do it. Do your own homework. Talk to people, not chatbots. Keep your thinking and skills sharp and cherish our messy humanity. That's the new punk rock.

Too many favorites to name, but these are two candidates.

Happy to see a great collaborator and a great human featured here!

Definitely a haunted burrow.

Future ID mark to separate Glaucous-winged Gulls from Glaucous-winged X Western Hybrids: Does it ride garbage trucks?

The black morph of the Eastern Gray Squirrel is most prevalent in Michigan and Ontario (50-60%) so a black Gray Squirrel showing up at a Tigers game is a uniquely Detroit experience!

two men standing next to a bunk bed with the words so much room for activities above them Alt: A scene from the movie Stepbrothers with two men standing next to a bunk bed with the words so much room for activities above them.

Me after cleaning my office at the end of the semester.

Saw lots of birds on my first trip to Montrose Point in Chicago! Seeing warblers like this Canada Warbler down so low is such a treat!

The Cardinals knew about the new Pope first, but the Yellow-legged Gulls were second.

my inner monologue as i go birding: "people overlook gray catbirds but they're so cute. maybe my favorite bird? oh a hermit thrush! they're so round. that might be my favorite bird. where's that damn cape may warbler singing from? not my favorite bird. LOOK A KINGBIRD!! is that my favorite bird?" 🪶