Scott Solomon, PhD

Woo!

NYAS Publications Bats are the only mammals capable of powered flight, and while they retain the furry coat of other small mammals, their wings, the primary flight surface, are generally thought to be hairless. We ass....

Super proud to share the first first-author paper from @ashockney24.bsky.social and our first official Rummel lab publication! Check it out here: nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

You’re most welcome! I love talking about how amazing ants are! 🐜

@scottsolomon.bsky.social Thanks again for the awesome talk at our TMN meeting last night. I didn't realize that ants were so fascinating.

Excited to see @weinersmith.bsky.social and @zachweinersmith.bsky.social’s book ‘A City on Mars’ being highlighted at the front of my local @barnesandnoble.com store! It’s their non-fiction book of the month!

Cruisin

Congratulations! Looking forward to reading.

Not quite sure what is happening here…

Moose are bigger than you think

Still looking for an EPIC trip to do this year? Join me in NEW ZEALAND this December! I'm hosting a trip for the Rice Alumni Traveling Owls and you're invited to join us! Here is the full trip brochure with all the details: alumni.rice.edu/sites/g/file...

Great write-up! Glad they appreciate you (and other cool scientists) in Philly!

Mama moose and calf!

Zambia elephant attack kills British and New Zealand tourists - BBC News The two tourists were trampled to death by a female elephant that was with a calf, police say.

We were fortunate. We later learned that on the very same day, two people were tragically killed by a charging elephant in Zambia under very similar circumstances. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Luckily, it worked. Just about 20 feet from us, instead of going through a bush that served as the last barrier between us and the elephant, it turned and went off to our side. Later, the lead ranger told us that if the elephant had gone through the bush, they would have had to fire their weapons.

The rangers had briefed us on what to do in exactly this situation— mainly that meant not running away. I was in the back of the group so I had to run *toward* the charging elephant to get behind the 2 armed rangers, who had drawn their weapons and were shouting and whistling to scare the elephant.

Our guides were armed rangers who said this was very unusual because 3 things all needed to happen: (1) we didn’t see the elephant, (2) the elephant didn’t see us, and (3) the elephant felt cornered, because it had dense vegetation behind it and the only way out was through us.

The moment just after we were charged by an elephant while walking through Kruger National Park!

Bush pig! My 11-year old nephew spotted this one. Our guide was impressed, as they are not commonly seen! Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique

It has gotten so bad that the park no longer encourages visitors to share rhino sightings, as they do for other big animals like elephants, lions, leopards, and buffalo. The poachers don’t need any help. We were fortunate to see this family of 3 very close to a road… which one I won’t say.

Sadly, rhinos are much harder to see these days because of ongoing poaching for their horns. This individual has had part of its horn removed as a preventative effort to make it less attractive to poachers.

It’s such a treat to encounter a white rhino in the wild! The first time I visited Kruger National Park, in 2013, they were relatively common. In fact, we saw three of them right on the road almost immediately after entering the park.

I love it when lions remind us that, after all, they are still cats 🐾

Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants Intensive ivory poaching during a period of civil conflict caused the rapid evolution of tusklessness in an African elephant population.

The genetics at work here are interesting. Tusklessness is caused by dominant alleles on the X chromosome that are lethal in males. So only females can become tuskless & were therefore more likely to avoid being killed by ivory poachers during Mozambique’s civil war. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Note the large adult female in the middle has no tusks. Tusklessness is normally very rare but has become more common among Gorongosa’s elephants as a consequence of poaching. Individuals born without tusks have been much more likely to survive into old age and to pass on their genes.

Elephants assembling into a defensive circle to protect their young. We accidentally spooked this herd by approaching two juveniles. Most of the adults were hiding in dense vegetation on the edge of the clearing and they came charging out when they saw us.

Vervet monkey

Scene from the stunning coastline of Mozambique 😍

Waterbuck battling for supremacy on the floodplain at Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique!

More content coming soon! I’ve been off adventuring…

He is a pro