Naturalist Notes

If you wanted to identify an animal that was accessing your your yard, moving through a hunting trail you frequent, or rummaging through your campsite at night, would you know how to confidently determine the species based solely on the tracks it left behind?  For the vast majority of people liv...

Defining animal language When we speak of animal language, we are referring to a coarse way of interpreting and understanding the inter-species communication around us. All higher animals/mammals communicate and depend upon messages and cues from each other for their survival. They do so in orde...

In the 1980 movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, a member of the San Bushmen hunter-gatherer tribe stumbles across a Coke bottle that was tossed out the window of a small plane. He takes it back to his village where it immediately garners everyone’s attention; at first villagers simply marvel at its ap...

Today the majority of people who live in the western world visit the outdoors for recreational pursuits (hunting, fishing, birding, exercise, etc.) or just for the purpose of relaxation. Whether it be in a park, local nature preserve, or a wilderness setting, we relish taking in beautiful vistas...