Curio Cabinet

Gorillas really aren’t supposed to fly. Earlier this month, a five-month-old gorilla was rescued from a plane’s cargo hold after someone tried to illegally import him into Thailand by way of Istanbul, Turkey. The baby primate, now named Zeytin, is recovering at Polonezkoy Zoo, and workers there hope that he may one day be reintroduced to the wild. Zeytin’s plight highlights a growing problem for wild gorilla populations: the illegal pet trade. But this is far from the only threat faced by the world’s largest primates.
 
Male gorillas can stand up to six feet tall and weigh up to 500 pounds, while females generally grow to around 4.5 feet tall and weigh around 250 pounds. Despite their enormous size and strength, these giants are fairly gentle. Most of their diet is made up of plants, though they also eat insects, like termites. Male gorillas may be famous for pounding their chests and shrieking, but such displays are actually fairly rare and are used to intimate opponents in order to avoid real fights.
 
There are two gorilla species: Eastern and Western, each of which has its own subspecies. All four kinds live in central and east African rainforests, and all four are endangered. Like many rainforest animals, their habitat has been rapidly shrinking due to human encroachment and the expansion of the logging industry. However, the biggest and most violent threat to gorillas is illegal poaching. Ape meat is seen as a delicacy in some wealthy areas, and gorillas are prone to being killed for their meat since they do not typically attack or run from people who get close to them.
 
All gorillas live in groups called families or troops that can have up to 50 members. Troops are composed of a dominant male, called a silverback, several adult females, and their young offspring. Gorillas don’t leave the troop they were born into until they’re between eight to twelve years old, which highlights another challenge they face: slow birth and growth rates. Gorillas live to be between 35 to 40 years old in the wild, but females only have one baby at a time, with gestation taking around 8.5 months. Since each baby takes around a decade to fully mature, gorilla populations struggle to bounce back after poaching attacks or habitat destruction. Luckily, conservationists have implemented captive breeding programs around the world and some countries have enacted laws to protect gorilla habitats from further destruction. Here’s hoping that brighter times are ahead for these dark-furred wonders.

 
[Image description: A gorilla sitting in green grass at the Pittsburgh Zoo.] Credit & copyright: Daderot, Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Don’t read this if you can’t stand to have your heart broken. Many penguins famously mate for life, a romantic fact that has helped make them some of the world’s best-loved birds. However, a 13-year study into the breeding habits of little penguins (Eudyptula minor) has revealed that the diminutive birds are surprisingly prone to “divorce.” Also known as fairy penguins, little penguins, as their name suggests, only grow to around 14 inches tall and only weigh about three pounds. But big drama sometimes comes in small packages. Researchers from Monash University in Australia tracked the breeding habits of around a thousand little penguin pairs on Phillips Island. The island is home to the world’s largest colony of the species, with a population of 37,000 or so. Of all the pairs they studied, around 250 ended up “divorced”, with the pairs splitting up and seeking new breeding partners.
 
So, what causes penguin divorce? Struggles with infertility, mostly. Penguin couples were much more likely to part ways when they failed to produce offspring. While divorce rates could be as high as 26 percent in some years, rates went down when the colony saw more successful hatchings. Marital bliss isn’t determined by offspring alone, though. According to one of the researchers, Richard Reina, little penguins aren’t exactly known for their faithfulness. In a university press release, he explained, “In good times, they largely stick with their partners, although there’s often a bit of hanky-panky happening on the side.” It might be hard to swallow the idea of adorable penguins divorcing and cheating on each other, but this study into little penguin behavior is important for the future of conservation. Current efforts to protect penguin species are focused on the impact of climate change, but studies like this show that there are complex social dynamics to consider as well when trying to maintain a healthy population. No word yet on whether there are little penguin divorce lawyers.
 
[Image description: A little penguin standing just underneath some type of wooden structure.] Credit & copyright: Sklmsta (Sklmsta~commonswiki), Wikimedia Commons. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

You really shouldn’t spray paint at church—especially not on the grave of the world’s most famous biologist. Two climate activists recently made headlines for spray painting a message on Charles Darwin’s grave, in London’s Westminster Abbey. They hoped to draw attention to the fact that Earth’s global temperatures were 34.7 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024. While there’s no way to know how Darwin would feel about our modern climate crisis, during his lifetime he wasn’t focused on global temperatures. Rather, he wanted to learn how living things adapted to their environments. His theory of natural selection was groundbreaking…though, contrary to popular belief, Darwin was far from the first scientist to notice that organisms changed over time.
 
Born on February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England, Charles Darwin was already interested in nature and an avid collector of plants and insects by the time he was teen. Still, he didn’t set out to study the natural world, at first. Instead, he apprenticed with his father, a doctor, then enrolled at the University of Edinburgh’s medical school in 1825. Alas, Darwin wasn’t cut out to be a doctor. Not only was he bored by medical lectures, he was deeply (and understandably) upset by medical practices of the time. This was especially true of a surgery he witnessed in which doctors operated on a child without anesthetics—because they hadn’t been invented yet. After leaving medical school, Darwin didn’t have a clear direction in life. He studied taxidermy for a time and later enrolled at Cambridge University to study theology. Yet again, Darwin found himself drawn away from his schooling, finally spurning theology to join the five-year voyage of the HMS Beagle to serve as its naturalist. The Beagle was set to circumnavigate the globe and survey the coastline of South America, among other things, allowing Darwin to travel to remote locations rarely visited by anyone.
 
During the voyage, Darwin did just what he’d done as a child, collecting specimens of insects, plants, animals, and fossils. He didn’t quite have the same “leave only footprints” mantra as modern scientists, though. In fact, Darwin not only documented the various lifeforms he encountered on his journey, he dined on them too. This was actually a habit dating back to his days at Cambridge, where he was the founding member of the Gourmet Club (also known as the Glutton Club). The goal of the club had been to feast on “birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate,” and Darwin certainly made good on that motto during his time aboard the Beagle. According to his notes, Darwin ate iguanas, giant tortoises, armadillos, and even a puma, which he said was "remarkably like veal in taste." His most important contribution as a naturalist, though, was his theory of natural selection.
 
Darwin came up with his most famous idea after observing 13 different species of finches on the Galápagos Islands. Examining their behavior in the wild and studying their anatomy from captured specimens, Darwin found that the finches all had differently shaped beaks for different purposes. Some were better suited for eating seeds, while others ate insects. Despite these differences, Darwin concluded that they were all descended from the same bird, having many common characteristics, with specializations arising over time. Darwin wasn’t the first person to posit the possibility of evolution, though. 18th-century naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck believed that animals changed their bodies throughout their lives based on their environment, while Darwin’s contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the same theory of natural selection as he did. In fact, the two published a joint statement and gave a presentation at the Linnean Society in London in 1858. Darwin didn’t actually coin the phrase “survival of the fittest,” either. English philosopher Herbert Spencer came up with it in 1864 while comparing his economic and sociological theories to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
 
Despite Darwin’s confidence in his theory and praise from his peers in the scientific world, he actually waited 20 years to publish his findings. He was fearful of how his theory would be received by the religious community in England, since it contradicted much of what was written in the Bible. However, despite some public criticism, Darwin was mostly celebrated upon his theory’s publication. When he died in 1882, he was laid to rest in London’s Westminster Abbey, alongside England’s greatest heroes. It seems he didn’t have much to fear if his countrymen were willing to bury him in a church!

 
[Image description: A black-and-white photograph of Charles Darwin with a white beard.] Credit & copyright: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-03485, George Grantham Bain Collection. No known restrictions on publication.

How did Pluto get its moon? By playing it cool, of course. Scientists have long wondered how a small dwarf planet like Pluto managed to trap an entire moon in its orbit. Now, researchers at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona think an icy “kiss” might have been the key. Pluto and its moon, Charon, make for an unusual pair. Most planets are substantially bigger than their moons, but that’s not so with Pluto. The icy dwarf planet is around 1,400 miles wide, and its moon is 754 miles wide while being about 12 percent the mass of Pluto. They are, essentially, two dwarf planets orbiting around one another. In fact, scientists sometimes refer to them as a double dwarf planet system. Researchers are just now piecing together how the two of them ended up together, and the answer appears to be an unusual process they’re calling “kiss-and-capture.” Billions of years ago, Charon collided with Pluto, but since both of them were solid enough to withstand the impact, they ended up stuck together in a snowman-like configuration. This is different from a standard “collision capture,” where the impact deforms both colliding bodies as if they were fluids. Because Charon rotates more slowly than Pluto, the two couldn’t merge together. Instead, the dwarf planet and moon remained attached for around 10 to 15 hours, after which point Charon started to migrate away, into its current orbit. Scientists at the University of Arizona are basing this theory on an advanced computer simulation where the material properties of both bodies were used to determine how they would react during a collision. It seems that, even in a simulated environment, these two were made for each other.

[Image description: A starry sky with some purple visible.] Credit & copyright: Felix Mittermeier, Pexels
 

Can you feel the heat? Devastating wildfires are wreaking havoc in populated areas of California, and as firefighters continue to battle the blazes, you may be wondering why it seems like such an uphill fight. As our climate warms, it’s increasingly important to understand how wildfires start, how they spread, and why fighting them can be extraordinarily difficult. Wildfires can start in a number of natural ways, from lightning strikes to the concentrated heat of the sun, but the most common culprit is human interference. Most wildfires are started by simple, careless actions, like discarding lit cigarettes in a dry area or failing to follow proper safety procedures with a campfire. Regardless of how they start, though, wildfires can grow out of control at an unbelievable pace. The speed at which a wildfire grows is based on three main factors: fuel, weather, and topography.
 
The density and material properties of a fire’s fuel (lush vegetation vs. dead, dry vegetation) can greatly impact how fast the fire spreads, but once it reaches a certain point, there’s very little difference. Even healthy, green vegetation can be quickly dried out by intense heat, and as long as there is net energy from a given source of fuel, the fire will spread. Topography, or the geography of a given location, matters a lot too. For example, fire tends to spread faster uphill because hot gases from the fire rise upward to preheat and dry out vegetation ahead of the flames. In grass fires, flames can spread up to four times faster uphill. Then, there is the weather. Humidity affects how quickly a fire spreads since it has to burn away ambient moisture in the atmosphere, but in California, firefighting efforts have largely been hampered by strong winds. Wind provides more oxygen for the flames, helping it burn hotter while carrying ashes and other flammable material over long distances, potentially spreading it to unconnected areas. Strong winds can also make it difficult to fly over the wildfires and douse them from above, hindering firefighters’ ability to contain the spread. Once wildfires spread to densely populated areas, the fires can easily destroy most buildings, whether they’re made of wood or brick, although the latter would last a little longer. If you’re given orders to evacuate ahead of an approaching wildfire, don’t try to weather the firestorm with a garden hose. It’s better to lose your home than your life.

 
[Image description: A nighttime wildfire burning among pine trees at Lick Creek, Umatilla National Forest, Oregon.] Credit & copyright: Brendan O'Reilly, U.S. Forest Service- Pacific Northwest Region. This image is a work of the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.