by David Quammen | Dec 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
As the epidemic of Ebola continues to ravage three West Africa countries, and to frighten people around the world, many scientific questions about this disease and the ghastly microbe that causes it remain unanswered. One of those is: What’s the reservoir...
by David Quammen | Nov 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
The 2014 epidemic of Ebola virus disease in West Africa is unlike any Ebola event ever seen before. In fact, as of this writing, it’s already ten times larger in terms of case fatalities—ten times more punishing to Africans, ten times more scary and befuddling to...
by David Quammen | Jul 15, 2014 | Uncategorized
A mule, wrote William Faulkner, in one of his later novels, is an animal that “will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.” But if the mule happens to love you as much as Rosie the Campfire Mule loves Wes Livingston, a...
by David Quammen | Aug 30, 2013 | Uncategorized
(This post was written for the National Geographic website and can be found here. At the same site, you can also read other posts from the 2013 Pristine Seas Expedition to Franz Josef Land.) Five weeks is a long time to spend on a boat, even if it happens to be a...
by David Quammen | Jul 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
In February of this year I turned 65. Ugh. It seems catastrophically old. Five years earlier, I had invented a cheerful motto to assuage the sting of turning 60, which seemed bad enough: “Sixty: Too young to quit skiing, too old to go bald.” I couldn’t use that...
by David Quammen | Dec 1, 2012 | Uncategorized
The wildebeest genome is an extremely efficient recipe for turning grass into meat. Wildebeest may not be the smartest animals on four hooves but you’ve got to give them that. And the greater Serengeti ecosystem is where this grass-to-meat transformation...
