Hacker News with Generative AI: Nature

The Neglected Abundance of Your Backyard (noemamag.com)
It started with a thump, the grim sound of a bird hitting the window of my little office shack. When I ran outside to check, I found the first hermit thrush that I had ever seen in our yard, lying dead in the grass.

Nature, Observation, Backyard Ecology, Birds

11 points by marojejian 5 days ago | 1 comments

The Boiling River of the Amazon (atlasobscura.com)
Hidden in the dense jungle of the Peruvian Amazon is a percolating, roiling river.

Amazon, Rivers, Geography, Nature, Travel

5 points by Brajeshwar 5 days ago | 0 comments

A rare snail is filmed laying an egg from its neck (apnews.com)
A Russian drone strike in northeastern Ukraine kills 9 people, officials say

Nature, Biology, Rare Species, Russia, War, Military, Drone Strikes

12 points by gmays 7 days ago | 0 comments

UK's Ancient Tree Inventory (woodlandtrust.org.uk)
Mapping the oldest and most important trees in the UK.

Trees, Conservation, UK, Mapping, Nature

89 points by thinkingemote 9 days ago | 71 comments

Traffic noise reduces the stress benefits of listening to nature, study finds (uwe.ac.uk)
Road traffic noise reduces the wellbeing benefits associated with spending time listening to nature, researchers have discovered.

Traffic noise, Environmental Science, Wellbeing, Nature

12 points by rntn 12 days ago | 1 comments

We Trade with Ants: The Little Speakers (fortressofdoors.com)

Animals, Nature, Communication

4 points by surprisetalk 12 days ago | 0 comments

Petrichor (wikipedia.org)
Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɪkɔːr/ PET-rih-kor)[1] is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil.

Weather, Nature, Science

16 points by bpierre 13 days ago | 7 comments

A Weirdly Inspirational Story of Caterpillar Torture (gizmodo.com)
Pine Processionary caterpillars are interesting little creatures. They go on long treks in single file lines. One day, a botanist decided to mess with them. What resulted was a strangely inspirational death march.

Animals, Nature, Science, Creative Projects

5 points by altilunium 18 days ago | 0 comments

What is storm-watching and where should you try it? (nationalgeographic.com)
Tofino's towering waves have pinned storm-watching tourism to the map, transforming the activity from an off-season secret into a year-round adventure for those drawn to nature's wildest moods.

Tourism, Weather, Nature

7 points by lentoutcry 19 days ago | 0 comments

Sea snail teeth top Kevlar, titanium as strongest material (2015) (cbc.ca)
British researchers have discovered the world’s strongest biological material ever tested: sea snail teeth.

Science, Materials Science, Biology, Nature

140 points by thunderbong 21 days ago | 61 comments

The unusual mathematics that gives rose petals their shape (nature.com)
The growth of rose petals exploits a geometric trick previously unobserved in nature, physicists have found.

Mathematics, Nature, Biology, Physics

20 points by gnabgib 22 days ago | 9 comments

Researchers are studying how to minimize human impact on public lands (undark.org)
Most people used to think the Crestone Needle, a jagged peak in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo range, was unclimbable. Until, that is, Albert Ellingwood and Eleanor Davis reached its summit in 1916.

Environmentalism, Nature, Research, Climbing, Colorado

63 points by droptext 24 days ago | 10 comments

Hunting for dark nights and wishing on stars (hcn.org)
Shadows cast 10 miles long as the last sun tucks between ridges and mountain tops. Dusk falls faster on our basin side and slower on the other side, the sunset watched not by looking toward it but by looking in the opposite direction toward blood-orange peaks. End-of-day light climbs the highest summits till it’s airborne, and we fall into the shadow of the Earth. My internal compass starts up, shoulders relaxing as I settle into cardinal directions, brain tingling with orientation.

Nature, Photography, Travel, Experience

23 points by occurrence 25 days ago | 5 comments

World Emulation via Neural Network (madebyoll.in)
I turned a forest trail near my apartment into a playable neural world.

Neural Networks, Artificial Intelligence, Simulation, Gaming, Nature

250 points by treesciencebot 28 days ago | 46 comments

Orcas start wearing dead salmon hats again after ditching the trend for 37 years (livescience.com)

Orcas, Animal Behavior, Marine Biology, Trends, Nature

19 points by jnord 29 days ago | 3 comments

Operation Atacama: The $1M cactus heist that led to a smuggler's downfall (bbc.com)
After thousands of rare Chilean cacti were found in the house of an Italian collector, a years-long trial slowly unravelled how they got there – and is setting a precedent for dealing with crimes of this kind.

Crime, Nature, International Relations, Law

9 points by andsoitis 39 days ago | 0 comments

Playing in the Creek (hgreer.com)
When I was a really small kid, one of my favorite activities was to try and dam up the creek in my backyard.

Childhood, Memories, Nature

347 points by c1ccccc1 42 days ago | 115 comments

Telling the Bees (emergencemagazine.org)
Finding solace in the company of bees, Emily Polk opens to the widening circles of loss around her and an enduring spirit of survival.

Bees, Nature, Loss, Grief, Survival

27 points by pepys 44 days ago | 8 comments

How to Recognize Woodpeckers by Their Drumming Sounds (allaboutbirds.org)
One of the first indications of springtime in North America is the rat-a-tat sound of woodpeckers drumming.

Birds, Spring, Sound, Nature, Identification

108 points by jamesriso 45 days ago | 31 comments

The Dire Wolf Is Back (newyorker.com)
Extinction is a part of nature. Of the five billion species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 per cent have vanished.

Extinction, Nature, Paleontology, Animals

189 points by adrianhon 46 days ago | 192 comments

Jumping Spiders (tnconservationist.org)

Jumping Spiders, Spiders, Insects, Nature

133 points by rolph 52 days ago | 75 comments

Getting hit by lightning is good for some tropical trees (caryinstitute.org)
Getting zapped with millions of volts of electricity may not sound like a healthy activity, but for some trees, it is. A new study, published in New Phytologist, reports that some tropical tree species are not only able to tolerate lightning strikes, but benefit from them. The trees may have even evolved to act as lightning rods.

Science, Nature, Tropical Trees, Lightning

141 points by sohkamyung 56 days ago | 64 comments

300-year-old Polish beech voted Tree of the Year (bbc.co.uk)
The Heart of the Dalkowskie Hills, a breathtaking 300-year-old beech, has won Poland the European Tree of the Year award for the fourth consecutive time.

Poland, Trees, Awards, Nature, Europe

222 points by n1b0m 65 days ago | 61 comments

Watching nature scenes can reduce pain, new study shows (exeter.ac.uk)
A new neuroimaging study has revealed that viewing nature can help ease how people experience pain, by reducing the brain activity linked to pain perception.

Science, Pain Management, Nature, Neuroscience

37 points by jjp 68 days ago | 11 comments

The Wasp That Lays Eggs Inside Caterpillars and Turns Them into Slaves (2014) (wired.com)
Few parasitoids are more bizarre or disturbing than the wasps of the genus Glyptapanteles, whose females inject their eggs into living caterpillars.

Entomology, Science, Biology, Parasitism, Nature

14 points by simonebrunozzi 68 days ago | 3 comments

Hyperion (Tree) (wikipedia.org)
Hyperion is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) in California that is the world's tallest known living tree, measured at 116.07 metres (380.8 ft) tall in 2019.[1][3]

Trees, Nature, California, Environmental Science, World Records

28 points by carabiner 70 days ago | 17 comments

The long flight to teach an endangered ibis species to migrate (newyorker.com)
Our devastation of nature is so deep and vast that to reverse its effects, on any front, often entails efforts that are so painstaking and quixotic as to border on the ridiculous.

Conservation, Endangered Species, Climate Change, Environmentalism, Nature

74 points by FinnLobsien 71 days ago | 19 comments

Hours in a Hurricane, on a Race with No Course (nytimes.com)
Why would hundreds of people trek overnight through the wilderness with nothing but a compass? Because it’s the best feeling in the world.

Adventure, Hiking, Nature, Endurance

19 points by elemeno 71 days ago | 5 comments

Backyard Cyanide (suziepetryk.com)
There’s a bushy tree in my backyard with these dark red fruit — the kind that makes some primal instinct scream at you across millennia, but you can’t tell if it wants you to eat them or not.

Nature, Plants, Personal Experiences

138 points by tancik 73 days ago | 56 comments

Magpies and crows are using “anti-bird spikes” to make nests (2023) (audubon.org)
Humans have made the world less hospitable for birds in many ways. One obvious and intentional example of this can be found in towns and cities worldwide: anti-bird spikes. The pointy wires you might see attached to roofs, ledges, and light poles are meant to deter urban species like pigeons from landing, pooping, and even nesting where people don’t want them to. But in an avian act of poetic justice, a handful of European birds have struck back.

Nature, Animals, Urban Planning, Environmentalism

234 points by perihelions 74 days ago | 84 comments