The top 10 news stories on our radar today.
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1. Fire Ants Could Inspire the Next Rescue Robots

   “Most search-and-rescue robots are miniaturized tanks: They’re big, clunky, and travel in straight lines. By studying how ants move through confined spaces, researchers think they can build better bots that can search for disaster victims buried in rubble.” Popular Mechanics
   Tech

2. NASA Funds 3D Pizza Printer

   “NASA has doled out a research grant to develop a prototype 3D printer for food, so astronauts may one day enjoy 3D-printed pizza on Mars.” Space
   Space

3. Abrupt Climate Shifts Spurred Stone Age Innovation
   

   “A rapid shift in climate that brought wetter and warmer conditions in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age helped propel innovation and cultural advances in early man, a study has found.” Los Angeles Times
   Ancient

4. New Method for Producing Clean Hydrogen

   “Duke University engineers have developed a novel method for producing clean hydrogen, which could prove essential to weaning society off of fossil fuels and their environmental implications.” PhysOrg
   Environment

5. T. Rex’s Smaller Cousin Ate Like a Falcon

   “Researchers at Ohio University in Athens found that while a T. rex whips its head from side to side to gorge on its victims, the Allosaurus — a theropod that lived about 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic period — may have been a more dexterous hunter, using its neck and body to tug flesh from carcasses, the same way a falcon does.” Live Science
   Ancient

6. How Does a Tornado Work?

   “A massive tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday and killed scores of people was unusual not for its size or ferocity, but for the path it took, experts say.” National Geographic
   Earth

7. Folk Remedy Extracted from Captive Bears Stirs Furor in China

   A small Chinese company’s proposal to triple the number of bears in captivity used for bile farming has sparked outrage among animal welfare advocates. New York Times
   Animals

8. Vertical ‘Pinkhouses:’ The Future of Urban Farming?

   “The idea of vertical farming is all the rage right now. Architects and engineers have come up with spectacular concepts for lofty buildings that could function as urban food centers of the future.” NPR
   Science

9. Lost in Translocation: How Bird Song Could Save Species

   “Many factors influence the success of these new populations, including habitat quality, predators, capture and release techniques, the number and sex of individuals, and their genetic diversity. Now new research suggests bird song could also be important.” British Ecological Society
   Animals

10. What It’s Like to Be Eaten By a Grizzly Bear

    “Brad Josephs was capturing footage for BBC’S “Great Bear Stakeout” when one of the younger bears ate the camera. We are left with an unharmed camera, an unharmed bear and some awesome footage.” Buzzfeed
    Just for Fun

Made of rice paper, edible QR codes help diners learn about the fish they eat at San Diego’s Harney Sushi. Photograph courtesy of Harney Sushi

Guests at the upscale Harney Sushi in San Diego now get a little something extra with their fresh tuna and crab rolls: edible QR (quick response) codes. When scanned with a smart phone or tablet, the codes take users to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) FishWatch website, where they can learn about the sustainability of the seafood they are consuming.

Harney Sushi’s owners, Dustin Summerville and Kirk Harrison, and Executive Chef Robert Ruiz have been working with a number of fishery stakeholders and NOAA scientists at the agency’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in nearby La Jolla, California, to develop a local economy and culture of sustainable seafood.

Harney Sushi is one of the first U.S. restaurants to use edible QR codes, which are printed on rice paper with water-based, edible ink.

In 2010, Harney’s Chef Ruiz won the grand prize at the San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival, and was named “Chef of the Fest.”

Ocean Views spoke with Ruiz about the QR code program:

Can you give us some background on the restaurant and how you got into sustainable fish?

We have two locations in San Diego and have been fully sustainable for over two years. We do over 25 tons of sashimi-grade fish a year. Our Oceanside location has a maximum occupancy of  260 people, and on a Friday, we’ll turn the restaurant over three times, so we have more than a thousand people walk through the doors. Imagine if you take that weekly, we reach a lot of people.

Our company was founded in Old Town, San Diego, on Harney Street 12 years ago. We’re proud to note that Troy Johnson, Food Network personality and Food/Restaurant Editor for San Diego Magazine, just ranked us the number one sushi in San Diego because of our efforts in sustainability. I was also honored to be listed as “the chef of tomorrow” in the “trends” section of the same issue, again, largely due to our work on sustainable seafood. This is my fifth year as executive chef.

I was born in Oceanside and grew up in San Diego. I moved to Hawaii’s Big Island as a teen and lived there for 10 years. I got a job cleaning fryers and worked my way up. I earned a spot in Kona, at the Hualalai Resort, a Four Seasons property.

I was trained by a CIA (Culinary Institute of America)-trained chef and apprenticed under a Japanese sushi chef from Tokyo, so I was trained very traditionally. The resort had their own aquaculture system, we farm raised our own fish and shrimp and grew our own produce. Hawaiian culture is an example of the utmost sustainable society, everything comes from there, so I came from a sustainable background. When I came back home to San Diego I was shocked that it’s not how it is in Hawaii.

Harney’s owners were excited about all the ideas I had for sustainability. I started looking at MSC (Marine Stewardship Council), the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, and scoured the internet. The problem was I kept getting conflicting info, and that led me to start making phone calls.

I got ahold of Katie Semon at NOAA, who is responsible for their FishWatch, and began working with her. I didn’t want second-hand info, I wanted the best info possible. Now I work with Sarah Mesnick, a NOAA science liaison in La Jolla.

Scripps [Institution of Oceanography] is here in La Jolla as well. Sarah and I got the wheels rolling on a group project with Scripps and NOAA, so we cultivated a public event at Scripps called “Consider a Fish.” We did the first one on urchin, so we brought a bunch of interested people together to sit down and discuss the science. I talked about how urchin is used in food and the market value.

I was then invited to participate in a class at Scripps, with several scientists, on bluetech jobs, which are about sustainability and bringing aquaculture and fishing back to San Diego. The edible QR codes I created were founded in that class.

An edible QR code on a roll. Photograph courtesy of Harney Sushi

Can you take us through how the edible QR program works?

I had seen the concept in a sushi bar in London, with codes for MSC. Pastry chefs and bakers have used edible art for some time for cakes, it’s edible rice paper. With the help of Ro Zinniger, a SanDiego cake and sugar artist, we bought a printer and edible ink. It was a $400 investment.

The program went into full effect about three months ago. The response has been really outstanding, and we haven’t had any negative feedback.

When a QR code shows up on a diner’s plate they are confronted with it, they can’t avoid the issue anymore, they have to ask what it is. That’s our opportunity to educate them. The codes lead to an entire alphabet of fish on FishWatch, with lots of info, so consumers can educate themselves and make their own decision. The trouble with third-party fish guides is that they are lists of what people can or cannot eat, instead of letting people make their own decisions.

We’re helping create new sustainable fisheries because we’re creating a voracious demand for it.

Will the program help the local fishing community?  

San Diego used to be the tuna capital of the world. Now, I can’t get local line-caught tuna or albacore because the industry has left. But Genevieve Rich, a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wants to bring a community fishing project to the area. Thanks to your article (“Red’s Best: Networking Small-Scale Fishermen“), she’s looking into using the tools from Red’s Best to help local fishermen log their catches. So people can get the fish they deserve.

I’m not like a Greenpeace advocate and I’m not a fisherman, but I’m where the tires meet the ground. I’m here making sushi one plate at a time for every customer I can, and I’m making these QR codes so they won’t forget about it.

In July, we’ll be serving MSC-certified albacore and we’ve already generated the QR code. It will go to a YouTube video showing the fleet. We’re also working on a sea urchin code, with Heather Krish, master of advanced studies in marine biodiversity and conservation at Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

I can reward the people who are doing the right thing.

Have you thought of including health information with the QR codes? National Geographic has a seafood decision guide that includes a layer of information on health, including mercury content and omega-3s.

I don’t have that info layered into the codes, but when it comes to the fisheries I get my fish from they have the info. I would love to do a QR code for you guys, that’s a gap I’d like to cover.

I know a lot of people are concerned about mercury, especially pregnant women. I tell people that we catch albacore that are only one to two years old, so they haven’t had time to accumulate that many toxins. A lot of small fish that have short lifespans are great for them to eat as well.

Have the QR codes affected your sales?

We are growing faster than our projections. We have been record busy.

We have also noticed that people are now ordering more sashimi, more straight fish, I think because we’ve given them more confidence. If they were scared about trying some of the specialty fish, now they can scan the code and know everything we have is traceable.

Chef Rob Ruiz teaches area youth about sustainable seafood. Photograph courtesy of Harney Sushi

Chef Ruiz examines fish at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Photograph courtesy of Harney Sushi

Do the codes help fight fish fraud?

Absolutely. We are working with the Ocean Discovery Institute, a charity here that helps underprivileged kids who are interested in marine science. Last month we had a group of the kids come in and they took DNA samples of all our fish. We’ll publish the results this June.

In the [recent Oceana report on fish fraud], West Coast sushi bars were worse than average for fish fraud, so with our QR codes we are shining a light in the darkest tunnel, that’s part of why we are gaining traction. Before coming here I worked in some really bad sushi bars and saw some atrocious things.

A lot of people in the industry are saying that labeling fish is hard and that people aren’t trying to be purposefully deceitful. But do you think a lot of fish fraud is actually intentional?

At a restaurant the margins are so slim that you know exactly how much you are spending on everything. So in my opinion the fraud is intentional.

There’s a giant hole in the sushi business: no matter where I go the chef doesn’t know where his fish comes from. He’ll get it from a wholesaler, who gets it from an auction. When a billion Chinese people start to eat sushi like we are it is going to vacuum the oceans dry. Piracy will go rampant. These sushi bars rely on the ignorance of the customer and murkiness of the fish trade in order to maximize the profit they are making.

One of the most popular dishes is escolar, which makes customers sick. That fish is trash, it’s illegal in many countries. But here many are calling it “white tuna.” They buy it for $6 a pound and sell it for tuna prices (tuna costs $24 a pound).

They also say, “Why would I buy a fresh snapper from New Zealand that’s $12 or $14 a pound when I can buy $4 tilapia that comes in a bag and is easier to prepare?”

A recent article in Huffington Post said that so many people call escolar “white tuna” now that it should be considered acceptable, the author said it is “well understood vernacular.” What do you think of that?

That is outrageous.

Do you think the QR codes could be expanded?

I want to get QR codes on the East Coast and beyond. It would be such an honor to change the way Americans eat seafood.

Any last words?

I love San Diego and I hope through this project we’re going to bring local, traceable, sustainable fishing back here. I want to be known for my food, and that I love the ocean. I layer the science into it.

A chef’s job is to know where their fish is coming from. How can I be the only one asking this question?

Brian Clark Howard covers the environment for National Geographic. He previously served as an editor for TheDailyGreen.com and E/The Environmental Magazine, and has written for Popular Science, TheAtlantic.com, FastCompany.com, PopularMechanics.com, Yahoo!, MSN, and elsewhere. He is the co-author of six books, including Geothermal HVAC, Green Lighting, Build Your Own Small Wind Power System, and Rock Your Ugly Christmas Sweater.

According to the statement released yesterday, BioBlitz highlights included:

• More than 3,000 people, including more than 1,500 schoolchildren, participated in the BioBlitz and the concurrent Biodiversity Festival.
• The initial scientific species count as of the 4:30 p.m. closing ceremony Saturday was 458, with well over 1,500 observations made over the two days. Organizers expect the number to increase significantly over the next few months as state-of-the-art testing of the collected samples continues.
• During the two-day, 24-hour (noon-to-noon) inventory, the Louisiana State University arthropod team processed more than 400 distinct insect species. Many are known to the park, but never documented. Several new invasive insects were also among the finds.
• A rare Louisiana milk snake was discovered, and possibly one new fish, Fundulus herteroclitus (mud minnow), will be added to the park’s species roster.
• The festival grounds were brightened by dozens of flags created by students at area schools that featured local species like alligators, snapping turtles, ducks and dragonflies.
• The Biodiversity Festival included a wide variety of music, nature-inspired activities, talks, art, live animal demonstrations and hands-on science activities. The festival emphasized biodiversity and encouraged the public to do its part to protect the environment. Many visitors interacted with representatives of science, nature and environmental organizations at more than 40 booths.

Photograph by David Braun

Photograph by David Braun

“The BioBlitz was part scientific endeavor, part festival and part outdoor classroom,” said NPS and NGS. “Participants combed the park, observing and recording as many plant and animal species as possible in 24 hours. Activities included counting alligators, catching insects, spotting birds, exploring and examining aquatic invertebrates and using technology to better understand the diverse ecosystems of this unique park.”

“This is the first time anyone has done this level of work on a bottomland, hardwood, freshwater system like this,” said Victoria Bayless, curator at the Louisiana State Arthropod Museum. “Everything we can document and share is really important right now.”

Photograph by David Braun

Photograph by David Braun

“This was a fantastic opportunity for the public to meet and work with scientists and to understand and appreciate what makes Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve’s Barataria Preserve such a special and biologically rich place,” said Lance Hatten, acting superintendent of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve and New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park. “For many people, especially schoolchildren, this was their first visit to the park, and it was exciting to have them experience it with amazing scientists and naturalists as their guides.”

“Watching scientists, students and the general public in the field exploring and making discoveries put a smile on my face,” said John Francis, National Geographic’s vice president for Research, Conservation and Exploration. “Scientists joined students and residents from the surrounding communities and celebrated their unique roles as members of the natural systems where they live. It was also exciting to see new technology and smartphone apps being used in the field to document and identify species finds.”

Photograph by David Braun

Great Nature Project

In his closing remarks, Francis invited all to join the National Geographic Society’s Great Nature Project. The project encourages people from around the globe to go outside, explore, document plants and animals with cameras, and upload them to share, using the hashtag #GreatNature. The goal is the largest photo album of plants and animals, capturing the rich biodiversity of Earth and raising awareness about protecting the planet. The weeklong quest will take place Sept. 21-29, 2013, and is part of the National Geographic Society’s 125^th anniversary yearlong celebration. Learn more at greatnatureproject.org.

Photograph by David Braun

Photograph by David Braun

BioBlitz 2014: Golden Gate

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve BioBlitz was the seventh in a series of 10 annual BioBlitzes to be hosted by National Geographic and the National Park Service leading up to the National Park Service centennial in 2016. During closing ceremonies the BioBlitz flag was passed to Aaron Roth, deputy superintendent of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, where the eighth BioBlitz will take place March 28-29, 2014.

The first BioBlitz was held at Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., in 2007; the second took place at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California in 2008. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was the site of the third BioBlitz in 2009; Biscayne National Park, outside Miami, was the 2010 site; Saguaro National Park in Tucson hosted the 2011 BioBlitz; and Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was the 2012 host park.

Photograph by David Braun

Photograph by David Braun

The Jean Lafitte BioBlitz was made possible through the support of corporations, foundations and state and local agencies. Corporate support came from Southwest Airlines. Foundation support was from the Harold M. and Adeline S. Morrison Family Foundation, the National Park Foundation and the National Park Trust. The Louisiana Office of State Parks and Jefferson Parish also provided support.

National Geographic has had a close relationship with the National Park Service since the Service’s inception; the Society helped draft legislation to establish the Service in 1916. National Geographic has given grants to establish or sustain national parks and has extensively covered the parks in its media for nearly a century.

Photograph by David Braun

It’s often said that federal governments talk and cities act. Nowhere is this more evident than in our North American cities. While federal governments have failed to produce effective climate policies, North American cities have shown that smart, aggressive climate action is doable. Since 2005, when more than 1,000 mayors signed on to the Mayors Climate Protection Initiative, committing their cities to meet the targets set forth in the Kyoto Protocol (reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels), several North American cities have surpassed the Kyoto goal. For example, the cities of San Francisco and Toronto have each reduced their community-wide GHGs to 15 percent below 1990 levels, and one of our newest members, Washington, D.C., recently announced that it has achieved a 12 percent reduction since 2005.

And we’re growing economies in the process. Vancouver has grown its population by 27 percent and increased jobs by 18 percent while simultaneously achieving the smallest per capita carbon footprint of any city in North America. The City of Austin, which recently received the only Green Power Leadership Award ever given to a city by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has seen some of the strongest job growth in the U.S. over the past five years while aggressively implementing its sustainability agenda.

Other North American cities are championing some of the world’s most groundbreaking sustainability policies and programs:

• New York City’s Greener Greater Buildings Plan targets energy efficiency in these large existing buildings in the 15,000 buildings that account for 45 percent of total GHG emissions in the city.
• Portland’s pioneering “ecodistrict” movement is testing new strategies for integrating building and infrastructure projects with community and individual action.
• The City of Chicago has created the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, a new public-private partnership to leverage up to $1.7 billion to help finance needed improvements in the city’s streets, public transit, public buildings, and utilities.
• Los Angeles is soon to complete one of the most ambitious street light energy efficiency projects in the world, retrofitting more than 140,000 street lights with LEDs, increasing efficiency by 63 percent, and saving the city more than $5 million annually.
• Houston’s award-winning Green Office Challenge has fostered voluntary energy efficiency upgrades of between 10-50 percent in more than 400 commercial buildings.
• The City of Philadelphia is more than 80 percent of the way toward achieving its ambitious goal of providing easy access to open green space for all of its residents.
• New Orleans is taking aggressive steps to reduce future flooding and other climate change risks by elevating homes, rebuilding levees, and restoring wetlands.
• Seattle has led the way in green energy and green buildings, as the first city in the U.S. to mandate Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for municipal building projects. The city’s electric utility, Seattle City Light, was the nation’s first large electric utility to become carbon neutral.

Our North American cities have demonstrated incredible climate leadership, and there’s much to be proud of. But we still have a long way to go. We have some pretty big challenges to confront, including building cities’ resilience to the more frequent impacts of climate change, tackling the next round of harder-to-achieve GHG reductions, and doing a better job of “building the business case” for sustainability investments which grow economies and create jobs. The good news is that there are many lessons to learn from, and best practices to share with, other cities around the world as we all confront similar challenges.

I look forward to working with our North American cities to take on these challenges, and to continue to demonstrate that climate change can be addressed one city at a time.

Johanna Gregory Partin is North America Regional Director for the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. Prior to coming to C40, Johanna served as Senior Policy Advisor on Environment to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, where she advised Mayor Lee on citywide sustainable energy, climate, transportation, green building and other programs promoting sustainability for San Francisco. Ms. Partin served in the same position under Mayor Gavin Newsom from 2009-2010. Ms. Partin also served on the Board of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and is a Faculty Member for the Climate Leadership Academy. Previously, Ms. Partin worked as Renewable Energy Program Manager at the San Francisco Department of Environment, and as Program Manager for international clean energy programs at Winrock International. Ms. Partin has over 20 years’ experience in the fields of climate change, renewable energy, microfinance, sustainable development and gender equity, and has worked both locally and in more than 15 countries around the world. Johanna has a Master’s degree in Energy & Environmental Policy from the University of Delaware and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies and Anthropology from UC Santa Barbara.

The devastating tornado that barreled through the Oklahoma City area on Monday has produced some stunning on-the-ground video footage. But cameras aboard weather satellites are also putting a new perspective on the supercell thunderstorm that spawned this monster twister.

These “eyes in space” provided key imagery and data of the May 20 storm for weather forecasters, and chronicled the tornado’s birth and rapid movement through populated areas. According to NASA, this unique vantage point from orbit shows the effects of the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico flowing across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri—eventually triggering the two-mile-wide tornado.

The above time-lapse animation is a compilation of still images snapped every 15 minutes on May 20 by U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) GOES-13 satellite, positioned 35,800 km (22,300 miles) above Earth in a geosynchronous orbit. The video may look like a serene sight from space, but it belies the true destructive nature of this tornado, now classified as an EF5—the strongest possible category of tornado. An EF5 on the enhanced Fujita scale means wind speeds topped out at over 200 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, natural light still images like the one below from NASA’s Aqua satellite show the top of the Oklahoma storm just minutes before it spawned the deadly tornado. Other satellites were also put into play throughout the day to allow for continuous monitoring and tracking of the storm. Check out NASA’s compilation of various imagery and video of the powerful storm that hit Oklahoma on Monday.

On May 20, 2013, a supercell thunderstorm in central Oklahoma spawned a destructive tornado that passed just south of Oklahoma City. NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of the storm at 2:40 p.m. local time. The red line depicts the tornado’s track.
Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA Goddard; caption by Adam Voiland

The massive tornado that ripped through Oklahoma on Monday has been chronicled on video by news outlets, storm chasers, and shaken survivors. Here are some of the most compelling clips, as chosen by National Geographic’s video editors. (Related: “Oklahoma Tornado: Why So Destructive, Unpredictable?”)

This video catches the tornado just as it’s forming near Newcastle, Oklahoma. In the background, tinny warnings from the car’s radio urge people to seek shelter. (Also see a video showing the birth of a tornado in Kansas.)

Storm chasers David Demko and Heidi Farrar got caught in the debris surrounding the tornado, now a giant storm, before it destroyed an elementary school and killed at least 24 in the town of Moore. Demko’s remark, “This is worse than Joplin,” refers to the deadly 2011 tornado that killed 158 people in Joplin, Missouri.

This clip offers a much closer encounter. As the tornado passes directly above his storm shelter, Charles Gafford III thrusts his phone through a gap to capture video of the storm’s whirling, debris-filled maw. (That’s a car tire blowing past at 00:36).

How did it feel to climb from safety into the wreckage of that storm? In this short video, a man witnesses an obliterated landscape when he leaves a shelter where he and others had weathered the tornado. (See more pictures of the Oklahoma tornado.)

Here, storm chasers capture the tornado passing close to a high school. The giant storm, wreathed in flying debris, tears the roof off a distant building (00:36) and gradually dominates the skyline.

Other videos show us miracles amid the wreckage. The Oklahoman captured a mother’s tearful reunion with her first-grade son, a student at the elementary school destroyed by the tornado.

In an on-camera interview with CBS, a woman who survived the tornado is unexpectedly reunited with her missing dog, spotted under some debris by a member of the CBS production crew. (The reunion happens at 01:28.)

Rubble from a destroyed neighborhood is seen May 21 in Moore, Oklahoma. Photograph by Brennan Linsley, AP

Tell us—what other videos have you seen of the Oklahoma tornado?

Jose Fuster, 67,  Cuban Painter. © KIKE CALVO

My dream is… to create a piece of art that will be admired like the ones created by Antonio Gaudí or Pablo Picasso, such as the ¨Guernica¨.

José Fuster, 67, is a Cuban artist that was born in Caibaríen. Having trained at the School for Art Trainers, he considers the Romanian artist Contantin Brancusi as his spiritual father. The artist does not forget where he came from, and his work incorporates all those values, integrating an ecological kaleidoscope of vegetable urbanizations, all taking shape in his mind and pieces of art. There is a ¨before¨ and ¨after¨ aspect of his work, parallel to the rhythm of the country, as there is in the history of Cuba, after the ‘Special Period’.

Titan looking up into the trees overhead (Photo by David O’Bryan)

Lisa O’Bryan is in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where Jane Goodall began the first studies of chimps in the wild. Lisa is in the forest to try to better understand the calls chimps make, to help discover just where the line is (or isn’t) between sounds and speech.

Though the chimps have been searching far and wide for any high quality food that might be available, all they have been turning up with is a mouthful of hard, bright green fruits. Thus it wasn’t surprising when one of the chimps went in pursuit of a more satisfying meal.

My focal target for the day was Titan, one of the adult male chimpanzees at Gombe National Park. After spending the morning crunching on unripe fruit with his group mates, Titan climbed higher on the ridge to try his luck solo. While perched on top of a dense sea of shrubs he suddenly dropped to the ground and wriggled underneath the vegetation. Casually coming to a stop at the base of a large tree he peered upwards through the dense ceiling of leaves.

This action didn’t catch our attention until we spied a troop of red colobus monkeys resting in the highest branches. Clearly his behavior caught their attention as well since they immediately began leaping through the treetops to safety. While the odds were clearly not in his favor, Titan pursued, slinking through the undergrowth below the fleeing troop.

Scrambling on top of a fallen tree to get a better view of the action, we saw the monkeys congregating in a nearby tree nervously scanning their environment. Suddenly, Titan’s huge form broke free of the vegetation below, setting the air a-buzz with flying primates. Titan immediately zeroed in on one of the smaller monkeys, hurtling through the branches and plunging back into the bushes below.

Titan enjoys the fruits of his labor while Fanni scores some scraps (Photo by Lisa O’Bryan)

Chema waits for scraps of meat to fall from the chimps feeding above her (Photo by Lisa O’Bryan)

Though he emerged a few minutes later empty-handed, he clearly wasn’t ready to give up. While climbing back into the tree he grew more brazen, making a grab for a pair of monkeys as they raced by. While one quickly fled, the other put up a fight, shaking branches and lunging at the provoking chimp before running off. Undeterred, Titan sauntered through the trees after the fleeing troop.

As the action continued into the next valley, we made a break for the trail leading down the steep ravine. Halfway down, chilling screeches broke out from around the stream bed, hastening our travel. As we skidded to a stop at the bottom of the gorge we saw what all the commotion was about. Perched high in a tree, Titan was holding the body of a young monkey. Now in the company of two females attracted by the commotion, Titan remained in the tree for the rest of the evening, savoring the best meal he has had in some time.

As the rainy season fades away, these hunts will likely increase in number, particularly once the chimps start traveling in larger parties. Until then, those bold enough (or hungry enough) to go it alone may be rewarded with a hearty meal to help them weather these lean months.

NEXT: Read All Gombe 2013 Blog Posts

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National Geographic Jane Goodall Archives

Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique – Sitting on the dusty floor of a makeshift laboratory tent Harith Farooq carefully folded a piece of fine, steel mesh into a foot-long cylinder, then weaved in a stretch of a thick wire along its edge, and finally carefully attached a neck of an empty water bottle to one of the ends. He looked at the contraption in his hands with deep concentration. “Something is still missing”, you could almost hear him think, “but what? A battery? A fork? Some gasoline, perhaps?” His gaze shifted to a stack of paper mousetraps covered with thick, sticky glue, the kind that was meant to immobilize any animal unlucky enough to step onto it. “Bingo!” – Harith picked one up and squeezed it into the tubular apparatus. “The perfect leezard trap”, he announced proudly.

For the last few days Harith, a Mozambican scientist from the University of Lúrio in Pemba and his colleague MO Roedel from Berlin, two herpetologists participating in a biodiversity survey of the Cheringoma Plateau in Gorongosa, had been trying to catch some of the many lizards found in the Nhagutua Gorge, the site of our first camp. Alas, the sneaky reptiles proved to be extremely difficult to catch by hand, which prompted Harith to come up with an alternative solution. As the survey progressed his traps kept growing larger and more complex, combining both natural materials (rocks, sticks, bark) and man-­made objects – a plastic sheet, twine, wire and, of course, steadily increasing amounts of glue. The one thing that they all had in common was their total inability to capture even a single reptile.

The strangest part was that Harith was incredibly good at catching reptiles, or any other organisms, without the need for additional accessories. I had never seen anybody catching, with their bare hands, a giant centipede, a solifugid, or a deadly spitting cobra, but Harith caught them all, while carrying a casual conversation. In the end, during the Cheringoma survey he and MO collected 47 species of lizards and snakes, effectively quadrupling the number of reptiles known from Gorongosa National Park.

Swynnerton’s amphisbaenian (Chrindia swynnertoni), a subterranean blind lizard, found only in Gorongosa and a small surrounding area. (by Piotr Nascrecki)

Within a three-week period in Gorongosa our team of biologists was able to document the presence of all nine families of lizards that occur in southern Africa. Among them were some real gems, including an entirely blind, subterranean lizard, the Swynnerton’s amphisbaenian (Chrindia swynnertoni). These tiny reptiles, known only from a handful of specimens recorded around Gorongosa, spend their entire life underground, leading a lifestyle remarkably similar to that of earthworms, and feeding on termites and ant larvae.

On the opposite end of the lizard spectrum, two species of giant monitors (Varanus) turned out to be quite common on the Cheringoma Plateau. One day Harith walked into the camp carrying a live Rock monitor (V. albigularis) the size of a goat, which he had captured by throwing himself on top of the gargantuan animal, barely overpowering it with the help of two other people. The reptile’s snout was still covered with blood of the last victim, probably a bird or a small child, by the looks of it, and gazing into the monitor’s eyes made me realize how grateful I was that our species appeared long after the era of dinosaurs had passed. We released the beautiful creature after examining it for the presence of external parasites, which the lizard had none, proving its excellent health condition.

Flap-necked chameleons (Chamaeleo dilepis) are common in the savanna
woodlands of the Cheringoma Plateau (by Piotr Naskrecki)

Almost every day our herpetological team, which also included a Mozambican student Francisco Domingos, recorded something new and exciting. Often it was a tiny brown frog that differed from all other frogs by the presence of a slightly enlarged corner of the left supraocular cuticular fold, which was enough to make our herpetologists prance and giggle with excitement like little girls. But at other times it was a vine snake that could kill you with a half a drop of its venom, or a spiny rock lizard that defends itself by squeezing into rock crevices and inflating its body like a balloon. The survey found charismatic chameleons, among them the famed pygmy chameleon of Mount Gorongosa, unquestionably the cutest lizard in Mozambique, and blindingly fast lacertid lizards with flame orange tails, which looked like tiny thunderbolts zipping across the ground.

Thunderbolt lizard (Nucras sp.), one of the fastest animals found in Gorongosa. (by Piotr Naskrecki)

The survey officially ended yesterday, and Harith is on the way back to Pemba. Data collected by him and the rest of the herpetological team will be added to the ever-growing Gorongosa biodiversity database, a powerful tool that helps manage the restoration efforts in the park. I was sorry to see the members of the team depart, but having witnessed Harith handle cobras and puff adders as if they were harmless puppies I was relieved to see him leave the park, still alive and well. All things considered, a gash in his finger, courtesy of a pouched rat, followed by a nip from a giant scorpion hardly count as injuries.

Plated lizard (Gherrosaurus major) was one of the most exciting finds of the survey. (by Piotr Naskrecki)

The male of the Gorongosa girdled lizard (Cordylus mossambicus) looks like an
alligator wearing an orange T-shirt. These spectacular lizards are found only in a
small area around Gorongosa and the neighboring Chimanimani Mountains of
Zimbabwe, and are threatened by habitat loss and overcollecting for pet trade. (by Piotr Naskrecki)

Piotr (Peter) Naskrecki is a Polish-born entomologist, photographer and author, currently at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA.). He received his M. Sc. degree in Zoology from the A. Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland (1990), and a Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT (2000). Between 2002 and 2009 Piotr served as Director of the Invertebrate Diversity Initiative at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International, Washington, D.C. His research focuses on the evolution of katydids and related insects, and the theory and practice of nature conservation. Visit his website for more information.