World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The buntings know the North Star by heart, learn to look for it in their first summer of life, storing this knowledge to use years later when they first learn to migrate. How they must have spent hours gazing at the star during those nestling nights, peeking out from under their mother. What shines so strong holds them steady.

Porch lights, trucks, buildings, and the harsh glow of streetlamps all complicate matters and discourage fireflies from sending out their love-light signals—meaning fewer firefly larvae are born the next year.

When we see these beacons flashing their lights, they usually have only one or two weeks left to live.

eagle’s nests are huge—about as wide and as tall as an elephant

With the pulse and undulation of the comb jelly, hundreds of thousands of cilia flash mini-rainbows even in the darkest polar and tropical ocean zones.

The comb jelly is a creature of delicacy. It doesn’t sting, and it’s not actually a jellyfish. It belongs to a whole other phylum, Ctenophora.

The touch-me-not is native to Central and South America but can be found along roadsides in Florida

How I wish I could fold inward and shut down and shake off predators with one touch.

let me and my children and everyone’s children decide who touches them and who touches them not, touch them not, touch them not.

The cactus wren, the largest wren in North America at a whopping seven inches long, is one of the only birds that doesn’t require standing water to drink—it gets all of its water from juicy insects and fruit.

The narwhal’s “horn” is actually a tooth with about 10 million nerve endings—a loooong, helix-spiraled tooth that pokes through the upper left “lip” into the chilly arctic ocean. It’s one of only two teeth they’ll ever get in their lifetimes. All males have this long-in-the-tooth situation, but about 15 percent of female narwhals also have one,

For a long time scientists thought this tooth was just a hunting tool because narwhals were observed poking smaller fish with it to stun them before gobbling them up, but it’s been widely accepted that this tooth also helps narwhals “see” underwater by having have some of the most directed echolocation of any animal.

The word narwhal comes from the old Norse word nar, which means “like a corpse,” due to the distinctive mottled skin that looks like the spotted skin color of drowned

Scientists have taken to studying axolotls for the regenerative properties of their limbs—very unique in the animal world, because axolotls don’t seem to ever develop scar tissue to hide damage from a wound.

International Union for Conservation of Nature have determined there are no more axolotls in the wild.

The squid’s eye is about the size of a shooter marble, but this is nevertheless the largest eye-to-body ratio of any animal on the planet.

Trees have also been known to form alliances and “friendships” through fungal networks.

If your garden’s fruits and vegetables bear thick skin, dimpled and ridged through the fall, it means a severe winter draws near.

But I think it’s the quiet way you settle into the crook of a tree trunk, the still and slowdown of your heart in a world that wants us to be quick and to move onto the next thing.

Octopuses are some of the only animals found whooshing and gliding through every single ocean on the planet: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic, and Southern.

That means they have one precious night to be pollinated by a bat or bee, and turn the flower into a dragon fruit.

Ribbon eels are all born jet black males—they are protandric, changing to female only when necessary to reproduce.

The ribbon eel also has a scruffy yellow goatee on its lower jaw, which stores all its taste buds.

It is this way with wonder: it takes a bit of patience, and it takes putting yourself in the right place at the right time. It requires that we be curious enough to forgo our small distractions in order to find the world.