by Jan Thornhill Deer sleeping forms.  They're pretty compact when it's below freezing, with their back legs tucked under. Deer put on a lot of fat in the fall, and their winter hair is hollow for added insulation.    Their skinny, uninsulated legs are heat exchangers – warm blood pumped from their core runs alongside veins filled with cooled blood. This arrangement preheats the cooler blood so it's not super-cooled before it returns to the deer's heart. Jan Thornhill is an award-winning (multiple awards!) Canadian author and illustrator. Her books include The Triumphant Ta ..read more

by Margriet Ruurs Not long ago I was at the Dead Sea in Jordan. This large ‘lake’ is about 65 KM from the capital city of Jordan, called Amman. Amman is at 700 meters above sea level and can be chilly in Fall or Winter. But a one hour drive to the floor of the Jordan River Valley takes you to the lowest point on earth: about -400 meters. The temperature differences can be impressive. You can go here in one hour from cold, even snow, to warm enough to sit on the beach and swim!   Along the main road south I spotted vendors selling inflatable beach floaties. But you don’t need a flotation ..read more

If you ask someone what animal has the best sense of smell, chances are that most people will answer “Dogs”. Not a bad answer, though not quite right. At least two others are better.     Dogs have an amazing sense of smell. That's why we use dogs to track and find people who are lost, buried in avalanches, trapped in earthquake- or bomb-damaged buildings. We use dogs to sniff out illegal drugs, explosives, buried landmines, soil contaminants, animals of specific endangered species, black truffles, and even diseases. They couldn’t do it without their remarkable ability to smell. But ..read more

Branching Outby Joan Marie Galat I love spending time in forest habitat. The air is fresh, animals signs are everywhere, and the world feels like a quieter place. My interest in these giants of the plant world led me to write a book for ages 8-12 that explores how people and animals depend on trees. Branching Out: How Trees are Part of Our World (Owlkids) is full of surprising facts about trees, but it is just as much a book about the animals (even fish!) who use them for food and shelter. India’s national tree—the banyan (Ficus benghalensis)—is one of eleven featured species. This ..read more

 Did you ever wonder what path a raindrop takes when it falls past your window? Will it reach the ocean? WHICH ocean? I asked that question when we were living on a farm north of Edmonton in Alberta, and investigated with maps and online maps. Turns out, the stream on our farm trickles into a little river called Redwater, which runs into the North Saskatchewan River, out of Alberta, and many many kilometres of rivers and lakes later reaches Hudson Bay via the Nelson River.  But that journey is not the path taken for ALL the water draining from land around that Alberta farm. About two ..read more

 Check out Nina Munteanu's blog for a charming tale about a tardigrade, blending some science facts with her fiction! Here's the link at https://themeaningofwater.com/2022/12/25/a-tardigrade-christmas-a-different-christmas-story-with-a-nod-to-lewis-carroll/ Happy Christmas and other good wishes of the season to all ..read more

by Kim Woolcock When I started writing It’s Tough to be Tiny, I didn’t know what a velvet worm was. I stumbled across a reference to them while researching small creatures with superpowers, and the name immediately hooked me. Velvet worms?? Would they be fuzzy and cute? And why had I never heard of them? It turns out they are not fuzzy but they are very cute. And they are deadly hunters. I am a sucker for creatures that are cute but deadly, and as soon as I started reading about them, I knew velvet worms needed a place in the book.   The velvet worm Euperipatoides flexes its slime ..read more

by Anne Munier As a food source, insects have an awful lot going for them. They are extremely nutritious, can be found just about everywhere, reproduce quickly, and- according to entomophagic enthusiasts (a.k.a. committed bug eaters)- they taste pretty darn good! Two billion or so people in the world make insects a regular part of their diet. There are over 2,000 edible species; the most common ones are some kinds of beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, and ants. (Note: Never eat an insect that you don’t absolutelyknow to be edible -- not *all* species of beetle, caterpillar, bee, wasp and ant ..read more

 Our own Joan Marie Galat shared on Facebook the news of her soon-to-be released book, Mortimer: Rat Race to Space -- which you can tell from the title and the cover image is a work of fiction with a lot of science elements! Joan says: Cover reveal! Scheduled for release in September 2022 by Cormorant Books. This is my first middle-grade novel and I'm super excited! I expect to hold a launch but you can also preorder through the links below. Preorders help authors and shopping at independent bookstores helps too. That's my pitch! Edmonton: https://audreys.ca/item/Sz_EzYizsPkW9cJp8r_ ..read more

By Claire Eamer  No! Not those bears! I'm talking caterpillars. Woolly bears are those fluffy, hairy caterpillars that look a bit like tiny plush toys. They're common from Mexico to northern Canada. You might have seen a woolly bear trundling along a warm sidewalk in summer or climbing a plant stem to munch on leaves. Eventually, the caterpillar will pupate and emerge as a moth. So what's so special about woolly bears in the mountains? Actually, it's one particular species -- the arctic woolly bear, Gynaephora groenlandica. Arctic woolly bears weren't supposed to be crawling around in the ..read more