For the love of butterflies

“One sunny morning, as I was wandering about alone, my heart leapt when an Oakleaf came and settled on the path a few feet away. I dashed back to the house, grabbed the nearest net and ran back.... The net billowed as I swung it, but at the last moment, it struck a stone on the path. There was a flash of orange and blue as the Oakleaf made off, and I was left with the net.

Death crawl

MANY new taxa of colourful terrestrial Streptaxidae snails have been found in Thailand, a biodiversity hotspot. They live in rock crevices of limestone.

Curse of the horn

The sinking ship

An overwhelmed Jeevabai rushes towards her daughter-in-law to show a photograph of a camel herd swimming in sea water. Curious, other women of the house in Kachchh’s Laiyari village surround the two.

On a wing and a prayer

In 1993, when South African photojournalist Kevin Carter clicked a vulture stalking a dying child in Sudan many expressed outrage. After all in most parts of the world, vultures are reviled. Carter was censured for having done nothing to help the dying child. In spite of the outrage, the photographer went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for the picture in 1994.

What killed the chirp?

Science and Technology - Briefs

Material Sciences Live wire Here is a wire you can stretch, bend or cut and it would still work. Scientists have created the self-healing, elastic wire using liquid metal and a polymer. Small tunnels are bored in polymer sheath and are filled with a liquid alloy of indium and gallium, forming a liquid metal wire inside the stretchable sheath.

Call of the phantom

Identity crisis

IT HAS been 165 years since a unique population of wolves living in the Indian side of the trans-Himayalan region was first described but its classification still remains contentious. It was assumed to be a population of the Tibetan wolf (Canis lupus chanco)—a subspecies of gray wolf. But genetic studies indicate that it is actually a different species; some biologists call it the Himalayan wolf.

The phoenix act