Yale e360:

In a series of tests in Cornwall in western England, researchers from the University of Exeter used 28 traps to capture 1,200 animals on the ground beneath street lights and in darker areas between the lights. According to their findings, published in the journal Biology Letters, invertebrate predators and scavengers were more common underneath the lights, even during the daylight hours.

Jerry Adler and Andrew Lawler, writing for Smithsonian:

How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was modest.

Ferris Jabr, writing for Scientific American:

Lia Kvavilashvili sat in her office at the University of Hertfordshire, mentally reviewing a study she had recently published. She knew that there was a particular statistical measure that might have been useful in the study, but she could not remember its name. Frustrated, she got up to make a cup of tea.

Suddenly the word “hurdle” popped into her mind, unannounced, uninvited. Kvavilashvili—who grew up in Georgia speaking Georgian, Russian and Estonian, and only started to learn English at age 13—had no idea what “hurdle” meant.

Robert Krulwich:

“Plants smell,” says botanist David Chamovitz. Yes, they give off odors, but that’s not what Chamovitz means. He means plants can smell other plants. “Plants know when their fruit is ripe, when their [plant] neighbor has been cut by a gardener’s shears, or when their neighbor is being eaten by a ravenous bug; they smell it,” he writes in his new book, What a Plant Knows. They don’t have noses or a nervous system, but they still have an olfactory sense, and they can differentiate. He says there’s a vine that can smell the difference between a tomato and a stalk of wheat. It will choose one over the other, based on…smell!

His writing is always delightful, but I absolutely love his illustrations. They often make me chuckle.

Christopher Mims argues that the rapid adoption of Facebook hasn’t made us lonely, but that social networking is a reaction to much larger social forces. So what’s causing American’s to be lonely? You’ll have to read Mims’s piece to find out. As usual, it’s a sharp piece of writing.

We humans have our fingers in so many ecosystems that it’s easy to forget how little we actually know about them, even the ones we think we know best. Take this finding from a PLoS ONE study: Over 770 new species are discovered every year… in Europe. 

Via Carl Zimmer.

Clever infographic by Mark Fischetti for Scientific American.

Sadly, nearly a third of people don’t know anyone who lives around them.

Via Christopher Mims.

Adam Rogers peers into the abyss in the first episode of Wired’s The Observation Deck, regaling us with accounts of forgotten underworlds.

Matt Novak:

Remember paper maps?

Go on…

Mark Wilson, reporting for Fast.Co Design:

“We tend to be predominantly more negative about the weather than positive,” shares Clever. “Our weather chart of this year provides several interesting observations; sunshine is prominent in the way most people rate the weather. The correlation between sunshine and weather sentiment is stronger than the correlation between weather rating and sentiment. So people are more likely to say something positive online about the weather, when the sun is out.”

It’s raining in Cambridge today. Just thought I’d put that out there.

Andy Boenau, reporting on Chuck Marohn’s talk at CNU 20:

One of Marohn’s trademark statements is that by misunderstanding the true nature of streets and roads, a hybrid has evolved–stroads. Streets are for people and roads are for cars. And as Marohn says, “stroads are the futon of transportation options. They try to do everything and they don’t do anything well.”

As you may have noticed, email notifications are back here at Per Square Mile. I was able to convince the folks at WordPress.com to transfer my subscriber list. (It was actually pretty easy, and they were quite nice about it.) 

If you’re overwhelmed by the frequency of emails you’re now receiving from Per Square Mile, you can manage your subscription at WordPress.com to receive a daily or weekly digest (sent in the morning or on Mondays, respectively). Or if you can’t get enough Per Square Mile, you can double-check that you’re signed up for immediate notifications. I recommend the latter, of course. 

For those who wish to start a new subscription today, head over to WordPress.com and create an account from which you can follow Per Square Mile by entering the URL (https://persquaremile.com). You can also subscribe to one of the the RSS feeds, follow the Per Square Mile account on Twitter, or follow the Per Square Mile page on Facebook.

I’m currently exploring other subscription options, too, so if you have any opinions on the matter, please let me know.

Into another animal’s belly, it appears.

Or something else entirely?

Last week Geoff Manaugh pointed to an older essay by Michael Maltzan, who argues that Los Angeles is less a city and more a “laboratory” and an “unending conveyor belt of diversity and iteration”. Or even more simply, “Los Angeles”. There doesn’t seem to be anything else quite like it.

Growing tropical regions seem to be pushing current climate zones toward the poles. Want a glimpse of future weather in your area? Take a look a few hundred miles south (or north, depending on your hemisphere).

Caroline Fraser with excellent, in-depth reporting on the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, or KAZA, a transnational conservation area in southern Africa that’s the size of Sweden. In more ways than one, Fraser points out, this isn’t your traditional wildlife reserve.

Haya El Nasser, writing for the USA Today:

Why are the giants of the building industry, the creators for decades of massive communities of cookie-cutter homes, cul-de-sacs and McMansions in far-flung suburbs, doing an about-face? Why are they suddenly building smaller neighborhoods in and close to cities on land more likely to be near a train station than a pig farm?

If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know the answer.

(Thanks to Adam Rogers.)