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JANUARY 2018
PREPARED FOR A
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GOT COUPLES TALKING.
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I CO N T E N T S
J A N UA RY 2018 • VO L . 233 • N O . 1 • O F F I C I A L J O U R N A L O F T H E N AT I O N A L G EO G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y
FRONT FEATURES
VISIONS
3 QUESTIONS
How Colombia’s president,
Juan Manuel Santos, has
promoted conservation
EXPLORE
Aerodynamic eggs, trashy
nests, and a bird detective
On the Cover Today one in 30 | WHY BIRDS 58 | FLIGHT PATHS 66 | THE HEALING
eight bird species is threatened MATTER OF COLOMBIA
with global extinction, BirdLife
A photographer captures
International reports. Vulnerable Wild birds connect us the patterns that birds After a half century of war.
species include the secretary to a nature that’s rapidly make in the sky. By Alma Guillermoprieto
bird, Sagittarius serpentarius; receding. They live in By Catherine Zuckerman Photographs by
this one lives at the Toronto Zoo. a spectacular variety Photographs by Xavi Bou Juan Arredondo
Photo by Joel Sartore of habitats and signal
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each one’s ecological
Go to natgeo.com/corrections. health. Birds—with their 110 | KABUL’S 116 | THE SCIENCE
brilliant plumage, their MIDDLE CLASS OF GOOD AND EVIL
WULOOVDQGWKHLUƄLJKWŞ 0RYLQJDZD\IURPFRQƄLFW A decisive factor: empathy.
nurture our souls. By Sune Engel Rasmussen By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
By Jonathan Franzen Photographs by Photographs by
Photographs by Joel Sartore Andrew Quilty Lynn Johnson
EL SEWHERE
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| F R O M T H E E D I TO R | T H E Y E A R O F T H E B I R D
‘ I F YO U TA K E C A R E O F T H E B I R D S , YO U TA K E C A R E
O F M O S T O F T H E B I G P R O B L E M S I N T H E W O R L D .’
That’s what Thomas Lovejoy says, compared with 13 times for apes. And The program Planet of
and he should know. The famed biol- the National Geographic Society has WKH%LUGVairs January 19
on Nat Geo WILD.
ogist and conservationist, a National awarded hundreds of grants for orni-
Geographic–funded scientist, helped thology research and projects. Throughout 2018, look for
introduce the term “biological diversity” In 2018—the centennial of the Mi- National Geographic’s Year
to the world. And he long predicted that RIWKH%LUGRƂHULQJVGLJLWDO
gratory Bird Treaty Act, which protects
content, books, Traveler
by early in the 21st century, the Earth more than 1,025 species—we’ll take our magazine stories, travel
would start losing a dramatic number coverage of topics affecting birds to a adventures built around
of species—a prediction, unfortunately, new level. In this issue we launch a year birds—and community and
social media experiences.
that is turning out to be spot-on. of storytelling with “Why Birds Matter,”
We were taken with Lovejoy’s quote an essay by best-selling author Jonathan
about birds and decided to use it as a Franzen. It’s paired with remarkable
launchpad for what we’re calling the avian portraits created by National
Year of the Bird. In this 12-month multi- Geographic photographer Joel Sartore.
platform exploration—with our partners Why is National Geographic focus-
from the National Audubon Society, ing so much attention on birds? That’s
BirdLife International, and the Cornell just another way of asking, as Franzen
Lab of Ornithology—we’ll examine how does, Why do birds matter? Among his
our changing environment is leading eloquent answers: “They are our last,
to dramatic losses among bird species best connection to a natural world that
around the globe. And just as important, is otherwise receding.”
we’ll document what we can do about it. Thank you for reading National
At National Geographic we’ve been Geographic and joining with us in the
looking at the planet’s health from a Year of the Bird.
bird’s-eye view for a long time. This
magazine has featured birds on its cover
more often than it has featured other
popular creatures—at least 30 times, Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief
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| E X P LO R E | B I R D S
S TAT U S A S O F O C TO B E R 2 0 1 7
CRITICALLY ENDANGERED
NORTH & CARIBBEAN SOUTH EUROPE AFRICA ASIA MIDDLE OCEANIA ANTARCTICA
CENTRAL AMERICA EAST &
AMERICA CENTRAL ASIA
Cherry-throated tanager
Nemosia rourei
CURRENT POPULATION:
30-200, Espírito Santo,
Brazil
M A I N T H R E AT S
1 0 4 BIRD SPECIES
A G R I C U LT U R E 35
Akohekohe
Palmeria dolei
3,800, Maui,
Hawaii
67
LO G G I N G 27
20
POLLUTION 8
Spoon-billed sandpiper
Calidris pygmaea
22 240-400, northeastern
RESIDENTIAL & Russia and Southeast Asia
COMMERCIAL
D E V E LO P M E N T 9
68
I N VA S I V E
SPECIES 30
35
C L I M AT E C H A N G E &
S E V E R E W E AT H E R 13
Hooded grebe
64 Podiceps gallardoi
OT H E R
660-800, Patagonia,
Includes human Argentina
disturbance,
23
PLQLQJƃUHV
BIRDS ON Found on all seven continents, birds are a vital gauge of ecosystem
health. Yet many species have had it rough since at least 1500, when
THE BRINK recordkeeping began. During the rise of global trade in the colonial era,
birds in the biodiverse tropics, for example, were hard hit by habitat
By Eve Conant
loss and the introduction of invasive species—threats that persist
DOCUMENTED SINCE 1500
ALREADY EXTINCT
45
27 LO G G I N G
Kakawahie
3DURUHRP\]DƄDPPHD
Passenger pigeon
Ectopistes migratorius 1963, Molokai, Hawaii
1900, Ohio 2
POLLUTION
77
HUNTING &
34 TRAPPING
Carolina parakeet
Conuropsis carolinensis 3
RESIDENTIAL &
1910, Florida
COMMERCIAL
D E V E LO P M E N T
/HDVWYHUPLOLRQƄ\FDWFKHU
Pyrocephalus dubius
1980, Galápagos
Islands, Ecuador 122
I N VA S I V E
81 SPECIES
11
C L I M AT E C H A N G E &
S E V E R E W E AT H E R
Canarian oystercatcher
Haematopus meadewaldoi
1913, Canary Islands,
Spain
28
18 OT H E R
today. Nearly 200 species are gone forever, according to BirdLife SPECIES COUNT Size indicates the
International, the official authority for birds on the International number of species
under threat or
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened
extinct. Some face
Species. Even more species are critically endangered, many clinging multiple threats in
to grim odds: Fewer than 50 adults survive in the wild. 1 10 25 multiple regions.
ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ AND RYAN T. WILLIAMS, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL
EXTINCT CATEGORY ALSO INCLUDES THOSE SPECIES THAT ARE LIKELY EXTINCT AND THOSE THAT ARE EXTINCT IN THE WILD.
| E X P LO R E | B I R D S
see that one of the best explanations for ILLUSTRATIONS: DAISY CHUNG,
NGM STAFF
By Hannah Lang egg-shape variation was flight ability,” SOURCE: RENÉ CORADO,
WESTERN FOUNDATION
says Stoddard. OF VERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY
Common murres, for instance, have
Birds lay eggs of surprising variety, and particularly pointy and elliptical eggs
scientists have long wondered why. (see below)—and are expert divers.
Could it be that certain shapes protect Perhaps a streamlined bird needs a
eggs from shattering? Or perhaps allow streamlined egg; stout flightless birds
them to fit snugly in a nest? Or was Aris- like ostriches and emus hatch from eggs
totle correct when he asserted that long, that are nearly round.
pointy eggs contained females while Penguins, however, break the mold: 5.5
INCHES
rounder eggs held males? (He wasn’t.) Although the aquatic birds can’t take to ACTUAL HEIGHT
OF CASSOWARY EGG
To crack the mystery about egg the air, their eggs are asymmetrical.
shapes, Princeton University evolution- This discovery initially left the
ary biologist Mary Caswell Stoddard researchers puzzled, but they
and her colleagues examined almost developed a working hypothe-
50,000 eggs from more than 1,400 sis, says Stoddard: “The same
species. They classified the eggs based processes that may influence
on their asymmetry and ellipticity, dis- egg shape in good fliers may
covering that the more pointy or oval also be at work in good
shaped an egg, the more likely it came swimmers, like penguins.”
(JJVKDSHVUHYHDOƄLJKWDELOLWLHVŞSRLQWHGIRUVWURQJƄLHUVOLNH
FRPPRQPXUUHVURXQGIRUHDUWKERXQGKHDYLHVOLNHFDVVRZDULHV
30
American
flamingo
Phoenicopterus ruber
$ƄDPLQJRFRPHVLQWR
the world with white
plumage; its striking
color derives from
organic pigments called
carotenoids in its diet of
mollusks, crustaceans,
and algae. Its bizarre
beak makes more sense
upside down, as it is
ZKHQWKHELUGLVƃOWHU
feeding, head inverted.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT LINCOLN
CHILDREN’S ZOO, NEBRASKA
THE YEAR OF THE BIRD
WHY
BIRDS
MATTER
It’s not just what they do
for the environment—
it’s what they do for
our souls. In 2018 we’ll
explore the wonder of
birds, and why we really
can’t live without them.
BY J O NAT H A N F R A N Z E N
P H O T O G R A P H S BY J O E L SA RT O R E
Great
hornbill
Buceros bicornis
With its massive bill and
casque and a wingspan
approaching six feet, the
great hornbill is king of the
jungle skies in Southeast
Asia. It adorns its black
and white feathers with a
yellow-tinted oil secreted
from a gland near its tail.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT HOUSTON ZOO
36
Western
rosella
Platycercus icterotis
The sociable western
rosella of southwestern
Australia is often seen
foraging in pairs or small
groups. Damaging to fruit
orchards, they used to be
shot as vermin. The species
is now protected, but its
numbers are still declining
because of loss of habitat.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT BLANK PARK ZOO,
DES MOINES, IOWA
WHY BI RD S MATTER 37
Emperor penguins incubate their eggs in Ant- Birds aren’t furry and cuddly, but in many
arctica in winter. Goshawks nest in the Berlin respects they’re more similar to us than other
cemetery where Marlene Dietrich is buried, spar- mammals are. They build intricate homes and
rows in Manhattan traffic lights, swifts in sea raise families in them. They take long winter
caves, vultures on Himalayan cliffs, chaffinches vacations in warm places. Cockatoos are shrewd
in Chernobyl. The only forms of life more widely thinkers, solving puzzles that would challenge a
distributed than birds are microscopic. chimpanzee, and crows like to play. (On days so
To survive in so many different habitats, the windy that more practical birds stay grounded,
world’s 10,000 or so bird species have evolved I’ve seen crows launching themselves off hill-
into a spectacular diversity of forms. They sides and doing aerial somersaults, just for the
range in size from the ostrich, which can reach
nine feet in height and is widespread in Africa,
to the aptly named bee hummingbird, found Ringed teal
only in Cuba. Their bills can be massive (pel- Callonetta leucophrys
icans, toucans), tiny (weebills), or as long as This pair of chest-bumping
ringed teals (the male is at left)
the rest of their body (sword-billed humming-
is native to South America. Many
birds). Some birds—the painted bunting in birds form strong pair bonds
Texas, Gould’s sunbird in South Asia, the rain- during the breeding season, but
the notion that most species are
bow lorikeet in Australia—are gaudier than any
sexually monogamous is out-
flower. Others come in one of the nearly infinite dated. We now know from
shades of brown that tax the vocabulary of avian genetic tests that both males
and females seek out mates
taxonomists: rufous, fulvous, ferruginous,
other than their social partners.
bran-colored, foxy.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT SYLVAN
Birds are no less diverse behaviorally. Some HEIGHTS BIRD PARK, SCOTLAND
NECK, NORTH CAROLINA
are highly social, others anti. African queleas
and flamingos gather in flocks of millions, and
parakeets build whole parakeet cities out of
sticks. Dippers walk alone and underwater, on
the beds of mountain streams, and a wander-
ing albatross may glide on its 10-foot wingspan
500 miles away from any other albatrosses. I’ve
met friendly birds, like the New Zealand fan-
tail that once followed me down a trail, and I’ve
met mean ones, like the caracara in Chile that
swooped down and tried to knock my head off
when I stared at it too long. Roadrunners kill
rattlesnakes for food by teaming up on them,
one bird distracting the snake while another
sneaks up behind it. Bee-eaters eat bees. Leaf-
tossers toss leaves. Thick-billed murres can dive
underwater to a depth of 700 feet, peregrine fal-
cons downward through the air at 240 miles an
hour. A wren-like rushbird can spend its entire
life beside one half-acre pond, while a cerulean
warbler may migrate to Peru and then find its
way back to the tree in New Jersey where it nest- Q Society Grant Your National Geographic Society
ed the year before. membership helped fund this project.
38 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
fun of it, and I keep returning to the YouTube nearly a century ago. If you shoot too many pic-
video of a crow in Russia sledding down a snowy tures of a lyrebird, it will add the sound of your
roof on a plastic lid, flying back up with the lid camera to its repertoire.
in its beak, and sledding down again.) And then But birds also do the thing we all wish we could
there are the songs with which birds, like us, fill do but can’t, except in dreams: They fly. Eagles
the world. Nightingales trill in the suburbs of effortlessly ride thermals; hummingbirds pause
Europe, thrushes in downtown Quito, hwameis in in midair; quail burst into flight heart-stoppingly.
Chengdu. Chickadees have a complex language Taken all together, the flight paths of birds bind
for communicating—not only to each other but the planet together like 100 billion filaments,
to every bird in their neighborhood—about how tree to tree and continent to continent. There
safe or unsafe they feel from predators. Some was never a time when the world seemed large to
lyrebirds in eastern Australia sing a tune their them. After breeding, a European swift will stay
ancestors may have learned from a settler’s flute aloft for nearly a year, flying to sub-Saharan Afri-
ca and back, eating and molting and sleeping on
the wing, without landing once. Young albatross-
es spend as many as 10 years roving the open
ocean before they first return to land to breed.
Black-throated
magpie-jay
Cyanocorax colliei
The raucous call of the
black-throated magpie-jay is
a common sound in its native
western Mexico. Magpies,
crows, jays, and other cor-
vids are highly intelligent
birds. Magpies can recognize
themselves in mirrors, and
crows are adept toolmakers.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT HOUSTON ZOO
A bar-tailed godwit has been tracked flying non- wildness has touristic or carbon-sequestering
stop from Alaska to New Zealand, 7,264 miles in value. You may also hear it argued that bird pop-
nine days, while a ruby-throated hummingbird ulations function, like the proverbial coal-mine
may burn up a third of its tiny body weight to canary, as important indicators of ecological
cross the Gulf of Mexico. The red knot, a small health. But do we really need the absence of birds
shorebird species, makes annual round-trips be- to tell us when a marsh is severely polluted, a for-
tween Tierra del Fuego and the Canadian Arctic; est slashed and burned, or a fishery destroyed?
one long-lived individual, named B95 for the tag The sad fact is that wild birds, in themselves, will
on its leg, has flown more miles than separate the never pull their weight in the human economy.
Earth and the moon. They want to eat our blueberries.
There is, however, one critical ability that What bird populations do usefully indicate is
human beings have and birds do not: mastery the health of our ethical values. One reason that
of their environment. Birds can’t protect wet- wild birds matter—ought to matter—is that they
lands, can’t manage a fishery, can’t air-condition are our last, best connection to a natural world
their nests. They have only the instincts and the that is otherwise receding. They’re the most viv-
physical abilities that evolution has bequeathed id and widespread representatives of the Earth
to them. These have served them well for a very as it was before people arrived on it. They share
long time, 150 million years longer than human descent with the largest animals ever to walk on
beings have been around. But now human beings land: The house finch outside your window is a
are changing the planet—its surface, its climate,
its oceans—too quickly for birds to adapt to
by evolving. Crows and gulls may thrive at our
garbage dumps, blackbirds and cowbirds at our
feedlots, robins and bulbuls in our city parks. But
the future of most bird species depends on our
commitment to preserving them. Are they valu-
able enough for us to make the effort?
WHY BI RD S MATTER 43
THE GIFT OF SONG
Wake up early enough almost anywhere, and you’ll likely be treated
to some tunes from songbirds, which make up almost half the
world’s avian species. Unlike instinctual calls, the extravagantly
complex pitch, rhythm, and structure of true birdsongs must be
learned early in life and can vary locally within a species.
Superb
lyrebird
Menura novaehollandiae
Australia’s superb
lyrebird is a masterful
mimic. To attract a mate,
DPDOHULƂVRQWKHFDOOV
of other birds in the
forest while shaking its
splendid tail feathers
overhead. Captive birds
have been recorded
aping the sounds of
chain saws, car alarms,
and camera shutters.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT HEALESVILLE
SANCTUARY, AUSTRALIA
Kirtland’s
warbler
Setophaga kirtlandii
Central Michigan’s rare
Kirtland’s warbler depends
RQQDWXUDOƃUHVWRSURPRWH
the stands of young jack
pines it needs for nesting.
0DOHVDUULYHƃUVWDWWKHLU
usual breeding grounds in
spring and begin to sing,
to establish territories and
attract incoming females.
PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE WILD
NEAR MIO, MICHIGAN
Painted
bunting
Passerina ciris
Looking as if it has splashed
around for a while in a child’s
watercolor box, the painted
bunting is a fairly common
songbird in Mexico and the
southeastern United States.
During mating season,
males often sing back and
forth at each other in a
territorial duet called
countersinging.
PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE WILD NEAR
CHRISTOVAL, TEXAS
Prothonotary
warbler
Protonotaria citrea
In the swamp forests
of the southeastern U.S.,
the persistent tweet-
tweet-tweet-tweet of the
prothonotary warbler can
be heard from high in the
trees in summer. The
species migrates early
in spring from Central
America and northern
South America.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT VIRGINIA AQUARIUM
AND MARINE SCIENCE CENTER
TA I LO R E D TO T H E TA S K
“The shape of a beak tells a poignant story of each bird’s
evolution and survival, and helps us to understand its place in
the world,” writes Noah Strycker in Birds of the Photo Ark. A
sparrow’s sturdy triangular beak packs the power to crack seeds,
while a hawk’s sharp, hooked beak makes short work of prey.
Secretary bird
Sagittarius serpentarius
With its outlandishly long
OHJVDQGƃHUFHGHPHDQRU
the secretary bird of the
African savanna looks like
a cross between a crane
and an eagle. Its hooked
beak is all raptor.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT TORONTO ZOO
White-headed
duck
Oxyura leucocephala
Endangered, the white-
headed duck is native to
Spain, North Africa, and
&HQWUDO$VLD7KHƄDWEHDNV
of ducks typically have soft
edges for sensing food in the
water and comblike lamellae
inside to sieve out insects,
seeds, and other morsels.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT SYLVAN HEIGHTS BIRD
PARK, SCOTLAND NECK, NORTH CAROLINA
King penguin
Aptenodytes patagonicus
Perfect for spearing small
ƃVKDQGVTXLGDNLQJ
penguin’s beak sports
orange or yellow patches
WKDWUHƄHFWXOWUDYLROHWOLJKW
we cannot see, but they
can. Males and females
share this trait and appear
to judge prospective mates
in part by the intensity of
the UV light beckoning
from their beaks.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT INDIANAPOLIS ZOO
Long-billed curlew
Numenius americanus
With a wingspan that can approach
three feet, the long-billed curlew is North
America’s largest shorebird. In winter it
employs its eponymous feature to probe
for shrimp and crabs in Mexican tidal
PXGƄDWVDQGLQVXPPHULWXVHVLWVELOO
to seek burrowing worms in pastures
of the western United States.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT TRACY AVIARY,
SALT LAKE CITY
F RO M F I N E RY TO F L I G H T
)HDWKHUVƃUVWDSSHDUHGQRWRQELUGVEXWRQGLQRVDXUVORQJ
before birds evolved; even some early tyrannosaurs sported
primitive ones. Dinosaur feathers were likely used for insulation
RUGLVSOD\0RUHFRPSOH[IHDWKHUVVSHFLDOL]HGIRUƄLJKWWRRN
birds—the sole remaining dinosaur lineage—to new heights.
Malayan peacock
pheasant
Polyplectron malacense
Nearly half of a male
Malayan peacock pheasant’s
20-inch average length is
devoted to its tail, which it
raises and spreads out in
a splendid fan to impress
females. Its range and
numbers have declined
dramatically as its lowland
forest habitat has been
cleared for cultivation.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT PHEASANT HEAVEN,
CLINTON, NORTH CAROLINA
Birds were not the
ƃUVWWRHYROYHKHDG
ornamentation—both
dinosaurs and even
more distant relatives,
the pterosaurs, had
them. But today’s
birds display a
remarkable variety
of crowns and crests,
used to attract mates
and intimidate rivals.
Left to right, from top:
red-fan parrot
(Deroptyus accipitri-
nus), blue crowned
pigeon (Goura
cristata), Major
Mitchell’s cockatoo
(Cacatua leadbeateri),
palm cockatoo
(Probosciger
aterrimus), and black
crowned crane
(Balearica pavonina).
PHOTOGRAPHED AT HOUSTON
ZOO; OMAHA’S HENRY DOORLY
ZOO AND AQUARIUM, NEBRASKA;
PARROTS IN PARADISE,
AUSTRALIA; JURONG BIRD PARK,
SINGAPORE; COLUMBUS ZOO
AND AQUARIUM, OHIO
Vermilion
cardinal
Cardinalis phoeniceus
Like its North
American cousin,
the vermilion cardinal
of Colombia and
Venezuela is an
irresistible eye-
catcher—only
more so. The male’s
feathers are even
redder, and it holds its
long, spiky crest aloft
nearly all the time.
The males sing and
ƄDXQWWKHLUƃQHU\IURP
conspicuous perches
in early morning.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT NATIONAL
AVIARY OF COLOMBIA
Cape vulture
Gyps coprotheres
Vultures are hardly
the most lovable
birds—they’re big
and ugly, and they eat
disgusting things in
disgusting ways. But
without them to clean
up carrion, insect
populations would
soar—and diseases
with them. This trio of
Cape vultures is native
to southern Africa.
PHOTOGRAPHED AT CHEYENNE
MOUNTAIN ZOO, COLORADO
SPRINGS, COLORADO
FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL
Beyond the sheer joy they provide, birds play a vital role in the
environment, pollinating plants, dispersing seeds, controlling
LQVHFWVDQGUHPRYLQJURWWLQJƄHVKŢ7KHIXWXUHRIELUGVDQGXV
are intertwined more than we know,” writes photographer Joel
Sartore in Birds of the Photo Ark. “We soar, or plummet, together.”
| PROOF | A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL
Flight Paths
A photographer captures the
invisible patterns that birds
make across the sky.
58
Soaring above the Skógafoss
waterfall at their nesting
site in Iceland, northern fulmars
reveal zipperlike patterns.
| PROOF | A P H OTO G R A P H E R’ S J O U R N A L
By Catherine Zuckerman
Photo Illustrations by Xavi Bou
60 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
Evoking an airborne serpent, western marsh harriers glide above trees where great
cormorants perch. The wildlife-rich wetlands of Estany d’Ivars i Vila-Sana, Spain,
were drained around 1950 for agricultural use and restored in 2005.
natural world when he was a child and would take long walks with his grandfather, who lived on the Llobregat
River Delta near Barcelona. As an adult, Bou began to wonder what it might look like if birds left trails in the sky.
1HDUWKHƃVKLQJYLOODJHRI5RVHV6SDLQ
seagulls form a dreamy tableau as they
chase a boat for scraps.
The Healing of
Colombia
After a 52-year civil war, the battered but
hopeful nation seeks a lasting peace and
new opportunities across its countryside.
66
An airplane that drug lord Pablo Escobar used for
smuggling cocaine adorns the entrance of Hacienda
Nápoles. His once lavish estate is now a theme park
with animal exhibits, waterslides, and dinosaur statues.
In southwestern Colombia in February 2009, members of the
FARC rebel group killed nine people—two of them pregnant—
from the Awá indigenous community. The FARC said they
were informants for the Colombian Army. The remains were
returned to the Awá in late 2014 for proper burial.
Pedestrians watch a wedding party’s arrival at the
Church of San Pedro Claver, in the historic district of
Cartagena. The resort city’s Spanish colonial charms
are a boon for tourism, which the government says
has risen 250 percent in Colombia since 2006.
By Alma Guillermoprieto
Photographs by Juan Arredondo
72 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
What makes this story different from other in early childhood education and became the
episodes of horror and heartbreak in Colombia head of community relations in her hometown.
is that the people of El Salado came back. In a And after half a century in which the war circled
stubborn return to this most unlikely promised repeatedly in on itself, and after four years of
land, the Saladeros took back their town two painstaking negotiations, the country’s oldest
years after the killings, clearing the tropical guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolu-
vines that had climbed across roads, up walls, cionarias de Colombia—or FARC, by its Spanish
and into every empty room, whitewashing the initials—turned over the last of its weapons in
adobe houses, and replanting the tobacco fields June 2017 to a United Nations team. By then the
that had provided a tolerable income not so long entire country had been reshaped by violence.
before. There was no school for the children, but Now a lasting peace will have to be won, inch by
Mayito Padilla, by then 12 years old, decided to inch. El Salado, with its head start on reconstruc-
start one on her own, including literacy drills and tion, has given people hope that the country too
the multiplication tables, and a history course in can heal.
which her 37 students went over their own expe-
riences so as not to forget the terrible events of THE REALITY is that in the two centuries since
the recent past. it gained independence from Spain, Colombia
Today, El Salado and Colombia are transform- has rarely been without violent conflict. Some
ing their grim heritage. The girl now known as would argue that the latest cycle of bloodshed
“Miss Mayito” worked her way through a degree began on April 9, 1948, with the assassination
76
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The FARC sensed an opportunity and stepped in.
In exchange for protecting the campesinos from
ruthless traffickers and ensuring standard prices
for the coca leaves they harvested, the FARC lev-
ied an export tax for every kilo of processed coca
paste that left the territories under its control.
Soon FARC troops had standardized uniforms
and boots—and standard-issue combat weapon-
ry too. Their numbers swelled to an estimated
20,000. The guerrillas were awash in money,
and the leadership inevitably became corrupt,
vicious, and hungry for more. Hardly revolu-
tionary, they extorted, kidnapped, and set off
bombs. And because FARC guerrillas attracted
the attention of paramilitary groups that sprang
up to combat them, they inflicted great suffering At age 17, after Antonio
on the very campesinos they lived among. It was saw paramilitaries
displace his family, he
the FARC that the paramilitary killers in El Sa- joined the FARC. At 22,
lado accused the villagers of sympathizing with, he and other guerrillas
and it was the FARC that, backed into a corner met to talk about turning
militarily, finally signed a peace accord with the in their weapons. Within
Colombian government on November 24, 2016, a year a peace pact
was signed, leaving the
and turned over its weapons in June of last year. rebels the task of
reintegrating into towns
FROM THE PENINSULAR Guajira Desert to the they’d once terrorized.
high Andean páramos, where it’s possible to
walk with one’s head literally in the clouds; from
the tropical plains along the Atlantic to the deep gleaming rivers everywhere; steep valleys cov-
green jungles of the Pacific, this is a breathtaking ered in a patchwork of coffee farms; lush pastures
country, with only 48 million people occupying a spreading like velvet cloaks toward the Amazon.
territory almost twice the size of France. Colom- What you can’t see are the land mines.
bia has more varieties of hummingbirds, butter- When a round of peace talks in the early
flies, orchids, frogs, and whatever other tropical 2000s broke down, the tide of the war turned
living thing one can imagine than just about any- against the FARC, which intensified its use of
where else on Earth. mines—technically, improvised explosive de-
Many people here are shockingly poor, which vices, since they’re handmade—to obstruct the
is particularly clear if you travel from the modern army’s hot pursuit. They’re bitter souvenirs of
cities to, say, the Pacific region of Chocó, whose the guerrillas’ fight, and eradicating them is a
impoverished Indian and Afro- Colombian pop- crucial task faced by the government. Too often
ulations still navigate numerous broad rivers in a campesino steps on a mine somewhere that
canoes because there are so few roads. Visitors to was planted long ago, leaving a child blinded
the resort city of Cartagena are rarely told about by shrapnel or a farmer missing a leg or an arm
an outlying barrio named after Nelson Mandela, and no longer able to feed his family. According
where some 40,000 people, mostly refugees to the HALO Trust, a worldwide mine-clearing
from the violence in places such as Chocó and El organization, Colombia has consistently ranked
Salado, live in shameful conditions. Flying over behind Afghanistan as the country with the
the emerald-green country, you can see broad, second highest number of mine victims in the
78 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
world; mines have killed or wounded more than In the remote town of Ricaurte, which like most
11,400 Colombians since 1990. urban clusters in Colombia is crowded and grace-
“Land mines did more damage to campesinos less and roaring with motorbikes, I was intro-
than to the army,” Álvaro Jiménez, a mine ex- duced to Cristian Marín, a member of the Awá
pert, told me. Jiménez is a former guerrilla him- indigenous people who live in a jungle preserve
self (the organization he belonged to, the M-19, not far away. Slight, cinnamon skinned, and just
turned over its weapons to the government in a little potbellied, Marín is one of the youngest
1990). Eighteen years ago he became the head of leaders to be elected by the Awá to solve disputes
the Colombian Campaign Against Mines, which and deal with the outside world.
creates and sponsors harm-reduction programs Marín speaks in a murmur and relies on un-
in areas mined by the guerrillas. “Mines generate derstatement, so it’s hard to get a picture of the
many fears,” he said. “Like the fear of venturing damage his community suffered without re-
out after dark to look for a doctor if someone is sorting to rude questioning, and it was only in
sick, taking children to school. Normally cam- response to one such interrogation that he told
pesinos live in a harmonious relationship with me about an army-guerrilla confrontation near
their surroundings. Mines destroyed that.” his own family’s compound in which, as usual,
Jiménez suggested I travel to the department neither party emerged the winner.
of Nariño, a land of high rolling hills quilted in a “And as usual,” Marín said, “the guerrillas
patchwork of soft green fields and then a plunge mined as they retreated. So people decided not
to the untamed tropics of the Pacific coastline. to leave their homes. They were afraid.” Besieged
82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
are no new criminals. For that we need a secu- for things such as curfew hours. Not so with
rity force, but right now we have barely 10,000 the new criminal bands. “They just say ‘plata o
police” in rural areas, he explained. plomo,’ ”—silver or lead, meaning bribes or
In a great irony of this complicated war, the bullets—Navarro said. “And anyone with any
FARC may turn out to be by far the cheaper of two brains at all will say, ‘Oh, I’ll take silver, because
evils, compared with the cost of controlling the lead is far too heavy.’ ”
savage new drug-trafficking gangs taking over
the territories where guerrillas and paramili- HOW WILL the 23 percent of Colombians who live
taries once fought for control. The government in the countryside fare now that there’s peace?
estimates that 5 percent of the guerrilla forces Over the course of half a century, more than sev-
have refused to lay down their weapons and may en million people left their homes in the rural ar-
eventually find their way into the ranks of the so- eas most afflicted by guerrilla and paramilitary
called bacrim (short for bandas criminales). To- violence. The government’s reconstruction and
day these gangs are mostly involved in the drug reparations efforts are focusing on these regions.
trade, but they’re slowly taking over old guerrilla Seventeen years after the massacre that emptied
and paramilitary sidelines as well: extortion, kid- out the town, El Salado is a good place to look for
napping, and human trafficking. first results.
And as Marín had told me in the little plaza of Set a couple of hours inland from the Carib-
Ricaurte, “At least with the guerrillas, they had bean shore, the town still isn’t much to look at: A
a central command one could negotiate with,” gulch runs through the center, and an unrepaired
88 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
guerrillas. The settlements are part of the 297- IF THE GOVERNMENT had been bolder, or rich-
page agreement so laboriously negotiated be- er, or less hemmed in by loud opposition to the
tween guerrilla leaders and the government. peace agreement in Congress and among Colom-
They’re supposed to contribute to a smooth bians in general, each former combatant would
transition into modern-day consumer society have received a far larger amount of money—
for some 7,000 fighters, now that they have laid enough to set up a curbside arepa stand, or finish
down their weapons. school, or in other ways help ensure that a person
Despite the ramshackle quality of the reentering society from the equivalent of Mars,
dormitories—one wallboard room per guerrilla with only the clothes on his or her back, would
or guerrilla couple, toilet and shower stalls across find legality more attractive than a job with one
the way—Alex was truly pleased with his new of the criminal bands now hiring. The monthly
surroundings. All of 25, painfully shy of strangers subsidy will end in July of 2019, as will the demo-
and completely innocent of the ways of capital- bilization territories, where the United Nations
ism, he looked and acted more like a teenager, verification mission and the national police are
as if his real life had stopped when he ran away ensuring safety and protection. It was almost un-
from his family to join the FARC at age 15. “No fair to ask Alex, still adjusting to the basics of his
money, no work, no chance to study—my fami- new life, how he saw the future after this transi-
ly was poor,” he explained. He said he had never tion period, but clearly it was something he and
had a moment of regret, but one wonders how his mates discussed constantly.
much his situation improved: During his 10 years “What I worry most about is security,” he said
as a guerrilla fighter he never slept under a roof, immediately. In the mid-1980s failed negotiations
saw his family, or used money. “Looking back, with the FARC included a truce, an amnesty, and
those were years of suffering and hardship,” he the opportunity to create a political party, which
said. Sleeping most often in a hammock pro- was called the Unión Patriótica. Within the dec-
tected from the rain by a plastic sheet, bedtime ade more than a thousand party militants had
was at six every day lest a conversation, a giggle, been assassinated, mostly in broad daylight and,
a lit cigarette give away the group’s location. instructively, in public spaces. Now the FARC is
Radios weren’t allowed, because an infiltrator transforming itself into a new party, which is sup-
might easily place a microchip locator in one. posed to guide the ex-fighters, win elections, and
Crisscrossing the country with hundred-pound lead Colombia into the new world Alex thinks his
backpacks, guerrillas relied on rice as their main years of struggle have made possible. When he’s
sustenance. On his first day out of training, Alex speaking in what might be considered his hero-
said, his group ambushed a military post, and he ic voice, Alex muses about a future of collective
saw three of his young comrades die. effort and collective joy, but caught off guard,
“One feels the change most in the tranqui- he dreams aloud about the little farm he hopes
lidad,” he said. And then there are the dormi- FARC leaders will arrange for him and the nurs-
tories: “Now we each have an opportunity to ing degree or baking certificate to which others in
organize our little room as we like. Our bed- his group aspire. He’d like to study too, finish ele-
times have changed, because some like to watch mentary school and get his high school diploma.
their telenovela, others their soccer game.” He On the farm? He hesitates. Life is complicated
worried that a monthly government subsidy of and uncertain for everyone these days, but who
about $300 per demobilized fighter would be knows? It might all work out in the end. j
hard to administer properly, but the money was
being deposited into a nearby bank. “Now that
Alma Guillermoprieto, ZKROLYHVLQ%RJRW£ZULWHVRIWHQ
we’re civilians,” he said, “we have to learn to DERXW/DWLQ$PHULFDIRUWKHPDJD]LQH. 3KRWRJUDSKHU
manage ourselves, and we know that out there Juan Arredondo, IRUPHUO\DFKHPLVWLVDOVREDVHGLQ
you need money for everything.” %RJRW£7KLVLVKLVƃUVWNational Geographic VWRU\
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By Tim Folger
W
e see evidence of the kill first:
a shockingly broad spread of
scarlet, probably the blood of a
ringed seal, on snow-covered
sea ice. Then the polar bear
appears. She’s big, maybe 500 pounds, trailed by
a single cub. They’ve just jumped into a lead—a
long fissure of open water in the frozen sea. In
seconds they’re out of the water again, running
across the ice, spooked by the approach of our
helicopter. Prolonged running can harm polar
bears: Fat and fur insulate them so well they risk
overheating. François Létourneau-Cloutier, our
33-year-old Québécois pilot, takes us higher, and
the mother and cub slow to an amble.
After following them for several minutes,
Létourneau-Cloutier sets the helicopter gently
onto the ice a few hundred feet away and cuts
the engine. The mother rises on her hind legs,
assessing our 35-foot-long flying machine with
the unruffled gaze of the Arctic’s top predator;
the cub remains on all fours behind her. For a
few timeless moments we savor the scene—bears
against an otherwise empty immensity of snow
and ice, countless shallow pools of meltwater re-
flecting a high summer sun ringed by faint halos
of red and blue. Then, with a frenzied whine, the
helicopter’s rotor blades break the spell, and we
lift off, veering southwest toward our campsite
on the northernmost tip of Baffin Island, Canada,
about 700 miles north of Hudson Bay.
Within a few decades such vistas are unlikely
to exist, at least not here, during summer. As the
planet heats up, the summer sea ice and all the
superbly adapted life it supports—the bears, the
seals, the walruses, the whales, the Arctic cod,
the crustaceans, the ice algae—may well vanish
around Baffin. As we fly over the vast frozen ex-
panse, it almost strains belief to think that we’re
witnessing—and with the rest of humanity, help-
ing to cause—its demise. In the 1980s satellite
data showed that Arctic sea ice extended on aver-
age across nearly three million square miles at the
end of summer. Since then more than a million
square miles has been lost—an area roughly the
98 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
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PAUL SOUDERS
size of Alaska, Texas, and California combined.
Climate models suggest that by the 2050s, less Ice on the Edge
than 200,000 square miles of perennial sea ice The Arctic’s year-round ice is projected to
will remain. The good news, such as it is: What’s shrink to a narrow strip off the northern edge
left will collect in a compact region, not here but of Canada and Greenland in the next few
farther north, above Greenland and Canada’s decades. Wind and ocean currents will help
Ellesmere Island. That shrunken redoubt will be thicken the ice in this final, frozen refuge.
the last stand for many of the Arctic’s wild things.
“The animals that depend on the edge of the
sea ice for a living will be congregating there in ARCTIC AMPLIFICATION Northern Hemisphere
The Northern Hemisphere is warm- 2016, +1.8°F
the summer,” says marine ecologist Enric Sala,
ing faster than the planet as a
leader of the National Geographic Society’s Pris- whole—and the Arctic is warming
tine Seas project. “It will be like one of those wa- nearly twice as fast.
tering holes in Africa where everybody shows up.”
Temperature change
Sala has come to Baffin with divers and film- (land and marine) Global
compared to the +1.4°F
makers to document the icy world that’s doomed
1961-1990 average
here—and to make the case for preserving the
“last ice” farther north. Since he started Pristine
Seas a decade ago, the project has helped protect +0.1°F
more than three million square miles of ocean.
But preserving the remnants of Arctic ice, which
will require the cooperation of Greenland and 1961-1990 average
Canada, will be its most ambitious undertaking.
It’s also the most urgent. “The Arctic is chang-
ing faster than anything else,” Sala says, and as 1979, +0.01°F
Observed data
Satellite record
2015 2050-2059 The projected decline
190,000 miƜ in summer sea ice
from the 1980s to
Sea ice coverage
shown on map the 2050s is roughly
equivalent to the
contiguous U.S.
shrinking to the
size of California.
108 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
undergo profound changes. Diverse species will and there’s barely any wind. After more than a
be thrust into closer contact than ever before. week of waiting, Sala and his team of divers are
“There’s the potential for a massive scram- eager to explore some open water around a cou-
bling of genes in the whole Arctic Ocean,” Kelly ple of small islands off Bylot’s western shore. In
says. “We did a survey of marine mammals and a few weeks, algae will be in full bloom, the water
came up with 34 species that are capable of hy- will cloud, and underwater filming opportunities
bridizing.” For reasons that scientists don’t yet will vanish. But now, the sea here is just begin-
understand, marine mammals have tended to ning to blaze with life.
retain the same number of chromosomes—a key “Sunlight is like a lighter for this ecosystem;
requirement for hybridization—as they diverged it’s why we’re here now,” says Manu San Félix,
into different species and even genera. a diver and photographer who has joined us on
“So you end up with things that you would the beach, wearing his dry suit. Over the next few
otherwise say are different genera, but are in fact days, if the weather holds, he, Sala, and other ex-
able to produce fertile hybrid offspring,” says Kel- pedition members will record the beauty of what
ly. “An example would be harp seals and hooded will be lost if we fail to protect the Arctic’s last ice.
seals, which we classify as different genera—but The harder work, more arduous even than div-
we’ve seen them hybridize in the wild. There is ing in freezing water, will take years: persuading
some evidence of a hybrid between belugas and governments to cooperate to save a region that
narwhals.” Pizzlies—crosses of grizzlies and po- extends across borders. Preserving the last-ice re-
lar bears—already roam the Arctic. Genetic stud- gion itself won’t be enough; because ice migrates
ies show that polar bears began diverging from long distances, its sources eventually will have
grizzly bears within the past 500,000 years. Glob- to be protected as well. Right now, for example,
al warming threatens to reunite the two species. Siberian ice contaminated with nickel and lead
“We could lose polar bears,” Kelly says. “They from the Russian industrial city of Norilsk—one
might be reabsorbed into the grizzly bear ge- of the world’s most polluted places—sometimes
nome out of which they came. We’re not just drifts into the Canadian Arctic. There it poisons
talking about ecological change. We’re talking the food web as it melts.
about evolutionary change—really sped up.” “It’s a good sign that we are seeing narwhals,
The end result, says Kelly, is likely to be a tre- belugas, and polar bears,” says San Félix. It
mendous, irreversible loss of genetic diversity. means the food chain here is still healthy. We
But even if that weren’t the case, the Arctic’s talk about a pod of bowhead whales that were
wildlife would still be in trouble. “We’re chang- spotted during a helicopter flight the other day
ing the habitat so fast that even if they have the and about how their huge heads enable them to
genetic diversity to respond, they may not have smash through two feet of ice. Bowheads can live
the time.” For some of the world’s iconic species, 200 years or more. (One way their age has been
the last-ice region could make the difference be- determined is by carbon-dating old harpoon
tween survival and extinction. points embedded in their bodies.) The oldest of
them now, says San Félix, might have been born
“PEACEFUL, ISN’T IT?” Enric Sala is smiling as he when Napoleon was still alive. “Imagine!” he
joins me on the beach in front of our camp’s dou- says. “That calf we filmed might be here in 2215!”
ble row of two dozen orange tents. We’re looking If we’re lucky, that is, and foresighted enough.
east across the frozen reaches of Navy Board Inlet Says Sala: “This is not a simple, linear story where
toward Bylot Island, several miles away. Covered we know how it ends.” j
with mountains and glaciers, a refuge for den-
ning polar bears and hundreds of thousands of 7LP)ROJHU has written many features for National
nesting birds, it’s larger than the big island of Ha- Geographic, including two on how climate change is
waii. The sun is out, the weather has finally lifted, DƂHFWLQJ*UHHQODQG+HOLYHVLQ*DOOXS1HZ0H[LFR
LAST I CE 109
| D I S PATC H E S | A F G H A N I S TA N
Kabul’s
Middle Class
On the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital,
families have found a modern, stable
lifestyle beyond the war’s reach—for now.
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families of Samim Sediqi (at left) and his
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there is easier—and safer—than down-
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111
BY SUNE ENGEL RASMUSSEN
P H O T O G R A P H S B Y A N D R E W Q U I LT Y
O
n Fridays residents of the Khwaja
Rawash apartment complex on the
outskirts of Kabul climb to their ASIA
K A BU L’S M I D D L E C L A S S 113
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October 1, 2017 | Las Vegas, Nevada | 58 killed, 546 injured
116
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THE SCIENCE OF
117
December 14, 2012 | Sandy Hook Elementary School | 27 killed, 2 injured
118
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119
June 12, 2016 | Pulse nightclub, Orlando, Florida | 49 killed, 53 injured
120
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June 7, 1998 | Huff Creek Road, Jasper, Texas | 1 killed
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123
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Photographs by Lynn Johnson
124 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
T H E S C I E NC E O F G O O D A N D EV I L 125
126 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
Aldridge’s heroic rescue is an example of what
scientists call extreme altruism—selfless acts
to help those unrelated to oneself at the risk of
grave personal harm. Not surprisingly, many of
these heroes—such as Roi Klein, an Israeli army
major who jumped on a live grenade to save his
men—work in professions in which endanger-
ing one’s life to protect others is part of the job.
But others are ordinary men and women—like
Rick Best, Taliesin Namkai-Meche, and Micah
Fletcher, who intervened to defend two young
women, one wearing a hijab, from a man spewing
anti-Muslim abuse at them on a commuter train
in Portland, Oregon. All three were stabbed; only
Fletcher survived.
Contrast these noble acts with the horrors that
humans commit: murder, rape, kidnapping, tor-
Phineas Gage
ture. Consider the carnage perpetrated by the and the frontal lobe
man who sprayed bullets from the 32nd floor of LEARNING HOW THE BRAIN WORKS
the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, in $UDLOURDGFRQVWUXFWLRQIRUHPDQ*DJHOHIW
October at a country music festival. Three weeks VXUYLYHGDQH[SORVLRQLQWKDWGURYHDQLURQ
later, officials put the casualty toll at 58 dead and URGWKURXJKKLVOHIWIURQWDOOREH:KHQKHUHFRY
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546 wounded. Or think about the chilling ruthless-
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ness of a serial killer like Todd Kohlhepp, a real es- XQGHUZHQWDVLPLODUFKDQJHZKHQDEHQLJQWXPRU
tate agent in South Carolina, who appears to have JUHZLQKLVIURQWDOOREH$IWHULWZDVUHPRYHG
left clues about his murderous habit in bizarre LQKLVZLIHWROGWKH6KHUEURRNH8QLYHUVLW\
online reviews for products, including a folding PHGLFDOWHDPŢ7KDQN\RXIRUJLYLQJPHEDFNP\
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shovel: “Keep in car for when you have to hide the
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bodies.” In spite of how aberrant these horrors are, EUDLQVWUXFWXUHVJXLGHVRFLDODQGPRUDOEHKDYLRU
they occur often enough to remind us of a dark
truth: Humans are capable of unspeakable cruelty.
Extreme altruists and psychopaths exemplify Decety, a social neurologist at the University of
our best and worst instincts. On one end of the Chicago. “We have two faces because these two
moral spectrum, sacrifice, generosity, and oth- faces were important to survival.”
er ennobling traits that we recognize as good; For centuries the question of how good and evil
on the other end, selfishness, violence, and originate and manifest in us was a matter of phil-
destructive impulses that we see as evil. At the osophical or religious debate. But in recent dec-
root of both types of behaviors, researchers say, ades researchers have made significant advances
is our evolutionary past. They hypothesize that toward understanding the science of what drives
humans—and many other species, to a lesser good and evil. Both seem to be linked to a key emo-
degree—evolved the desire to help one another tional trait: empathy, which is an intrinsic ability
because cooperation within large social groups of the brain to experience how another person is
was essential to survival. But because groups had feeling. Researchers have found that empathy is
to compete for resources, the willingness to maim the kindling that fires compassion in our hearts,
and possibly kill opponents was also crucial. “We impelling us to help others in distress. Studies also
are the most social species on Earth, and we are have traced violent, psychopathic, and antisocial
also the most violent species on Earth,” says Jean behaviors to a lack of empathy, which appears to
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Researchers have found Zahn-Waxler and her colleague Soo Hyun Rhee,
a psychologist at the University of Colorado Boul-
that empathy is the der, found they had a high likelihood of develop-
kindling that fires ing antisocial tendencies and getting into trouble.
Other studies have measured callousness and
compassion, impelling lack of emotional expression in adolescents us-
us to help others. ing questions such as whether the subject feels
remorseful upon doing something wrong. Those
with high scores for “callous-unemotional” traits
tend to have frequent and severe behavioral
problems—showing extreme aggression in fights,
stem from impaired neural circuits. These new for instance, or vandalizing property. Researchers
insights are laying the foundation for training have also found that some of these adolescents
regimens and treatment programs that aim to en- end up committing major crimes such as mur-
hance the brain’s empathic response. der, rape, and violent robbery. Some are prone
to becoming full-blown psychopaths as adults—
RESEARCHERS ONCE THOUGHT young children individuals with cold, calculating hearts who
had no concern for the well-being of others—a wouldn’t flinch while perpetrating the most hor-
logical conclusion if you’ve seen a toddler’s tan- rific acts imaginable. (Most psychopaths are men.)
trums. But recent findings show that babies feel If the empathy deficit at the core of psycho-
empathy long before their first birthday. Maayan pathic behaviors can be traced all the way back to
Davidov, a psychologist at Hebrew University of toddlerhood, does evil reside in the genes, coiled
Jerusalem, and her colleagues have conducted up like a serpent in the DNA, waiting to strike?
some of these studies, analyzing the behavior of The answer isn’t a categorical yes or no. As it is
children as they witness somebody in distress—a with many illnesses, both nature and nurture
crying child, an experimenter, or their own moth- have a hand. Studies of twins have established
er pretending to be hurt. Even before six months that callous-unemotional traits displayed by some
of age, many infants respond to such stimuli with young children and adolescents arise to a substan-
facial expressions reflecting concern; some also tial degree from genes they inherit. Yet in a study
exhibit caring gestures such as leaning forward of 561 children born to mothers with a history of
and trying to communicate with the one in dis- antisocial behaviors, researchers found that those
tress. In their first year, infants also show signs of living with adoptive families that provided a warm
trying to understand the suffering they’re seeing. and nurturing environment were far less likely to
Eighteen-month-olds often translate their empa- exhibit callous-unemotional traits than those with
thy into such positive social behavior as giving a adoptive families that were not as nurturing.
hug or a toy to comfort a hurt child. Children born with genes making it more likely
That’s not true of all children, however. In a that they will have difficulty empathizing are of-
small minority, starting in the second year of life, ten unable to get a break. “You can imagine that if
researchers see what they call an “active disre- you have a child who doesn’t show affection in the
gard” of others. “When someone reported that same way as a typically developing child, doesn’t
someone had hurt themselves,” says Carolyn show empathy, that child will evoke very different
Zahn-Waxler, a researcher at the University of reactions in the people around them—the parents,
Wisconsin–Madison, “these children would kind the teachers, the peers—than a child who’s more
of laugh at them or even kind of swipe at them and amenable, more empathetic,” says Essi Viding, a
say, ‘You’re not hurt,’ or ‘You should be more care- research psychologist at University College Lon-
ful’—saying it in a tone of voice that was judgmen- don. “And many of these children, of course, re-
tal.” Following these toddlers into adolescence, side within their biological families, so they often
130 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
have this double whammy of having parents who psychopathy, measured using a checklist of 20
are perhaps less well equipped for many of the criteria such as impulsivity and lack of remorse,
parenting tasks, are less good at empathizing, less compared with one out of every 150 in the gener-
good at regulating their own emotions.” al male population.)
Using an MRI scanner installed inside a trac-
THE FIREFIGHTERS TRIED desperately to save tor trailer, Kiehl and his colleagues have imaged
the six Philpott children from their burning house more than 4,000 prison inmates since 2007, mea-
in Derby, England, in the early hours of May 11, suring the activity in their brains as well as the
2012. But the heat and smoke were so intense size of different brain regions.
that only one of the kids was alive when rescuers Psychopathic criminals show reduced ac-
finally made their way upstairs where they had tivity in their brain’s amygdala, a primary site
been sleeping. That boy, too, perished two days of emotional processing, compared with non-
later in the hospital. The police suspected arson, psychopathic inmates when recalling emotion-
based on evidence that the fire had been started ally charged words they were shown moments
by pouring gasoline through the door’s mail slot. earlier, such as “misery” and “frown.” In a task
Derby residents raised money to help the chil- designed to test moral decision-making, re-
dren’s parents—Mick and Mairead Philpott—pay searchers ask inmates to rate the offensiveness
for a funeral. At a news conference to thank the of pictures flashed on a screen, such as a cross
community, Philpott was sobbing and dabbing burning by the Ku Klux Klan or a face bloodied
his eyes with a tissue that remained curiously dry. by a beating. Although the ratings by psycho-
Leaving the event, he collapsed, but Derbyshire’s pathic offenders aren’t that different from those
assistant chief constable, walking behind, by non-psychopaths—they both recognize the
was struck by the unnaturalness of the behavior. moral violation in the pictures—psychopaths
Eighteen days later, the police arrested Philpott tend to show weaker activation in brain regions
and his wife. Investigators determined that they instrumental in moral reasoning.
had set fire to the house with an accomplice to Based on these and other, similar findings,
frame Mick’s mistress. A court found all three Kiehl is convinced that psychopaths have im-
guilty of manslaughter. pairments in a system of interconnected brain
Philpott’s faking of grief and his lack of re- structures—including the amygdala and the or-
morse are among the characteristics that define bitofrontal cortex—that help process emotions,
psychopaths, a category of individuals who have make decisions, control impulses, and set goals.
come to embody evil in the popular imagination. There is “basically about 5 to 7 percent less gray
Psychopaths have utter disregard for the feelings matter in those structures in individuals with
of others, although they seem to learn to mim- high psychopathic traits compared to other in-
ic emotions. “They really just have a complete mates,” Kiehl says. The psychopath appears to
inability to appreciate anything like empathy compensate for this deficiency by using other
or guilt or remorse,” says Kent Kiehl, a neuro- parts of the brain to cognitively simulate what
scientist at the Mind Research Network and the really belongs in the realm of emotion. “That
University of New Mexico who was drawn to is, the psychopath must think about right and
studying psychopathy in part because he grew wrong while the rest of us feel it,” Kiehl wrote in
up in a neighborhood that was once home to the a paper he co-authored in 2011.
serial killer Ted Bundy. These are people who are
“just extremely different than the rest of us.” WHEN ABIGAIL MARSH, a psychologist at
Kiehl has spent the past two decades exploring Georgetown University, was 19, her car skidded on
this difference by scanning the brains of prison a bridge after she swerved to avoid hitting a dog.
inmates. (Nearly one in every five adult males The vehicle spun out of control and finally came
in prison in the U.S. and Canada scores high in to a stop in the fast lane, facing oncoming traffic.
T H E S C I E NC E O F G O O D A N D EV I L 131
Kent Kiehl
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132
Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center
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133
Our social brain “Fearful expressions elicit concern and caring.
If you’re not responsive to that expression, you’re
is plastic, even in unlikely to experience concern for other people,”
adulthood, and we can Marsh explains. “And altruistic kidney donors
just seem to be very sensitive to other people’s
be trained to be more distress, with fear being the most acute kind of
kind and generous. distress—maybe in part because their amygdalas
are larger than average.”
134 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
Gregory Stanton, a former U.S. State Depart- been put to the test at the Mendota Juvenile
ment official and founder of Genocide Watch, Treatment Center in Wisconsin, a facility that
a nonprofit that works to prevent mass murder, houses serious offenders but is run more as a
has identified the stages that can cause otherwise psychiatric unit than as a prison. The adolescents
decent people to commit murder. It starts when referred to the center come in with already long
demagogic leaders define a target group as “the criminal histories—teenagers who are a threat
other” and claim it is a threat to the interests of to others. “These are folks who essentially have
supporters. Discrimination follows, and soon the dropped out of the human race—they don’t have
leaders characterize their targets as subhuman, any connection to anyone, and they are in a real
eroding the in-group’s empathy for “the other.” antagonistic posture with everybody,” says Mi-
Next, society becomes polarized. “Those plan- chael Caldwell, a senior staff psychologist.
ning the genocide say, ‘You are either with us or The center attempts to build a connection with
against us,’ ” says Stanton. This is followed by a the kids despite their aggressive and antisocial be-
phase of preparation, with the architects of the haviors. Even when an inmate hurls feces or sprays
genocide drawing up death lists, stocking weap- urine at staff members—a common occurrence at
ons, and planning how the rank and file are to many correctional institutions—the staff mem-
execute the killings. Members of the out-group bers keep treating the offender humanely. The
are sometimes forced to move into ghettos or kids are scored on a set of behavior rating scales
concentration camps. Then the massacres begin. every day. If they do well, they earn certain priv-
Many of the perpetrators remain untouched ileges the following day, such as a chance to play
by remorse, not because they are incapable of video games. If they score badly, say, by getting
feeling it—as is the case with psychopathic kill- into a fight, they lose privileges. The focus is not
ers—but because they find ways to rationalize on punishing bad behavior but on rewarding good
the killings. James Waller, a genocide scholar at conduct. That’s different from most correctional
Keene State College in New Hampshire, says he institutions. Over time the kids start to behave
got a glimpse of this “incredible capacity of the better, says Greg Van Rybroek, the center’s direc-
human mind to make sense of and to justify the tor. Their callous-unemotional traits diminish.
worst of actions” when he interviewed dozens of Their improved ability to manage their emotions
Hutu men convicted or accused of committing and control their violent impulses seems to en-
atrocities during the Rwandan genocide. Some of dure beyond the walls of Mendota. Adolescents
them had hacked children, even those they per- treated in the program have committed far few-
sonally knew, to death. Their rationale, according er and less violent offenses between two and six
to Waller, was: “If I didn’t do this, those children years after release than those treated elsewhere,
would have grown up to come back to kill me. the center’s studies have found. “We don’t have
This was something that was a necessity for my any magic,” Van Rybroek says, “but we’ve actually
people to be safe, for my people to survive.” created a system that considers the world from the
youth’s point of view and tries to break it down in
OUR CAPACITY TO EMPATHIZE and channel a fair and consistent manner.”
that into compassion may be innate, but it is not During the past decade researchers have dis-
immutable. Neither is the tendency to develop covered that our social brain is plastic, even in
psychopathic and antisocial personalities so adulthood, and that we can be trained to be more
fixed in childhood as to be unchangeable. In re- kind and generous. Tania Singer, a social neuro-
cent years researchers have shown the feasibility scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human
of nipping evil in the bud as well as strengthen- Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germa-
ing our positive social instincts. ny, has pioneered studies demonstrating this.
The possibility of preventing violent teenage Empathy and compassion use different net-
boys from hardening into lifelong criminals has works in the brain, Singer and her colleagues
T H E S C I E NC E O F G O O D A N D EV I L 135
136
Missy Ewing
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Anthony Chavez
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141
found. Both can lead to positive social behavior,
but the brain’s empathic response to seeing anoth-
er person suffer can sometimes lead to empathic
distress—a negative reaction that makes the on-
looker want to turn away from the sufferer to pre-
serve his or her own sense of well-being.
To enhance compassion, which combines
awareness of another’s distress with the desire to
alleviate it, Singer and her colleagues have tested
the effects of various training exercises. A prom-
inent exercise, derived from Buddhist traditions,
involves having subjects meditate on a loved
one—a parent or a child, for example—directing
warmth and kindness toward that individual and
gradually extending those same feelings toward
acquaintances, strangers, and even enemies, in
an ever widening circle of love. Singer’s group
has shown that subjects who trained in this form
of loving-kindness meditation even for a few days Sue Klebold
had a more compassionate response—as mea- and Coni
sured by the activation of certain brain circuits—
than untrained subjects, when watching short
Sanders
SHARING SORROW
film clips of people suffering emotional distress.
In another study, Singer and her colleagues .OHEROGDWOHIWLVWKH
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tested the effects of compassion training on RQHRIWZRWHHQDJHUV
helpfulness by using a computer game in which ZKRFDUULHGRXWWKH
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ing gates along the way. They can also choose .OHEROGZURWHDERXWKHU
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trol group toward the other character—the equiv- WR6DQGHUVDWULJKW
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alent of a stranger. LQWKHPDVVDFUH)RU
That we might be able to mold our brains to be \HDUV6DQGHUVZDVDQJU\
more altruistic is an ennobling prospect for so- ZLWK.OHEROGIRUUDLVLQJD
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in schools. The result could be a more benevolent KHOSHGKHUXQGHUVWDQG
world, populated by people like Ashley Aldridge, .OHEROGŢ,IDQ\RQHŠV
in which reflexive kindness loses its extraordinari- SDLQLVJUHDWHUWKDQP\
ness and becomes a defining trait of humanity. j RZQLWŠVKHUVţVKHVD\V
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Yudhijit BhattacharjeeLVDFRQWULEXWLQJZULWHU LQ2OLQJHU&KDSHO+LOO
for National Geographic. Lynn Johnson UHJXODUO\ FHPHWHU\QRZVKDUH
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142 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C • JA N UA RY 2 0 1 8
T H E S C I E NC E O F G O O D & EV I L 143
FURTHER
A G L I M P S E O F W H AT ’ S N E W A N D N E X T
BOTS ON TH E W I NG
The SmartBird, an ornithopter created By Brendan Borrell
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EHFDXVHLWWZLVWVLWVZLQJVDVLWƄDSV Remote-controlled drones have become
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an invaluable tool for government agen-
PHOTO: MAX PINCKERS
cies, researchers, filmmakers—anyone
trying to get a bird’s-eye perspective on
the world. Today’s most common drone,
the quadcopter, excels at vertical takeoffs
and stationary hovering. But it’s noisy
and is a literal drag when it comes to
forward flight. Its whirring motors burn
about four times the amount of power
as a plane-like drone with rigid wings.
So-called ornithopters, which have
flapping wings, offer the best of both
worlds. The one seen here, named
SmartBird, has a 6.5-foot wingspan and
was modeled after a herring gull. It can
cross the sky silently and efficiently and
can take off and land in tight quarters.
The next advance, dronebuilders say,
will be to emulate the way birds change
the shape of their wings by overlapping
their feathers, as when a peregrine falcon
performs a dive at more than 200 miles
an hour. “I don’t know any aerial robot
that can do that,” says David Lentink, a
Stanford University mechanical engi-
neer who studies biological flight.
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