Tabla de contenidos para January 2024 en National Geographic Magazine

AT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, we talk a lot about “charismatic species,” a loose term used by conservation biologists to describe animals that have the broadest public appeal. Because they hold our attention, animals such as tigers, elephants, and gorillas are influential in provoking thought, discussion, and action around conservation. Few insects would be considered charismatic, but one that does fit the bill is the subject of this month’s cover story: the monarch butterfly. Monarchs are both beautiful and, in their own way, magical. Each year eastern North American monarchs complete a seasonal migration of up to 3,000 miles, traveling from the United States and Canada to wintering grounds in Mexico. (You can learn more about the migration in an episode of our series Incredible Animal Journeys, streaming on Disney+.) The monarch’s…

We all know the characteristic features of a giraffe: long neck, hornlike head protuberances, spotted coat. Well, not always. A giraffe missing spots was recently photographed for the first time in the wild. The unprecedented sighting, at a private game reserve in Namibia (above), occurred just weeks after another animal with similar coloring was born at a Tennessee zoo. No data suggest that a solid-brown coat is appearing more frequently than in the past, but it’s a surprising coincidence, says Sara Ferguson, a wildlife veterinarian and conservation health coordinator at the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. The last reported all-brown-giraffe sighting was in 1972, at a Tokyo zoo. Genetic mutations are the likely cause, but the animals don’t seem to be at a disadvantage, says Derek Lee, a biologist at Penn State…

ON A HOT, CLEAR OCTOBER DAY IN TEXAS HILL COUNTRY, ANDRÉ GREEN II IS GENTLY SHAVING A MONARCH BUTTERFLY. Bent over his makeshift laboratory bench, he deftly pinches the butterfly’s bright wings between a thumb and forefinger, swiping a sliver of sandpaper down its thorax to remove a few minuscule hairs. Green and his fellow researchers have set up temporary quarters inside one of the area’s many private hunting lodges, and its walls are lined with the taxidermied heads of native and exotic game animals. But Green, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan and a National Geographic Explorer, has eyes only for the three dozen monarchs he captured earlier in the day. He applies a dot of epoxy between the wings of the butterfly…

Two weeks before her 48th birthday, Eboni Camille Chillis lay in a hospital bed, ready to give birth to her first child. As she nervously waited for the doctors to begin a cesarean section, she put on a playlist she had made for the occasion. It consisted of songs she found calming and empowering, such as Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out,” and “Lovely Day,” by Bill Withers. With her phone next to her ear, she sang along. A few nurses joined in too. Chillis had always wanted to be a mother. In her 20s and 30s she’d expected the rom-com ending. “I would fall in love, get married, have a baby,” the Atlanta-based educator and entrepreneur told me. “And it didn’t happen that way.” When the pandemic forced her to…

THE JAVARI RIVER SPLITS BRAZIL AND PERU as it flows deep into the Amazon forest. The only signs of human life along the waterway are the occasional boat or dock on the Peruvian side. On the Brazilian bank, government signs warn that this is Javari Valley Indigenous land, a reserve that’s home to the highest concentration of isolated Indigenous peoples in the world. Outsiders are forbidden to enter, but the lure of abundant minerals, timber, and wildlife is impossible for many to resist. Some 6,000 people are known to live in the reserve, an area of nearly pristine forest roughly the size of Portugal. But that number accounts only for members of seven tribes who have established contact with the outside world. I’ve come to see how these people, who…

WHO A Chicago-based artist, photographer, and musician WHERE Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico WHAT Phase One XF camera with a 35mm lens Wu’s Lux Noctis project—Latin for “light of the night”—has taken him around the world to photograph familiar landscapes in new ways. He’ll often deploy drones and LED panels to “paint” a scene during an exposure that can last several seconds or even minutes. One evening in the remote badlands of New Mexico, Wu found a grouping of eroded rock columns known as hoodoos. He captured two exposures, then merged them into this composite image of an otherworldly, rose-colored vision. National Geographic has more than 455 million Instagram followers. Join them here: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield, @natgeoadventure, @natgeoyourshot, @natgeotv, @natgeowild, @natgeodocs.…

A dental implant does the work of a real tooth, helping people eat, speak, and smile, but it also has the potential to help them hear, according to a study by scientists at Shanghai’s Tongji University. They discovered that the jawbone transmits sound to the inner ear just as well as the mastoid bone, used by some hearing aids. The finding could lead to the development of dental implant hearing aids that are comfortable and discreet.…

HAWAIIAN LEGEND TELLS the story of the goddess Hi‘iaka, who travels down a dusty trail on the windward coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i to a beach where she meets her sisters, including Pele, the volcano deity. And there, on this remote beach in Puna, Hi‘iaka danced what some consider the first hula. The path to Hā‘ena Beach, also called Shipman Beach, is still intact. Sometimes muddy and slippery, the 2.9-mile trail deposits visitors at an uncrowded shore known for its fine sands amid an otherwise rugged and rocky coast. During ancient times, this was one of many footpaths (ala hele) across the Hawaiian Islands that linked coastal fishing villages. In the mid-1800s the trail was straightened and widened to accommodate horses and wheeled carts. Eventually, as people moved…

Monarch butterflies fly to warm regions where milkweed, vital for their offspring, is available. North America has two populations: western monarchs that breed west of the Rockies and winter in coastal California, and eastern monarchs that breed in the Great Plains, Canada, and Florida, before many migrate to central Mexico for the winter. 1. EGG Females lay each wax-coated egg on the underside of a milkweed leaf. Only 2 percent reach adulthood. In two to five days the larva emerges, consuming the shell as its first meal. 2. LARVA Milkweed is essential during the nine- to 14-day larval stage. The caterpillar eats, growing larger and shedding its skin four times between stages called instars. 3. CHRYSALIS The larva sheds its skin one last time to reveal the chrysalis. Inside, some…

The Amazon’s Javari Valley, home to isolated tribes and long considered mostly inaccessible, is now facing serious environmental threats. Deforestation of Indigenous areas in the Amazon increased 129 percent between 2013 and 2021; illegal gold mining along rivers also has begun to pollute lands within protected areas. Indigenous lands (over 500 sq mi) These reserves have the dual purpose of ecological preservation and the protection of tribes within them. Tree-cover loss (2000-2022) Natural causes of deforestation include fires and storms, but in the Amazon the leading causes are logging and clear-cutting for pastures or farming. Illegal mineral extraction Miners dredge for gold and other minerals along rivers. The area within Indigenous lands used for unlawful mining rose 495 percent from 2010 to 2020.…

A SERIES OF FROGLIKE crouches. A personal best time of four hours on a typically 15-minute trail. This is how Julya Hajnoczky describes her slow and unconventional mode of hiking. For weeks each year, the Calgary native creeps along footpaths in some of Canada’s most stunning wild spaces. She hovers over moss or mushrooms while other visitors speed by. “It must be how cyclists feel on the highway when they’re getting passed by semitrucks,” she says. Sometimes, though, hikers stop and ask what she sees that they don’t. She’s happy to explain—after all, that’s the point of her project. In 2017 Hajnoczky designed and built an eight-foot-long mobile trailer, which she dubbed the Alfresco Science Machine. Painted forest green, it houses an inventory of fieldwork immersion: a bed, a camp…

WHERE TO HIKE HAWAIIAN HERITAGE TRAILS 1. Alaka‘i Swamp Trail, Kaua‘i Sprawling over 4,345 acres in West Kaua‘i, Kōke‘e State Park has roughly 45 miles of hiking trails. Most notable is the seven-mile (round-trip) Alaka‘i Swamp Trail, which follows the rim of Kalalau Valley into a rare montane bog environment some 4,000 feet above sea level. Along the way are native plants and trees, home to endemic birds including the ‘elepaio (monarch flycatcher) and ‘anianiau, a Hawaiian honeycreeper only found here. Hawai‘i’s Queen Emma visited the swamp on horseback in 1870. The setting so entranced her that she had her hundred dancers and musicians who traveled with her perform here before continuing on. 2. Moanalua Valley, O‘ahu This hike can be as short or as long as you want, from…

ENDANGERED SPECIES AMERICAN WOOD STORK AMERICAN ALLIGATOR After losing habitat, the wood stork was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1984. A few years later, the American alligator, also a mainstay of Florida’s Everglades, departed the list as a recovery success story. The two, which were photographed separately, have a symbiotic relationship: Alligators patrol the flooded forests where wood storks nest, keeping predators such as raccoons away from eggs. In return, alligators occasionally prey on fallen wood stork fledglings. ENDANGERED SPECIES FANSHELL MUSSEL TANGERINE DARTER ROANOKE DARTER Freshwater fanshell mussels rely on darter fish, including the tangerine and Roanoke, for their survival. Mussel larvae attach for weeks to darters, where they absorb vital nutrients to develop. A single mature freshwater mussel can clean up to 15 gallons of water…

The island of Rottumeroog in the Netherlands is an uninhabited wilderness heavily protected by European nature laws. In 2012 and 2013, I traveled there back and forth multiple times for an assignment, spending a total of 50 days and nights—an amazing opportunity, as visitors were usually prohibited. For much of my time there, I was alone. My job was to take pictures to help others learn about this place. But about two-thirds of the way through, a lesson emerged. It came by way of a message in a bottle, tossed from the sea. I grew up near the Dutch coast, and Rottumeroog’s flat, open setting was familiar to me. I tried to avoid imposing my own narrative on the island, which has a sand foundation and is gradually drifting to…