Tabla de contenidos para March 2025 en National Geographic Magazine

NEW YORK CITY had a horse problem in the late 19th century. Its streets and alleyways were jammed with an estimated 150,000 of the animals—each one producing more than 35 pounds of waste every day. The logistics of disposing of that much excrement created an enormous challenge that New Yorkers were eager to solve. And a new invention—the automobile—seemed to be the answer. When the city’s very first motorized taxicab service launched in 1897, it featured a clean energy technology that might shock modern New Yorkers: The cabs were electric vehicles. Produced by the straightforwardly named Electric Vehicle Company, the cars were known as Electrobats and were emerging as the market’s leading electric vehicles. Philadelphia inventors Henry Morris and Pedro Salom patented the Electrobat in 1894 and in two years…

The cardboard pet carrier rested on a patch of desert grass with a towel draped over it, while an animal rescuer named Eric Murray squatted on a nearby cinder block, adjusting his thick gloves for the extraction. Then, in one swift motion, Murray reached into the carrier and retrieved a small owl with brown and white speckled feathers. Although an adult, the owl was only about nine inches tall, with long spindly legs and sharp talons. Its large yellow eyes widened as it slowly rotated its head at an uncanny angle to survey the surroundings. On this hot spring day, Murray and about a dozen volunteers clad in work gloves and sun hats gathered at Martin Farm, a 241-acre parcel of grassland northwest of Tucson, Arizona, to participate in a…

BENEATH THE GLOW OF THE MORNING SUN, thousands of reindeer plod across the frozen far reaches of northwestern Canada. In the slow-moving scrum, the animals’ bodies almost disappear under a cloud of vapor as warm breath collides with cold air. A forest of antlers seems to dance in the mist. Glimpsed from afar, the migrating herd looks like one long, sinuous streak of brown painted across the snow-white canvas of an Arctic landscape. The nonprofit National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funded Explorer Katie Orlinsky’s work. In the distance are four Inuvialuit herders on snowmobiles, armed with rifles and keeping watch. They are alert, attuned to the rhythm of hooves falling on frozen earth, and on this crisp morning their job is to escort…

IT WAS ON A SLEEPY SUNDAY morning in Stockholm’s central train station when I felt once again a familiar thrill—the jolt of being hauled out of the moment and transported to another, older world. I was in Scandinavia researching a story and having a coffee with an Uppsala University archaeologist, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson. She had offered to show me Birka, the site of an early Viking town on an island west of Stockholm. As we passed the time before our ferry departed from a nearby quay, Hedenstierna-Jonson reached into her pack and pulled out a large copy of an engraving that had appeared in a 19th-century Swedish newspaper. Unfolding it carefully, she placed it on a table and smoothed out the wrinkles. As I gazed down at the paper, I felt…

My father once told me that the average lifespan of butterflies is seldom more than a few weeks. OBSESSED WITH THEM since he was a boy, he caught thousands during his lifetime. Using pins and tweezers, he’d straighten their wings on a wooden spreader, not a single antenna damaged. He’d then affix the insects to a foam board by piercing tiny needles through their thorax and apply chemicals to preserve their bodies and wings. He’d meticulously arrange butterflies and moths according to their species and family in display cases. With the help of a magnifying lens, he’d inscribe their Latin names on labels smaller than a sunflower seed. Encased in glass, his specimens glistened. My father, Rustam Effendi, was a Soviet Azerbaijani lepidopterist, a preeminent authority on butterflies and moths…

TELEVISION SETTING HIMSELF on fire—safely!—is just one of the many skills that famed magician David Blaine learns to master in his upcoming National Geographic series, David Blaine Do Not Attempt. Across six episodes Blaine travels the world searching for the secrets to daring rituals and feats like kissing cobras or getting engulfed by bees. “I’ve always loved things that look like magic but are actually real,” he tells viewers. “Many of the things I’m seeing I didn’t even know were possible.” Blaine puts the techniques he discovers to use in ever grander stunts of his own devising. The photograph above, taken in Rio de Janeiro, shows Blaine on his journey toward getting lit ablaze—a trick that culminates in a leap from a bridge in order to extinguish the flames. Coming…

IT’S CALLED THE CERRADO, PORTUGUESE FOR ‘CLOSED,’ AND FOR NEARLY ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY this vast tropical savanna in central Brazil seems to have been shut off from the rest of the world. People do live there; hunter-gatherer groups, overcoming the formidable wilds, have roamed the Cerrado since the Stone Age. And in colonial times, those escaping slavery often disappeared behind the hills, where they built tight-knit communities, unlocked the land’s subtle gifts, and settled in. Otherwise, across centuries, hardly anyone ventured inside. The terrain was repellent to visitors, practically impossible to traverse. Much of the Cerrado is a dense, tangled mess of stunted trees and shrubs, the whole place crawling with snakes. It pales in lushness to the mighty Amazon rainforest to the north, the green lungs of the…

THE AVERAGE CHICKEN EGG can fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. This rare, fossilized specimen from National Geographic’s historical collection is more than 100 times larger. At just over a foot long and nine inches in diameter, the intact egg belonged to an elephant bird (Aepyornis maximus), a flightless herbivore endemic to Madagascar that’s been extinct since at least the 17th century. Today researchers believe the bird resembled an oversize ostrich, though it was most closely related to the kiwi, a smaller species of ratite. Its thick legs had to support some serious weight: Adults could grow to be 10 feet tall and over 1,000 pounds. Elephant bird lineage dates to around 50 million years ago, but their numbers declined as humans settled Madagascar. What happened? Gifford Miller, a…

THERE AREN’T MANY hikes that offer their grandest views at night. Of course, there aren’t many hikes that bring you to the edge of a frequently erupting volcano either. High in Guatemala’s Sierra Madre, Volcán de Fuego is a geological marvel that has become a singular tourist experience. The volcano is best glimpsed from the heights of its neighbor, the currently inactive Volcán de Acatenango, which, at 13,045 feet, is the third highest mountain in Guatemala. The strenuous hike to the summit moves visitors from lush coffee plantations through cloud forests, up to the otherworldly terrain near the peak. From there, the reward is an incredible view of Fuego spewing gas and ash as the earth rumbles underfoot. The most natural starting point for the journey is in the small,…