SCIENCE

A Dancing Parrot and More

June 22, 2009

That's Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody." The sulfur-crested cockatoo has our web staff hooked, and they're not even angry about the earworm I unintentionally planted in their brains. Snowball is featured on our Wild Things page in the July issue, which just went online last week. We've also got video of some odd dancing algae on that same page.

But Wild Things is just the start of a science-rich July Smithsonian. There's a special Frontiers of Science section, which has stories about robot babies, wave energy and a new kind of RNA. I was already looking forward to the exhibit of China's terracotta warriors, which will come to D.C. at the end of the year, but now that I've seen our photos, I'm really excited. The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 is coming up, and our story reminds me that I'll need to write about it here, too (don't worry, I've got something good planned for you). "The World's Largest Fossil Wilderness" tells of an incredible fossil find deep in an Illinois coal mine. And Food and Think blogger Amanda profiles "Ant Man" Mark Moffett (check out his Web site Doctor Bugs--if you search, you can find video of his 2008 marriage to Melissa Wells atop an Easter Island volcano, which Amanda mentions in the article).