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Navy SEALs may be the most rigorously trained men and women of the U.S. military, but a couple of other mammals also harbor stealthy underwater skills—with no need to wear a wetsuit.

Life Ascending is a challenging read which provides ample rewards for the determined reader. It is literate and witty and one of my favorite science books of the past few years.

The table is set, the candles lit, and the wine poured. Now comes the Thanksgiving pièce de résistance: a big, succulent roast of…tofu? Heck, yes!—although, you might refer to it as “tofurky,” after the brand by the same name that hit the alternative meat scene in 1995.

LGEPR via Flickr

Is a new flat-screen television on your holiday wish list this year? Or maybe you'd rather not wait for Santa and plan to purchase one yourself on Black Friday? Before swiping your credit card, or asking Santa to put his electrical engineering elves to work, you may want to carefully consider your choices—beyond just sound quality and color sharpness: How much energy does that set drain?

Tourists visiting Cape Town, South Africa are increasingly becoming victims of baboons committing highway robbery, reports the Associated Press. Over the years many of these plucky primates have grown to associate cars with food, thanks to sightseers who fed them. Now the monkeys don’t even need a tourist to dangle a sandwich or a snack; they just help themselves. With nearly 30 members one baboon gang led by an individual known as “Fred” recently struck the small coastal neighborhood of Simon’s Town, raiding unlocked cars for food. There are about 420 baboons traveling in 17 troupes near Cape Town. City officials are concerned baboon burglaries will rise even further when Cape Town hosts a flood of visitors attending the World Cup next year. Word to the wise: Don’t feed the wildlife.

There’s been some buzz (and a little outrage) online lately over the St. Louis Zoo placing fake polar bears in its empty polar bear display (the most recent living inhabitant was euthanized this past spring when vets discovered she had cancer). So what’s the story here? Has the zoo, as Huffington Post reports, installed electronic proxies provided by a holiday decoration company rather than shelling out big bucks to buy another live polar bear?

Bodies were piling up, and crime scene investigators were closing in on their killer. Soon another TV forensic mystery would be solved. But something was off: CSI had the wrong bird. A house wren—common dweller of woodlots and suburban backyards—was calling from the desert. Despite paying meticulous attention to other details that bring movies and TV shows to life, Hollywood is notorious for blundering when it comes to casting birds. Who goofed? And who got it right? Read on.

Whether you’re planning on carving a tom, jake, or jenny this Thanksgiving, chances are you didn’t shoot the turkey yourself. Even though wild turkey numbers are growing, the vast majority of all the turkeys people bake, brine, or roast this holiday are not the wild variety. (More on that here.) Instead, domesticated Broad Breasted White turkeys make up 99 percent of the 46 million gobblers that Americans consume on Thanksgiving. Other domesticated types, known as heritage breeds, may be even more appealing to your taste buds--and your eco-sensibilities.

Wild turkeys (Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

It’s difficult to find hard numbers on how much more Americans waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s than the rest of the year—Recycle Works says household trash increases by 25%. Whatever the actual number, there’s no question that once the fourth Thursday in November hits, many of us forget about our earth-friendly ways and splurge through year’s end.

Bearing that in mind, I decided to search for some tips to reduce the waste that often accompanies these festivities, without cutting into holiday cheer. Many articles and blogs I read suggested buying local and organic food—always a useful tip—but with Thanksgiving just two days away, food-purchasing has likely already occurred.

Instead, click through for a few tips there’s still time to try out this Turkey Day.

Ever since Captain Chesley Sullenberger's plane struck a flock of geese and ditched in the Hudson River last January, aeronautic experts have stepped up debates about how to avoid such mid-air collisions. Often the bird that gets blamed is a goose or a raptor inadvertently sucked into a plane's engine. But groups of smaller birds can pose a significant risk too, as has been the case recently at the Vancouver International Airport, where flocks of flying dunlins are competing for air space. The Vancouver Sun reports that dunlins have died by the dozens on the airport's runways in at least three air strikes this month. And this is just the beginning