The Brain Scoop

Pregnant bats and the world's largest spider; your average evening in the Amazon. Studying bats allows biologists to make valuable connections between the animals and their environments, as insect eaters thrive in jungles and fruit-eaters act as seed dispersers and plant pollinators. We may not have netted an incredible number that evening, but the two bats documented provide important insights on the biodiversity of their forest home. This is a segment in a series about The Field Museum's Rapid Inventory No. 27, a journey through the forests between the rivers Tapiche and Blanco in Peru. Every year, the Museum's conservation group [the Action Center!] gathers together leading scientific experts across a number of disciplines (botany, zoology, geology, and anthropology) in order to gain an understanding of little-known areas of the rainforest. They work with local communities and their governments to help inform decisions made for conserving these unique, precious, and threatened parts of the world.

Taking a break from our Amazon Adventures to bring you answers to all of life's biggest questions! .... or, just whatever you asked me on Twitter (@ehmee) or the Facebooks.

Considering how sweaty and dehydrated I became during this film shoot, it's remarkable that Ernesto and the rest of the bird team were diligently out for long periods of time, at all hours of the day and night, to listen for the birds of the Amazon.

Mummies: Images of the Afterlife will begin touring in September, 2015. Stay tuned to see them visiting a museum near you!

Not every part of the rainforest is filled with towering canopies! We discovered an area with trees only twice my height, and it took a couple of geologists to help us figure out why.

Wherein Emily and Anna learn taxidermy from Katie Innamorato, founder of AfterlifeAnatomy! There are a number of significant differences between the art of taxidermy and the preparation of animal specimens for research. Join us as we gut it... together!

YOU can be a part of The Field Museum's History -- Donate to the #ProjectHyenaDiorama and help the hyenas !!

Check out these extra bits and pieces from our How To Taxidermy a Squirrel episode -- and be sure to check out our Indiegogo campaign!

Wherein Isobel and Maria show us the ropes -- or nets -- for surveying fishes in the Amazon. The distribution of fish in tropical river systems is important to understanding how animals move around these waterways. Where there are big fish -- like the electric eel -- we know there must be an ample supply of prey species, too!

The Amazon rainforest is a dense, seemingly impenetrable place. Before our scientific team can accurately document the biodiversity of an area they need a map to follow and clear trails on which to walk. Enter Alvaro del Campo, the Rapid Inventory logistics guru!

Wherein Dr. Corrie Moreau shows us how she dissects ants to learn about their gut microbiomes for her research!

Bullet ants (Paraponera clavata) have the most intense sting of any insect -- but what makes it so painful? Dr. Corrie Moreau walks us through how she extracts their venom to learn more about the chemistry of this remarkable species!

Naked mole-rats are some of the most fascinating members of the animal kingdom - but just how unique are they? Turns out, they diverged from their nearest relative more than 31 MILLION years ago! Field Museum curator Dr. Bruce Patterson, and Yale postdoctoral researcher Nate Upham have determined they ought to be in their own scientific family. Now, can someone please update their Wikipedia page?

For our final installment in the Amazon Adventures series, I interviewed expedition leader Corine Vriesendorp about what it means to protect and conserve areas of the rainforest in spite of the overwhelming global demands for its natural resources.

By the 1960s the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) was extinct in many states - including Illinois - because of the negative effects of the pesticide DDT. But, thanks to dedicated reintroduction and monitoring efforts over the last 30 years in part from Field Museum scientist Mary Hennen and The Chicago Peregrine Program, just recently these birds were removed from the Illinois threatened species list!

BABY DINOSAURS IN THE CITY!... and we've been studying them for years! We talked with Field Museum ornithologist Josh Engel about how scientists gather information and take risks while monitoring these impressive aerial predators.

Joyce Havstad, PhD holds the title Philosopher-in-Residence at The Field Museum.* We had the joy of interviewing her about some of the fascinating concepts she researches and explores -- in this case, what is a holotype? And how can paleontologists determine new species of prehistoric life based off of incomplete fossil skeletons? *It's probably the only job title that can compete with 'Chief Curiosity Correspondent', really.

Tom! Good luck in the big city, and thanks for all of your hard work over the last 1.5 years. We'll miss you!

More than 420 million years ago ancient millipedes took their first many -- many many many -- steps onto land. Today they remain largely cryptic animals, as there are tens of thousands of species still unknown to science. Associate Curator Dr. Petra Sierwald, arachnologist and millipede expert, is working to create a visual atlas to help with our understanding and identification of these mysterious creatures!

Out of any creatures in the animal kingdom, spiders seem to have the worst reputation. Their many legs and unpredictable movements elicit a fear response in even the most stoic of individuals. Let's take a moment to put our fear aside and learn more about these global dominators with Dr. Petra Sierwald!

WASSAP YOUTUBE comin' at you with some answers to your FAQ's! Got another query?! Leave it in the comments!

Diaphonization -- otherwise known as clearing and staining -- is one of the most photogenic preparation methods used by research scientists. It's beautiful, but is it practical? We interviewed Dr. Caleb McMahan, Collection Manager of Fishes, on how he uses this technique to answer questions about the evolution of fish!

Paleontologists today look at more than just fossil evidence to learn about organisms that lived millions of years ago. In this case, we're seeking to answer the question: how, and when, did mammals evolve their specialized movements? Turns out, the next step in this process involves dissecting a giant weasel...

Paleontologists today look at more than just fossil evidence to learn about organisms that lived millions of years ago. For this episode we visited Dr. Katrina Jones at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology to learn how she dissects and examines animals living today in the search for answers about the movements and evolution of early synapsids!

Our ability to use today's technology in unique and novel ways is a major part of scientific discovery. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Pierce shows us how she uses 3D modeling software to experiment on the bones of animals that went extinct millions of years ago, in order to figure out how they moved and walked. This is the final installment in a three-part series supported in part by The Field Museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and The National Science Foundation (!!!!).

DEATH ROCKS! An episode about deadly rocks! Really, it's about some minerals which may contain harmful elements that through the repeated, ongoing, and/or prolonged exposure to them in unregulated environments may cause damage over time... but that doesn't fit in the title.