Submitted by Nathan Bolls

I once read, and filed away, a quote by artist Pablo Picasso. These words seem to have been spoke in frustration:

“Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don’t they try to understand the singing of birds? Why do they love the night, a flower, everything that surrounds them, without trying to understand them? But painting, they must understand.”

I love art galleries, but as would any biologist, I am sympatric to Picasso’s lament. For me, seeing some living form is just the hors d’oeuvre. The main course consists of those gems of insight into how plants and animals do what they do, how they survive in the tough world of nature.

I always want to know, if I don’t, what benefit is derived from whatever the organism in question is doing at the moment of visual contact. I want to know what anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and behavioral adaptions they employ to survive where they live. How do they elude predators? How do they manage extreme wind, drought, flood, heavy snow, or numbing cold? I want to understand how they achieve and maintain adequate nutrition and proper bodily salt and water balance.

Beyond the widely appreciated examples of migration, hibernation, and of camels and kangaroo rats in the desert, each of the millions of species-including each organism in our natural area—has its one scenario for survival. I want to know how they do what they do. Hope you do too.