Profile: Fernando Santos-Granero
Do objects have an occult life?
Febrero 08, 2013
In the Peruvian Amazon, a Smithsonian anthropologist learns that Yanesha people believe that certain personal objects become part of a person’s being.
In the Peruvian Amazon, a Smithsonian anthropologist learns that Yanesha people believe that certain personal objects become part of a person’s being.
A visit to a shaman’s garden prompts an unexpected warning about the tobacco plant spirit’s ability to do away with disrespectful visitors.
How will tropical forests respond to a warmer climate with higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations? By growing plants in geodesic domes, Smithsonian scientist Klaus Winter is seeking answers.
At one of the oldest Maya sites, STRI staff archaeologist, Ashley Sharpe, discovered dog bones from the Guatemalan highlands deep within two pyramids.
It is much faster to learn to recognize a new prey item from a neighboring species, than to learn by trial and error.
What slows or stops a disease epidemic if the pathogen is still present? It appears that wild frogs are becoming increasingly resistant to the chytrid fungal disease that has decimated amphibian populations around the world.
About 66 million years ago, a radical change on the Earth filled tropical forests with flowers. A new catalog of fossil pollen grains may hold an explanation.
Coral reef fish often see a very different seascape that humans do. Using the evolutionary laboratory created by the Isthmus of Panama, Michele Pierotti is learning exactly how they view their underwater world.
White-faced capuchin monkeys in Panama’s Coiba National Park habitually use hammer and anvil stones to break hermit crab shells, snail shells, coconuts and other food items, according to visiting scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). This is the first report of habitual stone-tool use by Cebus monkeys.
Not only does it take energy to make weapons, it may take even more energy to maintain them. Because leaf-footed bugs drop their legs, it is possible to measure how much energy they allocate to maintaining this appendage that males use to fight other males.