This past week, a crow in the middle of Bell Field caught my eye as it was picking around at something in the snow. Naturally, I tromped all the way over and found the exciting marks of a crime scene:...

Now that we are back in the double digits, some of you may be wondering, what is out there moving around the Arb? Mice can be found hopping through the snow and the shrimp are active in Spring Creek,...

You might not expect to see otters in the Arboretum, but not so long ago they were an important part of southern Minnesota river ecosystems—including our own Cannon river. Throughout the state, populations...

Sometimes animal coloration has an obvious adaptive explanation. Snowshoe hares are white in winter because individuals that blended with the snow were less likely to get eaten than those that didn’t....

It’s 4th week for students on campus, and the steady escalation of academic workload is rivaled only by the parallel and seemingly vengeful intensification of winter as temperatures plummet past contemporary...

Turtles, nine species of which live in Minnesota, are really neat. Some evidence for turtles’ greatness: they are like “pond coyotes” in that they eat just about anything; all freshwater turtles...