Stories of Exploration and Discovery

Quick! Which species pulls at your heartstrings--a tiger cub or an algae-covered sloth? A panda or a toad? A lion or a dung beetle? When it comes to emotional attachment, research funding, global popularity, and conservation support, the fluffier your fur and the bigger your eyes, the better your chances--unless zoologist Lucy Cooke has a vote. She's on a one-woman crusade to show the world why some of the most unlovable animals are actually the most interesting and deserving of our attention, study, and protection.

Cooke's popular blogs, online videos, films, and TV programs bring her trademark humor and quirky storytelling style to a serious message: If we only care for the best known and best loved species, other enormously crucial parts of the web of life could vanish forever. With her unconventional attitude, she leverages the Internet to reach a new audience that more traditional wildlife programming has yet to tap.

"My goal is to preach to the unconverted," says Cooke. "A lot of conservation messages are difficult to hear; they make people feel guilty. I think humor is the sugar coating that helps people swallow the pill. If you manage to make someone laugh while you tell them something important, they'll stick around and listen to more."

Cooke worries about what she calls "the tyranny of the cute." "There are so many television shows about koala bears and kittens," she observes. "All the attention seems focused on a handful of charismatic 'celebrity' animals. Even scientists get less funding for animals that aren't cute and cuddly. In fact, large mammal species appear in 500 times as many published papers as threatened amphibians."

She adds: "I've always loved an underdog. Weird, freaky creatures fascinate me because they tell an amazing evolutionary story. I'm interested in all of nature, not just the shiny, fluffy bits."

Amphibians, particularly frogs, top Cooke's underdog list. "Over a third of amphibians are going extinct; it's the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet. Yet I couldn't convince anyone to commission a film about it. That motivated me to start my Amphibian Avenger blog." The widely read blog showcases creatures that rarely attract the spotlight. "Frogs are a miracle of evolution that come in myriad forms and every color of the rainbow. You literally can't get bored with them."

Amphibians also occupy a crucial spot in the middle of the food chain. "If you remove them, everything else goes haywire," she notes. "The ripples are already reverberating through the whole web of life--when amphibians go extinct, birds and snakes that eat them also disappear. Since amphibians breathe through their delicate skin; they are very vulnerable to pollution, climate change, and disease. That makes them fantastic barometers of the health of ecosystems. If amphibians aren't doing well, chances are their overall environment is sick."

Even the story of why amphibians are so endangered is fascinating. "The deadly fungus, chytrid, is creeping across the planet, wiping out whole swaths of amphibians like something from a sci-fi movie," Cooke says. A leading theory says the fungus came from the African clawed frog, which was bred and exported by the thousands to produce frog-based pregnancy tests. A woman's urine would be injected into the frog, and if eggs were laid, the woman was pregnant. When new forms of testing emerged, the frogs (by then in labs all across the world) were released into the wild. Scientists, totally unaware the frogs carried the lethal fungus, had unwittingly helped start a worldwide epidemic.

"It's exciting to tell stories that haven't been told," Cooke says. "Take Wallace's flying frog. It lives in the tallest trees on the planet, atop Borneo's rain forest canopy. To avoid going all the way up and down, this frog evolved with flaps of skin that allow it to glide from tree to tree. Or consider the golden poison dart frog, the most poisonous vertebrate on the planet. Only one centimeter long, yet loaded with enough poison to kill ten men. Or Darwin's frog, the only species excepting the seahorse in which the male gets pregnant."

Cooke's blog and videos transport you to one of the world's highest lakes, where the endangered Lake Titicaca frog survives huge variations in temperature and intense UV rays by permanently living on the lake's floor. Since it never surfaces, it breathes only through its skin and consequently evolved with copious folds and flaps to increase its surface area. "Tragically, I've only seen this frog in a blender," Cooke reports. "People have decided he's a medicinal cure for impotence." Her videos expose frog juice bars that have brought the ancient species to the brink of extinction.

Cooke reached her widest audience yet when her online video about sloths went viral. Millions have viewed the film about a sanctuary for baby sloths that were orphaned due to power lines and roads that now wind through Costa Rica's jungles. Cooke is pleased to help elevate the status of sloths; animals that she insists are unfairly derided and misunderstood. "They've always had a reputation for being lazy, stupid, and dirty. The first European to describe a sloth said, "If there was one more thing wrong with it, it wouldn't survive.' It's even named after one of the seven deadly sins."

In fact, "slothfulness" is the key to the animal's success. A slow metabolism allows the sloth's liver to process toxins found in the leaves it eats. Moving slowly also keeps it hidden from predators. "My video showed the world how cute and interesting these babies are," Cooke says. "I'll use any tactic to make people like things."

The wobbly-nosed proboscis monkey, dung beetles, bats, and more get their moment in the sun thanks to Cooke. "It's about championing animals that don't have a voice and telling their stories in a way that engages a wider audience. I want people to share my sense of wonder, amazement, and love for these creatures. Once you understand why they're ugly or odd, I hope you'll appreciate and want to save them as much as I do."

Barrington Irving is very good at rising above obstacles. Literally. Raised in Miami's inner city, surrounded by crime, poverty, and failing schools, he beat the odds to become the youngest person and only African American ever to fly solo around the world. He built a plane himself, made his historic flight, graduated magna cum laude from an aeronautical science program, and founded a dynamic educational nonprofit. Then he turned 28.

His message for kids: "The only thing that separates you from CEOs in corner offices or scientists in labs is determination, hard work, and a passion for what you want to achieve. The only person who can stop you from doing something great is you. Even if no one believes in your dream, you have to pursue it." The secret, he believes, is having a dream in the first place, and that starts with powerful learning experiences that inspire kids to pursue careers--particularly in science, technology, engineering, and math.

The moment of inspiration for Irving came at age 15 while he was working in his parents' bookstore. One of their customers, a Jamaican-born professional pilot, asked Irving if he'd ever thought about becoming a pilot. "I told him I didn't think I was smart enough; but the next day he gave me the chance to sit in the cockpit of the commercial airplane he flew, and just like that I was hooked. There are probably millions of kids out there like me who find science and exploration amazing, but lack the confidence or opportunity to take the next step."

To follow his dream, Irving turned down a full football scholarship to the University of Florida. He washed airplanes to earn money for flight school and increased his flying skills by practicing at home on a $40 flight simulator video game.

Then another dream took hold: flying solo around the world. He faced more than 50 rejections for sponsorship before convincing several manufacturers to donate individual aircraft components. He took off with no weather radar, no de-icing system, and just $30 in his pocket. "I like to do things people say I can't do."

After 97 days, 26 stops, and dozens of thunderstorms, monsoons, snowstorms, and sandstorms, he touched down to a roaring crowd in Miami. "Stepping from the plane, it wasn't all the fanfare that changed my life. It was seeing so many young people watching and listening. I had no money, but I was determined to give back with my time, knowledge, and experience." He's been doing it ever since.

Irving's nonprofit organization, Experience Aviation, aims to boost the numbers of youth in aviation and other science- and math-related careers. Middle and high school students attend summer and after-school programs tackling hands-on robotics projects, flight simulator challenges, and field trips to major industries and corporations. In his Build and Soar program, 60 students from failing schools built an airplane from scratch in just ten weeks and then watched Irving pilot it into the clouds.

"We want to create a one-of-a-kind opportunity for students to take ownership and accomplish something amazing," he notes. "Meaningful, real-world learning experiences fire up the neurons in kids' minds. If you don't do that, you've lost them. Purposeful, inspiring activities increase the chance they'll stay on that learning and career path. We've had one young lady receive a full scholarship to Duke University as a math major, and several young men are now pilots, engineers, and aircraft mechanics."

"It's great to reach a few hundred kids every year," he says, "but I also wanted to find a way to inspire on a larger scale." How about millions of kids? Irving's next endeavor will transform a jet into a flying classroom that will circle the globe sharing science, technology, engineering, math, geography, culture, and history. "This isn't just an aircraft; it's an exploration vehicle for learning that will teach millions of kids in ways they've never been taught before—making them part of the expedition and research."

A web-based experience will make it easy for kids to participate at home and school, voting on everything from where Irving should make a fuel stop to what local food he should sample. He plans to call classrooms from the cockpit; broadcast live video from 45,000 feet; blog with students; collect atmospheric data; communicate with the International Space Station; and wear a NASA body suit that transmits his heart rate, blood pressure, and other vital signs.

Along the way, kids will have a virtual window on about 75 ground expeditions, including Machu Picchu, the Galápagos Islands, the Pyramids, the Serengeti Plains, the Roman Coliseum, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Wall of China. Cameras will provide 360-degree panoramic views of destinations from ancient archaeological sites to Hong Kong skyscrapers. Apps will track adventures such as shark tagging, giving students ongoing location and water temperature data.

A steady stream of challenges will let kids compete to solve problems ranging from evacuating populations after tsunamis to collecting trash in space. "We also want to create a forum where kids, parents, and teachers can speak to astronauts, scientists, and other specialists."

This "Journey for Knowledge" flight is scheduled to depart in 2013 and will make Irving the youngest person ever to fly to all seven continents.

Perhaps Irving's most compelling educational tool is the example his own life provides. After landing his record-breaking flight at age 23, he smiled out at the airfield crowd and said, "Everyone told me what I couldn't do. They said I was too young, that I didn't have enough money, experience, strength, or knowledge. They told me it would take forever and I'd never come home. Well ... guess what?"

Dr. Enric Sala is a marine ecologist who fell in love with the sea growing up on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Witnessing the harm people do to the oceans led him to dedicate his career to understand and find ways to mitigate human impacts on marine life. After obtaining a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Aix-Marseille, France, Sala moved to the United States for ten years, where he was a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2006, he moved back to Spain to hold the first position on marine conservation ecology at the Spanish National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), and in 2008 he became a National Geographic fellow. Combining work at both institutions, Sala is actively engaged in research, exploration, communication, and application of scientific knowledge related to the conservation of marine ecosystems.

Sala's research aims to provide the essential amount of information needed for policy change. His research includes an important exploration component, searching for the last healthy marine ecosystems that can give us an understanding of the past and the present that can be used to inform the future. One of his present goals is to help protect the last pristine marine ecosystems worldwide. He spends a great deal of time diving in many locations, including the Caribbean, the Sea of Cortés, the Mediterranean, and remote Pacific islands. His scientific publications are widely recognized and used for real-world conservation efforts such as the creation of marine reserves. He is currently leading a global marine conservation initiative at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.

Sala is a 2005 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, a 2006 Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, a 2007 National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and a 2008 Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He also received the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities with National Geographic. Sala's experience and scientific expertise contributes to his service on scientific advisory boards of international environmental organizations.