By David P. Barash

If you can go to the Amazon, the antarctic or the Galápagos, by all means do so. But when you get back, you need not stop your explorations simply because you happen to live in an asphalt jungle.

In "The Urban Naturalist," the Dutch ecologist Menno Schilthuizen invites us to explore the small natural oases found in every city. He promises to "show how, to the modern naturalist, the urban habitat is every bit as exciting and unexpected as 'wild' nature."

Mr. Schilthuizen recounts the 2019 discovery of "strange-looking eels" in the well of a Mumbai school. The eels, "around twenty-five centimeters long and only half a centimeter wide," were bright pink and "completely devoid of eyes." They had been leading an "unobtrusive life in the city's groundwater subterranean ecosystem," the author explains. "Fittingly, the school where the blind fish was discovered was a school for blind children."

The previous year, a zoologist found a new species of wolf snake (named for its "canine-like fangs") during a nocturnal investigation in a city park in Panzhihua, China. "The two-foot-long nonvenomous snake with its pretty cross-banding," Mr. Schilthuizen writes, was "hunting for geckos on a stone parapet in the urban park."

There are plenty of resources available to the would-be urban naturalist. The author notes that "the world's entire scientific literature is available online via Google Scholar and Sci-Hub. . . . Huge amounts of scientific data, from genome sequences to soil pollution measurements, can be downloaded by all and processed by anyone at home on a personal computer with open-source software."

Mr. Schilthuizen points out that being in nature, even in a city, contributes to mental and physical health. You don't have to find a new species of ant, snail or spider to succeed as an urban naturalist, but with the author's advice and encouragement, that might happen too.

--Mr. Barash, an evolutionary biologist, is professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Washington. His next book, "The Soul Delusion," will be published this year.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 14, 2025 11:53 ET (15:53 GMT)

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