Brain Food

Researchers are learning more about human voices by studying grasshopper mice. Their call, barely audible to human ears, is produced the same way that humans speak. Northern Arizona University Biologist Bret Pasch says the rodents stand upright, tilt their heads back and flare their mouths, like an opera singer. 

The array of telescopes on Anderson Mesa south of Flagstaff will soon be able to detect surface features of distant stars in more detail than any other telescope in the world. Astronomer Gerard van Belle is the director the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer.

Citizen Science Projects involve a lot of data recording, and you don’t necessarily expect to find anything startling or new. But Forest Service ranger Arthur Gonzales did when he was on a hike with his family near Williams. He was taking photos for a public project on the Kaibab National Forest to document plants and animals when he came across a rare beetle. 

Total solar eclipses cast an eerie darkness over the day, but astronomers say that's an ideal time to study the sun. Jeff Hall is an astronomer and sun expert at Lowell Observatory. He says when the sun’s brilliance is blocked out by the moon, other solar features appear.

A Flagstaff librarian is restoring century-old maps of Flagstaff once used by cowboys to determine grazing areas and water sources. Claudine Taillac says they were found in the basement of the historic Babbitt Building and were in need of some TLC. They were weathered, frayed and covered in dirt.