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NOT SO
BLACK AND WHITE

Saturday, November 5, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we learn about race from two twin sisters, see how a parrot’s eye made one of our top photos of this century, bear witness to a hunger crisis placing 37 million people on the verge of famine … and prepare for early Tuesday’s total lunar eclipse. Plus, happy National Bison Day.

A portrait of two young girls, one who has darker skin and hair than the other

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBIN HAMMOND

The image above is of Mille and Marcia Biggs. They are fraternal twins. The photo on the cover of a 2018 National Geographic magazine prompted many readers to reconsider outdated notions of race.

Bluntly, skin color “is not a binary trait”—and it’s not that rare for fraternal twins of a biracial couple to each look more like one parent than another, says statistical geneticist Alicia Martin. “We never worried about it; we just accepted it,” says the girls’ father, Michael, who is of Jamaican descent. And the two girls remain best friends.

The very concept of race—to quote DNA-sequencing pioneer Craig Venter—“has no genetic or scientific basis.” How have Mille and Marcia grown up?

Read the full story here.

Please consider getting our full digital report and magazine by subscribing here.

A portrait of two young girls

Dressed alike: “When they were first born,” mother Amanda Wanklin recalls, “I would be pushing them in the pram, and people would look at me and then look at my one daughter and then look at my other daughter. And then I’d get asked the question: ‘Are they twins?’”
“Yes.”
“'But one’s white and one’s black.’”
“Yes. It’s genes.” Read more.

STORIES WE'RE FOLLOWING

A picture of a parrot's eye

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE

This parrot’s eye (pictured above) is among our best of this century. See more.

Why are teenage girls coming down with long COVID? Related: What doctors didn’t tell women about COVID and its vaccines

The startling preservation of ‘nearly dead’ organs

The teenage brain: Figuring out how and why teens think

This ‘King Tut’ has a tomb in Washington

Why do we even have daylight savings time? (But first, prepare to turn your clocks back)

Warrior. Orator. Statesman. How Tecumseh fought for Native lands.

Mail-in voting in the U.S. began on Civil War battlefields

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

A man helps a young camel nurse on an older

PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNSEY ADDARIO

The coming storm: As the skies darkened, a 75-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim Yousef struggled to deliver a baby camel to an emaciated and dehydrated mother in the Horn of Africa. The worst droughts in four decades have killed animals and threaten with famine more than 37 million people in the region—including an estimated seven million children, says photojournalist and Nat Geo Explorer Lynsey Addario. Read her account here.

IN THE NIGHT SKIES

An illustration of the moon transiting the sky

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS

A total lunar eclipse: Early Tuesday, sky-watchers across North America may be able to see a blood red moon and the last total lunar eclipse until 2025. As the sun, Earth, and moon line up, the full lunar disk will enter our planet’s shadow and slowly become engulfed in its darkness. The first hint of the shadow hits the moon at 4:09 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday (1:09 Pacific Time), with the maximum eclipse occurring at 5:59 a.m. (2:59 a.m. PT), when the moon is expected to turn its deepest orange-red color. While the eclipse makes the sky unusually dark, check out a possible swarm of unusually bright meteors, known as the Taurid Fireballs. — Andrew Fazekas

WHY BLOOD MOONS HAPPEN

PHOTO OF THE DAY

A picture of a bison with snow stuck to its face

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL K. NICHOLS, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Where the buffalo-cows roam: Today is National Bison Day! But are there any pure American bison left to celebrate? A recent study says no. Every bison—also called buffalo—now contains some percentage of domestic cattle DNA. One bison tested from Yellowstone National Park (like the one pictured above) had 0.24 percent cattle DNA, which is relatively low considering humans often have 2 percent of their genes from Neanderthals, Nat Geo reports.

A GREAT AMERICAN HYBRID

LAST GLIMPSE

A photograph a man painting figurines of soldiers on horses

PHOTOGRAPH BY VOLKMAR WENTZEL, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

‘Beautiful surprises’: That’s how Nat Geo’s Maura Friedman describes stumbling upon this 1951 image and others in our archives while on an unrelated search. “I keep a folder on my desktop just named ‘pretty’ where I can keep random archival photos that just delight me.” This image of an Austrian artist touching up the paint on a porcelain figurine delighted and inspired us as well!

SEE VINTAGE PHOTOS

We asked, you answered: Last week, we asked you how to save your pumpkins from the landfill. Every year, millions of pumpkins in the U.S. alone are left to rot, and in landfills they contribute to methane gas, a potent planet warmer. We received dozens of creative responses ranging from baking delicious pumpkin treats to donating them to local farms. Read more about pumpkin waste and see some of our favorite reader responses here.

This newsletter has been curated and edited by Jen Tse, David Beard, Sydney Combs, and Heather Kim. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Alec Egamov, Rita Spinks, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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