Nature’s Most Extraordinary Stories
· The Atlantic
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
We often associate wonder with the faraway and the exceptional. But some of the planet’s most extraordinary spectacles unfold every day, largely unnoticed.
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For a recent Atlantic story, the senior editor Vann R. Newkirk II traveled to Mexico to witness one such phenomenon: the annual arrival of millions of monarch butterflies after a migration spanning thousands of miles. The journey still puzzles scientists, but perhaps the most remarkable part is that it continues at all. After decades of decline, monarch populations are showing signs of recovery, thanks in part to years of patient conservation work across North America. It’s a reminder of how much the natural world still has left to teach us about not only what it can do, but what it can survive as well.
Today’s newsletter explores the many ways that nature continues to surprise and inspire us to look a little closer.
On Our Living Planet
The Return of the Monarch
By Vann R. Newkirk II
After years of decline, butterfly populations are rising—for now.
Paradise Revisited
By Helen Lewis
What Darwin saw in the Galápagos
How First Contact With Whale Civilization Could Unfold
By Ross Andersen
If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say? (From 2024)
Still Curious?
- Do animals have fun?: Scientists want an evolutionary explanation for animal play. But maybe the answer is simply that it brings them joy, Sallie Tisdale wrote in 2024.
- Winners of the 2026 World Nature Photography Awards: Take a look at a collection of some of the top images “highlighting the beauty, fragility, and power of the natural world,” curated by Alan Taylor.
Other Diversions
- Tyler Austin Harper: “I love my emotionally stunted friendships.”
- Why animal narrators are all the rage
- Another symptom of growing isolation
PS
Courtesy of Jessica D.My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “I was hesitant to go to Antarctica because I thought it would be uncomfortably cold. Heaven forbid! It turns out, I was so entranced by the landscape, the wildlife, the sounds that I was willing to stand on the open deck for hours,” Jessica D. from Phoenix, Arizona, shared.
We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Rafaela