02.

2023

THE FUTURE IS
FOLDED
HOW ORIGAMI IS RESHAPING OUR WORLD
 FURTHER
C O N T E N T S
P R O O F E X P L O R E
THE BIG IDEA
These Boots Were
Made ... of What?
Investigating whether
an advertised item is
made from protected
wildlife isn’t as straight-
forward as it sounds.
BY D I N A F I N E M A RO N
DECODER
The Dawn of Jaws
New fossil discoveries
in China provide clues
to a key moment in
vertebrate evolution.
BY M I C H A E L G R E S H KO
From Coop
to Catwalk
In the Dutch country-
side, a portrait pho-
tographer turns his
lens to poultry and
finds the animals to be
“walking pieces of art.” ALSO
P H OTO G R A P H S BY Rock Climbing in Rio
ALEX TEN NAPEL Ocean Floor Exploration
F E B R UA RY 2 0 2 3
On the Cover
Origami folds let the
inner disk of NASA’s
starshade prototype
wrap into a cylinder for
launch, then unfurl to
block starlight reaching
a space telescope.
CRAIG CUTLER
32
CAPTURED
Moon Views in
Rainbow Hues
Orange, bronze, tan,
even purple—Earth’s
atmosphere colors
how we see the moon.
BY L I Z K RU E S I
CLOSER LOOK
Monsters of Spring
Fearsome creatures
scare away winter in
a Slovenian tradition.
BY N OA H C H A R N E Y
P H OTO G R A P H S BY
C I R I L JA Z B E K
ALSO
Freaky Fish Face-Off
Longest-Tongued Moth
F E B R U A R Y | CONTENTS

F E AT U R E S The Future Is Folded A New Old Age Made From Mud

Origami is delicate Having one of the In West Africa, a tradi-
and decorative, yes, world’s oldest popula- tional building material
but powerful and tions means having to is back, helping make
practical? As art is change—everything. modern edifices cool.
adapted to serve BY SARAH LUBMAN BY P E T E R S C H WA RT Z ST E I N
science, the intricate P H OTO G RA P H S BY P H OTO G RA P H S BY
patterns of origami N O R I K O H AYA S H I . . . . . . . P. 58 M O I S E S S A M A N . . . . . . . . P. 108
are being harnessed
to create items such What’s Not to Love? Tsukimi Ayano,
A B OV E :
as robotic arms, highly Sea otters seem to be 72, crafts a new doll to
effective face masks, doing swimmingly, but commemorate the resi-
and solar arrays to it’s complicated. dents of her hometown
unfurl in space. BY CYNTHIA GORNEY of Nagoro, Japan. The
B Y M AYA W E I - H A A S P H OTO G RA P H S BY shrinking hamlet has
P H OTO G RA P H S BY R A L P H PAC E A N D hundreds of dolls but
C R A I G C U T L E R . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 34 K I L I I I Y Ü YA N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 84 just 25 inhabitants.
 FROM THE EDITOR | F E B R U A R Y

FROM OTTERS
TO ORIGAMI
Animal Adaptations,
Human Ingenuity
B Y N AT H A N LU M P PHOTOGRAPH BY CRAIG CUTLER

WHEN I WAS a young boy, my favorite

stuffed toy was a floppy-necked bear
named Bearby, crocheted for me by
my aunt Lori. And my second favorite
was a plush sea otter.
As we all know, sea otters are deeply,
relentlessly cute. No doubt attracted
first by their cuddly appearance, I soon
became fascinated with their story.
These otters were hunted nearly to
extinction for their fur in the 1700s and
1800s, along the Pacific Ocean coasts
of Japan, Russia, and North America.
During my childhood, sea otters were
protected, but their comeback was not
assured, despite a variety of attempts
to help them on their way.
As Cynthia Gorney reports and
Ralph Pace and Kiliii Yüyan document
in stunning photographs for this issue
(“What’s Not to Love?”), although sea
otters have by no means rebounded
to their pre-18th-century levels, their
population is healthier today than
it has been for 200 years. And while
their undeniably adorable appearance
and antics have made them, in our
day and age, darlings of social media,
these tough and adaptable creatures
with enormous appetites are also a
keystone species deemed critical to
their ecosystems.
As such, they present a perfect how origami—which most of us think Inspired by origami’s magic
case study for the sometimes com- of as an art form or a craft—is begin- ball pattern, this silicone
rubber figure looks like
plicated ramifications of successful ning to power important advances in art—and works like an
conservation: What is the impact on everything from space exploration to artificial muscle as part of
the environment, and all living things robotics and medicine. Thanks to some a multipurpose gripping
device. Encasing the shape
(including people) that depend on it, very creative thinkers, a centuries-old in a flexible membrane and
when a species nearly disappears—and approach to manipulating matter is applying a vacuum causes
then comes back? now taking us to new heights. What a the gripper to contract
around an object placed in
I was not one of those kids who triumph of human ingenuity. its center, gently but firmly
played around with origami, but I We hope you enjoy the issue. grasping even delicate or
have long appreciated the skill and relatively heavy items.
beauty of it. If you do too, you won’t
want to miss this month’s cover story,
“The Future Is Folded.” It explores
Researchers want
to know: Have you
seen this whale?

Volunteers worldwide are

helping scientists gain a deeper
understanding of ocean life.

Roughly 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is ocean,
yet scientists have only explored five percent of that.
As researchers delve into bigger projects in harder-
to-reach locations, they’re relying more on citizen
scientists to help conduct long-term environmental
research. This is particularly important when it comes
to marine environments, which can be difficult to
research year-round because of cost and accessibility.
routes that research boats with limited resources
might miss. In Hawaii, citizen scientists with
the Pacific Whale Foundation’s “Great Whale
Count” project reported a five percent increase in
humpback whales.

The nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation

conducted a nine-year observational study of
bottlenose dolphins in Scotland’s Moray Firth. As part
of this “Shorewatch” project, volunteers scanned the
waters for ten minutes every daytime hour to record
dolphin sightings.

In total, citizen scientists collected 70,000 surveys

(equal to roughly 12,000 hours of work). This wealth
Credit: Jan Hvizdal. A 9-year-long wildlife survey utilised citizen
of data helps scientists understand the patterns and scientists to help better understand Scotland’s coastal species.

behaviours of Scotland’s coastal species, which in

turn enables them to suggest ways to protect wildlife.
Citizen scientists’ observations can also serve as
an early warning for oceanic changes on migration
Happywhale, a global citizen science project, records
whale sightings with the goal of establishing a better
understanding of these creatures. Happywhale uses
image recognition software to match crowd-sourced

Credit: Yuri Matisse Choufour. Anyone can assist in wildlife
understanding and conservation by becoming a citizen
scientist—spotting animals for research while on holiday.
whale photos against a database of thousands of
whales. Citizen scientists who participate can learn
about whale migration patterns as others upload
photos of the same whale.
ORCA, a UK whale and dolphin conservation charity,
submitted its photo library to Happywhale’s data
center. In April 2022, a science coordinator spotted
a humpback whale that was unknown to scientists
at the time—which she only realized after she
submitted it to the Happywhale catalog to find further
information.
Citizen scientist programs are in demand on
expedition cruises, where one of the main thrills
is scanning the waves for wildlife. Hurtigruten
Expeditions partners with several institutions to
run citizen scientist programs on each ship. The
company’s onboard Science & Education Program
This is paid content. This content does not necessarily reflect the views
of National Geographic or its editorial staff.
aims to increase guest knowledge and interest in
the areas they’re sailing to. Each expedition ship has
its own dedicated science center, and Hurtigruten
Expeditions partners with both Happywhale and
ORCA to help collect data.
On the MS Maud and MS Otto Sverdrup, which have
itineraries through Norway, the British Isles, and the
Arctic, expert ORCA ocean conservationists join the
expedition teams and conduct onboard lectures,
workshops, and accompany shore excursions. Ocean
conservationists also help travellers spot wildlife
and identify popular spots for whales and dolphins
while collecting data. Hurtigruten Foundation funds
other citizen scientist initiatives on-board as well,
like the collection and extraction of environmental
DNA (eDNA) from water samples in whale zones
in Antarctica. Guests can actively participate in
several types of scientific data collection while whale
watching in small expedition boats.
When ecotourists get involved in environmental
initiatives, they can provide invaluable data on
species and environments by being in the right place
at the right time. Aside from collecting data, sharing
observations, and affecting positive environmental
change, participating in citizen science projects helps
foster a unique type of environmental stewardship.
Credit: Yuri Matisse Choufour. Hurtigruten partners with
several institutions to bring scientists along to help passengers
spot wildlife and record invaluable data.
 P R O O F

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 2

FROM COOP TO
CATWALK

In the Netherlands,
Alex ten Napel makes
miniature runways in barns
and backyards to capture
the essence of chickens
such as this Polish rooster.
“I consider them walking
pieces of art,” he says.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LO O K I N G
ALEX TEN NAPEL AT T H E
E A RT H
When a portrait photographer F RO M
shifted his focus to poultry, he E V E RY
found his subjects to be coy, funny, POSSIBLE
and surprisingly similar to humans. ANGLE

6 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 7
P R O O F

Compared with people, chickens like the Polish hens above and below right are quite patient models, ten Napel says.

8 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Polish roosters and other showy chickens are bred for competition, not consumption.

Scientists think humans first domesticated chickens between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago.

F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 9
P R O O F

Ten Napel first came face-to-face with a chicken while he was camping in the Pyrenees Mountains about 10 years ago.
He felt an immediate connection to the species, which then became his main photographic muse.

10 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
The European Association of Poultry, Pigeon, Cage Bird, Rabbit, and Cavy Breeders recognizes more than a hundred breeds
of chickens, from the Polish, at left and above, to the Brabanter and the Dutch bantam.

F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 11
P R O O F
THE BACKSTORY
W I T H H I S P O RT RA I TS, P H OTO G RA P H E R A L E X T E N N A P E L
A I M S T O S H O W T H E P E R S O N A L I T I E S O F P O U L T R Y.
an animal
A C H I C K E N “ I S N OT J U ST
that gives us eggs,” says Alex ten
Napel, who’s been roaming his home
country of the Netherlands in search
of farm fowl since 2014. Taking inspi-
ration from Melchior d’Hondecoeter,
a 17th-century Dutch artist known for
his work with birds, ten Napel uses
lighting, backdrops, and an elevated,
catwalk-like stage to bring chickens
out of the coop and into an entirely
new context.
“What I hope you see in the photos
is that chickens can be proud beings or
funny beings,” he says. “They can be
like gymnasts or ballerinas. Not what
most people think of when you talk
about chickens.”
While each animal has different
characteristics, ten Napel has noticed
the emergence of some patterns
throughout his travels. Roosters,
or male chickens, tend to be large,
On his bird-friendly runway, ten Napel coaxes a model to strut its stuff for the camera.
visually striking, and imposing, he
says. But it’s the females ten Napel
finds himself drawn toward. “I have a
heart for the hens. They’re so vulnera-
ble,” he says. “They move me in a way
that I want to protect them.”
A specialist in portrait photography,
ten Napel focused on people—usually
children and older adults—for 25 years.
The chickens, he says, have reignited
his passion for this type of photogra-
phy. “I can’t direct them. I have to be
patient and feel how they will show
themselves,” he adds. “Everything they
give you is a gift.”
Though ten Napel has occasionally
tried to train his lens on other sub-
jects since falling for fowl, nothing
else seems to capture his interest so
completely. “This year I went back to
the breeders,” he says, “and I’m shoot-
ing the next series until, well, I can’t
photograph anymore.” —JA S O N B I T T E L
PHOTO: WIM DIEPENBROEK
 IN THIS SECTION

Farewell, Fatbergs

E X P L O R E Jaws’ Evolution
The Hikes of Rio
Moons of Many Hues

I L L U M I N AT I N G T H E M Y S T E R I E S — A N D W O N D E R S — A L L A R O U N D U S E V E R Y D AY

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C VO L . 2 4 3 N O. 2

These Boots Were

Made ... of What?
S E L L I N G I T E M S M A D E F R O M P R O T E C T E D W I L D L I F E M AY B E U N L AW F U L —
B U T A S N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C D I S C O V E R E D, T H AT ’ S H A R D T O P R O V E .

BY DINA FINE MARON

arrived on a steamy June day,

T H E S I X- P O U N D B OX
hot from its ride in the delivery van. The label said
BOOT BARN in capital letters, and when I opened the
package, the oaky scent of leather enveloped me.
The lower half of the boots had a distinct wrinkly
pattern that was rough to the touch. Stamped inside
the boots’ shaft: “genuine elephant leather.”
At a list price of $799.99, they’d been advertised
online as El Dorado Men’s Brass Indian Elephant
Exotic Boots. That is, boots purportedly made from
an endangered Asian elephant.
After four years as a reporter for Wildlife Watch,
an investigative project funded by the National
Geographic Society, I knew there was a market for
just about any exotic species, from leeches to rare
succulents. I’d become difficult to shock. But selling
Asian (or “Indian”) elephant boots? That sounded
unprecedented—and potentially unlawful under the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered

F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 15
E X
E M PB LAOR RK E || TTHHEE BBI G
I GI D
I DEEAA

THE TRADE IN ELEPHANT SKINS

HAS BECOME A PROBLEM, BUT
THERE HADN’T BEEN PREVIOUS
REPORTS OF ASIAN ELEPHANT
BOOTS. SO NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC BOUGHT A PAIR
TO SEND FOR DNA TESTING.

Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), according

to John Scanlon. From 2010 to 2018 Scanlon was
secretary-general of CITES, which regulates the
global wildlife trade. Asian and African elephants
are endangered animals. How could Boot Barn, a
major U.S. retailer, be selling these boots?
So began an inquiry that involved months of inter-
views, research in trade and financial records, inno-
vative materials analysis, and any number of dead
ends. What we learned, finally, was a hard but valuable
lesson: Efforts to monitor compliance with regulations
that govern wildlife products can be stymied by the
difficulties of proving the items’ provenance.

elephants and 50,000 Asian

O N LY 4 0 0,0 0 0 A F R I C A N
elephants are left in the wild. Most Asian elephants
are found in India and have what could be called a
biological advantage over their African counterparts:
More often than not, they are tuskless. That helps
shield them from the ivory trade, which has driven
the slaughter of African elephants. Among Asian
elephants, only males can grow tusks, and relatively
few develop them.
The chief threat to Asian elephants still comes from
people, by way of habitat loss and human-animal
conflict on farms and other land. Increasingly, the
trade in elephant skin has also become a problem; the
skin is sometimes used to make beads worn for good
luck in Myanmar and China. But there hadn’t been
reports of Asian elephant boots—so National Geo-
graphic set out to discover if Boot Barn’s boots actually
contained elephant skin (and, if so, how they could be
sold by a major U.S. retailer). I talked to wildlife and
trade law experts, I scoured CITES records looking for
legal elephant-skin shipments, and I identified which
company made the boots—but beyond that, answers
were hard to find. In the hope of determining the lab testing
boots’ origin, National Geographic bought a pair to
send for DNA testing. At biologist Sam Wasser’s Univer-
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before the pur- sity of Washington lab, researchers
chase, I’d called and emailed Boot Barn for weeks, had successfully identified elephant
asking about the boots and their sourcing. I got no ivory origins using DNA analysis. To
response to almost a dozen emails, phone calls, and attempt the same with leather from
LinkedIn messages addressed to the retailer’s chief Boot Barn’s boots, they cut small
financial officer, communications office, and people samples and ripped them into shreds
listed as press and investor relations contacts. I also with a razor blade—a low-tech way to
called customer service and reached a representa- get as much surface area as possible,
tive who said she’d look into it and call me back; which increases the chances of find-
I never heard from her. The last request for comment, ing DNA. They put the samples into

16 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 Boot Barn advertises
Brass Indian Elephant
Exotic Boots as made
from elephant leather.
Since global sales of
chemicals that break cell walls apart, Asian elephant skins
basically turning the shreds into a would potentially be
brown sludge that wildlife genet- unlawful, we tried to
ics lab manager Zofia Kaliszewska confirm the boots’
described as “gross and pulpy.” They provenance through
DNA analysis. Strips
spent about a week incubating the
cut from a boot were
sample, adding chemicals, trying to tested at a University
find any usable DNA. But eventually, of Washington lab.
their computer spit out DNA results
for only their control samples—none
for the Boot Barn samples. — D F M

PHOTOS: REBECCA HALE, NGM STAFF F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 17

E X P L O R E | THE BIG IDEA

addressed to Boot Barn’s president and chief execu-
tive officer, was sent in the weeks before this article
went to press. That request received no response.
Boot Barn’s advertisement said the boots were
made by a company called El Dorado. By searching
for El Dorado’s patent records and then Boot Barn’s
public financial disclosures to the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission, I discovered that El Dorado
is an “exclusive brand” of Boot Barn Holdings, Inc.;
Boot Barn’s public website lists El Dorado as one of
the boot brands the retailer has created.
a National Geographic
I A S K E D J O N AT H A N KO L BY,
Explorer who used to work as a wildlife inspector, to
examine the boot photograph in the advertisement.
He said the material did look like real elephant leather
he’d seen. Teresa Telecky, a zoologist and the vice
president of the wildlife department at Humane
Society International, said the same. “I’ve never seen
Asian elephant–skin boots for sale,” she told me.
When I asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—
which polices U.S. companies’ trade in products from
protected species—about the rules for elephant skin,
the response was a statement: “As a result of the Asian
elephant’s protection status, commercial import and
subsequent sale of skins could only be legal pursuant
to the antique exception of the Endangered Species
Act.” The antique exception says products from
protected species can be imported and sold—if they
are at least a hundred years old. A similar CITES excep-
tion allows global trade of products that date to before
the animal was placed on its banned list—in the Asian
elephant’s case, that happened in 1975. Even then,
global sales of the product would have to be noted
in CITES trade records, which are public. When I
searched those records, no shipments of Asian ele-
phant skins seemed to line up as a potential source.
Another grim possibility: What if the skins had
come from captive elephants in the U.S., perhaps sold
off by one of the country’s numerous roadside zoos?
Telecky noted it would still be illegal to sell them
across state lines under the Endangered Species Act.
Dan Ashe, president and CEO of the Association
of Zoos and Aquariums, had another theory about
the boots’ origin. He suggested that if the boots were
genuinely elephant skin, it might have come from a
recent U.S. import of African elephant–skin pieces
from Zimbabwe. Though trade in Asian elephant parts
is prohibited under CITES, there’s a legal carve-out for
the trade in elephant hides from four African nations
that have relatively stable elephant populations:
Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.
To explore the question Ashe raised—might Boot
Barn’s “Indian” boots have been made from African
elephant?—I called Sam Wasser at the University of
Washington. He directs a lab that has successfully
traced the origins of elephant ivory using DNA analy-
sis. If we provided the boots, could his team determine
whether they’re elephant—and if so, which species?
Wasser said they’d try but couldn’t guarantee that the
leather-tanning process had left usable nuclear DNA.
After the boots arrived at my house on that hot
June day, I shipped them to Wasser’s lab. Samples of
the leather were prepared and tested (see pages 16-17),
but no nuclear DNA was found. Wildlife genetics lab
manager Zofia Kaliszewska said the DNA could be
absent because “tannins had killed everything” during
processing—or because it truly wasn’t elephant. In
a last-ditch effort, Kaliszewska had the lab look for
mitochondrial DNA, which might have survived even
if the nuclear DNA they’d hoped to find had been
destroyed. That mtDNA couldn’t identify an elephant
species, but it might at least tell us if elephant skin was
present at all. The lab team then spent several days
looking for mtDNA. It struck out there too.
SO AFTER ALL the time, money, and effort, we still
couldn’t determine the boots’ provenance. Was Boot
Barn making and selling boots legally or illegally from
Asian elephants? Or making boots legally or illegally
from African elephants and misrepresenting them?
Or were these boots not made from elephant at all?
Here’s what we can say: Our investigation of the
boots’ origin gives a glimpse of the obstacles that
wildlife law enforcement, regulatory, and trade
agencies face in monitoring online sellers of wildlife
goods. As hard as these groups may work, they’re
likely outgunned on the internet, a global hub in the
multimillion-dollar black market for exotic animals
and animal products—a key reason Wildlife Watch
was founded at National Geographic.
As months passed, I continued to watch Boot Barn’s
website. By the time this article went to press, the
company seemed eager to move its elephant leather
boots. They were advertised on sale, “34% off.” j
Dina Fine Maron is a reporter for Wildlife Watch, our investigative
reporting project focused on wildlife crime and exploitation. It’s
supported by the National Geographic Society.

Know the Species

Asian elephants (left) are about eight times as rare
as their African cousins. They’re also smaller, have
rounded ears and an extra toenail, and more often
are tuskless. They employ their entire trunks to lift
objects, while African elephants have two trunk
tips for such tasks. — D F M

PHOTO: BRENT STIRTON

E X P L O R E | BREAKTHROUGHS

A solid solution for disposal

No more pouring used cooking
oil down the drain, ultimately
D I S PAT C H E S to form fatbergs in the sewer.
For sale online, plant-based “oil
FROM THE FRONT LINES solidifier” powders use the pro-
OF SCIENCE cess of oleogelation to turn the
A N D I N N OVAT I O N sizzling contents of a skillet into
a congealed disk you can toss
out with the organic trash. — P E

EVOLUTION

Bats foiled by
moth Darwin
imagined?
In 1862, when Charles
Darwin beheld a
Madagascan orchid
with a nectar tube
nearly a foot long,
he deduced that
a compatible pol-
linator must exist.
Four decades later,
scientists found it—
Xanthopan prae-
dicta, a hawk moth
with the longest
recorded tongue
of any insect. Now
a study by National
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR Geographic
Explorer Juliette
LIP-SMACKING FACE-OFFS Rubin has found
another adaptation:
THESE FREAKY FISH MAY OPEN WIDE TO FLAUNT COLORFUL MAWS, When Rubin played
WARN OFF RIVALS, AND DETER MOUTH-TO-MOUTH COMBAT.
bat echolocation
Special jawbones on sarcastic fringeheads (Neoclinus blanchardi) calls near captive
let the fish open their maws and flare their giant jaws in a wide gape, male moths, they
to show their mouths’ psychedelic colors. It hadn’t been clear why rubbed their gen-
the species developed such wild yaps: “They might have evolved to italia against their
have some special function,” says Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp,
abdomen, creating
a biologist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and a National
Geographic Explorer. Because males sport bigger, more colorful
ultrasonic
mouths than females, Hongjamrassilp’s team wondered if males noise that
gape to dazzle females, or perhaps to compete or communicate with would likely
other males. So the team staged fish showdowns, as reported in the jam bat sonar.
journal Ecology. When two males were placed in a tank where only — PAT R I C I A E D M O N D S
one could occupy a shell as shelter, the shell dweller went full-on gape
at the other fish’s approach in some 70 percent of encounters. Then
the interloper retreated or the males engaged in mouth-to-mouth
combat, which the bigger fish usually won. Big jaws may advertise
body size to deter fights, researchers say. Gaping to seek mates wasn’t
observed in the study; males appear to court with headshaking
motions instead of with their flashy mouths. — C A R O LY N W I L K E

PHOTOS (FROM TOP): REBECCA HALE, NGM STAFF; WATCHARAPONG HONGJAMRASSILP; JOËL MINET

INNOVATOR
VED CHIRAYATH
B Y P R I YA N K A R U N WA L
PHOTOGRAPH BY REBECCA HALE
This scientist is on a mission
to map the world’s oceans,
centimeter by centimeter.
About a decade ago, when Ved Chirayath learned
that more than 90 percent of the planet’s seafloor
remained unexplored, he was stunned. It was a stark
contrast to the detailed maps of Mars and the moon
he’d seen as an engineering graduate student devel-
oping devices to observe celestial bodies. Chirayath
decided to apply techniques from space exploration
to begin imaging the ocean. Baseline maps are vital,
he says, because if we don’t know what’s there, we
won’t know how to protect it.
There were big challenges: Sonar, commonly used to
gather data from large swaths of the ocean, can’t pro-
vide high resolution, while satellite images can’t
penetrate ocean depths and are distorted by waves.
E X P L O R E
So the University of Miami professor and National
Geographic Explorer created FluidCam, equipped
with a specialized digital camera and software to “see”
through water, and MiDAR, which adds high-intensity
light. These tools, often carried by a drone (pictured),
are helping his team map sea features to the centimeter
in places such as Guam. Since 2020, citizen scientists
have lent a hand by playing the NeMO-Net video game
to spot coral reefs in a virtual ocean made from the
images. The data will be used to train supercomputers
that will one day map reefs around the globe. j
The National Geographic Society has funded the
work of Ved Chirayath since 2021. Learn more about
its support of Explorers at natgeo.com/impact.
E X P L O R E | DECODER

New fossil discoveries from China shine light on a pivotal moment of

evolution: the arrival of the first vertebrates with honest-to-goodness jaws.

BY MICHAEL GRESHKO Xiushanosteus mirabilis

ONE OF THE most critical steps in the The fish, whose head (inset) bore
numerous armor plates, belonged
evolution of vertebrate life—even big- to a group called the placoderms.
ger than our aquatic forebears’ first
waddles onto land—was the evolution
of the jaw. From biting food to vocaliz-
ing, the jaw is essential to the survival
of 99.8 percent of living vertebrates,
including us humans. Of the jawless
fish that once abounded in Earth’s
ancient seas, only lampreys and
hagfish remain today. The rich story
chronicling the rise of gnathostomes,
also known as jawed vertebrates, has
long been missing the first few pages.
But now rocks in China have yielded
the oldest known complete skeletons
and teeth of gnathostomes ever found.
In four studies recently published
in the journal Nature, scientists led
by Chinese paleontologist Min Zhu
described fossil menageries from two
rock formations—436 million and
439 million years old, respectively—
in southern China, all within some
60 miles of the town of Yongdong.
Though the fossils are tiny—inch-
long skeletons and whorls of teeth only
fractions of inches across—they’re
packed with anatomical detail and
begin to fill a gap in the fossil record.
Living vertebrates’ DNA suggests that
the earliest jawed vertebrates had
arisen by no later than 450 million
years ago, but their oldest skeletons
had topped out at 425 million years old
until the new fossils. Their discovery
has given humans an impressive evo-
lutionary legacy to chew on. j

Qianodus duplicis
Scientists had to dissolve 660 pounds
of rock to find 23 tooth whorls (inset),
the oldest of their kind yet discovered.

24 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 D I S C OV E RY Fish fossil fields
Guizhou Province and
L O C AT I O N
Chongqing municipality, within about
60 miles of Yongdong
C H I N A
Yongdong
DISTINCTION Rock formations in
Fossil the regions contain the oldest
sites known complete skeletons and
TAIWAN
teeth of jawed vertebrates.

Fanjingshania renovata
Fin spines (inset) helped identify
this inches-long fish; though carti-
laginous, it shed its scales as
bony fish did.

Shenacanthus vermiformis
The species is named in part after
its armor plates’ distinctive surface
ridges (inset), which resemble worms.

NGM MAPS. PHOTOS: INSTITUTE OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND PALEOANTHROPOLOGY,

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (FOSSILS); COURTESY PALEOVISLAB, IVPP NICE STUDIOS (RENDERINGS) F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 25
E X P L O R E | CLOSER LOOK

During the Slovenian festival of Pust, costumed revelers chase out winter and usher in a season of renewal.

MONSTERS OF SPRING
AN ANCIENT TRADITION IN SLOVENIA HAS REVIVED SOME OF ITS
F O R G O T T E N M A S K E D C R E AT U R E S .

BY NOAH CHARNEY PHOTO GRAPHS BY CIRIL JAZBEC

two hours from Ljubljana,

I N W E S T E R N S L OV E N I A ,
the Soča River cuts through the hills around a cluster
of storybook villages, in a region where the Julian
Alps meet the Italian border. But on this late winter
morning, a parade of monsters is gathering on the
outskirts of the town of Ukanje (pictured above).
It’s part of Pust (pronounced Poost), Slovenia’s
version of Carnival, with roots in pre-Christian
ritual. This traditional pre-Lenten celebration has
evolved and adapted through the centuries, at times
in response to church leaders and, in later years, a
socialist regime. But it has always retained its spirit
of seasonal rebirth.
Today Pust is one of Slovenia’s biggest cultural
events. Festivalgoers dress up in elaborate, hand-
made costumes and masks, some wearing belts of
cowbells that clatter as they traipse through town—
all the better to scare away any vestiges of winter and
clear the way for spring.
“Pust is one of the oldest rituals,” says Janez Boga-
taj, a Slovenian ethnographer. “It goes back far before
the Christian era.”
Each hamlet and town fiercely champions its own
version and name of the festival. Kurentovanje Pust,
in Ptuj, is probably the country’s most famous, with
monsters called kurenti attracting big crowds to the
eastern city. The details may differ regionally, but one metal supplies ran low. Then, in the 1950s, locals
thing remains the same: The monsters are the stars. uncovered a 19th-century copper mask from a house
In many celebrations, these fantastic creatures being renovated.
with the power to summon spring are divided into The artifact—preserved by a painter named Pavel
the “beautiful ones” and the “ugly ones” (ta lepi and Medvešček—inspired resident Branko Žnidarčič to
ta grdi, respectively). The beautiful ones (depicted rekindle the maskmaking practice and the festival in
as newlyweds, doctors, and other personages) visit the 1980s. He now runs a workshop and a museum
homes, offering gifts and indulging in shots of home- displaying more than 200 of his creations.
made schnapps. These house calls promise good luck “I began to make reconstructions of old, nearly
for the rest of the year. forgotten characters, with the help of Pavel Med-
The ugly ones (representing devils or souls vešček’s documents and sketches,” Žnidarčič
of the dead) make mischief. Their job is to explains. “Before they were lost to oblivion,
chase away winter and eventually “kill” he recorded many Carnival figures, which
Pust (symbolic of winter, often depicted he accurately described and drew.”
EUROPE
as a straw doll). Pustje, the most iconic For many, Pust is also a rite of passage.
of the ugly ones, don colorful suits SLOVENIA A big part of some festivals involves
made of strips of fabric and horned the Pustje characters chasing boys
helmets with demonic faces made of through town. Once the boys are caught,
AFRICA
wood or sheepskin. Their arms are cov- the monsters playfully “beat” them
ered with soot. In some villages, they wield with ash-stuffed stockings, dramatically
wooden pincers. launching clouds of smoke into the air. The
The motley crew typically makes its way to the baptismal dusting hints at the bonfire that brings
edge of town, where the straw Pust is set ablaze. Pust to an end.
Villagers take particular pride in how they inter- With the coming of spring, the ash-covered boys
pret these age-old Pust customs. In Kanal and the symbolize a shift into adulthood. That often means
towns around Lig, the festival is called Liški Pust, taking on the roles of monsters at the next Pust,
and its claim to fame is bakreni, gleaming masks starting the cycle all over again. j
hammered out of sheet metal. Noah Charney is a professor and Pulitzer Prize finalist who has
Once made of copper, the bakreni (and the fes- been living in Slovenia for more than a decade. Native Slovenian
tival) were abandoned after World War I, when Ciril Jazbec is a National Geographic Explorer.

Villagers in Drežniške Ravne dress up as Pustje (left), horned creatures whose roots can be traced to pre-Christian rituals. In
Britof (right), a Pust procession heads out from the hamlet’s church. Traditions vary from village to village.

NGM MAPS
E X P L O R E | ADVENTURE
BY JORDAN SALAMA
B E YO N D T H E B E A C H
From a perch above Favela
Santa Marta, photographer
Wayne Lawrence cap-
tured this image of Rio de
Janeiro, which stretches
along the Atlantic Ocean
and Guanabara Bay. While
Brazil’s second largest
city is famed for its lively
beaches—Ipanema,
Copacabana—it also has
more than a thousand
rock-climbing routes, mak-
ing it an excellent urban
destination for the sport.
30 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
P H O T O G R A P H B Y WAY N E L AW R E N C E
RIO ROCKS CLASSIC CLIMB
Across this sprawling Among the many peaks,
city of nearly seven mil- Sugarloaf, at right, sticks
lion people, mountains out like a soaring thumb.
punctuate the landscape; To reach its summit, most
towering cliffs overlook visitors opt for an easy
cerulean waters and cable car ride, but oth-
sleek edifices. The rock ers dare to climb. Novices
around Rio, primarily take the Costão trail, while
granite and gneiss, those with intermediate
draws adventurers of to advanced skills can test
all experience levels their courage and stamina
for adrenaline-fueled on the technical routes or
ascents year-round. the via ferrata, which is
equipped with a perma-
nent steel cable.
 BY THE NUMBERS

2
C A B L E C A R L I N E S N E E D E D TO
S U M M I T S U G A R LOA F M O U N TA I N

100+
R O C K- C L I M B I N G R O U T E S
ON SUGARLOAF

1,299
H E I G H T O F S U G A R L OA F, I N F E E T

BRAZIL
SOUTH Rio de
AMERICA Janeiro
ATLANTIC
OCEAN

NGM MAPS F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 3 31

E X P L O R E | CAPTURED

1. The daytime sky’s scattered blue light 2. Light passing through varied atmospheric 3. During a total lunar eclipse, when the
tints a just risen color-altered red moon densities is bent, changing how the moon’s moon is in Earth’s shadow, bent red light
(March 12, 2017). shape appears (February 15, 2014). falls on its surface (July 27, 2018).

MOON VIEWS IN RAINBOW HUES

is an off-white brown-gray
T H E M O O N ’ S AC T UA L C O LO R
when its dusty surface is sunlit. But Earth’s atmosphere
modifies our views of the moon, altering colors and
shape. Italian photographer Marcella Giulia Pace,
who has captured lunar variations for 10 years, chose
48 of her images to compare in this spiral montage.
The varied colors appear when the moon is seen
or photographed through stratified and irregular
gas layers of Earth’s atmospheric blanket. Tiny air
molecules in the layers scatter light that hits them,
and their structure causes blue light to scatter more
readily than red or orange. When, for example, Pace
photographs the moon through the densest air—as
it rises and as it sits just above the horizon—this
phenomenon is especially intense, glowing more red
or orange. Other materials in the atmosphere—water
droplets, dust, wildfire smoke—also influence the path
of light and affect the moon’s hue, and those colors
are specific to the suspended materials themselves.
The moon’s apparent shape also is altered as the
light it emits travels through the stratified air. Because
the atmosphere nearest Earth’s surface is much
denser than high above, the path of light traveling
those varied densities will bend. The result: The
light’s source appears as a squished ellipse instead
of a lunar disk. — L I Z K R U E S I

32 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C PHOTO: MARCELLA GIULIA PACE (COMPOSITE OF 48 IMAGES)

 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C F E B R UA RY 2 0 2 3

Origami Inspiration . . . . P. 34
An Aging Japan . . . . . . . . . . . P. 58
Sea Otters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. 84
Building With Mud . . . P. 108

F EAT U R E S

H U M A N S A R E C A P T I VAT E D B Y

84 T H E I R C U T E N E S S —A N D H AV E
HELPED WILD P OPULATIONS
REBOUND IN THEIR HOME
WAT E R S . B U T S U C C E S S F O R S E A
OT TERS IS A MURKY MAT TER.

PHOTO: RALPH PACE. IMAGE TAKEN UNDER U.S. FISH

AND WILDLIFE SERVICE PERMIT 37946D
Origami artist and a pioneer in the use
physicist Robert J. of mathematics in
Lang folded this crane origami, designed the
out of a single uncut bird using geometric
square of paper. The concepts at the core
complexity of this of a program called
form—from spindly TreeMaker, which
limbs to feathered he developed in 1993
wings—was once to test whether com-
thought to be nearly puters could help
impossible. But Lang, design origami.

34
 The

Future
Is

folded
ORIGAMI HAS LONG INSPIRED ARTISTS. NOW IT’S BLAZING NEW TRAILS

I N S C I E N C E A N D T E C H N O L O G Y.

B Y M AYA W E I - H A A S

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CRAIG CUTLER

UNFURLING
This series of moun-
tains and valleys
harbors an astonishing
property: It can com-
pact or flatten with
a single motion. Lang
folded this example
of tessellated origami
using a sheet of paper,
but the pattern has
also been used to pack
the solar array on board
Japan’s Space Flyer
Unit, which deployed
after the spacecraft’s
launch in 1995. The
repeating angled
creases allow a folded
sheet to lengthen
and expand at the
same time. Known as
Miura-ori, the pat-
tern was described by
astrophysicist Koryo
Miura in the 1970s and
is similar to others
found in nature, such
as the unfurling leaves
of a beech tree.
 barking alerts me to the cardboard box deliv-
A C AC O P H O N Y O F
ered to my front door. Packed inside is a single sheet of white
corrugated plastic folded into what looks like a large suitcase.
My canine companions take a curious sniff as I unfurl the rigid
form, which spans nearly the width of my living room. Pushing PROTECTING
outward on the creases of one side, I hear a shockingly loud pop. The intricate fold
The dogs sprint for cover, scrambling across wood floors, while pattern of Air99’s
Airgami face mask
I frantically look for damage, heart pounding. But nothing’s bro- helps improve both
ken. Instead, the plastic suitcase has transformed, and suddenly fit and function.
a full-size kayak is sitting in my living room. Crafted from a flexible
N95-grade filter that’s
The boat, created by the company Oru Kayak, is part of a scien- fused to a more rigid
tific and technological revolution inspired by the centuries-old art and foldable layer,
of origami. What began as efforts to understand the math behind the mask’s edges
stay flush to the face
fold patterns has opened up surprising possibilities for manipu- because of its particu-
lating the shape, movement, and properties of all kinds of mate- lar pattern of creases.
rials—filters of face masks, the plastic of kayaks, even living cells. When flattened, it’s
two to three times
“I just can’t keep up,” says Robert J. Lang, a preeminent ori- the size of common
gami artist who previously worked as a laser physicist. “That’s N95 masks. Increasing
a wonderful place for the field to be.” a mask’s surface area
allows more air to
The art of origami has existed in Japan since at least the 17th pass through at once.
century, but there are hints of paper folding from long before. “It’s like breathing
Initially, models were simple and—because paper was expen- through a straw ver-
sus a big pipe,” says
sive—used largely for ceremonial purposes, such as the male Richard Gordon, Air99
and female paper butterflies known as Ocho and Mecho that co-founder and CEO.

38 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
EXPLORING
This expanding disk front of a space
lies at the center of telescope to block
the NASA Jet Propul- starlight, the starshade
sion Laboratory’s half- could help the scien-
scale prototype for a tists get a clear look.
starshade, which could The starshade’s struc-
become a vital part ture is based on a
of the search for hab- so-called flasher pat-
itable worlds. Our gal- tern, which allows it to
axy has about as many coil into a cylinder for
planets as stars, but launch. Deployed, the
scientists, blinded by shade (shown partially
the starry backdrop of opened in the previous
space, often can’t view image) would unfurl
these orbiting worlds into a flat disk with
directly. By flying far in petals like a flower.
 SPACE BIOMEDICAL
SECTORS EXPLORATION ENGINEERING
USING
ORIGAMI
Space missions need structures that are One of the fields most advanced in de
lightweight and versatile, compact during ing origami-based designs, the biomed
transport, and large once deployed. industry leverages the art to make proc
Origami-inspired space tools have grown as minimally invasive as possible. Appli
THE FUTURE IS to include antennas, photovoltaic arrays, include targeted drug delivery and imp
FOLDED
HOW ORIGAMI IS RESHAPING OUR WORLD
sun shields, and solar sails. surgical structures deep inside the bod

Make your
own starshade
Starshade exoplanet Vertebral
This month’s cover features exploration implants
a starshade prototype
that NASA is testing for A starshade would fly “Deployable imp
ORIGAMI-
deployment in space. BASED
between a telescope allow compact s
Origami makes packing DESIGN and a distant star, to be placed in
the shade on a rocket blocking the star’s light a fractured bon
possible. The exercise on so that orbiting exo- before they unf
planets could be seen into larger, load
the next page allows you
and studied for signs bearing structu
to test the basic principles
of life. The starshade, Manufacturing
of the design yourself.
folded to fit within a implants in a fla
16-foot-wide launch also makes it po
vehicle, would grow to to design surfa
about the size of half that can promo
a football field once bone regenerat
fully extended. and kill bacteri

UNFOLDING THE SCIENCE

Stowed Deployed Compact E

ORIGAMI, UNDERLYING
ORIGAMI
STRUCTURE

EVERYWHERE
Engineers are increasingly
HOW IT
WORKS
The inner disk when deployed is much like a bicy-
cle wheel: An outer truss is supported by spokes
tensioned against a center hub. A motor unfurls
a folded optical shield 65 feet in diameter.
A flat shape made of six square panels is f
into a compact cube configuration and th
minimally invasive surgery, is placed inside
fractured vertebra.
Balloo
turning to the centuries-old art cathe
of folding paper into three- Telescope
dimensional forms to shape some with folded Star
starshade
of the modern world’s most
ambitious designs. The models
shown here, many of which are
Exoplanet
still prototypes, demonstrate
the exciting potential of future
technologies. Not only are Flying in tandem with a space telescope, the
starshade would use thrusters to position itself
designs less expensive and 31,000 miles in front of it, covering a star that can As a minuscule balloon is inflated, the cub
faster to manufacture in two- blaze 10 billion times as bright as its exoplanets. expands to restore the height of the verte
The balloon is then removed.
dimensional form, but folding
Starshade
also opens a new realm of unfolded
Airf

scale, materials, and mechanical

movement, with applications
ranging from repairing our
Blocked
bodies to exploring outer space. light

ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ, NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER

ART: MATTHEW TWOMBLY
SOURCES: ITAI COHEN, CORNELL UNIVERSITY; NASA
EXOPLANET EXPLORATION PROGRAM; EDUCATIONAL
MUSEUM OF ORIGAMI IN ZARAGOZA (EMOZ); MARCO
Not to scale
MELONI AND OTHERS, ADVANCED SCIENCE, JULY 2021
 STRUCTURAL ROBOTICS MICROscopic
ARCHITECTURE engineering
evelop- Originally adopted by architects for Compared with conventional robotics, Imagine a robot so small that thousands can
dical aesthetic reasons, origami-based designs origami designs, when manufactured in two be injected through the tip of a needle—aiding
cedures can also reduce energy demands and dimensions and then assembled into three, microsurgery, cleaning bacteria from surfaces,
cations improve structural performance. Some are can be both easier to store and more or exploring worlds at a new scale. Invisible
planting responsive to their environment, changing cost-efficient—all while supporting complex to the naked eye, some can fold appendages,
dy. shape in reaction to light or acoustics. computational and sensing mechanisms. becoming 3D forms that then walk or swim.

Al Bahar Towers’ Vacuum-driven Mass-manufactured

responsive facades gripper microscopic robots
plants” Battling an environ- Rigid robotic hands More than one million
shapes ment of intense heat lack dexterity, but robots—each less than
side and blowing sand, soft bots often lack 100 micrometers long—
ne two towers in the strength. An origami can be manufactured
fold United Arab Emirates skeleton allows this onto eight-inch disks.
d- built in 2012 are each gripper to mold around These microscopic
ures. composed of 1,049 fragile items without robots (see penny
the origami-like shading compromising brawn, size comparison) have
t state elements. The screens lifting anything from detectors, power
ossible are responsive to sun a single broccoli floret sources, and circuits
ces exposure, opening to a hammer. It could that will enable them
ote in broad daylight to someday work on a Robot to sense, interact
tion provide shade and factory assembly line— with, and control their
a. conserve energy. or around the house. local environment.

Expanded Open Closed Released Gripped Flat Standing

olded Each shading device is made of fiberglass mesh The bell-shaped gripper has a foldable, silicone Robotic limbs are built around a flat microchip
en, with and weighs about 1.7 tons. Sun-tracking soft- rubber skeleton based on an origami pattern that acts as a brain. Powered by light, electrochem-
e the ware controls the opening and closing sequence that can shift between a spherical and a cylindrical ical reactions create stress and bend the base
according to the sun’s position. shape. It’s wrapped in an airtight rubber skin. layer of the legs.
on
ter
Solar
Panels reduce panels
solar-heat
absorption by Skin
over 50 percent Deployed
leg

Microchip
Skeleton

Sections of rigid material restrict bending to prede-

termined origami-like folds to achieve the desired
be Object 3D position. The microchip brain coordinates limb
ebra. movements to form an autonomous walking robot.

Airflow
low The system can When a vacuum Bending along folds
be overridden to sucks air out of creates movement
control individ- the skin, the ori-
ual panels. Wind gami skeleton
and solar sensors collapses along
will automatically fold lines to grip
open the pan- the enclosed
els during high object. It can
winds—and close lift up to 25
them during pro- pounds—over Schematic
longed overcast 120 times its
conditions. own weight.
M A K E YO U R OW N
festoon sake bottles at Shinto weddings. As paper PUZZLING
ORIGAMI
Use this classic origami method to craft a
model of the optical shield that may some-
prices fell, origami’s uses spread to gift wrap, Mathemat
day help NASA capture images of planets
outside our solar system. Scan this QR code playthings, and even geometry lessons for kids. fully unde

STARSHADE or visit natgeo.com/starshade to access and

print out a larger template for easier folding.
1 Cut and crease
Cut along dotted lines and
crease along fold lines. Blue
lines are “mountain folds”
that rise up. Orange lines
are “valley folds” that point
down. Gently run a pencil
or fingernail along fold lines
to help with creasing.
2 Fold and gather
Once all lines are creased,
fold along all fold lines,
moving from the center
outward. Lines will fold 180
degrees. Hold the central,
base hexagon flat while
rotating and gathering the
folds into a spiral shape.
Mo
3 Furl and unfurl
This folded model represents
a starshade’s inner-disk
optical shield when it’s
stowed before launch. Open
and close the starshade by
pulling opposite edges of
the sheets apart, then push-
ing them back together.
Then, in the mid-20th century, origami master
Akira Yoshizawa helped elevate paper folding to
a fine art. He breathed life and personality into
math behi
ture’s eleg
which form
folds are a
cular sheet
each creature he designed, from a stern-faced
gorilla glowering out of sunken eyes to a baby
these reall
3D forms w
ple creasin
elephant joyfully swinging its trunk. With the
Demaine, a
publication of his first origami book in 1954,
MIT who d
Yoshizawa also made the art form more acces- fold patte
sible, establishing an easily understandable lan-
guage of dotted lines, dashes, and arrows that
contributed to systems still used today.
In the late 1950s, Yoshizawa’s delicate forms
inspired Tomoko Fuse, now one of the fore- the small r
most origami artists in Japan. Her father gave ing the bo
her Yoshizawa’s second origami book when she top comp
was recovering from diphtheria as a child. Fuse pattern; b
methodically crafted every model, and she’s shoes, wh
been entranced with origami ever since. “It’s like been fasc

Cut the starshade magic,” she says. “Just one flat paper becomes unfolding
ld
unt

template along
something wonderful.” at the ord
Valley fo

the dotted lines.

ain

Among her many achievements, Fuse is There a

fol

famous for her advances in modular origami, he recalls

d

which uses interlocking units to create models decades w

with greater flexibility and potential complex- governing
ity. But she thinks of her work as less about cre- As we c
ation than about discovering something that’s that are fo
already there, “like a treasure hunter,” she says. unexpect
She describes her process as if she’s watching sheet fold
from afar, following wherever the paper leads which cau
her. “Suddenly, beautiful patterns come out.” known as
Indeed, origami taps into patterns that echo sheet fold
throughout the universe, seen in natural forms called the
such as leaves emerging from a bud or insects opens wit
tucking their wings. For these exquisite folds to physicist
become scientifically useful, however, researchers was used
must not only discover the patterns but also under- Space Fly
stand how they work. And that requires math. In the y
to many
ing tiny s
UTTING NUMBERS to ori- coats the

P gami’s intriguing patterns

has long driven the work of
Thomas Hull, a mathemati-
cian at Western New England
University in Springfield,
Massachusetts. When I walk into his school’s math
Kuribayas
When pro
flat struct
says, that
Despite
and techn
department, I know immediately which office is met resis
his. The door at the end of the hall is ajar, reveal- sion he ha
ing boldly colored paper folded in all manner of the Natio
geometric shapes. The models fill every nook of governme
ALBERTO LUCAS LÓPEZ,
NGM STAFF; LAWSON PARKER;
MATTHEW TWOMBLY
SOURCE: NASA/JPL-CALTECH
 ticians don’t father, Martin Demaine,
rstand the also at MIT. Drawn
nd this struc- to folding as a way to
gant bends, develop new magic
m as curving tricks, the duo fell in
dded to cir- love with the geomet-
ts. “You get rical problems that
ly impressive origami presents. While
with very sim- curved creases don’t yet
ng,” says Erik have applications, Erik
a professor at sees many possibilities
designed the in their simplicity and
rn with his potential strength.

room—hanging from the ceiling, adorn-

ookshelves, and surrounding the desk-
puter. Hull himself is a riot of color and
black and white spirals dance across his
hich are tied with purple laces. He’s long
inated by patterns and still remembers
g a paper crane at age 10 and marveling
ered creases in the flat sheet.
are rules at play that allow this to work,
s thinking. Hull and others have spent
working to understand the mathematics
g the world of origami.
chat, Hull pulls out an array of models
olded in intriguing shapes or move in
ted ways. One is an impossible-looking
ded with ridges of concentric squares,
use the paper to twist in an elegant swoop
s a hyperbolic paraboloid. Another is a
ded in a series of mountains and valleys
e Miura-ori pattern, which collapses or
th a single tug. Dreamed up by astro-
Koryo Miura in the 1970s, the pattern
to compact the solar panels of Japan’s
yer Unit, which launched in 1995.
years since, origami has been applied
different types of materials, includ-
sheets of cells. This unusual medium
self-folding structure created by Kaori
shi-Shigetomi at Hokkaido University.
obed, the cells contract, transforming
tures into cellular “Lego blocks,” as she
t could one day aid in growing organs.
e origami’s current popularity in science
nology, researchers’ early folding forays
stance. Hull still remembers a discus-
ad in 1997 with a program officer from
onal Science Foundation (NSF), a U.S.
ent agency that supports research and
50 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
FLOATING
In 2007 Anton Willis, the idea for a solution paper to see how it
who’d just completed to his space problem: can fold in on itself,
a graduate degree in a kayak that folded. and then refining from
architecture, moved He began crafting there,” says Willis, who
into an apartment in paper models, some- eventually founded
San Francisco that was times surreptitiously Oru Kayak. The com-
so cramped he had to at work, from one pany now has a full
put his beloved kayak continuous sheet to line of foldable boats
in storage. A maga- ensure the boat would that compact in min-
zine profile of Lang, be watertight. “For utes and are priced
the origami artist and a while it was almost on a par with tradi-
physicist, gave him like crumpling up the tional kayaks.

THE FUTURE IS FOLDED 51

LIFTING
Shuguang Li was play-
ing with a collapsible
origami cylinder when,
on a whim, he put it
in a vacuum bag. Li,
then a postdoctoral
fellow at Harvard and
MIT, pumped out the
air and was surprised
to see the shape con-
tract as if he’d pressed
it with his hand. By
testing other shapes,
he realized that fold
patterns and mate-
rial stiffness controlled
their motions, a dis-
covery that led to the
creation of these soft,
strong, and light-
weight robotic arms.
Each arm acts like
an artificial muscle,
encased in a vacuum
bag “skin” with an
inner skeleton inspired
by origami’s folds.
By varying vacuum
pressure, Li can make
the arms perform use-
ful tasks, like lifting
and grasping.
education. Hull was outlining a potential project,
when the program officer cut him off to say that
the NSF would never fund “a research proposal
with origami in the title.”
This skepticism wasn’t limited to the United
States. Tomohiro Tachi, a prominent origami
engineer at the University of Tokyo, looks down
with a smile when I ask if he’s ever faced resis-
tance to his work. People in Japan, he says, often
view origami as child’s play. But that perception
has shifted over the past couple of decades, with
the NSF spearheading much of the change.
During a temporary posting at the organiza-
tion starting in 2009, Glaucio Paulino pushed to
fund research involving origami. “The process
was brutal,” says Paulino, who is now a professor
of engineering at Princeton. “We were always in
the hot seat trying to defend the idea.”
But the effort paid off. In 2011 the NSF issued
the first of two calls for proposals mixing origami
and science, and teams of researchers flocked to
submit ideas. The move lent legitimacy to the
burgeoning field—and the use of origami in
science blossomed.
“There was this resonance,” Lang says. “It was
something whose time had come.”

RIGAMI IS NOW pushing

O the limits of what scientists

think is possible, particu-
larly at the tiniest of scales.
On a blazing hot summer
day, I meet up with Marc
Miskin, an electrical engineer at the University
of Pennsylvania. Inside the airy lobby of UPenn’s
Singh Center for Nanotechnology, we peer through
a bright-orange glass wall into a series of rooms
where people dressed head to toe in Tyvek sit at
microscopes or work under vent hoods. It feels
like a world away from the colorful chaos of Hull’s
office, but origami may prove no less vital here.
Miskin and his students have been using the
clean room to craft an army of robots no bigger
than a speck of dust. Such tiny bots require big
creativity. Gears and most other mechanisms
with moving parts work best in the human-size
world where momentum and inertia rule, Miskin
explains. But that’s not the case at tiny scales
where forces like friction are enormous, causing
everything to stick. Gears won’t turn. Wheels
don’t spin. Belts don’t run.
That’s where origami comes in. Fold patterns
will bend and move the same way at any size, at
least theoretically. Created using the same tech-
niques as the computer chip industry, Miskin’s
robots look like fat flakes with arms and legs.
When exposed to a trigger, such as voltage, their
limbs bend, helping them walk through a drop on
a glass slide or wave at a passing amoeba.
Miskin sees a world of possible ways these
tiny bots could be used, from manufacturing to
medicine. For now, though, pushing the limits
is what’s most important to him. “If you go after
hard problems,” he says, “you’ll be rewarded
with interesting technology.”
Origami holds particular promise for bio-
medicine. For instance, a team led by Daniela
Rus, director of the Massachusetts Institute of

54 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 HEALING
This tiny robot’s swirl-
ing folds allow it to
twist as it collapses or
expands. Often called
the Kresling pattern,
for design expert and
architect Biruta Kres-
ling, the folds have
inspired the invention
of cylindrical struc-
tures large and small,
including this minus-
cule medical tool.
Crafted by a team led
by Ruike Renee Zhao,
a mechanical engineer
at Stanford University,
the device could one
day be vital in targeted
drug delivery. Mag-
netic fields could direct
the robot to move
through the body mul-
tiple ways. For exam-
ple, spinning propels it
through liquid thanks
to the geometry of
its folds. Paired mag-
nets on opposite ends
of the cylinder force
the folds to compress,
pumping liquid medi-
cine to a desired point.

Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory, developed a robot that
can fold to fit into a pill capsule. After the capsule
is ingested, the bot unfolds and can be directed
around the digestive system using programma-
ble magnetic fields. An initial test demonstrated
one possible use: removing swallowed button
batteries from the stomach, a potentially deadly
condition experienced by thousands of chil-
dren each year. “Imagine embedding medicine
or using it to patch a wound,” Rus says. “Just
imagine a future of surgeries with no incisions,
no pain, and no risk of infection.”
These types of big dreams are where origami
seems to help science flourish most. The ven-
erable art form has provided a new tool kit to
ignite the imagination and create technologies
once thought impossible, including a kayak that
folds down small enough to fit in a car’s trunk.
On a bright fall afternoon I take my kayak for
a spin on Virginia’s Lake Accotink. The plastic
suitcase draws curious looks from passersby as
I unfold it. Perhaps one day folding forms will
be seen as prosaic. But for now, origami will con-
tinue to spark wonder and excitement as it pro-
pels science, medicine, and technology into the
future—and keeps me afloat as I shove off from
the lakeshore. j
Staff writer Maya Wei-Haas, who covers science
for the magazine, folded a thousand origami
cranes for her wedding. Craig Cutler specializes
in still life and environmental portraiture.

THE FUTURE IS FOLDED 55

CONNECTING
This rabbit was the recent explosion
folded from a pattern of origami models.
generated by the Ori- These folded forms
gamizer, a computer are “like a common
program designed by language,” Tachi says,
Tomohiro Tachi of the connecting scientists
University of Tokyo across disciplines
for creating complex around the world and
faceted shapes (note demonstrating the
the bunny’s mosaic- endless possibilities
like appearance). The that unfold when art
program helped spur and science mix.
 BY SARAH LUBMAN

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y N O R I KO H AYA S H I
Japan leads the world

in adapting to a rapidly aging

and shrinking population.

59
Japan is altering many
aspects of society as
its population ages,
including such rituals
as communal bathing.
Jiro Tajima, 88, is rinsed
off as he prepares
to immerse himself
at a Tokyo bathhouse
reserved most days
until early afternoon
for older people
to exercise, eat lunch,
and enjoy a soak.
Japan’s long-term
care insurance covers
most of the expense.

PREVIOUS PHOTO

One of the oldest

geishas still working in
Japan, Ikuko Akasaka,
82, has been perform-
ing the demanding
traditional art—dancing
and conversing with
clients—for 64 years.
“Every moment I want
to learn new things and
polish my art,” she says.
Chikayoshi Gonda,
97, cooks dump-
lings known as oyaki,
while Harumi Okubo,
80, crafts them.
The restaurant in
Ogawa where they
work started hiring
older people as the
mountain village’s
population grayed.
The average age of its
employees is now 70.
On an overcast
Saturday morning
in Iwase, a sleepy port
district on the lip of
Toyama Bay on Japan’s
largest island, the
streets are deserted
until the appointed
hour approaches.
An elderly woman pokes her head out of her
doorway and peers down the main thoroughfare
lined with traditional low-slung wooden build-
ings. Another advances gingerly along a narrow
side lane. A few minutes later, two tiny trucks
trundle up and roll to a stop.
The area suddenly springs to life. Five orange- In Ibusuki, a seaside
vested workers emerge and bustle about, setting city in the southwest,
Nga Thi Nguyen and
up traffic cones, handing out shopping bas- Mien Thi Tran, both
kets, and apologizing profusely for shifting the from Vietnam, work at
Tokushimaru mobile grocery a few feet from its Mifuku Suisan, a com-
pany that makes dried
usual spot. They ferry groceries from the first bonito flakes, a funda-
truck to the second, which efficiently morphs mental seasoning in
into a miniaturized shop with fold-out shelves Japanese cuisine. The
company’s president
and red awnings. The left side is refrigerated says foreign technical
and stocked with individual portions of fish and trainees like these, who
meat, yogurt, eggs, and other perishables. Pro- are allowed to stay in
Japan for five years,
duce is on the right; snacks and crackers, at the are now indispensable.
back. Half a dozen shoppers, all older women,
move haltingly around the truck.
Miwako Kawakami, a stooped 87-year-old
with bobbed hair, hands her cane to a worker

64 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
and takes a small basket. She buys leeks, carrots,
three onions, and a carton of milk. Kawakami
lives alone behind a nearby temple. “There used
to be a lot of stores here, but they’re all gone,” she
says. “The vegetable stand, the fish stand—they
all closed about five years ago.” She totters across
the street to meet her 86-year-old neighbor, who
has come to help carry her groceries.
Iwase has emptied out. Its young have left,
and those still here grow older. This dynamic is
happening all over Japan as the birth rate con-
tinues its decades-long decline. The country’s
population peaked in 2010, at 128 million. Now
it’s less than 125 million and projected to keep
shrinking over the next four decades. At the same
time, Japanese people are living longer—87.6
years for women and 81.5 years for men, on aver-
age. Except for the tiny principality of Monaco,
Japan’s population is now the oldest in the world.
The numbers, though stark, don’t convey how
profoundly this demographic shift is playing out
day to day. The increasingly disproportionate
mix of more and more seniors and fewer and
fewer young people is already altering every
aspect of life in Japan, from its physical appear-
ance to its social policies, from business strategy
to the labor market, from public spaces to private
homes. Japan is becoming a country designed
A NEW OLD AGE 65
for and dominated by the old.
Watch the nightly news, and you’ll hear
reports on Japan’s “aging society” as regularly
as the weather. Young people caring for family
members need greater support. 100-year-old
driver steers car onto sidewalk, hits pedestrian.
Majority of yakuza in Japan now over age 50.
Aging is everywhere. On some train station plat-
forms, there’s a notch in the base of each seat:
It’s a place to park your cane. Abandoned “ghost
houses” strangled in vines are a common sight in
hollowed-out communities like Iwase but also
in big-city neighborhoods.
Japan’s path foreshadows what’s coming in
many areas of the world. China, South Korea,
Italy, and Germany are on a similar trajectory;
so too is the United States, although at a slower
pace. Five years ago, the world reached an omi-
nous milestone: For the first time in history,
adults 65 and older outnumbered children under
five years old.
If Japan is any guide, aging will change the
fabric of society in ways both obvious and
subtle. It will run up a huge tab that govern-
ments will struggle to pay. Meeting the challenge
won’t be easy, but the future isn’t necessarily all
downhill. Japan’s experience, with its charac-
teristic attention to detail and design, suggests
extreme aging—a world in which an increasing
share of the population is old—may inspire an
era of innovation. Yamazaki, 83, a former construction worker. As
In 2020, Japan’s health ministry launched eight is his habit, Yamanaka forgoes the elevator and
“living labs” dedicated to developing nursing-care walks determinedly up seven flights of stairs
robots. Yet in a way, the entire country is one big without stopping, carrying the scuffed black bag
living lab grappling with the repercussions of a that belonged to his physician father. His patient
rapidly aging society. In business, academia, and lies on a hospital cot, one fist permanently
communities around Japan, countless experi- clenched. Aside from the bed, the narrow room
ments are under way, all aiming to keep the old holds a mini-fridge, a microwave, a collection of
healthy for as long as possible while easing the stuffed Winnie the Poohs, and little else.
burden of caring for society’s frailest. “I’m dizzy,” he tells the doctor. “How’s my
blood pressure?” Yamanaka takes the bedrid-
is on a mission to prevent
O S A M U YA M A N A K A den man’s vitals, assures him he will check his
lonely deaths. Several times a week, the 67-year- medication, and reviews the visitors log; health
old doctor leaves his Yokohama clinic to make aides also come by daily to bring food, adminis-
the rounds of pensioners who live alone in ram- ter medicine, and change diapers.
shackle single-room-occupancy units in Japan’s long-term care insurance system is
Kotobukicho. The hardscrabble neighborhood among the most generous in the world, and
sprang up during the postwar building boom Yamazaki’s needs are well covered. Compared
to house day laborers and is now home to aging with people in other industrialized countries,
welfare recipients and “people fleeing social obli- the Japanese receive far more benefits than they
gations for one reason or another,” Yamanaka pay for in taxes and premiums. The program
says—alcoholics, the mentally ill, ex-convicts. subsidizes between 70 and 100 percent of elder
On one of Yamanaka’s stops, he visits Seiji care, depending on income. Before the system

66 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
LEFT
Hiromu Inada, 89, trains
at a gym in Chiba, on
Tokyo Bay. He has com-
peted in 66 triathlons
since he turned 70.
In 2018 Inada became
the oldest triathlete
to finish an Ironman
World Championship.
He works out daily,
preparing for this year’s
competition. “Even
if I think something
might not be possible,
I try it,” he says, “and
surprisingly it turns
out to be possible.”

BELOW

Fumie Takino (front)

is the founder and,
at 90, the oldest mem-
ber of Japan Pom
Pom, a senior cheer
squad in Tokyo. For
26 years, she has prac-
ticed once a week.
“It is important to be
yourself and do what
you want to do,” she
says, “regardless of
your age.”

A NEW OLD AGE 67

 S
I
A
ELDER NATION PAST ITS PEAK
A country’s population usually follows
economy develops. Initially, numbers
A

Korea With nearly 30 percent of its people 65 and over, care drives down mortality. But that g
JAPAN
to education, birth control, and job o
Japan has the oldest population on Earth (except tiny
PA C I F I C Monaco). Its median age of 48.7 far exceeds the world’s,
O CE A N at 30.2. But as growth rates slow down, many countries Japanese 1950 One million
population POPULATION SQ
are following Japan’s graying trajectory. 90 and older
TO THE NEARES

80 4.1 million
people 65 and olde
70
60
2021 50
CATCHING UP FAST South Korea, 39.4%
40
PROJECTED Japan, 37.5%
Other countries are also aging quickly, partic- 30
Italy, 37.1%
ularly high-income ones in Europe and East
20
Asia. South Korea is growing older at an accel- 11.2 mill
erated pace; the proportion of its population 10 people
that’s elderly could surpass Japan’s by 2046. Japan, 29.8% China, 30.1% 0 1946-50

High-income
countries, 28% Postwar baby boom
Japan rebounded after the
United States, 23.6% Second World War with a high
fertility rate. Its youngest age
group was also its largest.

Middle-income
countries, 16.7%
Percent of India, 15%
population Italy
65 and older EMPTYING VILLAGES, GROWING
U.S.
10% After peaking in 2010 at 128 million, Ja
in 10 years—a drop of 1.5 percent. Dep
Low-income and mountainous areas. Over a thousa
4.9% countries, 4.8% residents die and younger ones leave
Nigeria, 4.3%

Change in population
by municipality, 2010-2020
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
Increase in population City

Up to 8% decrease
8% to 16% decrease Prefe
More than 16% decrease

HOW JAPAN GOT SO OLD 50 mi

Leading in longevity Births below the benchmark Limited immigration
50 km Tsushima
Healthy habits, along with Since 1974, Japan’s fertility rate Experts say xenophobia and strict
advanced health care, help has been less than 2.1 children requirements lower Japan’s admis-
extend Japan’s average life span per woman, the level needed to sion rate for immigrants compared
nearly 12 years past the world’s. sustain a country’s population. with other high-income countries. Iki
Kita
Fukuoka
Life expectancy at birth Fertility rate Net migration rate FUKUOKA
Years Children per woman Migrations per 1,000 population* SAGA
Goto Is.
84.4 O
4.9
World NAGASAKI
Kumamoto
72.8 High-income 3.3
3.7 KUMAMOTO
countries
Japan
Japan
1.5 Koshikijima Is. MIYAZA
59.2 Replacement rate 2.4
2.1
KAGOSHIMA Miyazaki
World
1.3 -0.3
46.5 Japan
-0.7
Ibusuki
1950 2019 1950 2019 1950 2019
ds
Islan
umi
Os Yaku Tanega
RILEY D. CHAMPINE, NGM STAFF; BRANDON SHYPKOWSKI. SOURCES: PETER MATANLE, UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD; *BASED ON THE NUMBER
JAMES RAYMO, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; UNITED NATIONS POPULATION DIVISION; JAPAN MINISTRY OF HEALTH, OF IMMIGRANTS
LABOR, AND WELFARE; JAPAN MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATIONS; NASA MINUS EMIGRANTS
 Rebun

Rishiri

H
O
s a predictable pattern as its
K
K
expand when improved health AI
growth wanes with better access
DO
pportunities for women.
Asahikawa
n people 1990 2020
QUARES ROUNDED HOKKAIDO
ST MILLION
Sapporo
14.9 million 35.8 million
er
Graying in the fields
Uc Seventy percent of farmers in
hi
Okushiri ur
aB Japan are 65 and older. Hokkai-
ay do has the most farmers of any
prefecture. Its fertility rate of
1.2 is one of the country’s lowest.
ai t
Str
ru
ion 6.5 million 4.5 million Ts u ga
born people born people born
0 1986-90 2016-20
AOMORI Sea of Japan HOKKAIDO
Tapering growth Population in decline Misawa
Japan’s fertility declined in the In 2020 Japan reported 1.6 (East Sea)
1970s and ’80s, as women had deaths for each birth. The num-
fewer children. Younger gener- ber of children under 10 is less JAPAN
ations became smaller in size. than half of what it was in 1950. HONSHU
AKITA Morioka

IWATE Tokyo

N a
KYUSHU SHIKOKU
CITIES East

n p
apan’s population fell by about two million YAMAGATA China s PACIFIC
nd

o
opulation is accelerating, especially in rural MIYAGI Sea
s l a to)
I OCEAN
and municipalities are in decline as older y u sh o

I s l a
k i-
for school and jobs in larger cities. Sado
Sendai R y u anse
(N Okinawa Bonin Is.
Niigata (Ogasawara-shoto)
NIIGATA
H U

n d s
Daito
y Islands
Ba Volcano Is.
a FUKUSHIMA (Kazan Retto)
m
ya

ISHIKAWA
N S
To

Nasushiobara
Kanazawa Toyama
Municipalities TOYAMA
Ogawa
TOCHIGI
Oki Is. GUNMA Urban influx
O

ecture boundary NAGANO Tokyo is Japan’s youngest pre-

fecture, with only 23 percent of
IBARAKI
H

Matsue
FUKUI SAITAMA its population 65 and older. The
SHIMANE

ds
TOTTORI GIFU megacity’s growth is propelled

an
Tokyo l
by migration from other regions. Is
YAMANASHI TOKYO r a
KYOTO Chiba ka
HYOGO SHIGA Yokohama To
OKAYAMA Kyoto
Amagasaki Nagoya KANAGAWA CHIBA
HIROSHIMA Okayama Kobe Otsu
Hiroshima Osaka AICHI KAGOSHIMA
Shizuoka
YAMAGUCHI d Sea Sakai MIE SHIZUOKA
s s
In
l an
KAGAWA OSAKA Hamamatsu
O Shima d an
d
akyushu n Is
l
EHIME Miyoshi TOKUSHIMA l a t o)
I z

NARA
i
am

Nagoro
KOCHI
I s h o
u

Am

WAKAYAMA
Bu

OITA
I s l a

u i - s
ng

KU
oS

y
k s e Island
s
wa
t ra i

n d s

ina
y u a n
IK

Ok
t

R
SH

N
U

( Naha Okinawa
SH

AKI
KYU

Oldest of all OKINAWA Southern outlier

Shikoku is home to Japan’s Almost a thousand miles
hima Islan
two most elderly prefectures, Sakis ds southwest of Tokyo, Okinawa’s
Kochi and Tokushima. In warmer climate draws many
each, more than a third of the new residents—boosting
population is 65 and older. SAME SCALE AS MAIN MAP population levels of all ages.
In the dwindling hamlet Nagoro, which now Inoue, 84, has decided
of Nagoro on Shikoku has just 25 inhabitants, to call it quits soon.
Island, 79-year-old with hundreds of dolls. Outside her home in
Shinobu Ogura (left) Tadao Inoue (top) had a mountainous hamlet
cleans the vacant ele- 50 cows on his dairy on Shikoku, 91-year-old
mentary school. The farm in Nasu, in central Toshie Ueno (above)
last students stitched Japan; now he’s down takes a stroll after feed-
dolls in their like- to one. With age, the ing her 15 cats. She’s
nesses; Tsukimi Ayano, work became too hard, the last person in the
a 72-year-old resident, but he says that having secluded area. “I am
made the principal. even one cow to milk alone here,” she says,
She has populated keeps him going. Still, “but this is where I live.”
began in 2000, the ailing old would go to hospi-
tals and stay until death. Now they tend to die
at home. “In some ways,” Yamanaka says, “we’re
the most advanced socialist country in terms of
medical welfare.”
But the system is strained. There’s already a
shortage of care workers; the government esti-
mates the country will need 700,000 more by
2040. Proposed fixes include raising their pay,
recruiting retirees and volunteers, promoting
nursing as a career, relying on robotics, and—
last and likely to stay last—allowing more
foreign workers. Immigrants from countries
such as Vietnam and the Philippines are working
in nursing homes, but there’s a tight cap on the
number of visas for skilled workers. Japanese
insularity combined with the difficulty of learn-
ing the language makes it hard to fill the gap in
care workers from abroad.
Meanwhile, the cost of benefits is escalating.
Social security expenses, which include public
health care, long-term care, and pensions, tripled
between 1990 and 2022, financed by government
debt. “The universal system we introduced has
lots of advantages, and people are used to it,” says
Hirotaka Unami, a senior aide to Prime Minister
Fumio Kishida. “To maintain that, we have to
restore the balance between benefits and bur-
dens. Otherwise it’s not sustainable.”
The solution, he says, is fourfold: accelerate
economic growth, incentivize more women and Tokyo. “To be honest, it’s too late. Politicians
older adults to work, raise the consumption tax, don’t want to talk about reducing benefits.”
and curb social security expenditures. “The goal
is to have more elderly people be contributors MORE THAN HALF of all municipalities in Japan
to society rather than receivers,” Unami says. are now designated as depopulated areas, where
It’s a daunting list. Economic growth can’t be the population has dropped by 30 percent or more
engineered at will. Tax increases are unpopular: since 1980. In many, older residents are orga-
It took Japan five years to raise the consumption nizing to adapt their communities to this new
tax from 8 percent to 10 percent. More than 70 reality. A housing development in Yokohama,
percent of Japanese women 64 and younger on the other side of Honshu Island from Iwase,
already work, but mostly part-time because of is emblematic of how aging is reshaping Japan
poor childcare options and financial disincen- from the ground up.
tives, including being paid less than men. At Kamigo Neopolis, 868 detached homes
The government is trying to raise the retire- perch atop a steep hill. Daiwa House, one of
ment age from 65, and people are working longer. Japan’s largest homebuilders, opened it in 1974
In 2021, more than a third of Japanese companies to house the explosion of young families that
let people work past 70; in 2016, only 21 percent followed the postwar baby boom. Designed as
did. Demographics leave no other option: By a bedroom community for salarymen making
2050, almost 38 percent of Japan’s population is the hour-and-a-half train commute to Tokyo,
projected to be 65 and over, putting enormous it’s one of 61 “neopolises.” In Kamigo, residents
pressure on the labor force to support them. could walk to shops and an elementary school.
“I don’t think we’ve got good answers,” says These days, more than half of Kamigo’s 2,000
Sagiri Kitao, an economist at the University of residents are 65 and older. The school closed years

74 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
LEFT
As night falls at the
Active Biwa nursing
home in Otsu, a city
near Kyoto, a robot
patrols, quietly open-
ing the door of each
room to check on res-
idents. If it detects
anything unusual, it
sends images to alert
care workers. Many
nursing homes are
experimenting with
technology designed
to reduce demands
on staff.

BELOW

Kazuko Kori, 89, talks

to Telenoid at Yume
Paratiis, a nursing
home in Amagasaki,
a city near Osaka.
A caregiver speaks
through it remotely.
The android is being
studied as a way to
stimulate conversa-
tions with people who
have dementia.

A NEW OLD AGE 75

Osamu Yamanaka,
a physician who runs
a clinic in Kotobu-
kicho, a downtrodden
section of Yokohama,
checks on 74-year-old
Kiichi Takahashi. He
frequently calls on his
older patients, many
of whom live alone in
cheap lodgings, their
medical costs covered
by Japan’s long-term
care insurance system.
“They don’t want to
be in a home. They’re
used to being inde-
pendent,” he says.
Yamanaka, who is 67,
plans to continue his
work for as long as
he can. “I have no rea-
son to stop,” he adds.
RIGHT
Toyama, a city on
the largest island,
has striven to become
a more hospitable
place to grow old. One
key initiative is the
Kadokawa Preventive
Care Center, which has
exercise pools fed by
hot springs. Every day,
about 250 older adults
work out at the facility.

BELOW
Taira and Ichi Katsuta,
89 and 85, who are
happily married, have
dementia. They live by
themselves in a Tokyo
apartment, often tell-
ing each other stories
that only they under-
stand. In Japan, one
in five people over 65
has dementia.

78 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

ago. The shops are gone. Weeds have taken over
the four parks. Residents joke that “Neopolis,”
which means “New Town,” is now “Old Town.”
The Aeon shopping center at Kamigo’s train
station, an 18-minute bus ride down the hill, has
a whole aisle of nursing-care products, such as
aprons for use while bathing an elderly parent,
disposal bags for adult diapers, odor-absorbing
cloths to hang on a bed rail, and bags of thicken-
ing powder, called toromi, that’s used in drinks
and soups to help prevent choking.
As Kamigo’s population shrank and its inhab-
itants aged, residents felt physically and socially
isolated. A loose network evolved to check up on
one another, and that became a committee called
Kamigo Machizukuri, a term for a distinctly
Japanese form of bottom-up, collaborative com-
munity engagement. In 2016 the group started
lobbying Daiwa House to create a central area
for shopping and socializing. The result was a
single-story building with a mini-mart, a produce
stand, five tables with chairs, and a video screen.
There’s an outdoor terrace with benches. The
center’s restroom includes a deep sink reserved
for the disposal of ostomy-bag waste, a now
ubiquitous fixture in Japan marked by a distinc-
tive icon outside bathroom doors.
“We’re thinking about setting up a transporta-
tion system to the hospital for people who can’t
get around,” says Nobuyuki Yoshii, a 74-year-old
retiree and father of three. He moved to Kamigo
more than 40 years ago for its easy access to
surfing and the then thriving jazz scene in down-
town Yokohama, a quick car ride to the north.
For decades, Yoshii got up at 5 a.m. to commute
to his architectural planning job in Tokyo, often
returning at midnight. These days, he heads the
machizukuri committee. An on-site nursing-care
clinic is also high on the wish list.
Kamigo is one small example of how Japanese
communities are working to enable aging in
place. Toyama, a city of more than 410,000 that
includes Iwase, is a more ambitious case study
in reimagining a city space, one now widely
praised as a model. The catalyst was Masashi
Mori, who until 2021 was Toyama’s charismatic
mayor for nearly 20 years.
He traveled the world looking for ideas to
accommodate the old. Inspired by light-rail
systems in Portland, Oregon, and Strasbourg,
France, Toyama installed trams that the elderly
ride at a discount and can board without climb-
ing any steps. They get into local attractions for
free with grandchildren. The city turned a shut-
tered school into a preventive-care center that
functions as a health club for older adults, with
gym equipment, classes, and waist-deep pools,
one with a built-in walking path and handrails.
“The more people walk, the less they spend
on health,” says Mori, 69, now a pear farmer
with a thick shock of dyed black hair and “Mr.
Mori” embroidered on his shirt cuffs. “You’ve
got to get them active and interacting with other
people.” Mori is proud of Toyama’s work to cre-
ate a more compact, navigable city. “We took
the initiative early,” he notes.
In Toyama’s rural areas, close to 40 percent
of the population is over 65. They’re served by
a gleaming care center that delivers home nurs-
ing. “We’re seeing an increase in single sons
living with their aging mothers, as well as lots of
couples where both have dementia,” says Naoko
Kobayashi, one of the center’s three doctors
who work to ease the suffering of aging patients
and also their exhausted families. “Dying is not
an easy thing.”
A NEW OLD AGE 79
Genyu Daito, 64,
the chief priest of
Banshoji, a Buddhist
temple in Nagoya,
prays in an LED-lit
ossuary that highlights
niches when they
are selected by an
electronic ID card. Inno-
vative burial options
are becoming popular
as the tradition of fam-
ily tombs declines.
 The city has had less success dealing with the
empty “ghost houses” that no one wants, espe-
cially those in which someone died alone. There
are more than eight million of them around
Japan. Laws are slowly changing to enable local
governments to fine and publicly report delin-
quent property owners to shame them. It took
Toyama five years in a drawn-out process to raze
just three houses, barely making a dent in the
more than 7,000 that are abandoned in the city.
a pristine nursing home in
AT Y U M E PA R AT I I S ,
Amagasaki, near Osaka, a robot called the Hug
carefully transfers 98-year-old Kotoyo Shirai-
shi from her wheelchair to her bed. Padded
armrests gently squeeze and support the tiny
woman, who wears fleece pants and cushioned
slippers. Staff at the 116-resident home say the
Hug enables aides to do lifting and lowering
tasks solo instead of in pairs.
The nursing home industry, naturally, is
ground zero of the living lab that is Japan. The
Hug is one of 20 technologies that Yume Paratiis
is testing, from room monitors to communica-
tion robots. The latter include Telenoid, which
has nubs for limbs and a realistic but expression-
less face. It talks via a care worker who operates
it from a distance. Telenoid wears an orange-
and-white onesie and matching hat. “This is a
boy, right?” asks 89-year-old Kazuko Kori, who
tells it to sing her a song. Some residents open
up to it, staff members say; others are turned off.
Hidenobu Sumioka of Kyoto-based ATR, who
helped create Telenoid, concedes that it’s not
for everyone, but he envisions a future where
robots play a social role for people in nursing
homes: “I’d like to use them to form more of a
community, the way people used to live.”
Among the most prominent companies
focused on aging is Sompo Holdings, one of
Japan’s top insurance companies, which started
acquiring nursing homes in 2015. Sompo now
owns around 400, making it one of the largest
operators. The company is also the only business
running one of the eight living labs; the others
are overseen by research centers.
Sompo’s Future Care Lab, in Tokyo, houses
two spotless testing rooms tricked out like nurs-
ing homes on steroids. Motion sensors on the
floors and walls detect falls and send alerts to
caregivers’ phones. A high-tech bed made by
Panasonic has a mattress that splits down the
middle so a patient can be rolled onto the outer
82 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
half, which can fold into a wheelchair. At more
than $10,000, though, it isn’t cheap.
Other devices include a lavender-and-white
bathtub that looks like a cross between a giant
Easter egg and an isolation tank. A person in a
wheelchair gets steered into the tub and sprayed
with soapy foam from all sides at the push of
a button, followed by warm water. But a full-
body soak is a cherished Japanese ritual that
nursing homes try to provide. Yume Paratiis
prefers a rotating chair lift that gently lowers
residents into a tub. When Takeo Okuzono, 85,
is immersed, he reclines into the bath and closes
his eyes. “I’m sleepy,” he mumbles.
Sompo is working to make nursing care more
efficient. In one ongoing study, workers in 10
Sompo homes collect data from “smart bed” sen-
sors that detect whether residents are asleep, in
bed but awake, or out of bed. The technology
enables 150 workers to check on 500 residents
remotely instead of visiting every room at two-
hour intervals, according to Albert Chu, Sompo’s
chief digital officer. Sompo now uses the wired
pads in nearly all its homes. “There are empty
wings in care homes because they can’t hire
enough people,” Chu says.
Robotics can help—and the Japanese gov-
ernment subsidizes their use—but they’re not
a panacea. Only a fifth of the nursing homes in
Japan use any type of robotics, according to a
2020 survey, and primarily for monitoring and
communication rather than helping lift, bathe,
and interact with residents.
focused on
E V E N I N D U S T R I E S N O T E X P L I C I T LY
nursing care are tackling “aging society” prob-
lems. In stark contrast to the incremental pace
of national fiscal reform, companies through-
out Japan, from conglomerates to start-ups, are
experimenting with gusto.
Some big companies are devising incentives to
keep seniors active in ways that are equal parts
marketing and corporate social responsibility.
Rakuten, Japan’s e-commerce giant, launched
the app Rakuten Senior in 2019. It rewards steps
walked with points that can be used toward
purchases, such as trial music lessons. Hitachi
partnered with the nationally funded Japan
Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES) to
create a “social participation encouragement”
app that aims to lower the cost of nursing care
by keeping people active. The app measures out-
door activity and ranks it in four categories, from
Japan’s creative
responses to
its aging citizens
may become
a source of
inspiration
as the world
grows older.
beginner to expert. It also recommends events
to attend and pushes evidence of the benefits of
social participation to users.
Hitachi says it’s in discussions with 70 busi-
nesses and municipalities about partnerships
that would link the app to elder-focused ser-
vices. Yuji Kamata, who leads the Hitachi team
that developed the app, notes that the data will
also benefit JAGES, which does national surveys
every three years; now the information will be
digitized at a lower cost and provide real-time
results. The app is free. Hitachi hopes one day
to sell the anonymized data.
Even Daiwa House, spurred by Kamigo’s res-
idents, formed a new division, called Livness
Town Project, to adapt 10 more of its planned
communities for aging. “We’re not doing this
to make money. It could be unprofitable,” says
Koji Harano, who runs Livness. “But it has
social value. It helps our brand.” He hopes the
company will market its aging-related housing
expertise overseas.
Other services have emerged to address the
ripple effect of solitary deaths. In 2020 more than
4,200 people over 65 in Tokyo died alone. Many
companies now insure owners of rental units
against the risk of someone dying and going
undiscovered on their properties, addressing
the growing reluctance of landlords to rent to
older tenants. Such policies cover the loss of
rent as well as the cost of cleaning. Thousands
of companies now specialize in residential deep
cleaning after a solitary death, a fate likely to
become more common in Japan given that more
than one in four adults 65 and older lives alone.
Japan’s economic prowess and industrial
innovation were envied around the world until
the Lost Decade, a long stretch of stagnation
that began in the 1990s. Although the coun-
try remains a digital laggard, Japan’s creative
responses to its aging citizens may become a
source of inspiration as the world grows older.
“You see next-generation talent thinking
about aging as a big opportunity,” says Jin Mon-
tesano, a senior executive at Lixil, which sells
bathroom and other housing products. One of
Lixil’s newer items is a shower that dispenses
cleansing foam from two adjustable bars that
lower to wheelchair height. Increasingly focused
on aging in the home, the company is encour-
aging employees to come up with more ideas.
“Age tech” is also beginning to be seen as an
opportunity for Japanese start-ups. The amount
of venture capital in Japan is comparatively low
but growing. One VC funding recipient is Tokyo-
based LifeHub, which is developing a wheelchair
that can raise its user to a standing position and
can ascend stairs and escalators. “Wheelchair
users want legs—healthy legs,” says Hiroshi
Nakano, LifeHub’s co-founder and CEO.
Start-ups are also taking on the most inti-
mate nursing tasks. Yoshimi Ui, an outgoing
33-year-old engineer, invented the Helppad, a
mattress-odor sensor that detects and tracks
excretions to make toileting care more efficient.
She runs her company, called Aba, out of a small
two-story house near Tokyo. Ui grew up with an
ailing, severely depressed grandmother at home
and was troubled by her suffering. That moti-
vated her to marry engineering know-how with
social impact. Ui says that her Helppad, which is
being tested in Sompo’s Future Care Lab, is used
at about a hundred Japanese nursing homes.
Both LifeHub and Aba envision international
sales. Aba, whose website proclaims, “Live well,
die well, build the future,” is getting inquiries
from South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.
Japan’s present challenges are our collective
future. Just as no one wants to dwell on getting
old, Ui says, most people don’t give nursing care
a second thought until a parent becomes ill and
the burden suddenly falls on them. She wants to
change that mindset. Her vision, she says pas-
sionately, is to “make the world a place where
there’s nursing-care support everywhere.” j
Sarah Lubman studied Japanese literature, lived
in Japan, and has traveled there regularly over
the past 15 years. Noriko Hayashi focuses on
documenting social issues. She is based in Tokyo.
A NEW OLD AGE 83
SEA OTTERS ARE THRIVING IN POCKETS
ALONG THE COAST FROM CALIFORNIA
TO ALASKA—BUT NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
BY CYNTHIA GORNEY

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R A L P H PAC E A N D K I L I I I Y Ü YA N

WHAT’S NOT
At once calm and agile
beneath rough surf,
a young sea otter
glides through Cali-
fornia’s Monterey Bay,
looking for mussels.
The diving power of
these mammals suits
their enormous appe-
tites; while foraging
underwater, they
typically find food
in a minute or two.
RALPH PACE
TO LOVE?

85
A female tucks paws
beneath her chin as she
dozes in a quiet Mon-
terey Bay kelp patch.
“I refer to their cute-
ness as their publicity
problem,” says Sea
Otter Savvy head Gena
Bentall, a biologist
whose organization
gives kayakers and
other onlookers guide-
lines for sensible
behavior around wild
sea otters. Smitten
otter-watchers
sometimes paddle
too close, or even give
chase, trying for the
cutest photograph.
RALPH PACE
A sea otter pup
peruses one of the
bay’s giant kelp fronds,
foraging for crabs or
snails to carry to the
surface for a meal.
Pockets improvised
from loose skin under
their armpits make
fine transport storage.
Next stop: the seabed,
to search for mussels,
clams, and urchins.
RALPH PACE
THE SCRUNCHED
FACE OF OTTER 820
PRESSED AGAINST
THE GRILLE OF
HER CARRYING BOX,
AND SHE WAS SQUEALING,
the way sea otters do when they’re panicked or
indignant or calling for their kin. (Think of a
gull’s cry, but sharper.) She had dark eyes, deep
brown fur, and a radio transmitter implanted in
her belly. She was 16 months old, a sea otter ado-
lescent, and unsettling events had so far marked
the whole course of her life. Abandoned as a
newborn, lifted into a truck by rescuers, bottle-
fed by black-cloaked humans, and raised by a
sea otter foster mother in an outdoor aquarium
pool, 820 was one small part of a long ecologi-
cal experiment—an atonement, of sorts, for the
massacre of her species more than a century ago.
So she was in a box. The box was on the deck
of an inflatable motorboat. She scrabbled her Monterey Bay Aquar-
ium’s Sandrine Hazan,
paws against the box floor and walls. her shape and smell
“We’ll see how this goes,” Karl Mayer said. disguised, feeds a res-
It was a late summer morning, and Mayer and cued sea otter pup.
These “Darth Vader”
his colleague Sandrine Hazan were animal care suits help prevent juve-
specialists with California’s Monterey Bay Aquar- niles from associating
ium, the gray structure receding in the fog as humans with comfort
or food once they’re
Mayer gunned the boat into deeper waters. Inside returned to the wild.
the aquarium, a crowd was already forming CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES

90 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 The National
Geographic Society,
committed to illuminat-
ing and protecting the
wonder of our world, has
funded Explorer Kiliii
Yüyan’s work document-
ing human communities
and the natural world
since 2021.
ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKENDRY

RALPH PACE AND KILIII YÜYAN IMAGES TAKEN UNDER U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE PERMITS 37946D AND 37085D
 SURFACE SLEEPING COAT CARE
In kelp forests, sea otters cling It takes regular grooming to
to seaweed as an anchor to maintain an insulating and buoy-
avoid drifting while they sleep. ant layer of air in dense otter fur.

Great white sharks sometimes

attack otters—which they rarely
eat—mistaking them for seals.

SUITED OCEAN NEWCOMERS

Whales and seals developed blubber
of years. Sea otters evolved only with

FOR
and have different but ingenious ada

THE SEA
Sea otters, with the animal
kingdom’s thickest fur,
can spend their entire lives
in water; river otters, their
distant cousins, spend two- Flat tail
thirds of their time on land.
For sea otters to maintain
25%
of total length
this marine lifestyle—
Lar
thriving in frigid seas
inhospitable to their furry
mammal relatives—they
must constantly produce
Round tail
and conserve body heat.
40%
Purple sea urchin
Strongylocentrotus
purpuratus

KELP FOREST
OUT OF BALANCE IN BALANCE STRATEGIC STRENGTH
Sea otters have voracious Kelp forests in California’s Sea otters have strong
appetites for bivalves Monterey Bay recovered hind limbs and webbed
and other invertebrates, after urchin-eating otter feet, which frees their
especially clams and sea populations rebounded. paws for finding and
urchins. Without otters, Fish stocks also recovered; grabbing food on dives.
overabundant urchins kelp beds often support River otters rely more
can decimate kelp forests. fish nurseries. on full-body undulation.

FERNANDO G. BAPTISTA, CHRISTINE FELLENZ, AND EVE C

SOURCES: JAMES BODKIN, BIOLOGIST EMERITUS, U.S. GEO
 STAYING ON TOP TOOL TRICKS
Sea otters conserve energy be- Sea otters use rocks to dislodge
cause they float; river otters must prey, then swim to the surface to
swim to remain at the surface. smash shells and eat their catch.

Clam

Rock

r for warmth over tens of millions SOUTHERN

hin the past three million years SEA OTTER
aptations to keep warm. Enhydra lutris nereis
100 lb max

3.9%
4 ft, 10 in max

of body weight

Guard hairs Minimal

body fat
Underhairs Skin Muscle
Loose flaps of
Air layer underarm skin can

2%
store food and
favored rock tools.

of body weight

12%
rge webbed feet 1.4%
NORTH
AMERICAN
RIVER OTTER
Lontra canadensis
34 lb max
4 ft, 6 in max

Fur density

900,000 450,000
Daily consumption as
a share of body weight
hairs per square inch hairs per square inch
Guard hairs

25% 14%
Matted Sea River
Underhairs underhairs otter otter
Air
FELTED FUR bubbles LUNG POWER BODY LIKE A FURNACE
Long guard hairs flatten Large lungs add buoy- Sea otters eat large quanti-
down and block water ancy at the surface and ties to feed a strategically
from a lower layer of provide a store of oxy- inefficient metabolism.
Air layer,
scaled underhairs. When gen to the circulatory Their mitochondria—the
1/5 in
grooming, otters mat, Air trapped in under- HAIRS system during forag- energy centers in cells—
SHOWN
or felt, their underhairs hairs insulates against ing dives that can last continuously emit heat to
Skin ACTUAL
together to trap air. cold ocean waters. SIZE nearly eight minutes. keep their bodies warm.

CONANT, NGM STAFF. MESA SCHUMACHER

OLOGICAL SURVEY, ALASKA SCIENCE CENTER; RANDALL DAVIS, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
 SINGLE MOMS

short to protect vulnerable pups

from eagles and other predators.

Pups are so buoyant they

can’t dive until they’re
two months old.

DEADLY TRADE, PROMISING REBOUND

There may have been as many as 300,000 sea otters before the rise of the
global fur trade in 1741. By 1911, they were nearly extinct, and the first legal
protections were put in place. Many populations are steadily growing today.

North
Pole

A R C T I C
O C E A N
A S I A CANADA
N O R
T H
A
R U S S I A ALASKA M UNITED
(U.S.) Sitka B.C. E
R S TAT E S
Ketchikan I
Se C
Ok a of en
. Beri ng Prince
William WASH. A
hot S e a Pribilof
P

sk Sound Prince of
tka

Commander Is. Wales I.

ha

Halibut OREG.
Is.
mc

Sakhalin Cove Vancouver

Ka

Amchitka I. Island
ds CA
LIF
an ORN
s Isl San Francisco Bay I A
a nd Aleutian
il Isl MEX.
Historic range
Kur Monterey Bay
JAPAN of sea otters
N Baja
A California
C E
P A C C O
I F I 500 mi
500 km

COUNTING OTTERS
The three subspecies Russian Northern Southern
are categorized by geo- Enhydra lutris lutris Enhydra lutris kenyoni Enhydra lutris nereis
graphically separate

7,500 109,500 3,000

populations. Biological
differences are small;
estimates are based on
regional surveys. (Population in 2012) (2021) (2019)

MAP SOURCES: JAMES BODKIN; EKATERINA OVSYANIKOVA AND OTHERS, MARINE MAMMAL SCIENCE, 2020;
MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION; U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; FISHERIES AND OCEANS CANADA
Tlingit fur artist Christy
Ruby heads home after
a day’s hunt off Prince
of Wales Island. As an
Indigenous Alaskan,
Ruby is permitted by
law to harvest sea
otters, as long as they
are only used for sub-
sistence or for tradi-
tional handicrafts—fur
clothing in her case.
“I don’t take it lightly
when I take a life,”
Ruby says. “It’s ances-
tral. It’s in my blood.”
KILIII YÜYAN
around the glass-walled sea otter tank; from the
perspective of the tank’s residents, the human
species must sometimes appear as one endless
lineup of goofy smiles and raised cell phones. A
couple of undulating laps, a little nose-rubbing
with the paws, a quick session of Bang Plastic
Ball Against Rocks—everything seems to provide
extreme amusement for the bipeds on the other
side of the glass. Pop a whiskery head out of the
water and pick a couple of gawkers to flirt with:
happy mayhem, guaranteed.
There are semi-rational explanations for peo-
ple’s ardor at the sight of sea otters, and you
can hear experts tick them off: 1. Sea otters are
tool users; they pick up appropriately shaped
stones, roll over, and position the stones on
their stomachs as shellfish-smashing devices.
2. They’re among the world’s smallest marine
mammals, and they swim on their backs, which
is weirdly entertaining to watch. 3. Something
about their faces, the fur, a furry little animal
being graceful in the sea …
And here the experts tend to give up, yielding
to the obvious. “When people ask me about them,
I have to be very professional, with my game face
on,” Hazan told me. “But when no one’s around,
we definitely use the c-word.” Cute, she means.
So relentless is sea otter cuteness that people
who work all day with them, while not immune
to it, can find it exasperating. The notion that
wild sea otters hold each other’s paws, for exam-
ple, to keep from drifting apart: Winsome but
wrong. (Sorry.) Some years ago, two sea otters at
an aquarium were photographed floating paw in
paw; those images have kept up a robust internet
presence, but there’s no reliable evidence that
sea otters regularly do this in open water. It is
true that they hug their pups while swimming
on their backs. It is also true that they sometimes
converge into “rafts,” giving the impression of
companions gathered for a pleasant group float.
Sea otters can be ferocious, though. They’re
predators: carnivorous and tough. They have
jaws and teeth that crush clamshells and rip
the guts out of spiky littler animals. Their near-
extinction story is a brutal eco-drama that
commences in the 1700s, when Russian sailors
exploring the Aleutian Islands learned what
Indigenous Pacific coastal people already knew:
Sea otters are covered with the thickest, most
luxuriant fur in the world. The coastal people
also prized those pelts, but they hunted at an
otter-sustaining pace; the new hunters possessed
98 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
no such wisdom. By 1911, when a treaty curtailed
the international seal and sea otter fur trade,
a few sparse clusters were all that remained of
the sea otter population that had once ringed the
Pacific—between 150,000 and 300,000, from Baja
California in Mexico up into the northern islands
off Alaska, Russia, and Japan.
Now, in waters off the North American conti-
nent, a different kind of human intervention has
been helping sea otters survive and spread once
again. Are they thriving? Touchy question. Is this
a happy ending? Touchier question. What about
the latest ideas for hurrying that spread along—
reintroducing sea otters to more places they
once inhabited, like San Francisco Bay? Raise
that question among debating partisans, espe-
cially people who make their living catching the
shellfish that multiplied when no sea otters were
around to eat them, and, well, brace yourself. It’s
complicated, figuring out how tough, carnivo-
rous predators fit into a world that changed while
they were gone, and amid this collision of opin-
ions about Enhydra lutris there was something
comforting about the precision of the morning’s
task: Help otter 820 get safely back to sea.
Mayer quieted the engine, studying the
gray-green water. The rescue sea otters at
the Monterey aquarium are numbered rather
than named, to keep sentiment in check; the plan
is to return them, if possible, to the wild. Otter
820 arrived at the facility’s intensive care unit—
someone phoned in a beached-pup sighting;
rescuers drove out to scoop her up—between
otters 819 and 821. Today’s try at releasing her
was a second attempt, as a few months ear-
lier she’d failed the first: Mayer and Hazan
transmitter-tracked her as she wandered about,
ate too little, kept losing weight. When they
finally brought her back in, she was so wasted
she slumped without protest into their net.
“We restored her to normal weight and
health,” Mayer said. “Now we’re trying again.”
He nodded at Hazan, who pushed 820’s box to
the edge of the motorboat, tipped it down, and
threw open the door.
A N E W B O R N S E A O T T E R
weighs about five pounds, resembles a fur pil-
low with eyeballs, and for the next few months
needs a mother for everything—not just food
but also the most basic instruction in staying a sea otter,” Mayer says. “They’d follow you
alive. The adult males don’t stick around to around. You couldn’t lose your sea otter pup if
help, and the pups don’t instinctively under- you wanted to.”
stand how to grab shellfish off the seabed, crack Trial and error taught the humans too. Wild
open a crab’s back, or stash smashing stones sea otters must not associate the sight and
under their armpits as they swim. They have smell of people with comfort or food, so the
to be shown how to groom constantly, fluffing bottle- feeders improvised what they called
their coats and blowing air
into the underfur; sea otters
have no blubber, and the
famous fur is a thick insu-
lation system for keeping

SEA OTTERS HAVE NO

them warm in the water,
where they spend most of
their time. In the Pacific a
sea otter with matted fur
or skin wounds can quickly
BLUBBER, AND THE
freeze to death.
The Monterey Bay Aquar- FAMOUS FUR IS A
ium has been experimenting
with sea otter recovery ever THICK INSULATION SYSTEM
FOR KEEPING THEM
since it opened in 1984, with
its focus on the region’s
marine life. Some of the last
surviving sea otters off Cal-
ifornia lived not far from
WARM IN THE WATER.
Monterey; scientists call
these southern sea otters, to
distinguish them from the
northerns near and above
the Canadian border. Before
long, reports of injured or stranded southerns Darth Vader disguises: black mask, gloves, dark
set in motion a remarkable sequence of rescue poncho to alter the human shape. Eventually, to
and rehab at the new aquarium. In-house vet- minimize even more the contact between pups
erinarians performed emergency otter surgery. and people, the aquarium’s biologists decided
One area, closed to the public, became a sea otter to try having the resident adult female sea
neonatal ward. otters take over the motherly finishing school.
Then, because even healthy pups still had These were rescues that for various reasons had
to learn how to grow up, staff members began been declared unsuitable for release back into
stepping in as substitute mothers. Mayer no lon- the wild but might still intuitively understand
ger works at the aquarium, but during his early what to do—how to foster a pup, teach it to
years there as an animal scientist, his duties forage and stay warm, prepare it for meeting
included some all-nighters on the aquarium’s others in the sea.
sea otter waterbed, soothing and bottle-feeding No aquarium had ever tried such a thing. But
an anxious pup. He would carry a pup into the the first of the surrogate mothers (as the biolo-
bay with him, a weight belt over his wet suit, gists labeled them) inspected their new charges,
and demonstrate diving for shellfish while his clearly grasped the task at hand, and got to work.
pupil watched from above. He used his teeth to That was more than 20 years ago. The popula-
crack the shells of live crabs—more parental- tion of southern sea otters is currently estimated
style demonstration—while floating on his at about 3,000, an encouraging if still modest
back. He put shells on his chest and pounded advance toward true recovery; they are scattered
them with rocks. up and down the middle third of California’s
“We’d essentially model what it was to be coast, with 100 to 150 living in the protected

W H AT ’ S N OT TO LOV E ? 99
While their mothers
feed together from
a shallow mussel bed
in Monterey Bay, stay-
ing close enough to
keep a watchful eye,
these two pups meet
for a playdate: They
cavort, chase each
other, and take turns
giving shoulder rides.
RALPH PACE
Monterey Bay slough the aquarium has used as
a prime release spot. Wild sea otters now share
that inlet with surrogate-raised sea otters and
their descendants, all of which seem to have
figured out how to yank crabs and clams from
the mucky bottom. Where smashing rocks are
scarce, they improvise by using empty clam-
shells or by bashing hard-shelled prey against
boat hulls and dock pilings. They’re surviving.
They’re raising their young. They’re satisfying
their prodigious appetites.
And here, problematically, is the 21st-century
sea otter conundrum: their appetites.

S E A O T T E R S E A T A L O T .
The daily intake of an adult sea otter can weigh
about a quarter what the otter weighs; lactating
mothers need even more. They eat shellfish,
and the about-a-quarter calculation doesn’t
include the shells. (For one 60-pound adult sea
otter, picture about 15 pounds of shellfish meat.)
Within their Pacific surroundings, sea otters are
a keystone species, the term biologists use for
animals or plants that are especially important
to the ecosystems in which they live. Those giant
otter appetites, plus their choice of prey, can
maintain—or restore—a healthy equilibrium in
their part of the sea.
Among the shellfish sea otters eat, for
instance, are urchins. Urchins eat kelp, so with-
out the otters around to hold their numbers
down, grazing urchins can take down whole
forests of kelp. And scientists are learning that
kelp forests, along with seagrasses that flourish
when sea otters are present, play their own cru- have. And some people are not.”
cial roles in marine resilience. Kelp tangles make Case in point: commercial shellfish harvesters.
protective nurseries for baby finfish, increasing “Like setting off a nuclear bomb,” a dive fish-
the number and variety of adult fish. Seagrasses erman named Jeremy Leighton told me one
filter out water contaminants and lock carbon afternoon in a waterfront café, describing sea-
into the sediment. beds he’s seen in the wake of hungry-sea-otter
“Sea otters have huge effects,” says research foraging. “Everything getting wiped out, in a
ecologist Tim Tinker, a University of California, radius, as they expand.”
Santa Cruz adjunct professor who is one of the Leighton lives in Ketchikan, Alaska. He was
world’s leading sea otter experts and has spent born in Alaska, as were his father and grand-
decades studying both the northern and south- mother. His catch includes geoduck, a large,
ern populations. “That’s why understanding burrowing clam, and sea cucumber, another
them is so important. When they’re removed shellfish. His territory is Southeast Alaska, cur-
from an ecosystem or put back into an ecosys- rently the global epicenter of people hostile to sea
tem, everything changes. And that’s disruptive. otters. It was here that I heard them described
Some people are going to like the effects they as “an infestation” (a Haida tribal leader) and “a

102 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 On a commercial dive
boat, Jared Ellis fin-
ishes hauling up sea
cucumbers harvested
by boat owner Craig
Thomas. As shellfish-
hungry sea otters have
spread throughout
other parts of South-
east Alaska, they’ve so
far mostly stayed away
from this spot, Kasaan
Bay. But wandering sea
otters are now sighted
here from time to time.
“We see it as a matter
of time,” says Ellis, who
works in construction
in the summer but
hopes to become a
career dive fisherman.
“It’s scary, for sure.”
KILIII YÜYAN

disaster” (a commercial crabber, glaring at the
water off his boat). Also this, from a man who’s
fished the area for almost 40 years: “Actually one
of the most destructive things on the planet.”
To be fair, that last description was prefaced
by “cute and fuzzy and cuddly and all that stuff,
but actually …” The speaker was Ed Hansen,
who works with a group called the Southeast
Alaska Fishermen’s Alliance; his wife, Kathy, is
executive director. They appreciate the popular
appeal, in other words. But their version of the
modern sea otter story is one of good intentions
gone awry—because unlike their southern rela-
tives, northern sea otters in recent decades have
multiplied prolifically in waters from which
they had once vanished. A 2021 U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service–supported study put the South-
east Alaska count at more than 27,000 sea otters.
Canadian scientists estimate that another 8,000
live along British Columbia’s coast.
Why the huge difference in comeback num-
bers, northerns versus southerns? The reasons
start with human intervention more than a
half century ago, when the U.S. government
was holding underground nuclear tests on
Amchitka Island, a thousand miles west of main-
land Alaska. Amchitka is part of the Aleutians,
and although that’s the very archipelago where
the hunt to near extinction began, by the mid-
1960s, some of the world’s remaining wild sea
otters could still be found there—remnant col-
onies, biologists called them. After shock waves

W H AT ’ S N OT TO LOV E ? 103
A sea otter grouping,
like this cluster in
Alaska’s Halibut Cove,
is called a raft. The
genders tend to split
up by raft: all females,
with pups and often
one territorial male,
or all males. Together
they groom and rest
between bouts of the
vigorous foraging that
frustrates shellfish-
harvesting humans.
“It’s a long-term
relationship we are
in,” says scientist
Tim Tinker. “Humans
and sea otters have
to basically re-figure
out how we coexist.”
KILIII YÜYAN
from the first test blast in 1965 killed hundreds
of these otters, Alaska Department of Fish and
Game officials began an extraordinary series
of relocation airlifts: Over the next seven years
more than 700 sea otters were pulled from the
Aleutians and Prince William Sound, flown east,
and lowered into the water in ancestral Pacific
Northwest sea otter territory.
The otters released off Oregon didn’t make
it; by 1981, they’d scattered or died. The otters
put in off Washington State hung in along one
stretch of coastal waters, their numbers grow-
ing steadily but slowly. In Southeast Alaska
and British Columbia, though, the relocators
set sea otters into the coastline’s multiple bays
and inlets, which turned out to be ideal pro-
tected settings for rapid—some Alaskans would
say explosive—population growth. The females
had pups (seven to 10 in a lifetime is typical).
The pups grew up and had pups. The expand-
ing colonies moved into more bays and inlets,
looking for food.
H E R E ’ S W H A T T H E 1 9 7 2
Marine Mammal Protection Act says about kill-
ing any such animal, including a sea otter, in
the United States: You can’t. Criminal offense.
You can’t “harass” a marine mammal, either.
There are a very few exemptions, including
one that applies to Alaska’s Native people,
who may hunt sea otters for “subsistence” or
for “authentic Native articles of handicraft
and clothing,” as in skinning them and using
their pelts only in the ways the law details.
This means that if you’re watching sea otters
eat your family’s livelihood, the MMPA says
there’s nothing you can do about it, Alaska
Native or not. (Canada has similar prohibi-
tions, but with no exemptions for its Indigenous
First Nations.) “The MMPA wasn’t written for
ever dealing with overabundance,” says Mike
Miller, a Sitka Tribal Council member who
chairs Alaska’s Indigenous People’s Council
for Marine Mammals. “But if you look at their
overall impact on ocean health, there’s a positive
side to otters too. There’s got to be something
close to balance someplace.”
Sea otters have occupied quite a bit of Miller’s
time since the turn into this century. He’s part
of a cultural initiative to teach and encourage
106 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
the kind of Alaska Native sea otter hunting
and skin sewing the law does permit—though
it’s been a challenge to build a viable sea otter
fur industry, given the many restrictions as to
how pelts may be obtained and used. He’s also
intrigued by the situation off the coast of his
hometown, Sitka: In the early 2000s, advanc-
ing sea otters were out there hoovering up the
shellfish—crabs, abalones, gumboot chitons,
urchins—that locals had harvested for genera-
tions. Recently, though, the sea otter numbers
have dropped in Sitka Sound, and the shellfish
stock is improving. Is this because of the Native
hunters, prompted by that cultural initiative,
who have made it a point to shoot their otters
in those waters? Not enough to wipe sea otters
out of the sound, but enough to send a warning
to stay away?
“Otters are smart,” Miller says. “We didn’t
have to take them all out.” Tribal knowledge
and scholarly research support the idea that sea
otters learn to recognize and avoid danger areas
and that Indigenous people may have once used
site-specific sea otter hunting to protect desig-
nated shellfish areas. There’s no question that
they did live amid an abundance of shellfish and
sea otters—long ago, to be sure, before there was
refrigerated transport plus a global appetite for
the animals that sea otters eat. Now Miller is part
of an ongoing meeting of Southeast Alaska “sea
otter stakeholders,” as they label themselves—
fish and game officials, tribal members, scien-
tists, and commercial fishermen—all trying to
work out a modern plan for sharing resources
with a keystone animal that humans came so
close to wiping out.
“It’s important for us to relearn how to coex-
ist with sea otters,” Tim Tinker says. “Humans
had learned that. And then for 150 years arriving
Europeans learned how not to.”
No specific proposals have emerged from the
Alaska discussions, but there are people watch-
ing closely from the western edge of the lower
48, especially around San Francisco Bay and the
Oregon coast. Both regions are under serious
study as reintroduction sites—shellfish-rich
waters that once supported thousands of sea
otters and could perhaps do so again. And in
both places, healthy sea otter colonies might
improve the water quality and plant life while
delighting tourists.
The local dive industry and crab fisheries’
wary response: We’re part of the ecosystem too.
“We are not necessarily dead set against sea otter her back to health again, and this time 820 was
reintroduction,” says Oregon Dungeness Crab formally pronounced unsuited to life in the
Commission executive director Tim Novotny, wild. She lives these days in a rock-landscaped
who has joined ongoing talks with the Elakha outdoor pool at SeaWorld San Diego, where she
Alliance, a group of conservationists, scientists, and her poolmates—all rescue sea otters, like
coastal experts, and tribal leaders exploring 820—“hit it off,” says Shirley Hill, an animal
another attempt at returning sea otters to the care specialist who’s worked for decades with
state. “The concern is, you
don’t want to put a floating
time bomb of furry crab-
eaters in the water. Goats are
cute, but nobody wants 5,000

THE 21ST-CENTURY
of them in their backyard.”
Elakha is a Chinook word
for “sea otter,” and the alli-
ance’s president, a former
Ore g on coas tal planner
SEA OTTER CONUNDRUM:
named Robert Bailey, says
he and his colleagues are THEIR APPETITES.
working hard to learn from
the Alaska experience—to A 60-POUND ADULT
EATS ABOUT 15 POUNDS OF
regard sea otters as “every-
body’s treasures,” as he puts
it, while trying to craft rein-
troduction proposals that
might keep human shellfish
SHELLFISH MEAT A DAY.
harvesters from losing too
much of their catch. In any
case, the sea otters would
have to be placed strategi-
cally, Bailey says, and their
population monitored closely. “We want to sea otters. “She’s just got a great disposition.”
minimize that impact,” he adds. Her name, also, is no longer digits. A pub-
Where might these sea otter transplants come lic poll renamed her Nova, and Hill says that
from? Among other sources, the populations despite the way Nova sometimes tries to cadge
that include surrogate-raised otters like 820. A extra food from the others’ meals, she appears
carefully monitored reintroduction site could to have won over even the pool’s oldest sea otter,
become another release spot for the Monte- who tends toward aloofness. The last time I saw
rey Bay Aquarium’s rescue sea otters, and two her, Nova was cruising around juggling a plastic
other West Coast aquariums are developing tube stuffed with bits of abalone and octopus
Monterey-style programs to pair surrogate sea frozen in ice. The attendants toss these into
otter mothers with rescue pups. Those programs the pool so the otters can bash them around to
will need appropriate release spots too. loosen the meat and then dig it out, and Nova
And here it would be nice to be able to report had evidently decided to toy with hers first, bal-
that 820 was last observed swimming serenely ancing it on her stomach, pushing it with her
in Monterey Bay, smashing crabs on her nose, banging it against the glass. People in the
stomach and so forth. Alas, that’s not what hap- gathered crowd pointed and smiled, and a man
pened. In the tradition of her species, 820’s story lifted the small girl beside him so she could get
turned into a just barely survival saga: A few a better view. “So cute,” he said. j
weeks after that second release, she slid onto
a nearby dock, wounded and emaciated. She’d Cynthia Gorney is a longtime contributing writer.
Ralph Pace specializes in underwater and environ-
been bitten by a shark. She had parasites. Res- mental photography. Kiliii Yüyan documents how
cuers scooped her up again, the vet staff nursed cultures around the globe relate to nature.

W H AT ’ S N OT TO LOV E ? 107
 BY PETER
SCHWARTZSTEIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MOISES SAMAN

MADE
FROM
MUD West African
architects look to
the past to beat
future heat.

The mud-brick walls

of the 19th-century
Grand Mosque of Bobo-
Dioulasso in Burkina
Faso are waterproofed
every year with shea
butter. But mud often
can’t hold up to the
intense rains climate
change brings.

109
At the Burkina Institute
of Technology in Kou-
dougou, designed by
celebrated Burkinabe
architect Francis Kéré
and completed in 2020,
poured clay forms the
massive walls. A facade
of eucalyptus wood
creates shade. Above
each classroom, a vent
allows hot air to escape.
The Yemeni city of
Shibam was designed
with the scorching
desert heat in mind.
Nicknamed Manhat-
tan of the Desert,
its towering earthen
buildings of vari-
ous heights provide
shadow. The white
walls reflect direct sun-
light and prevent heat
from accumulating.
ON A MID-MAY MORNING
IN THE VILLAGE OF
KOUMI, BURKINA FASO,
SANON MOUSA HAS
NEARLY FINISHED ANNUAL
MAINTENANCE ON HIS
THREE-ROOM HOUSE.
He replaced termite-ridden roof supports with
freshly cut beams and reinforced the heat-
defying mud walls, some of which are a yard
thick and more than a hundred years old. After
replenishing the roof thatch and sacrificing a goat
to the memory of his ancestors, all that remains
is applying layers of rainproofing to the exterior.
“The mud will keep us cool. The motor oil, clay,
and cow dung will keep us dry,” Mousa says as we
tour his living space, which is a good 25 degrees
cooler than outside. “We’ve perfected this.”
Mousa, a 50-something retired school librarian
with a somber demeanor, is proud of his house.
That doesn’t mean living in it is his first choice, The walls of the Grand
Mosque of Bobo-
though. In recent years he’s watched his wealth- Dioulasso are more
ier neighbors in this verdant strip of the country’s than six feet thick, pro-
southwest rebuild their homes in concrete. He tecting worshippers
from the heat. Such
has smarted at what he sees as a symbol of his thick mud brick slowly
relative poverty. Despite his considerable debt absorbs the heat of the
and consecutive failed harvests of the crops he day and then releases
it as the night cools.
relies on to pad his pension, status and safety
are tempting him to borrow money and abandon This story was pro-
duced and published
his mud home. When we met, two brothers in by National Geographic
the village had recently been killed in their sleep through a reporting part-
nership with the United
when a mud wall collapsed on them. Nations Development
Inside a crumbling mud meetinghouse, Mousa Programme.

114 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 HEAT AND HERITAGE
Naturally cooled and intricately decorated mud homes have
BURKINA
FASO
Langouérou
Shea
tree

defined architecture in Burkina Faso for centuries. Many AFRICA

people have now switched to fully concrete homes, but mud
is still in use—and increasingly recognized as a traditional
solution to the modern problem of rising temperatures.

Family AREA ENLARGED Villages such as Lan-

compounds gouérou, and the
in the village model area re-created
here, are a mix of older
and newer styles.

Langouérou

Fowl
enclosure

Women’s realm
Married couples customarily sleep
separately. Twin circle houses
for women have low doorways
to block heat—and intruders.

Kitchen

Crocodile

Skylight
Layers of
mud balls,
packed
Average step together
equals 3 ft

Mud Ladder
Grain
balls
pot
6-8“
Bench
Fowl
1.1 ft enclosure
Courtyard

Open
doorway
Mud 2.6 ft tall
bricks Mold
Fire pit

1 PLANNING THE HOUSE 2 BUILDING BLOCKS Lizard

Rooms are typically three to four
steps wide; floor plans are etched
on the ground. Height is measured
in brick layers or mud balls. Con-
struction is a community effort.
Locally mined, clay-rich earth is
mixed with water, then molded
into bricks or balls. Grass, cow
dung, and other materials can be
added to strengthen the mixture.

MONICA SERRANO, NGM STAFF; ALEXANDER STEGMAIER

 3 MULTIUSE ROOF Traditional roof Modern roof
Wood beams support an earthen Earthen slab Corrugated
slab that insulates the structure. iron
A finished roof is also used for
Wood beam Wood beam
drying food, for storage, and for
outdoor sleeping on warm nights. Mud brick Mud brick
laid lengthwise laid widthwise

Men’s quarters
NEWER TOUCHES
In the 1970s, villagers began incorporating
modern materials into mud homes, and mar-
ried couples began sleeping under the same
roof. The newer homes are simpler to build
and maintain but harder to keep cool.

Modern add-ons
Metal roofs are easy to install
but offer little heat protection
and are not multifunctional.

Men’s quarters
Rectangular homes
where men traditionally Standard-
sleep have large doors size metal
but thick, cooling walls. Lantern Thin
door
walls
5.7 ft tall

Thick
walls
Water

Bath
Wooden
door
3.8 ft tall

House
entrance

Pigments are
mixed using a
mortar and pestle

Second layer: Iron-rich

colored earth plaster enhanced coating

First layer: earth plaster

4 WATERPROOFING 5 DECORATION SOURCES: HIROHIDE KOBAYASHI,

Walls are coated with resins and
fats extracted from fruit or shea
trees. This protects them from
water during rainy seasons but
must be reapplied annually.
Wall designs are painted using
natural pigments, such as black
from graphite and red from iron-
rich soils. Lizards are symbols of
life; crocodiles are sacred.
KYOTO UNIVERSITY; LASSINA
SIMPORÉ, UNIVERSITY OF
OUAGADOUGOU; DIRECTORATE
OF CULTURAL HERITAGE,
MINISTRY OF CULTURE OF
BURKINA FASO; THIERRY JOFFROY,
UNIVERSITÉ GRENOBLE ALPES

MADE FROM MUD 117

Workers cool off
during their break at
a residential building
site on the outskirts
of Marrakech. The
Moroccan city has
embraced concrete in
its construction boom.
sits to the side of the village chief. Sanu, who
goes by only one name, is furious. He has man-
dated mud construction in the village center in
a bid to preserve the old ways, but fewer and
fewer residents are following his instructions—
including his own sons. “This is our heritage,”
Sanu says. “For thousands of years these houses
gave us a good life. Why would we change when
we most need them?
“I guess this is modernity,” he adds. “Maybe
we can’t fight it anymore.”
MUD VERSUS CONCRETE
there are
A C R O S S A F R I C A’ S S A H E L R E G I O N ,
thousands of villages like Koumi—and in the
dozens I’ve visited in several countries, the use
118 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
of concrete is increasing. As living standards
rise and access to concrete expands, some of the
world’s hottest, poorest landscapes are rapidly
morphing from brown to cinder block gray.
But abandoning traditional materials and the
construction techniques that underpin their
uses is anything but a sign of progress. Or so says
a growing coterie of architects, community lead-
ers, and government officials. Particularly not
now, when climate change is making already hot
regions even hotter, and concrete is fueling some
of that warming. The manufacture of cement, a
key ingredient of concrete, accounts for around
8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Proponents of traditional building techniques
are adamant that climate-battered communities
need more, not fewer, homes, schools, and civic

buildings made in the traditional way.
“The reality is that cement construction is
simply sexy,” says Francis Kéré, a Burkina Faso–
born architect and globally renowned advocate
of ecosensitive architecture. “But it’s bad sex. It
is not producing comfort.”
Mud walls, when built thick enough, can
absorb and store a lot of heat, which then dis-
sipates as outside temperatures cool in the
evening. By contrast, thin concrete cinder
blocks, with their hollow recesses, allow heat to
pass through freely, rapidly warming interiors.
Architects like Kéré are motivated in part by
a desire to preserve heritage and identity. For
all mud’s recent association with poverty and
backwardness, bricks made from the material
can produce spectacular, globally significant
architecture, such as Timbuktu’s city center
in Mali and Burkina Faso’s Grand Mosque of
Bobo-Dioulasso.
Countries with impressive but largely lost tra-
ditions of mud construction, including Saudi
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also are try-
ing to replicate the aesthetics and cooling features
of traditional architecture, incorporating wind
tunnels, building orientation, and use of shade.
They appear less interested in the construction
materials that were once used. “Our forefathers
built things with whatever they had, and maybe
if they had had a certain type of modern com-
posite panel 500 years ago, they’d have used it,”
says Chris Wan, head of design management in
Masdar, a pioneering sustainability-oriented city
in Abu Dhabi. “It’s about adapting traditional
materials, traditional designs. We also build
whatever’s best within our means.”
But mud-brick revivalists have a grander ambi-
tion as well, particularly in Africa. On a conti-
nent that accounts for just 4 percent of global
emissions yet is suffering much of the worst
climate-related fallout, they’re trying to assume
ownership of some of the solutions, even as world
powers struggle to take meaningful action. In
beating the heat, these architects suggest, home-
grown, nature-based traditions could be every bit
as important as foreign technology and expertise.
“We have chosen artifice. We have chosen to
detach ourselves from our origins,” says Salima
Naji, an award-winning architect. Naji champions
mud construction in Morocco, which has aggres-
sively turned its back on the material in recent
decades, even though the country boasts one of
the richest collections of earth architecture in the
world. “We have done this because we have for-
gotten the extraordinary benefits of these build-
ings in the heat. But we must remember, because
we need it now more than ever,” Naji says.
A REFUGE FOR THE SWEATY
by car provides
C R I S S C R O S S I N G B U R K I N A FA S O
an illustration of mud’s many perks. It’s at least
113 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade by the time I
arrive in the northern town of Kaya but well under
86 degrees inside architect Clara Sawadogo’s lat-
est design. The vaulted earth ceiling and stone-
mud walls of the half-finished clinic cocoon the
cool. Angled toward the prevailing north winds
and surrounded by lush, shady greenery, the site
is already enticing enough for dozing stray dogs.
MADE FROM MUD 119
At a quarry in Pissy,
on the western edge
of Ouagadougou,
Burkina Faso, men,
women, and children
mine granite to be
made into concrete
and gravel. Because of
high demand for con-
crete, this quarry is
still open despite com-
petition from nearby
mechanized ones.
Workers at a quarry
in Houndé, Burkina
Faso, hammer laterite
stone bricks from
the solid ground.
Mud bricks must be
shaped before dry-
ing, but laterite can
be extracted in rectan-
gles. Both traditional
building materials
create cooler struc-
tures than concrete,
are cheaper, and
require less energy
to produce.
 ‘WE’VE LEARNED THAT
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT
THE MATERIALS. IT’S
NOT ABOUT CONCRETE
BEING BAD. IT’S WHAT
YOU DO WITH THEM.’
FRANCIS KÉRÉ, ARCHITECT

Sawadogo is young, environmentally savvy,

and part of a global movement to repopularize
mud. She’s got plenty of talking points. The
material is essentially free, or at least locally avail-
able for a fraction of the cost of concrete, which
requires several ingredients that, in Burkina
Faso’s case, are mostly imported. At the adobe
pits that dot the outskirts of many of the larger
villages, teams of laborers lever mud from the
ground; compress it into rectangular, cookie
cutter-like fittings; then sell each air-dried brick
for 40 West African francs, about 10 U.S. cents.
“People tell me: It’s the 21st century. Stop using
mud,” Sawadogo says, gesturing at the clinic.
“But look at this. What’s not modern about this?”
Mud construction contributes little to
global warming. And concrete tends to be a
gateway, once people can afford it, to another
fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning.
Worldwide, both the electricity and the coolants
required by air-conditioning are growing sources
of greenhouse gas emissions.
The greatest selling point of mud in Burkina
Faso, where temperatures seldom dip much
below 90 degrees, is that it makes the heat tol-
erable, even without air-conditioning. Most of concrete and mud houses, nor wood. That’s
Africa is on track for more than two degrees Cel- vital in a country losing up to 600,000 acres of
sius (3.6°F) of warming by late this century, a fig- woodland a year to deforestation, according to
ure that masks even more dramatic temperature forestry officials, some of it for roof supports.
increases in parts of the continent. In the Royal Court of Tiébélé, a commune
In Boromo, roughly a three-hour drive south- along the Ghanaian border where most resi-
west of the capital, Ouagadougou, Ilboudou dents have long since turned to concrete, some
Abdallah has recently rebuilt his part-concrete, appear to regret ever having abandoned their
sheet-metal-roofed house entirely in mud. “I mud homes.
can’t tell you what a joy it is being able to spend “They see the comfort that they said no
time inside the house now without suffering,” he to before,” says Bayeridiena Abdou, a farmer
says. The Nubian Vault Association, an interna- who lives inside the local chief ’s mud-only
tional NGO, helped construct the home, one of compound and has witnessed clandestine
more than 600 private houses it built in Burkina nocturnal returns to the exiles’ crumbling old
Faso in 2020. houses. “They’re sneaking back.”
The organization’s vaulted model requires nei- Doctors in four medical facilities I visited
ther metal roofs, which magnify heat in both report a roughly fivefold increase in heat-related

124 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 Maxim Kiemdrebeojo,
17, lives at this Kéré-
designed orphanage
in Koudougou built
from laterite brick.
Some children here
have been displaced
by armed conflict
with Islamists in the
north and east of
Burkina Faso. Super-
visors think that the
coolness of the building
helps reduce conflict
among residents.

admissions and deaths over the past decade.
Some of them suspect that a disproportionate
number of these patients rebuilt in concrete
but lacked the means to artificially cool their
new houses.
On a sizzling hot day in midsummer, the town
of Léo is still—except for the local clinic. Ram-
bunctious children chase one another among its
shaded courtyards. Their parents rest beneath the
surrounding trees. Even newly arrived patients,
among them a man who’s just been pried from
a car wreck, marvel at the naturally cool wards.
Francis Kéré, designer of these buildings, is
pleased but unsurprised at the effect.
“We’ve learned that it’s not just about the
materials. It’s not about concrete necessarily
being bad,” he says. “It’s what you do with them.
This is what it can look like when you spend the
time to make a proper clay structure.”
Big names near and far seem convinced by his
reasoning. In recent years Kéré has designed a
new national assembly building in Benin that’s
nearly complete. A “symbol for the nation,” he
says, modeled on a palaver tree. Another one he
created for Burkina Faso has yet to get off the
ground. In March 2022 he became the first Afri-
can architect to win the Pritzker Prize, the most
prestigious award in architecture.
DANGEROUS TO LIVE IN?
MUD -BRICK BUILDINGS, for all their seem-
ingly magical cooling powers, have at least one
major drawback.

MADE FROM MUD 125

Salima Naji, a Moroc-
can architect and
anthropologist, works
with traditional con-
struction materials and
methods to preserve
villages and communal
centers in the country.
She restored the Id Issa
Granary in Amtoudi
(seen here), which
protected wheat and
other forms of wealth.
 ‘PEOPLE ARE SCARED,
AND YOU CAN UNDER-
STAND WHY. SOME-
TIMES THE WALLS
JUST FALL DOWN.
YOU COULD DIE.’
LEGNAOUI BIL EID, FARM LABORER
Until the late 1990s, the historic ksar, or for-
tified village, of Bounou in southern Morocco
trilled with the sound of more than a hundred
families. But its rammed-earth walls began to
collapse, and a falling gatehouse badly injured a
teenage boy, shaking residents’ faith in the ksar’s
structural integrity. Tales of even worse disas-
ters elsewhere—some fatal—reinforced that fear.
Gradually, Legnaoui Bil Eid and his family found
themselves almost alone. Now, without the criti-
cal mass of residents needed to maintain the his-
torical crenellated defenses, the ksar is crumbling
at record pace, becoming an even riskier habitat.
“People are scared, and you can understand
why,” says Bil Eid, an agricultural laborer who
earns extra income roping together palm-frond
fences to keep encroaching desert sands at
bay. “Sometimes the walls just fall down. You
could die.”
In one of climate change’s many bitter ironies,
the same warming that has bolstered mud’s
importance against heat is also triggering more
extreme weather events, which imperil mud
structures. Despite frequently resurfacing his
home’s exterior walls, Bil Eid says, the down-
pours these days are far too strong to keep the
interior dry, no matter how much protective lay-
ering he adds. He too is thinking of relocating.
In Telouet, in the Atlas Mountains between
Bounou, in the Sahara, and Marrakech, those
fiercer rains have combined with the impact of
centuries of deforestation to fuel devastating
flash floods through the denuded valleys. Most
years, at least a few locals die. Those who remain
have noted that it’s concrete houses, not those
made of the traditional mixed mud and stone,
that appear to weather the torrents.
Some of the abandonment of traditional
materials may simply be a function of chang-
ing tastes. In his lush, beautifully maintained
garden in Marrakech’s leafy northern periphery,
Mohamed Amine Kabbaj, one of the country’s
128 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
leading architects, regrets some of the aesthetic
changes that have come with the exodus. But
he says it’s only natural that people would favor
concrete. Most traditional mud structures per-
mit only small windows that let in minimal light,
and most of them require regular maintenance
of the kind that time-pressed or leisure-seeking
families prefer to avoid. “These kinds of designs
might be exotic if you come from London or Paris
for one or two days,” he says. “But if you’re given
a choice, you’ll prefer to live somewhere else.”
As much of Morocco has shifted from com-
munal to more individualistic lifestyles, and
as incomes have increased enough for people
to afford AC, mud houses—and their reliance
on the collective to maintain and often build
them—do appear increasingly out of step with
modernity. Deeper environmental and economic
forces, though, frequently leave little choice. In
the countryside, drought and desertification are
hobbling agriculture, the dominant rural pro-
fession. That loss of viable livelihoods is driving
people into the cities. Some villages have lost up
to half their inhabitants to urban areas in recent
years. It’s all contributing to a situation where
many fearful and displaced villagers have also
ended up unhappily living in concrete.
“You need to understand how much I miss the
cool of my old house. Few of us wanted this,” says
Driss Mataoui, who migrated from a mountain
village to an impoverished Marrakech neigh-
borhood 30 years ago. “But life demanded that I
move to the city, and city life is not good for mud.”
Urbanization presents a particular challenge
for proponents of traditional materials and
building techniques. Although mud has histor-
ically been deployed in dense urban settings, as
with Yemen’s centuries-old skyscrapers, archi-
tects fear for its place in cities of the sort that
are swelling across Africa. The helter-skelter,
unplanned nature of those booming metropo-
lises doesn’t always allow for the effective use
of wind direction, airflow, and other natural
cooling devices. For their part, insurance compa-
nies and municipalities remain unconvinced of
mud’s safety, so they frequently legislate against
its use. Even obtaining traditional materials in
urban settings can be surprisingly tricky.
“Where are you going to get mud to build at
scale close to here?” asks Kabbaj. “You have to
go kilometers away.”
Assailed by some of the same debilitating heat
as their Sahelian neighbors to the south, and
Staying cool is vital
in the Anti Atlas
mountains of southern
Morocco, where it’s
so hot that even the
crops require shade.
with air-conditioning still beyond many people’s
means, the likes of Salima Naji aren’t admitting
defeat yet. She has noticed more interest in mud
architecture among villagers across Morocco,
many of whom grasp its tourism potential.
Naji and her peers highlight the strong environ-
mental imperative to rein in, or at least reform,
concrete production in Morocco, where develop-
ers have robbed entire beaches of sand for use in
construction. Elsewhere, in countries like Viet-
nam and Bangladesh, developers source much of
their sand from riverbeds, which fuels soil sub-
sidence and more intense erosion and flooding.
But reviving a tradition when it’s already lost
its grip on the public imagination is a formidable
task. People have grown accustomed to building
houses as and when their finances allow, some-
thing that mud construction, fragile until com-
pletion, doesn’t permit. In some places, concrete
access has expanded so dramatically and knowl-
edge of mud has dropped so precipitously that
the more modern material may be cheaper. Most
important, climate and other struggles continue
to eviscerate the social and natural environment
in which this kind of construction was embedded.
And that could be key. Can traditional architec-
ture thrive when so much that buttressed it can’t?
“This is all connected to society. You cannot
disconnect it from everything that is going on
around us,” Naji acknowledges. “But still we
push ahead. If you have just one, two, three of
these [buildings], it’s not enough. We’re trying
to create a snowball effect to normalize it again.
We need people to see this.”

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE surprised by our success.”

FRANCIS KÉRÉ IS IN a reflective mood when I
call. Each of the past few rainy seasons has been
more destructive than the last, obliterating hun-
dreds of mud-brick buildings across Burkina
Faso, including a school, which collapsed on a
classroom of children, and part of the celebrated
Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso. The subse-
quent bad press has only reinforced the clamor
for concrete, no matter the cost.
But Kéré’s phone is ringing off the hook with
requests for work, and he’s bullish about mud’s
prospects. “It’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of
belief, it’s a matter of political will. It’s a fight,
and we’re not looking left and right. I just push
on,” he says. “There’s a lot of accumulated
knowledge now. In 10 years, you’re going to be
Kéré and other mud advocates have been hard
at work trying to rehabilitate the material’s image.
They’re finding ways to protect mud buildings
from downpours—by adding broader, metal can-
opy roofs that project more than three feet from
the walls, for example, or mixing small portions
of cement into the mud bricks to fortify them.
Just making mud bricks more available can
help. In an industrial park outside the Burkinabe
capital, Mahamoudou Zi’s workers cut, condense,
and sell thousands of standard-size compressed-
earth bricks—providing the reliable supply and
ease of construction that contribute to the suc-
cess of concrete. “I remember how cool my grand-
father’s house was,” Zi says. “I wanted to make it
simpler for others to replicate this experience.”

130 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
 The United Arab
Emirates has an impres-
sive but largely lost
tradition of mud con-
struction. For the
Louvre Abu Dhabi,
architect Jean Nouvel’s
design was inspired
by moucharaby lattice-
work screens, which
protect interiors from
direct sunlight and
provide natural ven-
tilation. This massive
moucharaby creates
what’s been called
a rain of light over
the museum.

Through a rigorous emphasis on not cutting
corners with a material that is unforgiving of
shoddy construction, the mud architects hope
to limit the building collapses that are damning
them all by association. At her construction site
in Kaya, Clara Sawadogo says she has had to
be so exacting in erecting the vaulted roof that
15 of her original 25 masons quit, citing the dif-
ficulty of the work.
More than anything, though, Kéré wonders if,
after being fed a steady diet of half-truths about
mud’s dangers and concrete’s promise, wary
citizens simply need more everyday examples
of what well-built mud architecture can offer.
Around Koudougou, 60 miles west of Ouaga-
dougou, he has tried to create something of a
showcase at a secondary school, Lycée Schorge,
and at the Burkina Institute of Technology, a
technical college. Teachers at the schools say
that the hundreds of students can concentrate
better—under the multilayered and overhanging
roofs, between compressed-earth-brick walls,
and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows.
To one 18-year-old computer science student,
who gave his name as Nataniel and who’s never
lived in a home with electricity, let alone cooling,
it’s almost as if these places are air-conditioned.
“We were told mud was bad,” he says. “We
were told we needed to work to escape this. But I
would be happy to live in something like this.” j
Journalist Peter Schwartzstein is based in Athens,
Greece, and focuses on food, water, and climate.
Moises Saman’s photography centers on the Mid-
dle East and North Africa.

MADE FROM MUD 131

 INSTAGRAM
JAVIER AZNAR
FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

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