A Map of Life Like None Other
There’s a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia that Piotr Naskrecki, an entomologist from Harvard University, often thinks about on slow walks around Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. Pareidolia describes an experience when people see a meaningful image in a random visual pattern: faces in a piece of toast, human figures in trees. It has to do with our evolution. In our prehistoric years, humans needed to be prepared for anything hiding in the bushes. Even if a poisonous snake turned out to have been a stick, it was a good idea to have jumped over it. At Gorongosa, Naskrecki harnesses this basic human impulse for science. “I let my mind take the reins of my imagination and guide me toward finding things that I normally would have completely missed,” he says.
Naskrecki finds many biological questions can be best answered with a slow walk. Even as an experienced naturalist, he finds the world opens up when he moves slowly and starts to notice things: a dried-up leaf on the side of the path may be hiding a caterpillar on the underside. Or it may not be a leaf at all, it might be a moth. Or a leaf-mimicking insect. Scientific findings are everywhere in the park, underfoot and overhead. Gorongosa is a living laboratory in the wild.
There are 10,000 species of spiders alone. What role do they play?
When Naskrecki first visited Gorongosa in 2012, he was completely blown away by the diversity of life. He saw an untold abundance of species interacting on all levels, from millipedes crawling in leaf litter to bugs embedded in
