Ari Daniel
Ari Daniel is a reporter for NPR's Science desk where he covers global health and development.
Ari has always been drawn to science and the natural world. As a graduate student, Ari trained gray seal pups (Halichoerus grypus) for his Master's degree in animal behavior at the University of St. Andrews, and helped tag wild Norwegian killer whales (Orcinus orca) for his Ph.D. in biological oceanography at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. For more than a decade, as a science reporter and multimedia producer, Ari has interviewed a species he's better equipped to understand – Homo sapiens.
Over the years, Ari has reported across five continents on science topics ranging from astronomy to zooxanthellae. His radio pieces have aired on NPR, The World, Radiolab, Here & Now, and Living on Earth. Ari formerly worked as the Senior Digital Producer at NOVA where he helped oversee the production of the show's digital video content. He is a co-recipient of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for his stories on glaciers and climate change in Greenland and Iceland.
In the fifth grade, Ari won the "Most Contagious Smile" award.
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A new part of an ocean plant cell has been discovered that might revolutionize farming one day. The structure can take nitrogen and convert it into the ingredient that helps all organisms grow.
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A new telescope could launch as early as late February. SPHEREx will look into deep space and also search for organic molecules. -
Maggots love to feed on decaying fruit. New research explains how they found this out and the implications for having texture be such a big deal.
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Some creatures — like maggots — love to feed on decaying fruit. New research shows that they associate the texture of food with how tasty it is, too. So how did researchers figure that out?
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The tiny ray spider uses its web to grab its prey out of the air. Though common practice with comic book characters, this ability is unusual in spiders.
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Scientists observed wolves in Ethiopia feeding on flower nectar. This may be the first instance of a predator serving as a pollinator.
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A company says it is pulling together DNA to try to re-create the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct. But some people question whether it makes sense to restore creatures to a different world.
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New technology is making it easier to find the origins of trafficked wildlife so they can be released back to the habitat they came from, instead of languishing for decades as sometimes happens. -
Bats are able to consume an extraordinary amount of sugar with no ill effects. Scientists are trying to learn more about how bats do it — and whether humans can learn from their sugar response. -
Scientists say a teenager and her father discovered fossilized pieces of a jawbone that belonged to an ancient marine reptile — perhaps the largest ichthyosaur ever found.
