Ari Daniel
Ari Daniel is a freelance contributor to NPR's Science desk.
He has always been drawn to science and the natural world. As a graduate student, he 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, he has interviewed a species he's better equipped to understand — Homo sapiens.
Over the years, he has reported across six 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. He formerly worked as a reporter for NPR's Science desk where he covered global health and development. Before that, he was 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 radio stories on glaciers and climate change in Greenland and Iceland.
In the fifth grade, he won the "Most Contagious Smile" award. [Copyright 2025 NPR]
-
A small, hairy, toxic version of the cucumbers found in the produce aisle does have an advantage over its more palatable cousins — a feat of ballistic seed dispersal. -
July 1 is the official end date for the agency that President Trump dismantled. We talk to four former top officials about this milestone event. -
The Ecosystems Mission Area helps researchers track everything from birds and bees to floods and fires. Trump wants to cut it by about 90%, gutting a key federal ecological program.
-
Billions of nocturnal Bogong moths migrate up to 1,000 km to cool caves in the Australian Alps that they have never previously visited. New research shows how they may find their way there and back. -
The magazine Nature announced the results of its annual Scientist at Work photography contest. The six winning entries are a set of dramatic, intimate portraits of research from all over the globe. -
The huge amphibians "will literally just feed on anything that fits into their mouth" — including turtle hatchlings. Clearing thousands of frogs from ponds helped other species stage a comeback. -
What if the solutions to some of Earth's biggest problems could be found in some of its smallest creatures? That bet has led a team of researchers to places both remote and — lately — rather familiar. -
The sometimes uncomfortable sensations we feel in our teeth may be an evolutionary holdover from the scaly exteriors of ancient armored fish. -
Scientists have found a way to sample DNA out of the air on a large scale — making it possible to one day track the health and well being of all kinds of species around the world. -
The all-female Korean Haenyeo divers show genetic adaptations to cold-water diving involving their blood pressure and cold tolerance. It's "like they have a superpower," says one of the researchers.
