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Photo by Lisa Ware, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute

All together now: Awwwww!

Today the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI), the Zoo’s research facility in Fort Front Royal announced the births of four maned wolf pups. The pups were born on January 5 and have been kept under close watch by zookeepers ever since. This is the first litter in two years, as the South American species is extremely difficult to breed in captivity. “They’re very shy and get stressed,” says Nucharin Songasen, a SCBI research biologist working with the pups. ”The mom tends to move the pups a lot, which can hurt them, and sometimes they do end up eating the pups. This year, one female [at another zoo] gave birth to three pups and she ended up eating all of them.”

So the SCBI researchers are keeping their distance while the mother, 8-year-old Salina, nurses the pups and moves them from den to den. They were a little concerned when she left one of the pups, a male, in a different den from the others. “The mom usually doesn’t want to spend energy taking care of the pups that are not doing well,” Songasen explains. “But he is very fat and strong, so we think maybe he’s really aggressive and she’s trying to give the others a chance to nurse.” When the male pup got left out, his father, Nopal, picked up the slack and cared for him until his mother returned. “The father has a big role in taking care of the young,” Songasen says. “The first six weeks the mom will take most of her time with the pups, but when they start running around and leave the den, the dad provides a significant role in providing food for the pups and protecting them.”

Photo by Lisa Ware, Smithsonian Conservation BIological Institute

These four little furballs are good news for the maned wolf population: there are only about 20,000 of them left in the wild and their natural habitat is shrinking due to human encroachment in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru. According to Songsasen, 80 percent of their habitat has already been converted to farmland, and only 5 percent of the remaining territory is protected. This leaves the wolves very vulnerable to conflict with farmers and other people in the area.

Photo by Lisa Ware, Smithsonian Biology Conservation Institute

Out of the four breeding pairs at SCBI, this is the first to successfully produce a litter. Currently, the breeding habits of the maned wolf are something of a mystery to scientists. The SCBI is working in conjunction with 18 other institutions researching the effect of plant-based diets on the wolves’ reproductive rates. “In the past two years, we’ve had young wolves die from intestinal disorders. Right now we don’t know what the optimal diet is. This species has very sensitive digestive tracts, and this might be another reason why they have reproductive problems,” Songasen says. These four pups bring the SCBI’s population up to 12; you can see two of them at the Zoo in the Cheetah Conservation Station.

In the meantime, take some time out of your afternoon to squeal over the just-released wolf pup photos.

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation, was run by hundreds of enslaved African Americans in his lifetime. Image courtesy of Monticello.

In June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” But after he signed his name to that now immortal document, he returned home to Monticello and resumed a lifestyle that denied this equality to more than 600 men, women and children who toiled as slaves on his Virginian plantation. Over the course of the third president’s lifetime, Jefferson would set only two of them free.

A new exhibition, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” now on view at the National Museum of American History, addresses this fundamental contradiction in the life of one of America’s greatest leaders. “Jefferson wrote and saved 19,000 letters in his life, so we know a vast amount about him,” says Elizabeth Chew, a curator at Monticello and co-curator of the exhibition, along with Rex Ellis of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “But all we had of these enslaved people,” Chew adds, “was his list of their names.”

From this list, Chew and Ellis, wove together a picture of another Monticello, home to the weavers, spinners, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, nail-makers, carpenters, sawyers, charcoal-burners, stablemen, joiners, and domestic servants that kept the plantation operating. The exhibit features Jefferson’s records and artifacts from Mulberry Row—the slave quarters. But most importantly, it follows six families through the generations: arrival at Monticello as slaves; dispersal at Jefferson’s death in 1827; migration across the country down to their descendants today.

These families are descended from Elizabeth Hemings and her children, Edward and Jane Gillette, George and Ursula Granger David and Isabel Hern and James and Cate Hubbard. Thanks to the Getting Word oral history project at Monticello, which has collected interviews from more than 170 descendants, the exhibit tells colorful stories about how they lived, what their work was, what skills they had, where they came from, and where they went.

According to Chew, looking at Monticello through the eyes of slaves is a relatively new perspective. Until the mid-1980s, tours at Monticello avoided the topic of slavery, often referring to slaves more euphemistically as “servants.” Sometimes they were cut out of the story entirely; tour guides and signs “would say things like “the food was brought” from the kitchen to the dining room,” Chew says. “Now we would say, the head cook Edith Fossett and her assistants brought the food from the kitchen to the dining room.”

For Chew, the most significant aspect of this exhibit is “the degree to which we can make the story of slavery the story of individual people and families.”

Bringing these people back into the narrative is essential to understanding Thomas Jefferson’s life and work. As Ellis said in a press preview, “They represent the community who brought him to his father on a pillow when he was born to those who adjusted the pillow under his head when he died.”

By extension, understanding Jefferson’s own complexities illuminates the contradictions within the country he built. “Most Americans probably don’t think of it, but the founders founded this country as a slave society, and that didn’t go away for a hundred years,” Chew says. The paradox of Jefferson, who called slavery “an abominable crime” and proposed several plans to end the slave trade, is a perfect lens for the national tensions that resulted in the bloodiest war in American history.

At their core, however, these stories are first and foremost about individuals and families. Because many African Americans cannot trace their family back past the Civil War, the stories collected here are especially precious. Bill Webb, a descendent of the Hemings family, explains his decision to try to find out his lineage: “I love history. I think it’s about a sense of who you are, and knowing some of your history.” Webb’s ancestor, Brown Colbert, was sold by Thomas Jefferson to another slaveowner in Lexington, Virginia, before he was freed by the American Colonization Society on the condition that he leave the United States for Liberia in Africa. Though Colbert and the children who accompanied him died shortly after arriving in Liberia, one of his daughters stayed in America and became the matriarch of Webb’s family. “They kept his name through generations–Brown, Brown, Brown,” Webb says.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. Webb, for one, plans to return to the exhibit many times with his family: “I’ve warned my friends who live in DC that they’ll see a lot of us, because it takes time to absorb everything. There’s just so much to see.”

“Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” presented by Monticello and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is on view at the American History Museum from January 27 through October 14, 2012.

The American Indian Museum features two daily films through the month of February. Image courtesy of the American Indian Museum.

Tuesday, January 31 Draw and Discover

PSA for all aspiring artists: the Luce Foundation Center holds an informal sketching workshop every Tuesday afternoon. Join the group for a discussion about the artwork on display, then grab some alone time to sketch whatever inspires you. Free. Some sketching materials provided. 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Luce Foundation Center, American Art Museum.

Wednesday, February 1 Great Spies of World War II

Enter a world of danger and intrigue with the first installment of the four-session course, “Great Spies of World War II: Garbo, Baker, deClarens…and Hemingway?” presented by the Resident Associates Program and the International Spy Museum. First up is Juan Pujol Garcia, codename Garbo, who deceived the Germans into believing he was operating a valuable spy network. As it turns out, it was valuable for the Allies. $76/member, $68 senior member, $112 general admission. 10:15 to 11:45 a.m. International Spy Museum.

Thursday, February 2 February Daily Films

The American Indian Museum kicks off its February daily film series with two movies that honor the themes of Black History Month. Wapawekka deals with the cultural and generational differences between a Cree man and his son, and Nikamowin/Song experiments with sounds, the human connection to language and the demise of native languages. Both films explore identity, community and tradition. Free. Screenings every day at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. excluding Wednesdays. American Indian Museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

A recent study indicates that ancient peoples in Peru were eating popcorn. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Popcorn dates pretty far back—way earlier than Orville Redenbacher—according to a study published last week. The paper, which appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was co-authored by Dolores Piperno, curator of New World archaeology at the Museum of Natural History, reveals that archaeologists have unearthed a number of corn samples from a pair of Peruvian excavation sites. Several of the specimens indicate that among many uses the ancient Peruvians found for the maize was one we still know well today: popcorn.

The samples include corncobs, husks and stalks, and date to 6,700 to 3,000 years ago, making the discovery the oldest corn sample ever found in South America, says Piperno. “Corn was first domesticated in Mexico nearly 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte,” she says. “Our results show that only a few thousand years later corn arrived in South America, where its evolution into different varieties that are now common in the Andean region began.”

The excavation sites, Paredones and Huaca Prieta, are located in a climate that allows such samples to be preserved for a long time. “The sites occur in a very, very arid climate, the coast of Peru, where it almost never rains,” Piperno says. “Those kinds of conditions are particularly good for preserving things, because it’s humidity that affects the preservation of plant remains over time.”

Some of the ancient corn cobs discovered in Peru. Photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum

Although there had been previous discoveries of microfossils—such as starch grains—finding entire cobs provides valuable information. “Microfossils give an excellent picture of if they’re eating corn, if corn is present, but what was missing was the morphological detail,” says Piperno. “This site provided actual cobs, information on the sizes of the cobs, and what they look like.” These findings will help researchers trace the early domestication of corn from teosinte, a complicated transformation that occurred thousands of years ago.

The samples indicate that the inhabitants of the site consumed the maize in several different ways—apart from popcorn, they consumed corn flour—but that it was still not a common food at the time. “It was probably a fairly minor component of the diet, because despite the very good preservation, not many cobs were found,” Piperno says.

How did the corn travel all the way from Mexico, its birthplace, to Peru, thousands of miles away? “People just passed it along,” says Piperno. “Farmers like to exchange goods and ideas, so it was probably just passed from person to person, from farmer to farmer.”

Got a burning question about popcorn or some other zany topic? We invite you to submit questions to our new reader forum, Ask Smithsonian. Each month, we’ll select a handful of reader-submitted questions to publish in Smithsonian magazine with answers from the Institution’s experts.

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's trilogy kicks off with "Where is the Friend's Home?" Image courtesy of the Freer Gallery.

Friday, January 27 Iranian Film Festival: Koker Trilogy

Even if you haven’t made it to the Iranian Film Festival yet, don’t miss part 1 of the Koker Trilogy by internationally acclaimed director and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami. The first film, “Where is the Friend’s Home?” employs the simple premise of a young boy traveling to his classmate’s village to return a book to weave a potent allegory on friendship, duty and the importance of breaking the rules sometimes. Free. 7:00 p.m. The second and third film will be shown Sunday: And Life Goes On at 1:00 p.m. and Through the Olive Trees at 3:00 p.m. Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery.

Saturday, January 28 Renwick Birthday Party

The Renwick Gallery turns the big 4-0 this weekend. Come celebrate with music, crafts, games, a scavenger hunt through the galleries, and, of course, cake. Free. 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Grand Salon, Renwick Gallery.

Sunday, January 29 Silkscreening Demo

Join local artist Kristina Bilonick for an art talk and demo of the silkscreen printing process. Bilonick is known for her interactive art installations incorporating screen printing, video and other media. Stick around afterward to try it yourself in a hands-on activity. Talk is free; activity has a minimal fee. Preregister by emailing AmericanArtLuce@si.edu. 1:30 p.m. American Art Museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.