He is remembered for the numerous expeditions he conducted for the New York Zoological Society, such as the Arcturus mission, his deep dives in the Bathysphere, and his prolific scientific writing for academic and popular audiences.

[16] While attending Columbia, Beebe persuaded his professors to sponsor him and several fellow students taking research trips to Nova Scotia, where he continued his hobby of collecting, as well as attempting to photograph difficult-to-observe scenes of birds and other animals.

During these trips, Beebe also developed an interest in dredging, the practice of using nets to haul up animals that lived deep underwater and attempting to study them before they died or disintegrated.

[26] In 1901, Beebe returned to Nova Scotia on his first expedition for the zoo, intending to collect marine animals by searching tide pools and with additional dredging.

[47] Regarding the killing of animals for the sole purpose of collecting, the book states: And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered life, think of the marvelous little engine which your lead will stifle forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear bright eyes of the bird whose body equals yours in physical perfection, and whose tiny brain can generate a sympathy, a love for its mate, which is sincerity and unselfishness suffers little when compared with human affection.

Beebe made extensive documentation of hoatzin behavior through field glasses, but their plans to capture one were foiled when they had to return home early due to Blair breaking her wrist.

Despite their failure to obtain their most sought-after prize, the expedition still returned with 280 live birds of 51 species, 33 of which were new to the zoo, although several of these died or escaped during the long trip back to New York.

[96] During this expedition, Beebe was also amazed to discover the number and variety of organisms living under a single tree and pioneered the method of studying a small area of wilderness for an extended amount of time.

After following several leads which came to nothing, his goal was realized when George Withers, who owned a rubber plantation on the Mazaruni River, offered him the use of a large house on his property for this purpose.

Using Kalacoon as his base of operations, Beebe performed a novel type of study: methodically dissecting a small area of jungle, and all of the animals which inhabit it, from the top of the canopy to below the ground.

[106] The best-known of these accounts is provided by the opening paragraph of his 1918 book Jungle Peace: After creeping through slime-filled holes beneath the shrieking of swift metal; after splashing one's plane through companionable clouds three miles above the little jagged, hero-filled ditches, and dodging other sudden-born clouds of nauseous fumes and blasting heart of steel; after these, one craves thoughts of comfortable hens, sweet apple orchards, or the ineffable themes of opera.

[121] Beebe's first expedition to the Galápagos lasted twenty days, broken into two ten-day periods, between which the Noma was forced to return to Panama for fresh water and coal.

[125] The book in which Beebe summarized this expedition, titled Galápagos: World's End, was an instant best-seller and remained on the New York Times top ten list for several months.

[127] Beebe continued to battle depression during this trip to Kartabo, both over his earlier loss of Blair, and over the death of his mother Nettie, who had died shortly before the beginning of the expedition.

Anchoring in a small cove, Beebe and his assistant John Tee-Van searched for an active crater where they could observe the eruption and were nearing exhaustion by the time they found one.

Searching for a way to satisfy his expedition's donors, Beebe hit upon the idea of documenting the marine life of the Hudson Gorge just beyond the shore of New York City.

Applying the same techniques to studying the Hudson Gorge that he had used in the Galápagos, Beebe encountered a surprising variety of sea animals, many of which had previously been thought to be exclusive to the tropics.

Anchoring his ship the Lieutenant in the harbor of Port-au-Prince, he performed over 300 helmet dives examining the area's coral reefs and classifying the fish that inhabited them.

[168] From 1930 to 1934, Beebe and Barton used the Bathysphere to conduct a series of dives of increasing depth off the coast of Nonsuch Island, becoming the first people to observe deep-sea animals in their native environment.

[170] Beebe's observations were relayed up the phone line to be recorded by Gloria Hollister,[171] his chief technical associate who was also in charge of preparing specimens obtained from dredging.

[189] Shortly after returning, Beebe set out on a longer expedition to the waters around Baja California, financed by the Californian businessman Templeton Crocker on board his yacht the Zaca.

The location that she found, known as Rancho Grande, had initially been intended as a palace for Venezuela's dictator Juan Vicente Gómez in the Henri Pittier National Park.

[206] Creole Petroleum, a Venezuelan spin-off of Standard, agreed to cover the cost of the station and finished a small portion of the vast structure for Beebe and his team to use.

[208] His immobility also presented him with the opportunity to spend hours at a time observing a pair of bat falcons through binoculars, documenting the behavior of their two chicks and every prey item fed to them by their parents.

Beebe returned to Rancho Grande in 1948, where he completed several technical papers about the migration patterns of birds and insects, as well as a comprehensive study of the area's ecology which he coauthored with Jocelyn Crane.

[215] The product of Jocelyn Crane's search for a potential research station in Trinidad and Tobago was a house on a hill overlooking the Arima Valley, which was known as Verdant Vale.

[233] However, by 1959 his strength had lessened enough that long hikes and tree climbing were no longer practical for him, and he contented himself with work that could be conducted in the laboratory, such as dissecting birds' nests to analyze their method of construction.

[237] Both accounts agree that throughout his final years Beebe remained fond of playing practical jokes on his visitors at Simla,[237] and retained his sense of humor even within days of his death.

[270] Along with his analysis of pheasant phylogeny and his studies of life in the Galápagos Islands, Beebe regarded one of his most important contributions to the field of evolutionary biology to be his hypothesis that the ancestors of birds passed through what he referred to as a “Tetrapteryx stage”, with wings on both their front and hind limbs.

Beebe based this theory on his observation that the hatchlings and embryos of some modern birds possess long quill feathers on their legs, which he regarded as an atavism; he also noticed vestiges of leg-wings on one of the specimens of Archaeopteryx.