Science Art: Plate IV. Tapeworms by William Miller, after P. Syme
Another engraving by the Scotch Quaker, mentioned here previously. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
zoology
Auroch returns.
The Telegraph hails the promise of herds of elephant-sized cattle returning to Europe’s plains: Now Italian scientists are hoping to use genetic expertise and selective […]
Extinct bird alive and well.
That, according to the Telegraph, is the good news. The bad news is that it’s in war-torn Afghanistan: The birds were then spotted again in […]
Science Art: Cormorant, by Bob Hines.
These are cormorants – the birds that swim underwater to catch fish. I fell in love with cormorants reading Ping as a little boy (on […]
Science Art: Chinchilla, Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1911
Behold a crepuscular rodent. In this case, I suppose, a fractional crepuscular rodent. (That means they like going out at dusk and dawn… creatures of […]
Birdfeeder evolution.
Wired reveals one strange way humans are changing the natural world – by accidentally creating new species: “This is reproductive isolation, the first step of […]
The Crocodile Goat of Majorca
Discovery tells the strange story of the island-dwelling goat that was more like a reptile than a mammal: The tiny goat, which stood about 19 […]
Scandal On The Beach! Extortion! Sex!
New Scientist tells the SHOCKING UNTOLD STORY of the steamy, sordid sex lives of fiddler crabs: Males have one giant claw, sometimes as heavy as […]
Science Art: Food chain-2, Nordisk familjebok
Click to embiggen The circle of life, seen as a straight line. With a bird of prey at the top. There’s something totemic about it, […]
Science Art: Flying Lemur, Webster’s New International, 1911.
This is the flying lemur, or colugo, also known as the order Dermoptera – the “skin-wings.” They’re related to shrews and bats moreso than real […]
Bats in daylight.
This may just be a behavioral curiosity, but I can’t help wonder if the devastation from white-nose fungus is playing more havoc than we realize. […]
Human see. Chimps do.
We’ve been watching chimpanzee’s faces. Why not? They can be funny to look at, often, and they can help us understand how we communicate emotions […]
How do geckos drop their tails?
ABC Science (the Australian network, not the American one) is taking a long look at lizards – specifically, the medical information we can get from […]
Last of the BIG cats.
The BBC reports that the largest species of cat, the Amur tiger, has an effective population of less than 50 animals: They sampled nuclear DNA […]
Komodo dragons: venomous after all. And how.
I’ve always reveled in the way Komodo dragons killed their prey – by having dirty mouths, chomping on quicker-moving prey and letting septicemia slowly finish […]