laelaps | November 26, 2009
Dwarf mongoose pups (Helogale parvula) playing, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 25, 2009I'm pleased to announced that paleontologist Scott Sampson, author of the new book Dinosaur Odyssey and host of the children's tv show Dinosaur Train, has just launched a blog. It is called The Whirlpool of Life. Go check it out!
laelaps | November 24, 2009
Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and there is a whole list of things I am not going to do;
I am not going to set aside time to read On the Origin of Species when I get home.
I am not going to write a long ode to Darwin in which I pontificate on how his view of nature changed science and society.
I am not going to stop by any Darwin-themed parties, lectures, or other events.
And so on. I really do not have any special celebratory plans for today at all. Instead I intend to honor the work of Charles…
laelaps | November 23, 2009
I get a lot of questions about my forthcoming book, Written in Stone, but the most popular by far is "What are you going to say about creationism?"
Presently there is a glut of books that confront creationism in one way or another. There are books that counter creationist claims with scientific evidence (Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters, Why Evolution is True, The Greatest Show on Earth, &c.) and others that, while they present many of the same scientific arguments, are also concerned with making the idea of evolution less threatening to religious audiences (Only A…
laelaps | November 22, 2009
A baby California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 21, 2009
A group of small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinerea) gnawing on some fishsicles, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 20, 2009
A giraffe, photographed at the Bronx zoo.
For me, no visit to the zoo is complete without stopping by to see the giraffes. They are among the most common of zoo animals, certainly, but I still find them fascinating. If giraffes did not actually exist and someone drew an illustration of one as a speculative zoology project the picture would likely be written off as absurd, yet the living animal is more charming than preposterous.
As with many extant large mammals, though, the giraffe is only a vestige of a once more diverse group. Its closest living relative is the okapi, a short-necked and…
laelaps | November 20, 2009
A young nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) nursing from its mother, photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 19, 2009
At last long there was solid proof that humans had died in a real Noachian Deluge. That such an event had occurred was widely taken on faith by Christians, and the belief that world's geology had been formed by the Flood was assented to by many naturalists, but in 1725 the Swiss naturalist Jacob Johann Scheuchzer believed that he had discovered a symbol so instantly recognizable that no one could doubt that the biblical catastrophe was real. It was what appeared to be a human skeleton, cleaved nearly in half but nonetheless preserved by the very floodwaters that had killed the sinner.
The…
laelaps | November 18, 2009Via NatureBreak.org, a capuchin monkey bathes using a stolen orange;
I think she is correct. Capuchin monkeys regularly rub citrus fruits on their fur and this activity appears to keep them free of parasites and keep some of the biting insects away.
laelaps | November 18, 2009
A group of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in pursuit of a troop member (off camera) that had made the faux pas of grooming the wrong female . Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 17, 2009During the past six million years or so several species of humans have simultaneously inhabited Earth at any one time, but today only one species, ours, remains. How did this come to be? This is the question behind part 3 of the NOVA documentary series "Becoming Human" (see my reviews for parts 1 and 2), and the show does not get off to a strong start.
Though I might be a little more merciful on the producers of this documentary than Greg, he was right to point out that the opening segment of the show is worn old tripe about how our species has fulfilled a kind of evolutionary destiny set in…
laelaps | November 17, 2009
A young Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | November 16, 2009
The display of horse evolution at the AMNH as created by W.D. Matthew. Price reproduced this illustration without permission in his creationist textbook The New Geology.
The 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" put scientists on the defensive. It did not matter that the defendant in the famous case, John Scopes, probably never taught evolution in a Tennessee school (he was only a substitute teacher and football coach who agreed to take the fall so that the ACLU could test a law that barred evolution from schools); the issue that everyone was concerned about was the conflict between science and…