Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
laelaps
Posts by this author
Contingency has been on my mind quite often these days. What would life look like today if the ancestors of the first land-dwelling vertebrates had two legs instead of four? How would non-avian dinosaurs continue to have evolved if they had not been wiped out 65 million years ago? What if, like…
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
A reconstruction of Smilodon, photographed at the American Museum of Natural History.
When it comes to animals, encyclopedias often present us with generalized descriptions. Where a creature lives, what color it is, what it eats, and other tidbits of information are listed to distinguish one…
If I were teaching a course on evolution, this would probably be the first thing I would show the class.
A grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
I love anatomy. With a little bit of background knowledge it becomes easy to see the similarities and disparities between any two organisms you wish to compare, and it is always exciting to see how the bones of my arms correspond to the flippers of a whale, the forelegs of a horse, the wings of a…
A reconstruction of Smilodon, photographed at the American Museum of Natural History.
Tracey (pictured) and I go for a stroll in the snow.
A walkway light buried by the snow.
As the snow continues to pile up outside, I can't help but think of polar predators. There are animals that live and hunt in the conditions that are keeping me inside today, and one of my favorites is the leopard seal. An apex predator in its Antarctic home, the leopard seal is an enormous pinniped…
Shrimp is fancy food for anyone's dinner table. Boiled, baked, grilled, poached... the culinary possibilities are almost endless, and the low price of shrimp at grocers and superstores makes it easy for us to keep on eating. Yet this abundance of shrimp obscures the true costs of the competing…
A domestic horse (Equus ferus caballus), photographed in suburban New Jersey.
Almost two decades ago vertebrate paleontologist Bruce MacFadden published his monograph Fossil Horses, an instant classic that was as much about new approaches in paleontology as the equids considered in the book. For over a century the family history of horses had been depicted as some of the…
Zeff the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) yawns. Photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta), photographed near Bear Mountain in New York.
Two views from the balcony on this snowy, snowy morning.
And, since it's Caturday, here is a shot of one of our new foster cats, Steve.
A Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), photographed at the National Zoo.
I got a pretty nice surprise yesterday morning; Laelaps was listed as one of the "Top 30 Science Blogs" by the Times science magazine Eureka! I was proud to see this blog featured alongside those of Scicurious, Ed, Carl, David, Sheril, Bora, and many of the others who made the list. Even better,…
A female lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
A note about "Photo of the Day": I recognize that this daily feature has not been as exciting lately. I often visit zoos, museums, and other places rich in photo ops throughout the year, but during the past several months…
A restoration of Titanoboa (foreground) in its natural setting. (By Jason Bourque, image from Wikipedia.)
When I was growing up I used to spend hours poring over the Time/Life series of nature books in my little library, absolutely enthralled by images of strange creatures from all over the…
A pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), photographed on Antelope Island, Utah.
A grizzly bear (the black dot in the middle of the photo) walking near the treeline in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley.
The quiet of my evening wildlife watching was suddenly broken by a thick Boston accent. "Oh my gawd! Look! It's a grizz! That's the last animal I needed to see! It's a grizz!"
He…
Rokan, the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
The due date for Written in Stone is still nine months away, but I have already started to compose a list of potential op-eds, essays, and articles that will help promote its release. They range from summaries of the book's premise to stories that were hacked out during the editing process, but the…
A red eft (Notophthalmus viridescens), photographed near High Point, New Jersey
The WCS-run Bronx Zoo welcomed four new additions this week; a trio of brown bear cubs from Alaska and an adolescent bear from Montana. All were rescued after their mothers had been killed for becoming too habituated to humans. According to the Bronx Zoo press release:
The three brown bear cubs…
Part of a bison herd (Bison bison) walking down the road. Photographed in Yellowstone National Park.