October 9, 2009
This is the martial eagle, one of Africa's largest eagles* and a truly formidable predator, even occassionally killing small antelope like duiker. This adult was a fair distance away but the presence of large nests gives away the location of trees where they might be found perching.
* I say "one…
October 8, 2009
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disease that afflicts people with extreme and debilitating tiredness that lasts for many years and isn't relieved by rest. Some estimates suggest that it affects up to 1% of the world's population. We don't know what causes it. Prostate cancer is one of the most…
October 6, 2009
At 13 metres in length, Tyrannosaurus rex had little to fear from other predators. But it was occasionally attacked by an enemy far smaller than itself. In a wonderful piece of forensic palaeontology, Ewan Wolff from the University of Wisconsin has shown that the tyrant lizard king was often…
October 5, 2009
Around 2600 years ago in Egypt, a woman called Irtyersenu died. She was mummified and buried at the necropolis at Thebes, where she remained for over two millennia before being unearthed in 1819. Her well-preserved body was brought to the British Museum where it was examined by the physician and…
October 4, 2009
Every weekend, I'm going to post new wildlife photos from our recent South African holiday. The vast majority will come from the four-day safari we went on, and what better way to start this series than with shots of an animal named Safari. She's a leopard, and undoubtedly one of the highlights of…
October 3, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Every month, at the full moon, tourists and students gather on the beach at Koh Phangan, Thailand for a night of booze…
October 3, 2009
I'm back! For anyone wondering why I've been reposting old pieces for the last few weeks, it's because my wife and I were enjoying a much-deserved holiday in South Africa. I'll stick a link to some photos shortly, but for the moment, here's some post-holiday geekery for you.
The trip was a…
October 2, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
In 1979, a crucified Eric Idle advised movie-goers to always look on the bright side of life. It seems that he needn't…
October 1, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
At Harvard University, a group of creative scientists have turned the brains of mice into beautiful tangles of colour…
September 30, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Sex is, on the whole, a good thing. I know it, you know it, and natural selection knows it. But try telling it to…
September 29, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
For decades, scientists have realised that languages evolve in strikingly similar ways to genes and living things.…
September 28, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
You don't normally hear continents described as speedy, but it's now clear that some are much faster than others.…
September 27, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
It's tempting to think that elephants have their own PR agency. Just last week, their mighty reputation was damaged by…
September 26, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
In your garden, there's a fair chance that a farmer is currently tranquilising her livestock with a chemical cocktail…
September 25, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
It's a myth that elephants are afraid of mice, but new research shows that they're not too keen on bees. Even though…
September 24, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
For plants too, sex can be a hot and smelly affair. In most plant-insect partnerships, the pollinator seems to do most…
September 23, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Many patients would like their doctors to be more sensitive to their needs. That may be a reasonable request but at a…
September 22, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
As a species, we value fair play. We're like it so much that we're willing to eschew material gains in order to punish…
September 21, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
The sabre-toothed cat is one of the most famous prehistoric animals and there is no question that it was a formidable…
September 20, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Imagine that one day, you make a pact with your brother or sister, vowing to never have children of your own and…
September 19, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
Science fiction loves to play off the potential threat of threat of alien viruses. But a new study suggests that space…
September 18, 2009
The two-toed sloth is a walking hotel. The animal is so inactive that its fur acts as an ecosystem in its own right, hosting a wide variety of algae and insects. But the sloth has another surprise passenger hitching a ride inside its body, one that has stayed with it for up to 55 million years - a…
September 17, 2009
Meet Raptorex, the "king of thieves". It's a new species of dinosaur that looks, for all intents and purposes¸ like the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, complete with large, powerful skull and tiny, comical forearms. But there's one very important difference - it's 100 times smaller. Unlike the ever-…
September 16, 2009
For humans and most other mammals, sex is a question is chromosomes. Two X chromsomes makes us female while an X and a Y makes us male. Birds use a similar but reversed system, where males are ZZ and females are ZW. But for reptiles, including crocodiles, turtles and many lizards, sex is…
September 16, 2009
People with red-green colour blindness find it difficult to tell red hues from green ones because of a fault in a single gene. Their inheritance robs them of one of the three types of colour-sensitive cone cells that give us colour vision. With modern technology, scientists might be able to insert…
September 15, 2009
You may have seen rowing before, but I guarantee you that you know little about the sport unless you went to university at Cambridge or Oxford. There you will find a subspecies of human known as the "boatie" who seem perfectly happy to gather en masse at godforsaken times of the morning to paddle…
September 14, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
It's not just us who like to go travelling in the summer - flu viruses do it too. After a busy winter of infection, they turn into the gap-year students of the virus world. They travel round the world, meet…
September 13, 2009
The British Wildlife Centre is one of my favourite places in the country. It's like a small zoo focusing solely on British wildlife and everything in it lives in lovely open enclosures with naturalistic environments (the otters have about three lakes to play around in). It's a fantastic place to…
September 12, 2009
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
In Jurassic Park, the role of Velociraptor was played by computer-generated reptilian actors, that bore little resemblance to the real deal. The actual dinosaur was smaller, slower and used its infamous claw…
September 10, 2009
The drawers of the world's museums are full of pinned, preserved and catalogued insects. These collections are more than just graveyards - they are a record of evolutionary battles waged between animals and their parasites. Today, these long-dead specimens act as "silent witnesses of evolutionary…
