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Zana's granddaughter Does the London Times routinely publish crackpot pseudoscience with no fact checking at all? I've just read their latest piece on the notorious Bryan Sykes, Bigfoot Hunter, and it's the kind of gullible tosh I'd expect from a Murdoch tabloid. It's got one paragraph that…

It's not a blanket, it's a train. Wired

A certain deep, primal part of my brain went "Squeeee!" at this video of a nautilus being fed by hand. I want one. I want a cephalopod to be my friend. But sorry, people, taking an exotic animal out of the ocean and confining it to an aquarium is not exactly the friendliest thing to do…and a lot of…

Dan Graur has snarled at the authors of a paper defending ENCODE. How could I then resist? I read the offending paper, and I have to say something that will weaken my own reputation as a snarling attack dog myself: it does make a few good points. But it's mostly using some valid criticisms to…

Over on Telliamed Revisited, Richard Lenski is talking about his favorite examples of evolution, and mentioned this figure from a paper on hybrid monkeyflowers. Cross-species breeding produces interesting results! Pollinator preference and the evolution of floral traits in monkeyflowers (Mimulus)

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Stephen Tan

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Anomalocaris has always been one of my favorite Cambrian animals -- it was so weird, and it was also the top predator of the age, making it the equivalent of T. rex. The anomalocarids were also a diverse and successful group, so wouldn't you know it…it also had a distant filter-feeding cousin in…

I've now read two novel attempts to explain the existence of junk DNA. To a lot of people, the very idea of junk DNA is offensive: whatever process built us, whether divine fiat or the razor-sharp honing of natural selection, must be powerful, omnipotent or nearly so, and incapable of tolerating…

This skink looks like it just burst out of someone's chest, and in addition, it's full of little baby skinks. NatGeo

Fred Tsang Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

We had a blizzard this week. It's bitterly cold right now. I was trying hard to think of good reasons to have left the Pacific Northwest, and this is about the only thing I came up with: Devil's Club. They're big. They're prickly-spiky-thorny. They're evil. You did not go blindly charging through…

Now you can learn everything you need to know about octopus sex. It's a bit tangly: But just in case you got lost in all the tentacles, here's a diagram to help you out. By the way, in case you've ever wondered where an octopus keeps its nads, they're maybe not where you expected. There should be…

That's all I've got to say. Hippos are really into scat. Yeah, I'd hide too.

This week, everyone has been sending me a link to that horrible series of photos showing a seal gnawing and dismembering an octopus (no, I will not link to it! I might cry.) So instead I'm showing you a happy movie of a successful octopus gnawing and dismembering a crab. Well, happy for everyone…

I did! It was an origami microscope, with a single simple lens added. Here's what it looks like: It's called a Foldscope, and I got it as part of a beta test program. It's a bit like the original Leeuwenhoek microscope, which you held up to your eye to see a magnified image. The differences are…

(via Earth Matters)

That quote is from a good article in Nature on how sex is non-binary -- my only quibble would be with that "now". You'd have to define "now" as a window of time that encompasses the entirety of my training and work in developmental biology, and I'm getting to be kind of an old guy. Differences in…

This is an amazing "discovery"! Someone named JA Tetro has been selling interviews and articles to women's magazines and other credulous sources, claiming that your microbiome is the key to compatibility. Tetro says that when you kiss your date, his or her germs make their way into your mouth’s…

Look at the extravagantly pulvinate abdomen of this female fly -- it's very sexy to the male fly. But it's all a FAKE. Misandry! Conniving, scheming female!

One or the other. I can't make up my mind. New Scientist

BBC

I'd wear it on my lapel, with the nice pocket watch on my vest and my jeweled monocle. Azalea Lace Bug I know. I'm a slob. But I could change! I've been reading fantasy regency novels, and could get into the style. Carriger has even posted suggestions for improving the stylishness of us uncaring…

As long as we're talking about brains this morning, here's another topic that irritates me: the abuse of the term neuroplasticity. Way, way back in the late 1970s, my first textbook in neuroscience was this one: Marcus Jacobson's Developmental Neurobiology. (That link is to a more recent edition;…

Steven Novella makes an important point: memories are fluid. There's no VCR in your head, and no tape recorder either, and memories are constructs. You remember the framework (sometimes very poorly) of a past event, and your brain builds a plausible set of details around it. When you picture…

A study of students in Israel by Victor Lavy and Edith Sand has discovered a surprising result…or maybe not so surprising to you, but I was rather shocked. Math teachers score girls' performance lower when they know their identities. In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded…

Look closely at the eel in this picture. Look up around its head. Do you wonder what that odd little blob is? Now go see the animation. All will be clear.

Answers in Genesis has announced today that they are suing the state of Kentucky for withdrawing a tax rebate. To make their case, they have released a long video featuring Ken Ham getting all the answers he wants from a lawyer wearing a greasy muskrat on his head. The reason that Kentucky…