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tetrapodzoology | November 8, 2011
You are currently at the old, defunct version of Tet Zoo. To see new stuff (from July 2011 to present), click here. See you there.
jtoney | July 20, 2011
Fourteen year old internet sensation Rebecca Black just released a follow up video "My Moment" after her debut of "Friday" that went viral with more than 167 million views. Attention at this scale landed her a spot on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a music video with Katy Perry, "Last Friday Night".
Such opportunities for seemingly instant fame can affect these teens, and pre-teens, in a profound way: IRL (In Real Life)...
Rebecca Black has had to endure the backlash of cyberbullying after her first video.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream…
tetrapodzoology | July 5, 2011
On January 23rd 2007, Tet Zoo ver 2 - the ScienceBlogs version of Tetrapod Zoology - graced the intertoobz for the first time. There was rapturous applause, swooning, the delight of millions. Looking back at it now, that very first ver 2 post is rather odd. It's on the blood-feeding behaviour of oxpeckers (Buphagus) and it only really mentions the move to ScienceBlogs in passing, as if it wasn't a big deal.
In reality, being invited in to join the ScienceBlogs collective was a big deal, and were I to go back in time and re-live the writing of that particular article I'd do much more of a "…
tetrapodzoology | June 30, 2011So sorry for the very short notice. The following airs here in the UK tonight (Thursday 30th June 2011), Channel 4. I look forward to it.
For the Tet Zoo articles on ING and related issues, see...
Inside Nature's Giants: a major television event worthy of praise and accolade. Part I!
Inside Nature's Giants part II: whale guts and hindlimbs ahoy
Enough mammals for the time being: crocodiles on Inside Nature's Giants (part III)
Inside Nature's Giants part IV: the incredible anatomy of the giraffe
Inside Nature's Giants, series 2: does Carcharodon bite?
Monster pythons of the Everglades:…
tetrapodzoology | June 2, 2011Once again I'm in that frustrating position so beloved of bloggers: where life and work just doesn't let you fritter away all those 'spare' hours preparing lengthy blog articles. In the mean time, here's one of those 'mystery pictures' to identify. What is it? Genus will do (I know the species, but that's because I have special data not available from this image). [UPDATE: no more guessing please. Answer below, comment # 31.]
While I'm here I may as well mention a few things I won't get to blog about.
Just did the trawling-the-journals thing. New items of much interest include the new long-…
tetrapodzoology | May 16, 2011
On March 14th 2011 National Geographic screened episode 1 of their new series Wild Case Files (here in the UK, the episode was screened on April 11th), and the reason I'm writing about it is because I featured in said episode.
The first section of the show was devoted to an investigation of the 'Montauk monster'. They provided a potted history of the whole 'Montauk monster' story, spoke to all the main characters involved, and ended with me explaining how the carcasses (both the original, July 2008 specimen, and the 'Clapsadle carcass' of May 2009 and 'Gurney's Inn monster' of September…
sastyk | May 10, 2011Whenever I talk about going to lower energy usage, a percentage of people shout out something like "But that would mean going back tothe stone age, to lepers walking the streets and people throwing their feces out the window on our heads!!!" I think it is fair to say that variations on the "without power, life would be intolerable" is a common assumption.
Part of the thing that bothers me about it is that I don't think it is true. I've spent a lot of time studying history, and I don't think the lives of all of those in human history who preceeded us were intolerable. I am extraordinarily…
tetrapodzoology | May 7, 2011
The interconnectedness of ecosystems and their components is, today, a familiar concept. Top predators eat herbivores, herbivores eat plants, and top predators keep so-called meso-predators in check too. But perhaps it isn't appreciated enough just how interconnected things can be. Cristina Eisenberg's excellent 2010 book The Wolf's Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades and Biodiversity draws on decades of ecological research to paint a complex picture of ecosystem interactions and cascades, of the crucial role of top predators, and of human impact on communities in the natural world.…
sastyk | April 14, 2011Let us imagine that you are MacGyver, that 1980s tv guy who can build an atomic bomb out of gum and duct tape. You are facing a world-shattering crisis. You have a pile of scrap materials out of which you must build a high speed vehicle to effect your escape from this crisis, which will certainly involve you outracing a dramatic explosion. There are wheels, gears, sticks and the all-important duct tape. There's also a big claw-footed bathtub. Now, when your need is for lightness and speed, do you attach the bathtub, just because you've got one lying around?
This analogy was used to me…
sastyk | March 24, 2011Life has been proceeding more or less apace, and it feels like a long time since I've sat down and contemplated anything, much less my Anyway Project goals. At the same time, all this business is a series of steps on the way to actually many of the things done. I hope that's true of all of you!
As you'll remember, the goal of the Anyway project is to integrate our preparations for a harder future with our daily life now, to turn them many parts into a whole. As I wrote previously:
The larger idea of the Anyway Project is to make our lives work more smoothly. Most of us stand with feet in…
tetrapodzoology | March 15, 2011Well, the whole 'distributed denial of service' thing has done a pretty effective job of keeping me away from Tet Zoo entirely. No chance to blog, and not even the chance to look at the site at all - so, wow, thanks for keeping the protobats discussion going (97 98 comments... not bad). While those jolly nice people at ScienceBlogs tech support have just unblocked my IP address, it seems that lots of readers remain blocked - I see Tet Zoo sliding down the ratings a bit over on Nature Blog Network. Yikes, fifth place! Anyway, I'm just about ready to start deluging Tet Zoo with the enormous…
tetrapodzoology | February 8, 2011
I've just heard the tragic and saddening news that ornithologist Bradley Livezey died yesterday morning (Tuesday 8th February, 2011) following a car crash. It seems that his car lost traction due to snow and ice on the road surface and then collided with another vehicle. Brad was 56. I never met him, but regarded him as a very friendly and co-operative correspondent.
Brad was a leading ornithologist, based at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. After receiving a bachelor's degree at Oregon State University in 1976, he was awarded a master of science degree at the University of Wisconsin-…
sastyk | February 7, 2011Ok, I have to go frantically clean my house. Objectively I know that the social worker wants to know that the house is clean, safe and appropriate for kids, not to look at the shine on the linoleum (of which there is presently none ;-)). In my inner heart, however, I'm pretty sure she's going to do the Miss Gulch thing "You people think you can adopt?!?! In this dump?!?! Are you out of your minds? That's it, I'm taking away your kids...and your little goats too!
I realize this means I have too much imagination, but I will be responding to my own nervousness by trying to create some order…
tetrapodzoology | January 23, 2011Welcome to part II of my musings on the 2010 blogging year. You'll need to have read the first part to make sense of it. The article you're reading now is extraordinarily long and I'd normally break up a piece of this length into two, three or even more separate articles. This year I want to get the birthday stuff out of the way as quickly as possible, however, so bear with me. Hey, you don't HAVE to read any of it. And so, off we go...
One of the bigger Tet Zoo-relevant issues of the year was the publication in September of Tetrapod Zoology Book One (Naish 2010a). Already I've seen several…
tetrapodzoology | January 20, 2011Today, my friends, is January 21st 2011. Do you know what this means? It means (drumroll)... that Tet Zoo is five years old today. Wow. Five years. With apologies to those who've heard the story before, things started in 2006 over at blogspot, and in 2007 Tet Zoo ver 2 kicked off here on ScienceBlogs. So: happy birthday Tet Zoo!
The fact that I've now been blogging about hardcore zoology for five years is a little scary; it makes me worried that things here might have become stale or blasé. To be honest, if that's so I haven't noticed and, anyway, my motivations for blogging are almost…
tetrapodzoology | December 7, 2010My recent brief mention of Thomas Huxley (in connection with the Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective volume) reminded me to look anew at this Tet Zoo ver 1 post from 2006...
Here's a little known fact. Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), the most important biologist of all time, did not spend his entire life as an old man. I despise stereotypes, especially those that are totally erroneous, and whenever I see a picture of 'old man Darwin' I wonder: why is it that so many of our most important scientists are consistently portrayed as old men? Don't get me wrong, I…
sastyk | November 9, 2010
Variations on the obligation to love one's neighbor show up across both the religious and secular spectrum. They tend to provoke a range of responses - from those who attempt to sort out what loving people who are not part of your immediate tribe would mean, to those who reject the necessity. This is not an easy idea - and even if you can sort out what it means to love people who you may not know well, or like much, or even trust, or know how to get to knowing, liking and trusting - it is a damned hard thing to put into practice. I want to talk a bit more about why even use the word love,…
tetrapodzoology | October 25, 2010You know me, I'm not one to brag. But...
One of several interesting things I did over the weekend was attend a special cinema screening (in Clapham, London) of the giant squid special episode of Inside Nature's Giants. It was great, and the showing was followed by a Q&A session with David Dugan (ING writer/producer), presenter Mark Evans, and anatomist Joy Reidenberg. It was great to meet and chat with Joy - here's photographic proof. I gave her a copy of Tetrapod Zoology Book One*.
* Or... should that be Tetrapood Zoology Book One? The publishers are aware of the mistake and will be…
tetrapodzoology | October 13, 2010Once again I'm going to do the advertising thing for those fantastic Inside Nature's Giants people. Sorry that notice is so short, but I only received the relevant information today (Wednesday 13th October). Tomorrow sees the premiere screening (here in the UK, on Channel 4) of a 75 minute ING special on the giant squid.
And, yes, once again I'm breaking the 'tetrapods only' rule... for ING, however, I can make an exception. More info below the fold.
Thanks to Tom Mustill and others at Windfall Films. If you're on facebook be sure to 'like' Joy's page.
For previous Tet Zoo articles on ING,…