Organisms
pharyngula | July 23, 2011I have been negligent in my self-appointed mission to oppose the hegemonic oppression of the Catriarchy, so today, behold, the beauty of sea pens and sea cucumbers. Cats can only dream of this level of exotic elegance, and of course, no one defaces echinoderms with juvenile LOLspeak.
pharyngula | July 16, 2011OK, I'm feeling guilty: I'm off at The Amaz!ng Meeting enjoying myself, and totally neglecting the blog readers who aren't lucky enough to be here too. And since I've been getting lots of requests to put the full content of my talk online, I figured…yeah, sure, I can do that. So here you go, all of the slides and what I said about them, mostly, below the fold. Criticize and argue and do your usual.
TAM is a tough crowd for me: it's a meeting where the emphasis is always on the space sciences, especially this year with a theme that just crows about astronomy, and I'm a biologist. It doesn't…
pharyngula | July 13, 2011Jehovah should have said, "But you must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of lions because when you eat from it, you will certainly die." That would have been a credible threat.
(via National Geographic)
pharyngula | July 11, 2011He's looking at you, and he's surrounded by rainbows. He must be magical.
(via reader Jeremy)
pharyngula | July 8, 2011A diver found a swarm of cephalopods huddled in fear of predators, and managed to get some spectacular photos.
(via Boing Boing)
pharyngula | July 7, 2011I found a recent paper in Nature fascinating, but why is hard to describe — you need to understand a fair amount of general molecular biology and development to see what's interesting about it. So those of you who already do may be a little bored with this explanation, because I've got to build it up slowly and hope I don't lose everyone else along the way. Patience! If you're a real smartie-pants, just jump ahead and read the original paper in Nature.
A little general background.
Let's begin with an abstract map of a small piece of a strand of DNA. This is a region of fly DNA that encodes a…
pharyngula | July 6, 2011That last post was just too saccharine, so I have to bring you down. Balance! Balance in all things! So here's your official downer for the day: a story about greyhound racing.
One thing about greyhounds: They aren't likely to die of old age. When dogs turn 4 or 5 and are finished racing, she claims, "it's more cost-efficient for trainers and owners to kill a dog than to house and feed it."
Pro-racing folks balk at that claim, saying that today, most greyhounds are humanely retired, not killed. But in 2002, Alabama investigators found the bodies of thousands of dead greyhounds on the…
pharyngula | July 1, 2011Found twitching off the coast of Florida, thrown onto a big blue tarp, and viewed by a parade of spectators tromping by and saying "Eww, ick" at my naked dying/dead flesh.
Give the mighty beast a bit of dignity, please!
pharyngula | June 29, 2011And a baobab tree!
Oh, no, pretty soon I'm going to be gushing over pictures of cute little kittens, aren't I?
(via National Geographic)
pharyngula | June 25, 2011Cats can't do this.
Also, if cats could shed their skeletons, they wouldn't be considered a delicacy.
pharyngula | June 20, 2011It's not just a big dangerous-looking weapon, it's an electrosensory organ.