I mean, really – have you ever seen something like this before? Melibe engeli is a type of sea slug, and a most unusual one. Its body is partly translucent, and has projections called cerata, themselves covered with smaller projections called papillae, down both sides. The animal is an active hunter – but what a […]
Continue readingYear: 2016
“killer neandertals” – a wild claim that doesn’t want to go away
A while ago now (6 years ago, in fact! How time flies when you're having fun), I wrote a piece about some fairly wild claims made about Neandertals. Rather surprisingly this post (here, & over on sciblogs.co.nz where it's mirrored) continues to attract occasional comments from those who firmly believe in the idea that Neandertals […]
Continue readingparts of our genome are actually viral
I've just come across a most excellent article by the Genetic Literacy Project. In it, Nicholas Staropoli notes that a proportion of the human genome actually has viral origins. This might sound a bit strange – after all, we tend to think of viruses as our enemies (smallpox, measles, and the human papilloma virus come […]
Continue readingmms – the woo-filled gift that keeps on giving
I've written before about the so-called 'miracle mineral solution', aka MMS (here, for example), but I see that it's hit the news again recently. MMS is essentially bleach1, but one Jim Humble has made quite a little empire (and a 'church') out of selling the stuff, and has previously claimed that it's a preventative & […]
Continue readingdogs, dispersal, & (bio)dynamics
A couple of days ago I did a spot of live radio with the good folks at 95bFM. It was great fun. One of the topics was dog evolution, which I've already written about here; another was the recent publications on human dispersal, covered nicely over on sciblogs.co.nz. The third was a brief discussion of […]
Continue readingselection and dog breeds
So, I own a pocket wolf. … … Oh, OK, I own a little black mini-poodle. But, like all dogs, he has the same number of chromosomes as a wolf! There've been several articles posted recently about the evolution of domestic dogs. While we've tended to think that domestication didn't begin until humans began to […]
Continue readingCOOLs? are they as cool as they sound?
The National government is proposing a number of amendments to the NZ Education Act. One, which has already received quite a lot of press, sounds rather like a return to bulk funding under another name. But the latest one to hit the news is more like an untried social experiment with the potential for a […]
Continue readingrun! well, amble! the giant carnivorous snails are coming!
There’s a lovely, life-size bronze sculpture of a Powelliphanta land snail sitting on my china cabinet. I love it because a friend made it for us – and because snails in this genus are rather special, for they are all carnivorous. Now, I ‘knew’ this fact, but I’d never actually seen one feeding. Snails being normally rather […]
Continue readingattack of the zombie snails
The semester's begun, teaching has started, admin isn't letting up any time soon, & there are days when I feel like a zombie by home-time. So it seems entirely appropriate to revivify a post I wrote 3 years ago, on that very subject. Honestly, sometimes I think the zombie apocalypse is already here. Certainly zombies […]
Continue readingtunicates – apparent simplicity belies a complex past
Tunicates are more commonly known as 'sea squirts' – little blobby marine creatures that squirt water when you touch them (hence the name). We don't hear about them often, except perhaps when they make the news for all the wrong reasons. But from an evolutionary perspective they are fascinating little creatures – and it's largely […]
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