Dragonflies are ancient: with damsel flies, they were among the earliest flying insects. An analysis based on molecular data and fossil evidence suggests a date of 480mya for the first insects, around the same time that land plants evolved, and includes a rather impressive family tree for the taxon; the earliest dragonfly fossils are around 325my […]
Continue readingCategory: animal behaviour
the speed of a chameleon’s tongue
In 2012 the world was introduced to some of the smallest-known vertebrates: tiny chameleons. My good friend Grant wrote about them at the time, & I set an essay assignment for my first-years on these tiny beasties. How tiny is tiny? The following images are from the original paper, published in PLoS one by Glaw, Kohler, […]
Continue readingspiders as wasp incubators
A few days ago there was a story in the Herald about an Australian huntsman spider that had been found by NZ's border security workers at Auckland airport. With a legspan of up to 15cm these are not small creatures! And yes, we do have them in NZ as well, but they're a different genus: NZ […]
Continue readingthe sonorous war cry of a very angry frog
I've always liked frogs. I remember, when I was probably around 4 years old, being fascinated by the tadpoles that Dad brought home in a big jar from a farm pond. Mum explained about how they'd gradually metamorphose (thought I doubt she used that word!) & we watched their legs slowly grow & their tails […]
Continue readingthe mysteries of cannibal octopus s*x
And oh, how I wish I could say it was me who came up with that title! But it wasn’t; it was the BBC, headlining a fascinating article about how octopuses get it on. It seems it’s rather difficult to be a male octopus with mating on his mind. Like a female spider, his prospective […]
Continue readinga mantis? or a fly?
So, which is it? A mantis? Or a fly? (Image by kind permission of Daniel Llavaneras) In fact, the creature shown in this gorgeous image by Daniel Llavaneras is neither mantis nor true (Dipteran) fly, although its common name is 'mantisfly'. Instead, it belongs to the insect family Mantispidae (a group that includes lacewings and antlions). Like real praying mantids, matisflies walk […]
Continue readingonly the bones remained
And at the end, there weren’t many of those. One of the things we talk about in biology class is the importance of decomposers. Most students think in terms of bacteria when this topic’s raised, & maybe things like fungi. But there is more to the breakdown of a body than those microorganisms. Think worms, […]
Continue readinga tale of two tails
Lizards, like us, are chordates. One of the defining characteristics that all chordates share at some point in their development is the presence of a notochord: a stiff rod of tissue that runs along the dorsal side of the animal, just beneath the hollow dorsal nerve cord. (Yes, hollow. This is the result of its […]
Continue readingtrue facts about owls
A lot of my friends seem to like owls, if their tendency to post photos of adorable fluffy feathered faces on Facebook is anything to go by. I rather like them too; we live close to a gully & it’s lovely hearing the moreporks calling at night. Once or twice one has sat in a […]
Continue readingit’s the season for ‘best-of’ science compilations…
… and so here are a couple of compilations. The first is Sciencealert's top 10 animal videos for this year. They include a lone porcupine seeing off a pride of 17 (!) lions; an octopus 'walking' on land (which is really really strange: it must take an awful lot of effort to do this, unsupported […]
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