The daughter & her friends play Assassin's Creed from time to time. This little arachnid would fit right in: Photo: Jeremy Miller For this is an assassin spider, one of a number of species (in the superfamily Palpiamanoidea) that prey on other spiders. The assassin spiders have a long history: a combination of fossil & DNA evidence suggests […]
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teach creationism, undermine science
Every now & then I've had someone say to me that there's no harm in children hearing about 'other ways of knowing' about the world during their time at school, so why am I worried about creationism being delivered in the classroom? Well, first up, my concerns – & those of most of my colleagues […]
Continue readingcharter schools can teach creationism after all
I first wrote about charter schools just over a year ago. At the time I was commenting on statements that such schools would be able to employ as teachers people who lacked teaching qualifications, wondering how that could sit with the Minister's statements around achieving quality teaching practice. But I also noted concerns that charter […]
Continue readingbicep-flexing & s*xual selection
When I was a kid, we’d all look forward to Friday evenings – because Dad & Grandma would come back from town with the weekly supply of comics. The ads in the back were almost as good as the cartoons, although we were very disappointed to find out that sea monkeys were definitely not as […]
Continue readinghave you heard of a pyrosome?
"Have you heard of a pyrosome?" asks Carin Bondar. My immediate answer was, no; no, I haven’t – but you know me, I’m always curious 🙂 Turns out that pyrosomes – which look almost other-worldly in the video below – are colonial tunicates: the same taxonomic group as the perhaps-more-familiar sea squirts. And that means […]
Continue readingthe male himalayan monal – an absolutely gorgeous bird
Another for the ‘gosh, isn’t this beautiful?!’ files: the Himalayan Monal (the national bird of Nepal). (Image via Facebook: Tambako the Jaguar; Flickr — with Robin Subba, Sarvesh Wangawad,Jeriko Angue, Roberto Delapisa, Jonas Mgr, Neelesh Suryavanshi, Shashank Asai,Sushant Bhujel and Pabitra Lamichhane.) This stunning bird (Lophophorus impejanus) is a type of pheasant, and like other pheasants the species is strongly sexually dimorphic: the males […]
Continue readingthe origins of humans lie in a – ahem! – far-fetched hybridisation event?
Or maybe not. The internet is a wondrous place: a source of information, of amusement, and – alarmingly often – of material that elicits a combination of ‘say what?’ and <head-desk>. And a hat-tip to PZ Myers for this particular example…
Continue readinga great synopsis of evolution? no, i don’t think so
The great & wonderful FB (</snark>) this morning delivered me a link to this video, describing it as ‘a great depiction of the process of evolution’. To which, having watched it, I can only say, ‘no, I don’t think so’. Why? Well, apart from the music (repetitive rap-style tracks don’t do a lot for me, […]
Continue readingaquatic apes & custard elephants
The ‘aquatic ape’ hypothesis (it can’t be described as a theory) has been around for quite a while, & in fact I’ve blogged about it before. So I was sorry to hear that Sir David Attenborough, who’s done so much to promote conservation issues and enhance our understanding of the natural world, appeared to have […]
Continue readingthe gastric-brooding frog – not quite back from the dead
I first found out about gastric-brooding frogs (Rheobatrachus silus) when reading Stephen Jay Gould’s essay "Here Goes Nothing" (as published in the 1991 book Bully for Brontosaurus). As he said, these frogs really do live up to their name: the frog swallows its fertilised eggs, broods tadpoles in its stomach, and gives birth to young frogs […]
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