The beautiful owl is back in the news. People are fascinated by this wonderful bird’s ability to fly so silently; a silent beast gliding through the woods. Noise has become an issue to people in general, I believe, because people are more sensitive about the …
The experts have told us that giant millipedes as long as a car weighing 50 kg roamed across Great Britain 326 million years ago, which at that time was at the equator. We are familiar with the modern-day millipede which are small insects. I am …
If ever you had doubts about the way evolution works to create a camouflaged coat to enhance the prospects of survival of the world’s wild species, this photo should dispel those doubts. Some people still don’t believe in evolution. But it’s entirely factual because the …
Why are giant pandas black-and-white? It looks as if they can’t be camouflaged with such sharp lines between the white and black parts of their fur. But a really good photograph accompanied by a really good article in The Times newspaper clarifies the point. Black …
GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, MOZAMBIQUE-NEWS AND COMMENT: This is an interesting example of how the intervention of humans can inadvertently alter the course of evolution. The story is also interesting for the fact that, looking at the story from a different angle, it is as if …
Researchers from the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh have very recently calculated that humanity’s roots stretch back to about 3.3 million years ago. This is 500,000 years earlier than had previously been thought. They believe that our ancestors weighed about six stones and slept in …
The fictional film giants Godzilla and King Kong, which have grown in size over decades, would be unviable in the real world because their bones would break in carrying such enormous weights. Apparently it’s all to do with biomechanics. When you grow an animal to …
Unquestionably, non-human animals do, indeed, have culture. It is another example of an erosion of the concept of human exceptionalism. Humans like to think that they are special and different to animals but I am afraid that in many ways they are not. As The …
A study carried out by researchers at the University of Exeter using twenty-two years of data on American squirrels in Yukon, Canada, found that when red squirrels live beside “familiar neighbours” it “boosts a squirrel’s chances of survival and successful breeding”. The American red squirrel …