New Creature

Annie Davidson sent this video of a new siphonophore, more beautiful and odder than a Portuguese Man o’ War, the only well- known member of the family. Was it Arthur Wilderson who recently observed that the ocean’s abyss is full of “new” life forms, as odd as anything in science fiction?

Meanwhile, at sea…

Brother- in- law George Graham has been getting more and more involved in observing, counting, and studying marine birds and fish off the coast of Massachusetts, so far as a volunteer. He sent this report and these excellent photos, as migration stretces its  lines down the coasts. My only caveat is that George will have …

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The Unfeathered Bird: or, why I was in Laramie

Carlos Martinez del Rio, “cyborg naturalist”, polymath, bibliophile, horseman, game cook, teacher, and doubtless a host of other things I don’t know about yet,  is director of the Berry Center Biodiversity Institute at the University of Wyoming at Laramie. In that position, supervising an ever- expanding net woven between science, art, and nature, he decided …

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Why Quammen’s Spillover is worth Your Time

David Quammen’s new book Spillover, on emergent diseases; or more specifically, on emergent zoonoses, came out a few months ago to a series of middling good but somehow lukewarm reviews. I vehemently disagree, but it takes a bit of unfolding. Why do some readers find such a book fascinating while others find it dull? First: …

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Nomenclature

Annie Davidson sent our tiny aging, nostalgic, and usually goofy Zoo group (we have known each other since, what, 1970?) a provocative essay contra the Linnaean binomial system. I think she was poking a stick in an anthill, but I am afraid it pushed a few buttons! I was provoked to editorialize… “The author’s criticisms …

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