Our Blog
Note to readers: ‘Biological Expositions’ is a series of blog-posts each of which is equivalent in content to a book chapter. If a bio-bullet is likened to a starter, our routine blog-post could be seen as a light lunch and a biological exposition as a three course meal.
Fluffy chitulose dreams
On the face of it, cellulose is the most mundane of biological products. Everyday cotton. When you put on pyjamas of 100% cotton, you're donning a product made simply from one...
Why did the marsupials sink with Zealandia?
If we survey the native faunas of the archipelagos of the world, it is birds rather than mammals that have, in general, succeeded on small patches of land isolated by sea. At...
What good is a clitoris?
Amputating[1] the clitoris is, by any standards, an abuse of the human body. As in the case of a hand amputated, some functions have been lost. But which functions, exactly? The...
The pied panda
Most biologists know that conservation of the giant panda is biased, but we introduce clarity here on three counts. Firstly, part of the bias is for pied colouration. Secondly,...
Why does no bird cock an ear?
'Pinna' means feather in Latin, and yet it's mammals, not birds, that have an ear pinna: that auricle projecting from each side of your head. Okay, so no bird has external ears...
Why we won’t call a bost a bost
English denies its prime animal species a name, showing the injustice of the vernacular. Mammalogists have no common or vernacular name for one of the most important animal...
Anthropological whisperings from the ear lobe
The Bio-edge starts with the human body. So many enigmatic body parts to choose from: chin, appendix, eye whites, thumb, foot, penis, mammaries, sinuses, kidneys . . . No other...
Would you like your paradox with a pinch of salt?
Is there a reader who hasn't scratched a head over the role of sodium in the human diet? The behaviour of Na in diet, health and ecology seems illogical. This is partly because...
Giant panda, giant cavy, and a pastural allegory
For more than a year Robin and the Honey Badger have felt inspired to compare the giant panda (Carnivora: Ursidae: Ailuropoda melanoleuca) of China with the capybara (Rodentia:...
Lateral thoughts on the leatherback turtle
At the mention of the leatherback turtle[1], most people generally knowledgeable about animals may visualise merely one of the half dozen-odd types of marine turtles collectively...
Nesting a tangle of cause and effect
Grand constructions by non-human organisms seem to defy our self-concept as the engineering animal. Yet some of the greatest feats of engineering can be found in Nature...