Richard Conniff's Blog, page 117

The Species Seekers Quiz: Wallace's House of Rest

After spending a dozen years in the tropics and making his reputation as the greatest field biologist of the nineteenth century, Alfred Russel Wallace later gave this name to the house where he retired:

1.  Darwinia, to honor his co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection (though his wife Annie had suggested Wallacea).

2.  Umbraculum, from the Latin word for a place of quiet retirement.

3.  Tulgey Wood, after a nonsense verse by Lewis Carroll.

4.  Birdwing, for his discovery of the...

How a Seashell Helped Deaf People Hear

I've written often here about the remarkable ways shellfish have altered the course of human history.  So I was intrigued to see a recent interview about how a shell inspired the invention of cochlear implants.  It appears in the Aussie magazine Cosmos, where I am an occasional contributor.  Here's an excerpt:

During one Melbourne summer in 1977, he took his young children to the beach to escape the heat. While they were playing in the shallows, Clark noticed a seashell lying on the ground...

Pulling Lizards' Tails at the Birthplace of Darwin's Big Idea

Charles Darwin when he was still just Chucky D, likable bloke.

On September 15, 1835, 175 years ago today, Charles Darwin first set foot in the Galapagos Islands.  He seems to have been struck at first mainly by the starkness of the landscape.  In his diary, he wrote:  "These islands at a distance have a sloping uniform outline, excepting where broken by sundry paps & hillocks. — The whole is black Lava, completely covered by small leafless brushwood & low trees."

But the species he...

Bless You and Your Embarrassing Kinfolk, Ricky Gervais

A while back, I wrote a piece in Smithsonian Magazine under the title "Genealogy is Bunk."  Ricky Gervais seems to think so, too, and it makes a writer named Megan Smolenyak at Huff Po just so furious.  Take it, Megan:

It's hard to get genealogists riled up, but Ricky Gervais has succeeded. Not that he intended to. Asked in a recent interview whether he would ever appear on the celebrity-roots series Who Do You Think You Are?, he replied in standard Gervais fashion, "No. Who cares who...

The Species Seekers Quiz: Name that Beast

What is the celebrated Incognitum?

A. A secretive relative of the gorilla

B.  A mastodon

3.  The oldest fossil of a fish

4.  Darwin's second vessel

And the answer is …

A mastodon.

In the spring of 1705, in the Hudson River village of Claverack, New York, a rainstorm eroded a steep bluff and spalled out a tooth the size of a man's fist.  Lord Cornbury, the eccentric governor of New York (his enemies said he liked to dress up as Queen Anne) sent it off to the natural philosophers at the Royal Society ...

Forgotten, Yes. But Happy Birthday Anyway

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Today's the birthday of the Comte de Buffon, a great naturalist and leading figure in my upcoming book The Species Seekers:  Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth (W.W. Norton, Nov. 1).    I wrote about him a while in the New York Times:

I SUPPOSE I already knew that it was a little perverse to be setting off in search of one of history's losers. But even the French seemed to think it was odd. Georges-Louis Leclerc? The Comte de Buffon? I...

Kiss Me, I'm Bradypus

Three-toed and shamelessly adorable

Some video webcaster has launched the dreadfully conceived "Cute Show," and it will probably be a huge sensation, right up there with funny cat videos.   I tend to think the uncharismatic animals of the world are the ones that really need–and reward–our attention.    That said, I am just a sucker for pictures of three-toed sloths (Bradypus tridactylus).  If you want to find out how they live, try to scrounge up a copy of my book Every Creeping Thing, which i...

Frillier than Austin Powers–and Way More Mojo

Meet Mr. Mojoceratops. (Nicholas Longrich/Yale University)

I am a great fan of colorful scientific names.  (You can read about some of the best of them in my book, just out last week in paperback, Swimming With Piranhas at Feeding Time:  My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals.)  So this new dinosaur, described today by a paleontologist at Yale, is a natural, not least for its splendid name.  It makes Austin Powers, not to mention Triceratops, look like a piker:

Mojoceratops: New Dinosaur...

Urban Animal: Learning To See the Forest Amid The Buildings

The shift from thinking about urban forests to urban ecology happened in the late 1990s. Morgan Grove had gone to work for the U.S. Forest Service in Baltimore in 1996, the day after defending his doctoral thesis at Yale. Federal officials soon began looking at the Urban Resources Initiative's work in Baltimore as a model. The Forest Service had customarily funded long-term research (LTR) projects in natural settings around the country. But it had never attempted such an ecosystem...

Urban Animal: Learning To See the Forest Amid The Buildings

The shift from thinking about urban forests to urban ecology happened in the late 1990s. Morgan Grove had gone to work for the U.S. Forest Service in Baltimore in 1996, the day after defending his doctoral thesis at Yale. Federal officials soon began looking at the Urban Resources Initiative's work in Baltimore as a model. The Forest Service had customarily funded long-term research (LTR) projects in natural settings around the country. But it had never attempted such an ecosystem...