Archives: Adaptation

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Brawn over brains?

There’s no question that broadly speaking, big brains are smart. Take humans, for instance: our brains weigh in at about 3 pounds on average, nearly four times the size of the brains of chimpanzees (whose brains weigh in at less than a pound apiece). What’s less clear is why. There are a number of... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Nest in the city

One of the most incredible things about peafowl is how well these birds thrive in the suburbs. There were hundreds in Arcadia, CA, where I studied them, and every once in a while I hear about some other town where they’ve taken over – Orange County, Palos Verdes, Miami – they even disperse and... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Cuttlefish strike a pose for 3D camouflage

In the game of hide and seek, cuttlefish have the upper hand. These chameleons of the sea are astonishingly good at disappearing: they can instantaneously change the colour of their skin to blend in with the background, matching even the finicky details like the pattern of coloured rocks on the ocean floor. Divers have long known... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Monkeys draw from memory

We’re a little bit closer to understanding what it’s like to be a monkey, and it’s thanks to the same technology that powers your smartphone: the touchscreen. The latest victory for touchscreens is in the field of memory research. Scientists have been studying this ability in animals for decades – some birds, for example,... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

The ancient mariner

I drove a tractor for the first time a few weeks ago, when we were furiously collecting the last of the sap run for maple syrup. A small triumph for me since it seemed so terrifying at first. Trying to hide my confusion, I waited until the last moment to ask, “Which pedal is... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Cultured tastes

We drove halfway across the country for the party, but the main course alone was worth the trip. When the pig was finally hauled out by a crew of strapping male relatives, the guests at Anne-Claire and Martin’s wedding converged at the carving table. Small children, I’m told even a Jewish person or two – nobody... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

To kill bias, gather good data

I hate myself for this: I have the worst sense of direction. For the entire year when I was living in my first apartment in Kingston, I would take a circuitous route along King Street and then up Princess on my way home from the Kingston Yacht Club. Nearly two kilometers, when walking up... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

A royal waste?

Giant pandas are in the news again, this time for their annual date night at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC. But hardly a day goes by without a report somewhere on the latest captive panda birth, strategic breeding attempt or panda relocation. A blogger at the London Review of Books compared the bears to members of the... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Backpedalling on backwards evolution

In a recent post I wrote about irreversible colour changes in morning glory flowers, and how this was promoted as evidence that evolution does not work in reverse1. This is called Dollo’s Law, after the 19th century Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. He spent most of his life digging up and reconstructing Iguanodons, but his name lives on... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Wherefore the mustache?

Ears, palms, toes, neck, and nose. In that order. These are the grossest places for humans to have hair, according to Queen’s students. Ok, there were a few others that I didn’t mention. The upper lip, however, did not receive a single vote. Last fall a number of men in the biology department grew competitive... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Super indelible flower colours

How do you fire a pollinator? That was the question in last week’s Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour departmental seminar. The speaker was James Thomson, an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Toronto who specializes in the interactions between plants and their animal pollinators. His research shows that nectar-addled hummingbirds... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Science fictions

Fakery is not just for Hollywood films anymore. Nature documentaries are full of it, from elegant narratives to some downright dirty tricks. This tradition goes back a long way: the myth that lemmings commit mass suicide to save their brethren from overpopulation was spread widely as as result of the 1958 Disney film White Wilderness. This is... More

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