Tag: evolution

Politics, Reviews

A Little Queer Natural History

September 24, 2024 by Peter 1 Comment

The “clickbait” title for this post could well have been “The gays are making our bears queer” but no, this is a book review,...

Reviews

How Birds Evolve: What Science Reveals about Their Origin, Lives, and Diversity: A Book Review by a Non-Science Person

November 2, 2021 by Donna No Comments

Doug Futuyma believes in science and in the scientific basis of evolution. This shouldn’t have to be stated, especially in a book on bird...

Birding

Do birds avoid predators because of culture?

December 15, 2015 by Greg 2 Comments

Tradeoffs in behavior, and plasticity We assume natural selection has shaped birds to avoid predators. Noticing predators, reacting to them perhaps with an alarm...

Birds

How The Bird Got Its Beak

May 19, 2015 by Greg 1 Comment

Birds are a subset of dinosaurs (See: Honey, I Shrunk the Dinosaurs. Prior to the extinction of all of the other dinosaurs, resulting from...

Birds

Honey, I Shrunk The Dinosaurs!

August 19, 2014 by Greg 6 Comments

There is a fantastic paper just out in Science: “Sustained miniaturization and anatomoical innovation in the dinosaurian anceestors of birds” by Michael Lee, Andrea...

Birds

Grallards: New Zealand’s Next Extinction or Newest Species?

July 24, 2014 by Duncan 2 Comments

Yesterday i introduced you, gentle reader, to the lovely work done by the acclimatisation societies of New Zealand in making the already interesting biogeography...

Birds

Being A Living Fossil Evolved Multiple Times

June 17, 2014 by Greg No Comments

It has been discovered that largosity and flightlessness, which perhaps fortunately tend to go together in birds, evolved more than once. The original story...