You may have heard last month’s news about an aggressive form of HIV that had public health officials in New York scared out of their professional gourds. They isolated the virus from a single man, and reported that it was resistant to anti-HIV drugs and drove its victim into full-blown AIDS in a manner of months, rather than the normal period of a few years. Skeptics wondered whether all the hoopla was necessary or useful. The virus might not turn out to be all that unusual, some said; perhaps the man’s immune system had some peculiar twist that gave the course of his disease such a devastating arc. But everyone did agree that the final judgment would have to wait until the scientists started publishing their research.

Continue reading “Evolution at Work (and Creationism Nowhere in Sight)” →

I can’t remember the first time I saw the dinosaur fossils at the American Museum of Natural History, but they’ve been good friends for over thirty years. We’ve all changed a lot over that time. I’ve grown up and gotten a bit gray, while they’ve hiked up their tails, gotten a spring in their step, and even sprouted feathers.

Continue reading “Growing Up With Dinosaurs” →

Last week my editor at the New York Times asked me to write an article about the evolution of crying, to accompany an article by Sandra Blakeslee on colic. Both articles (mine and Blakeslee’s) are coming out tomorrow. As I’ve written here before, human babies are by no means the only young animals that cry, and there’s evidence that natural selection has shaped their signals, whether they have feathers or hair. Among animals, there’s a lot of evidence that infants can benefit from manipulating their signals to get more from their parents. On the other hand, evolution may sometimes favor “honest advertisements” that prevent offspring from deceiving their parents. Human crying may be the product of the same conflict of evolutionary interested between parents and children.

Continue reading “Darwin in the Crib” →

At 1 p.m. today I listened by phone to a press conference in Washington where scientists presented the first good look inside a Hobbit’s head. The view is fascinating. While it may help clear up some mysteries, it seems to throw others wide open.

Continue reading “The Hobbit’s Brain” →

I’ve got an article in today’s New York Times about animal personalities.

Continue reading “Conscientious Chimps and Bold Birds” →