For anyone in the US who likes to know what it’s like inside a giraffe (hands up, people), it was frustrating to discover the show Inside Nature’s Giants airing on British TV. The best we could manage were snippets on YouTube. Now the show is here in the States. The other day I spent some time with one of the main scientists of the show, Joy Reidenberg, an anatomist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. I’ve written a profile of her, both as a researcher who’s discovering fascinating new things about whales, and as that most improbable thing: a celebrity anatomist. Check it out.

Be sure to take a look at the extras on the page, such as the podcast, video, and graphic instructions for how to dissect a 50-ton whale.

[Photo courtesy of Joy Reidenberg]

Originally published February 6, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.

Charles Darwin recognized that natural selection can make eyes sharper, muscles stronger, and fur thicker. But evolution does more than just improve what’s already there. It also gives rise to entirely new things—like eyes and muscles and fur. To study how new things evolve, biologists usually have to rely on ancient clues left behind for hundreds of millions of years. But in a study published today, scientists at Michigan State University show that it’s possible to watch something new evolve in front of their eyes, in just a couple weeks.

The scientists were studying a virus, which evolved a new way of invading cells. As a result, their research not only sheds light on a fundamental question about evolution. It also suggests that it may worryingly easy for viruses such as influenza to turn into new epidemics. Check it out.

[Image of lambda virus: AJC1 on Flickr via Creative Commons]

Originally published January 26, 2012. Copyright 2012 Carl Zimmer.