Greetings–
Guaranteed: Nothing on this list is an April Fool’s joke.
Endangered animals get a lot of medical attention in captivity–but are they getting too much attention for their own good? For my column this week in the New York Times, I write about some scientists who think that parasites are important to the long-term survival of species. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, April 1, 2016”
The New York Times, March 31, 2016
The kakapo, a large flightless parrot that can live 95 years and perhaps longer, is dangerously close to extinction. Once found throughout New Zealand, the population has dwindled to fewer than 150.
Conservation biologists are doing everything they can to keep the kakapo from vanishing. And so, when they discovered a few years ago that a pair of captive kakapos were infected with tapeworms, they did the obvious thing: They dewormed the birds.
Hamish G. Spencer, a geneticist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, thinks that was unwise. If endangered species are going to escape extinction, he argues, they may need parasites to survive.
Continue reading “Tapeworms and Other Parasites Can Make Good Guests”
Greetings–
No stomach flu, no head cold. Just a case of playing hooky on a pleasant Friday. Without further ado, here’s Friday’s Late Elk:
I’ve been rather obsessed with how life came on land for my whole career. In my first book, At the Water’s Edge, I delved into the remarkable history of research into this question. I’ve tried to keep up with new studies on this great transition in the years since the book came out. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, March 26, 2016”
The New York Times, March 24, 2016
It’s one of the most famous chapters in evolution, so familiar that it regularly inspires New Yorker cartoons: Some 375 million years ago, our ancestors emerged from the sea, evolving from swimming fish to vertebrates that walked on land.
Scientists still puzzle over exactly how the transition from sea to land took place. For the most part, they’ve had to rely on information gleaned from fossils of some of the intermediate species.
But now a team of researchers has found a remarkable parallel to one of evolution’s signature events. In a cave in Thailand, they’ve discovered that a blind fish walks the way land vertebrates do.
Continue reading “Researchers Find Fish That Walks the Way Land Vertebrates Do”
Greetings–
It’s a quieter week this time around, but here are a few things for your enjoyment…
The study of ancient human DNA just keeps getting more interesting. In the New York Times, I write this week about a new survey of the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA lurking in our genomes. It looks like there was even more interbreeding between our ancestors and these extinct humans than we previously thought. Here’s the story. P.S.: As a big fan of the comedian Harry Shearer, I was tickled to see on Twitter that the column inspired him to write a Neanderthal love song. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, March 18, 2016”