How times have changed. Used to be, if I wanted to figure out what people were reading, I’d ask a few friends. This week, I got replies from 761 people.

On Monday I asked you to help me get a better sense of the science reader–how the science reader gets a science fix, what the science reader values, and what the science reader expects from the future. Thanks to everyone who responded–both directly to the survey questions and indirectly in the comments. Not surprisingly, commenters revealed to me some shortcomings of the survey itself–most glaringly, leaving podcasts, radio, and public libraries off the list of venues where you get your science fix. Despite these shortcomings, I still ended up thinking the survey was very useful. The picture it paints is pretty clear, and, in some ways, surprising.

Continue reading “The Science Reader: A Crowd-Sourced Profile” →

There was a time when seahorses meant little to me. They were pleasant to look at in an aquarium. They seemed to show up a lot on the walls of restaurants near beaches. But as is so often the case in nature, there’s bizarre biology lurking under the surface. Specifically, inside the male seahorses. When it’s time to make new seahorses, the male seahorses get pregnant.

Their pregnancy seems bizarre because it is rare. In most species that keep their young inside a parent, the job goes to the mother. But there is a deep symmetry to these two ways of reproducing. That’s a general rule when it comes to evolution: time and again, biologists find the same underlying principles driving the evolution of both the familiar and the bizarre.

Continue reading “Through the Sexual Looking Glass” →

A quick note: I’ll be closing the survey on science reading habits at 1 pm EST Wednesday. The turnout has been great, and people are still joining in tonight. But I don’t want to let too much time go by before crunching the numbers and putting them back out for you again. So please have your say.

P.S. I know, I know–why are podcasts and public libraries not in the survey? I don’t know why I blanked on them. Register complaints in the comment thread.

Originally published March 16, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

The other Zimmer at the Times: On On Point.

This one, talking about the secret life of plants, carnivorous and otherwise on WNPR’s Colin McEnroe Show.

Originally published March 16, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.