If you ever find yourself in the forests of Ecuador, you may have the good fortune of spotting a club-winged manakin. The closest the rest of us will probably ever get will be to watch this video. But don’t just watch it. Listen.

If you said to yourself, “Hold on, is that bird singing with its wings?” the answer is yes. Continue reading “Feathers That Sing: What A Little Sexual Selection Can Do” →

The winners of this year’s AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award have just been announced. I’m honored to be the winner for large newspapers. (I submitted some of my articles over the past year in The New York Times.)

The whole enterprise of handing out awards for science journalism is fraught with gloomy undertones these days, of course. Last year’s newspaper winners actually lost their jobs by the time the awards were announced. But even as we struggle on, it’s reassuring that there are chances to get some recognition for striving to do our best, to make as much sense of the world as we can manage in plain English. And I’m particularly grateful that the folks at the New York Times indulges me in my curiosity about basic questions about the nature of life–like why fireflies flash.

Originally published November 10, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Supermodel microbes? You bet. Check out this gallery of lovely, sometimes whimsical microbe colonies.

Originally published November 9, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.

Duygu writes, “I am a developmental biologist by training. Actually, my Ph.D. thesis does not really have an evolutionary focus because I study joint regeneration in embryonic chick limb. However, I have been an evolution enthusiast and also an activist for educating public about the theory of evolution for a long time. I could not imagine a better tattoo: Darwin’s finches arranged to look like a butterfly…I got it in 2009–Darwin’s 200th anniversary and On The Origin of Species‘ 150th anniversary. I spent last few years reading and writing a lot on evolution, as well as playing the “editor-in-chief” for translating UC Berkeley’s Understanding Evolution website into Turkish (Evrimi Anlamak – a completely volunteer work by our group called Hard-workers for Evolution). All in all, I am a biologist and ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution‘… So, I celebrate it with four finches on my shoulder!”

Peter Wainwright and his colleagues at UC Davis study the weird ways in which fish eat. Two years ago I wrote about their creepy work on moray eels for the Times here. Now they’ve got a Youtube channel for their surreal films. Mick Jagger, meet the Red Bay Snook. And Mr. Mosquitofish, meet your doom. (h/t Jonathan Eisen)

Originally published November 7, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.