Flying Princesses and Sportive Octopuses

Posted on by Lori Jia

My radio silence is the result of a perfect storm–reporting trips, upcoming holidays, and the minor matter of my deadline for turning in my book at the end of the year. Any free moment gets gobbled up before I can even think about blogging. But I can point you to some pieces of mine that are now coming out in various non-blog outlets. First up: the natural history of play. It’s part of a special report on games that appeared yesterday in Forbes.com. 

Originally published December 15, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

Games Animals Play

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Forbes, December 14, 2006

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To write about the natural history of games and play, I decided to consult an expert. The other day, as I was twirling my 5-year-old daughter around so that she could pretend she could fly with her fairy wings, I asked her why she likes to play.

Charlotte flew on in silence for a moment. I could tell my question seemed strange to her. “Everyone likes to play,” she said. “Except for grown-ups.”

I suppose the thought of not playing is just too absurd for a 5-year-old to take seriously. Play is a kind of lingua franca for children. Charlotte gets a bit shy when we visit friends, but if there’s a child in the house who’s ready to share a train set or a princess costume, she takes off in a sprint. I might as well have asked her why she eats or sleeps.

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Your Monday Morning Parasite Show (Safe for Breakfast)

Posted on by Lori Jia

Thanks to PZ Myers for calling attention to this superb video of Corydceps, a parasitic fungus that drives its insect host up a plant before growing a spike out of its head. Leave it to David Attenborough, master of the nature documentary, to bring the beauty of this parasite to video. I’ve seen photographs of Cordyceps before, but I never knew it made such a graceful entrance.

What’s particularly cool about Cordyceps is that it is not alone. Other parasites drive their hosts to bizarre heights. Another fungus, called Entomophthora muscae, drives houseflies and other insects upwards, climbing screen doors in some cases, before springing out of its host’s body.

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A Fin Is a Limb is a Wing

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National Geographic, November 30, 2006

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The father of evolution was a nervous parent. Few things worried Charles Darwin more than the challenge of explaining how nature’s most complex structures, such as the eye, came to be. “The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder,” he wrote to a friend in 1860.

Today biologists are beginning to understand the origins of life’s complexity—the exquisite optical mechanism of the eye, the masterly engineering of the arm, the architecture of a flower or a feather, the choreography that allows trillions of cells to cooperate in a single organism.

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Scientist of the Year: Jay Keasling

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Discover, November 22, 2006

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Which scientist had the greatest impact in the past year? Mike Brown of Caltech forced astronomers to rethink what a planet is. Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago found a key fossil showing how life moved onto land. Emma Whitelaw of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research documented how heredity extends beyond genes. NASA’s James Hansen bolstered the case for global warming and spoke out against government censorship. And these were just some of our finalists.

In the end we zeroed in on one researcher whose work stands out even in this illustrious company. We are pleased to announce Jay Keasling as the winner of DISCOVER’s first Scientist of the Year award.

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