A Woolly Mammoth Primer

I’ve said before that proboscideans – the familiar group of placental mammals that includes living elephants and their many fossil relatives – have never been well served here at Tet Zoo…

The Amazing Giant Black Fossa

Is there a bigger, badder, blacker fossa alive in Madagascar?

Sloth World, 2025 (Part 1)

Like me, you are no doubt a big fan of sloths...

Whales and Dolphins Around the Coasts of Europe, 2025

Once again, I’m back from time spent in the North Atlantic looking at wild cetaceans, specifically on a Bay of Biscay trip (a journey made between Plymouth in England and Santander in Spain) organised by the wildlife charity ORCA…

Armadillo Empire, Part 2: Fairies, Tolypeutines, and Where Glyptodonts Go

Once more, it’s time to look at armadillos, both at their diversity and at some aspects of their evolutionary history…

Armadillo Empire, Part 1: of Euphractines and Eutatines

If you’ve read recent articles here, you’ll have seen the coverage I’ve been giving to armadillos…

Suburban Camera Trapping, Week 1

Let’s experiment with camera trapping!

Of Zaedyus, the Pichi

Let’s look at armadillos some more. Or, let’s look at more armadillos. I mean, let’s look more at armadillos. Whatever: armadillos! More.

The Fate of the Woolly Long-Nosed Armadillo of Peru

One of my favourite mammal assemblages of all is Xenarthra, the ‘strange joint’ group that includes the remarkable and odd anteaters, sloths and armadillos…

Otaria, the Southern Sea Lion

I haven’t written much on pinnipeds (seal, sea lions and walruses) here at ver 4. Here’s a recycling of material originally published at ver 2 way back in 2007, enjoy! I haven’t updated it…

Curtis, Swisher and Lewin’s Java Man of 2000: Hominin-Themed Books, Part 1

If you were following the hominin-themed discoveries of that long-ago era known as the 1990s, you may well remember the hot news, published in Science in 1994 and 1996, on Homo erectus…

The Kleinmachnow Lion is Definitely Not a Lion

Over the past day (20th July 2023), social media accounts have been sharing a brief snippet of mobile phone footage purporting to show a lion (specifically, a lioness) walking at the edge of woodland in the Berlin suburb of Kleinmachnow…

The Slightly Surprising Diversity of Zebras, Part 2

Back in October 2022, we looked at the diversity and evolution of plains zebras, a group that includes the Quagga. Here, we carry on with the zebra series, this time looking at Grevy’s zebra….

The Discovery of the Okapi, Part 2

In the previous article, we looked at the European, scientific discovery of the Okapi Okapia johnstoni…

The Discovery of the Okapi, Part 1

If you’ve heard of the Okapi Okapia johnstoni – and if you’re at all interested in the history of zoology – chances are high that you’ve heard the famous story of this animal’s scientific discovery…

Piltdown Man and the Dualist Contention

One of the most fascinating episodes in the history of palaeontology is that of Piltdown man, an alleged human ancestor discovered in 1908 at Piltdown in Sussex, England…

Pouches, pockets and sacs in the heads, necks and chests of baleen whales

Way back in 2010, I published a series of articles on the various pouches, pockets and sacs (virtually all of which are laryngeal diverticula of one sort or another) that exist in the heads, necks and chests of mammals. I never finished that series.

The Slightly Surprising Diversity of Zebras, Part 1

Finally, it’s time to talk about the zebras…

The Domes of Wisdom: an Asian Elephant Tale

Time for another article from the extensive TetZoo archives, this time a piece from ver 2, 2008 (original here). We begin with this interesting photo provided by my good friend Markus Bühler (of Bestiarium): it shows a bull Asian elephant Elephas maximus at Hagenbeck Zoo, Hamburg…

Domestic Horses of Africa

I’ve written a fair amount about HORSES at TetZoo, predominantly at versions 2 and 3. For reasons, I now aim to reproduce it here at ver 3. We start with a article I first published in 2015 (original version here)…