Sloth World, 2025 (Part 1)

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

Crocodiles Attack Elephants Then, Now, and Still

Regular readers here will be familiar with my lamentations about the old, archived material from ver 2 (ScienceBlogs) and ver 3 (Scientific American). It’s been lost, destroyed, vandalized, paywalled, or some combination of those things. Today, something happened which has inspired me to rescue one of those articles from ver 3, specifically from 2013 (here’s the original). What inspired it, huh? Well, THIS DID…

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…

In Memory of Richard Ellis, Influential Artist and Author

Within recent days, the world has learnt of the passing of American writer, author, artist and natural historian Richard Ellis (1938-2024), best known for his many works on marine animals and their environment...

Tet Zoo Reviews Zoos: New Forest Wildlife Park

Regular readers will be aware of my intermittent, occasional articles on the zoos and other animal-based visitor centres of the world, published as and when I remember to do them...

New Species Round-up for 2023, Part 1

This is a time of ecological crisis and massive loss of animal diversity, make no mistake about it. But there’s still a vast amount of new stuff left to discover, and every year we see a significant influx of newly recognized species, even among tetrapods. In this and the next article, we take a whistle-stop tour of those tetrapod species new to science as of 2023. As ever, remember that new to science is not synonymous with new to humanity…

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…