Stories by Darren Naish

Warthogs are African members of the pig family, famous for their long, upcurved tusks and facial ‘warts’. They are mostly naked-skinned, possess a dorsal crest that’s longest over the neck and shoulders, and are specialised grazers that ‘kneel’ on their wrists in order to bring the mouth close to the ground. As much as I’d like the talk about warthogs at length, we’re here because of the skeleton and, specifically, just a few things about it...

You might be surprised to learn that microhylid frogs in Peru, India, Sri Lanka and perhaps elsewhere have developed close relationships with large spiders...

I've said on several previous occasions that domestic animals are far from outside the Tet Zoo remit. On the contrary, I find them to be of great interest, and I think that their diversity, evolution and behaviour is something that we should pay attention to more often.

A couple of weeks ago I hatched a plan to write about all the neat new dinosaur-themed studies that had just appeared in print; I began by penning my thoughts on the Brontosaurus issue.

I’ve just learnt (thanks, Marko Bosscher) that today (April 27th) is World Tapir Day, an annual event in which the world unites in celebration of our plucky, trunk-nosed perissodactyl pals and in which we aim to enhance awareness of tapir conservation through the raising of funds and sale of tapir-themed merchandise.

So, the name Brontosaurus is back in business. After comparing, analysing, measuring and coding an extraordinary amount of anatomical detail pertaining to diplodocid sauropods, Emanuel Tschopp and colleagues have produced the largest-ever phylogenetic analysis of sauropods (Tschopp et al.

Over the last several days a consortium of people interested in herpetology, weird animals, animal lore, and special effects have worked together to help resolve an incredible and bizarre `mystery'*.

I'm about as interested in domestic animals as I am in non-domesticated ones. Sheep of various kinds have been discussed on Tet Zoo a few times, and right now I want to say a few brief things about a breed I recently saw on several occasions in Romania - the Turcana or Tsurcana, a highly [...]

Check any mainstream book on the whales, dolphins and porpoises of the world and you'll see these creatures depicted in tedious monochrome; as eternally decked out in blacks and greys.

While in Romania back in 2011, I photographed the lizard you see here. It's clearly a lacertid: a member of the Eurasian-African group that contains the familiar Lacerta sand lizards and green lizards as well as many other groups.

You never really hear much about shrew-opossums or rat-opossums, the small group of living, South American marsupials properly called caenolestids or caenolestoids.

It's time for one of those classic `from the archives' type articles. This one was originally published in July 2008 at Tet Zoo ver 2. Apart from tiny editorial tweaks, it hasn't been updated.

One of the birds I see most regularly here in southern England is the Eurasian coot Fulica atra. This is another of those oh-so-familiar animals that we see so often that we normally pay it little attention.

I'm feeling the urge to blog about lizards. So, today I'd like to talk about the Aprasia species, a group of short-tailed, near-limbless gekkotans that belong to the Australian Pygopodidae family, the so-called flapfoots, flap-footed lizards or pygopods.

Following on from February's review of Matthew P. Martyniuk's Beasts of Antiquity: Stem-Birds in the Solnhofen Limestone, it's time once again to look at another recently published dinosaur-themed book.

Some of you will know that I'm putting together a giant textbook on the vertebrate fossil record… and, oh god, it isn't easy. If you want sneak-peeks on how things are going, please consider supporting me at my patreon page.

During the upper Palaeolithic (that is, between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago), prehistoric people in Europe and Asia (and elsewhere) depicted the animals they saw in thousands of piece of cave art.