Evolutionary Biology

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Martin Krzywinski, a contributing artist who designed the Graphic Science illustration in the September issue of Scientific American magazine.

We've all done it: We're at an event, we take a bunch of photos with our phones, we take a selfie and maybe one with a friend, we post all the images online, and we're done.

Last week, on the same day that McSweeney’s Books published a new, paperback edition of my book The End of War, I argued that we must and can end war and militarism, our most urgent problems.

I've just returned from LonCon3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, held at the enormous ExCel Exhibition Centre in east London. Yeah, I know, sci-fi isn't exactly a normal part of the Tet Zoo remit but, on this occasion, there really is overlap since I was there for a set of special Speculative Biology talks [...]

People who lack the gardening bug often regard flowers like fashion models: pretty but boring. Jens Petersen, the man who gave us the groundbreaking photographs of fungi in “The Kingdom of Fungi”, which I reviewed here in March, has a new book of photographs (still available only in Danish, unfortunately, and called Blomsterliv — “Flower [...]

To activate or loosen their grip on a surface, geckos extend and angle or retract tiny toe hairs that create contact points. Clara Moskowitz reports 

 

Monkeys trained to play fixed video games made moves indicating that they expected certain patterns to occur. Erika Beras reports
 

Pharmaceutical pollutants in water seem to improve survival among hatchlings of at least one species

Hey so snakes that inject venom into the bloodstream are pretty bad, how about a snake that injects venom into your bloodstream AND makes you bleed out from every orifice?

These researchers and educators can teach you more about sharks as the fascinating, ecologically important and threatened multiple species that they are

We must wait patiently two more months until the official International Octopus Day. But August 8th (8/8) is reason enough to celebrate these awesome, eight-armed creatures.

Millions of dollars and two decades of conservation efforts have failed to protect the Gulf of California's critically endangered vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus).