Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep by David Stipp: An engaging and entertaining exploration of evolution The science writer presents a series of case studies inspired by strange animal behaviour

Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep by David Stipp: An engaging and entertaining exploration of evolution

Covers of two new books about nature published this week, set against a background of floating jellyfish. - Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution, by David Stipp - Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places, by Alex Riley

Two fascinating books about nature just published this week: Super Natural, by Alex Riley, and Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep, by @davidstipp.bsky.social.
Super Natural: theliteratelizard.com/book/9781324...
Why Rats Laugh: theliteratelizard.com/book/9781643...
Full titles in alt-text
#BookSky

A book I wrote, "Why Rats Laugh & Jellyfish Sleep," came out today. It’s an exploration of Darwinian puzzles posed by close-to-home creatures and things, such as skunks, bumblebees, earthworms, and caffeine.

SUNNY FLEDGES 💕🥲💕 Big Bear Eagles / 10:46 / 2025-06-02 YouTube video by Eagle Goddess

An animal-cam moment to remember: Sunny the eagle fledged this morning, while Gizmo watched with amazement -- www.youtube.com/watch?v=1svd...

Chilocorus stigma - Wikipedia

Why is it that so many storybook-ready names belong to ladybugs? I guess it’s because they have so many arresting looks to warn predators of their inner poison. EG: the twice-stabbed lady beetle, below. Also the thrice-struck, polished, parenthesis, kidney-spotted fairy, and steelblue ladybugs.

Found art. Proposed title: Sic transit, aka The State of the Nation.

If Thomas Paine were reincarnated as a Washington Post opinion writer, this would be an excerpt from his final column (suppressed) just before he quit (taken from “Common Sense”): “The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.”

Now that trans (genic) mouse research is under fire, federal $’s will likely soon be banned at schools whose math teachers refuse to deny the existence of trans (cendental) numbers like pi. There go the trans (finite) numbers too. To paraphrase Kronecker, “God made the integers; all else is woke.”

A living haiku of hope during a bleak time: One of the witch hazels that bloom through snowy months in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. They chiefly hope for owlet moths, pollinators that shiver their flight muscles to get warm enough to fly in winter.

My recent favorite escape to the altogether elsewhere: Journey Through Genius, Bill Dunham’s lucid, readable book on math’s great theorems. You need only high school math for it. I’m taking it slow, the better to marvel. The eternally beautiful and true is perfectly orthogonal to the present.

Storage Tanks xkcd.com/2974

quentin stipp on Instagram: "Was curious how this process would look sped up, couple hours compressed down to a couple minutes - #watercolor #watercolorsketch #watercolorlandscape #painting #art #snow... 15 likes, 0 comments - quentinstipp on January 27, 2024: "Was curious how this process would look sped up, couple hours compressed down to a couple minutes - #watercolor #watercolorsketch #watercolorl...

I always like getting the story behind the story. Here's an example by an artist I follow, revealing how some chiaroscuro came to light (and dark) not long ago:
www.instagram.com/p/C2nB9hOini1/

This eye candy just in from a friend in Maynard, MA -- a two-spotted longhorn bee, perhaps. The males like to have slumber parties: sites.tufts.edu/pollinators/...

President Venn Diagram xkcd.com/2962

From the Boston MFA: a series of Song Dynasty dragons. My favorite is the Retired Dragon. No fools they: Dragons know when it's time to step aside and get philosophical.

These two B. impatiens posed together on one of our sunflowers, probably from the same nest. Turns out bumblebees' 10x worker size variation (from a single colony) is a longstanding puzzle --it must be an evolved thing, but what are the teensy ones for? Could cuteness be adaptive for bees?