The spine of JZ Young's The Life Of Mammals

The inside cover of my copy of The Life Of Mammals, featuring Desmond Morris's 'ex libris' sticker

In light of the sad news about Desmond Morris, here is my copy of JZ Young's The Life Of Mammals, bought a few years ago in a second hand bookshop down Charing Cross Road and once belonging to the man himself.

A close encounter between a buzzard and a raven in front of a fluffy nimbus cloud

A buzzard and a raven tangling in a deep blue sky

Some exciting scenes in North Essex today - a raven mobbing a buzzard! I've never seen a raven in this part of the country before, and it looks like it's here to stay because it returned to its nest (and mate) in the top of a tall pine tree. #birdsofbluesky (photos @samuraipizzakat.bsky.social)

image from inside Artemis II text: i need more men to understand that two men crying and hugging in space after one of them announced they were naming a moon crater after the other one's late wife is actually what peak masculinity looks like.

A tree felled by beavers lies in the water at a lake's edge

For most of my life I never imagined I'd see this sight in southern England 🦫

Donate to Secure The Rothbury Estate | The Wildlife Trusts Stretching over 3,800 hectares, the Rothbury Estate in Northumberland is abundant with opportunity. It’s the largest continuous area of land to appear on the market in 50 years. Its sale creates a uni...

So far, Just 18,557 of the 69.86 million people in the UK have donated to help save the Rothbury Estate in #Northumberland. If £13.5 million can be raised by September, this will become the largest new nature reserve in the UK in a generation. Please donate!
www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/roth...

Paragraf

"Sapiens": One page at a time I've been co-teaching a course for several years in which we read Sapiens . I think I've read it eight times, now. That explains the gumband...

I love this! The brilliant Holly Dunsworth is reviewing Sapiens, one page at a time, separating myth from fact… Let’s dive in!

ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...

And scon

New #Postdoc alert! This is a really cool project, working with a great team including the wonderful @drphilcox.bsky.social and @toriherridge.bsky.social. www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Necessary cookies should be default, if for some reason you want all the other shite you should have to actively seek it out rather than having to deselect it from the popup window.

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

Vous voulez faire une thèse sur l'évolution de la tête des squamates au Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle?
C'est par ici: adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Interested in a PhD on the evolution of the head shape of squamates at the Museum of Natural History of Paris?
Here you go:
adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Absolutely not. If you are using AI to write you should 100% be ashamed.

Shame is one of the last bulwarks against a total slop apocalypse.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/b...

Besides the damage they can do to wildlife, finding a sheep in Dorset that'd had its face ripped off by a dog and left to die by the dog's owners is something I won't forget in a hurry.

Farm worker tells of heartache over dog shooting as part of campaign to crackdown on livestock worrying A farm worker has described being faced with the agonising decision of having to shoot a dog which was repeatedly attacking his sheep as ‘one of my worst ever days in farming’.

Controversial(?) opinion, but dogs should not be let off their leads in the countryside at all. www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbysh...

My full quote to the Times on why it’s bananas to let landowners release 50m pheasants into the British countryside without proper regulations, given their ecological impacts and role as a vector for bird flu:

Only if you get your news from sitcoms

Government to lift paywall from large parts of the Land Registry Exclusive: finding out who owns land will become simpler under plans to make the best use of green spaces and hit net zero targets

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England.

I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Note from Otto Warburg asking for money.

Otto Warburg's grant application: "I need 10,000 marks".

Rewilding linked to dramatic increases in birds across Scotland New research across Scotland's Northwoods Rewilding Network has revealed striking biodiversity gains on rewilded land, with bird diversity increasing by more than 260% and pollinating insects rising m...

"The results are astonishingly clear. On rewilded land, biodiversity surged across the board, with the number of bird species up 261%. The variety of bumblebee and butterfly species more than doubled, their abundance increased over 10x."

The cure for nature loss exists.
share.google/w30RUdw1902W...

In the last two weeks, 1% of new NSF awards were in biology. Just one grant of 97. One.
Biology in the US is on hold until there’s a regime change.

Poo-olingo

I’m looking for a post doc (up to five years) interested in phylogenetics and earth systems - please spread the word!

- Not at all - To some extent - Very much so - Don't know

A face-on view of a taxidermied woodcock. It has a thousand-yard stare, which is pretty accurate.

A beautifully taxidermied female Eurasian woodcock, Scolopax rusticola, in a glass museum display case.

Screenshot of a Morphosource specimen page showing a 3D digital mesh model of a woodcock skull

And as a bonus is a mesh of the skull of a female Eurasian woodcock (woodhen??), Scolopax rusticola, that sadly died after striking a window in central London in late 2023. Woodie, as she is now known, was scanned and has now been taxidermied and is on display at the @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social

Avian cranial evolution is influenced by shape interactions between hard and soft tissue traits Abstract. Changes in the structure and relative size of the brain are thought to be key transformations in the evolution of birds, reflecting innovations a

Here is a link to the paper: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...