Friday, 27 November 2020

Selecting Good Students: Sherrington’s Frog Test

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The second paragraph of Sir Vincent Wigglesworth’s (1899-1994) biographical memoir for the Royal Society reads: His father was imaginative,...
Sunday, 22 November 2020

Herpetology in Britain: The Trio of Medical Men—Smith, Bellairs and Frazer

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A fact, noted in a biography of one of them, is that all three authors of the editions of The British Amphibians & Reptiles and its suc...
Thursday, 12 November 2020

The critically endangered Tamaraw: more bad news

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I have written previously ( here ) about the Tamaraw ( Bubalus mindorensis ), the small buffalo found only on the island of Mindoro in the P...
Tuesday, 3 November 2020

Fluorescent Platypus: any biological significance?

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An interesting observation of fluorescence in ultraviolet (UV) light has been reported in museum specimens of the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus ...

Beale’s Terrapin or Turtle: An Endangered Species in Hong Kong

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The freshwater chelonians, terrapins in English usage and turtles in American, of China and south-east Asia generally are in big trouble. Ex...
Friday, 23 October 2020

I know who that is! J.B.S. Haldane—a new biography—and the editor of Water Life magazine

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I was reading the new biography of J.B.S. Haldane by Samanth Subramanian to see if it could tell me anything important I did not know alread...
Tuesday, 20 October 2020

How good at keeping and breeding animals was London Zoo in the 1950s? The fellows’ rebellion and the search for historical data

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In my last post I described how data had been gathered to investigate the breeding record, survival of young and rates of mortality at Londo...