Brian Switek
Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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Posts by this author
One of the most maddening aspects of my college education was that despite the dull and useless nature of many of my required courses I had no choice but to take them. You just can't buck tradition, everyone said, even if no one quite remembers why the tradition was started in the first place.…
A sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), photographed at the National Zoo.
A somewhat thrown-together illustration about camel evolution. The series should be read C-D-E-F for the evolution of the forelimb and G-H-I-J for the hind limb. Compare this to more famous diagrams of horse evolution, like this one. From A text-book of geology for universities.
For more than a…
Rokan the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). photographed at the National Zoo.
Evolutionary anthropology is a subject that has traditionally been dominated by a focus on males, or at least "masculine" behaviors like hunting. The most popular images of our own ancestors have often been of a group of males setting out for a hunt or crouched over a freshly-killed carcass. It is…
The skeletons of a few apes (from the right: Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, and Homo sapiens), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History.
I really admire folks like those at the NCSE who keep up with the latest schemes of creationists. Not only is their service valuable to protecting science in the United States, but I just don't think I could match their endurance when it comes to listening to creationist nonsense. Creationism is…
A pygmy treeshrew (Tupaia minor), photographed at the National Zoo.
Ah, Easter. The holiday when many people ask "Wait, bunnies don't lay eggs. What gives?" Not everyone is a fan of the Easter Bunny, though. In Australia rabbits are a major pest and some have attempted to raise awareness of a local, endangered marsupial called the bilby by offering it as an…
A maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), photographed at the National Zoo.
A juvenile orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), photographed at the National Zoo.
After the recent eruption of geo-blogs here on Sb I bet physics fans will be glad to hear that we have just added an astrophysics blog, Starts With a Bang, to the stable. If photography is more your thing, though, you should check out the other new addition; a photo blog with rotating guest…
An artist's restoration of Hurdia. From the Science paper.
It is not easy working on Cambrian fossils. The petrified treasures are found in only a few places in the world, and even though many exhibit exquisite preservation they come from a time when life on earth would have looked very…
A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), photographed at the National Zoo.
When I first happened upon Sean B. Carroll's new book, Remarkable Creatures my first thought was "Damn! He beat me to it!" For over a year I have been preparing my own pop-sci book about paleontology, evolution, and the history of science, and as I skimmed through Remarkable Creatures I saw that…
A Cuban crocodile (Crocodylus rhombifer), photographed at the National Zoo.
Ever since it was made available last month I have been anxiously awaiting the first formal reviews of the new edition of The Open Laboratory: The best science writing on blogs 2008. Today the first appeared over at the New Scientist, but much of it had little to do with The Open Laboratory itself…
About a month ago I posted a photograph of one of my favorite subjects, one of the snow leopards (Panthera uncia) from the Bronx Zoo. Shortly after I put it up Judy, who blogs at crazybasenji.com, asked if I could send along a higher-res copy so that she could paint it! I was delighted by the idea…
As regular readers may (or may not) have noticed I have not been posting many updates about my book, still tentatively titled Life's Splendid Riddle, lately. The primary reason for that is because other projects have taken up much of my time, but it can also be frustrating trying to find something…
One of the unwritten rules of creating a good horror yarn is that the location your story takes place in has to be as frightening as your monster. The setting almost has to act an an extension of the bloodthirsty antagonist; a place that can more easily be seen as its lair than a place of human…
A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo.
A male grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), photographed at the National Zoo.
In any book about evolutionary anthropology it is almost obligatory to cite Charles Darwin as the person who suspected that our species was most closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas, thus anticipating our modern understanding. In his famous 1871 book The Descent of Man Darwin wrote;
In each…
Rokan, a male Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae), photographed at the National Zoo.