So the new Star Wars has been out for a while now and although awesome from so many points of view, it severely lacked the species richness seen in previous episodes. Nevertheless, it is still my duty as a respectable zoologist nerd to contribute to the ever-growing pile of publications dedicated to the franchise. So […]
Biology of the Big Screen: Godzilla’s “MUTOs”
An international multimedia phenomenon since 1954, the Godzilla franchise returned on the big screens just in time for its 60th anniversary last year, with a rather surprising story including some new exotic characters. The classic “monster against the city” scenario is twisted and turned so that the iconic creature loses the “bad guy” label to some […]
Animals as you don’t know them: The Hoatzin
In the top ten living oddities of the Amazonian jungle, the Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) would easily occupy one of the first three positions. Found commonly in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Suriname, French Guiana and Guyana (who went one step further and adopted it as its national bird), the Hoatzin lives in mangroves, swamps or […]
Monstrous mating
There are many valid reasons that we, as humans, can be afraid to reproduce ourselves, but none of these reasons is the actual act of reproduction, judging by how effective we’ve become at practicing it while avoiding most of its implications. We’ve got our evolutionary history to thank for our relatively straightforward mating system and […]
Animal armageddon: The sixth mass extinction
The fact that we’re losing biodiversity at an alarming rate turned from ‘news’ into ‘common knowledge’ decades ago. There is not one major animal or plant group that does not contain critically endangered species, or in some way threatened and soon to become critically endangered and this is due to the negative impact our dominant […]