There’s a great big biosphere outside our blogosphere, and you can see some its strangest features in Amity Wilczek‘s Harvard blog “Nature Is Profligate.”
Aside from the fact that Amity is my daughter–I love the surprising stuff she blogs about and the even-more-surprising things she says about that stuff. To quote Amity on the subject of
two-headed snakes:
“Watching a movie of a two-headed snake is like watching a tug of war with a very short rope — one head says “Up!” while the other says “Down!”…Snakes have a keen sense of smell, which is very important in their prey location response. If one head smells like a recent meal, the other head may try to eat it!
(BTW, following Amity’s two-headed-snake-links, I discovered a
cute little duck with a 17-inch corkscrew for a penis. Did he evolve for two-thirds of “wine, women, and song”?)
4 responses so far ↓
1 Frank Paynter // Jun 12, 2003 at 10:13 pm
Yes. I linked Amity in the excellent Betsy Devine interview just published at http://www.sandhilltech.com/weblog/blogger.html/
2 Betsy Devine // Jun 13, 2003 at 5:10 am
Wow! Thank you, Frank!
3 NatureIsProfligate // Jun 13, 2003 at 11:39 am
Thanks for the kind words. That duck is impressive (you can see a picture at http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_366856.htm). And next to the Argentine Lake Duck in the “gee whiz that’s big” hall of fame is a 3mm fly (Drosophila bifurca) whose sperm are 60mm long? Just for comparison, a human sperm is about 0.025mm in length (1/12000 the size of the marvelous flies’ wigglers).
4 Donna Wentworth // Jun 16, 2003 at 5:31 pm
Must say I love both the interview (agree with David Weinberger’s assessment) and Amity’s blog (so interesting!). I’m presently drowning in blog riches. Thank you, all.