Annie Lennox's song "Keep Young and Beautiful" reflects the irony of beauty as a persuasion strategy rooted in evolutionary biology. Various species, from cleaner wrasses to dung beetles, demonstrate deliberate manipulation of appearance and behavior to enhance mating success, revealing shared evolutionary patterns in beauty and attraction across species.
So long and thanks for all the frogs
It seems incredible that it was three weeks ago that I dragged my overstuffed bags past the sun room and caught a final glimpse of the frog pond I created, observed, fretted over, and about which I’ve shared in couple of times in blog posts. As we gear up for a new life in Kansas... Continue Reading →
Postscript: Build It and They Will Spawn
I braved the over-friendly mosquitos to get some photos. You can also make out some of the many pond snails who hitchhiked in on the aquarium plants. In my last post, I wrote about my utter failure to build a successful frog pond. This was based on considerable research, and no experience whatsoever. What all... Continue Reading →
No Place for Frogs
Last summer, listening to nights filled with frog calls from the trees around our house, I resolved to put in a frog pond in our garden. My hope was to encourage breeding and bring our property a tiny step further towards being a well-rounded habitat for native wildlife. A Gray Treefrog, one of the species... Continue Reading →