“God in his wisdom made the fly, but then forgot to tell us why.” So wrote American poet Ogden Nash, and few people, enraged by a buzzing bluebottle, would not agree. But like everything in the animal kingdom, flies have their reasons and their charms. Many flies annoy us, some […]
The illegal wildlife trade is the second biggest international crime after drug smuggling, but one hears about it less often. Personally, I think that wildlife smugglers should be punished far more harshly than drug dealers – after all, if someone wants to inject himself with heroin or addle his brain […]
Some English animal names don’t precisely define any one particular creature: prawn is a good example. According to my old seashore guide book, Palaemon serratus is the common prawn. In Ireland, however, fishermen call this a shrimp, and prawn to them is Nephrops norvegicus. But Nephrops, the Dublin Bay prawn, […]
I was recently shown a photograph of something from a local beach that I hadn’t noticed before. It resembled a giant honeycomb growing over a mussel-covered rock. The thing was a colony of Sabellaria alveolata, the honeycomb worm. The individual worms are only about four centimetres long, but each builds a […]