“Ah, women. What do they want?” asks GQ magazine on the cover of the February [1994] issue. The question has been on male minds at least since Valentine’s Day, one million B.C.
Biology
Atelopus frogs pondering the universal mystery • Photo by Brian Gratwicke (CC BY 2.0)
Photo by Mike Lewinski (CC BY 2.0)
Lighting up your love life
Along the tidal rivers of Southeast Asia, thousands of male fireflies gather in trees at dusk and flash their bioluminescent lights in an attempt to attract the female of the species.
Caenorhabditis elegans • Image by Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Making a new Methuselah
An Irish proverb describes life this way: “Twenty years a‑growing. Twenty years in bloom. Twenty years fading. Twenty years a‑dying.”
Illustration of red blood cells (Pixabay)
The consortium that is ourselves
I’ve been thinking about Lewis Thomas.
Dictyostelium discoideum • Photo by Usman Bashir (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sing a song of slime mold
I sing of slime electric. The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, they will not let me off till I respond to them, and discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
A potato leaf with Phytophthora infestans • Photo by Howard F. Schwartz (CC BY 3.0)
Spuds vs. fungus: A historic battle rages on
In the field below, my neighbor Danny Murphy is spraying his potatoes, a bright yellow tank of fungicide strapped to his back. Potatoes are prone to a troublesome variety of diseases, but Danny’s principal enemy is the fungus Phytophthora infestans, called blight.
Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash
It’s been 40 years now since Kinsey lit the fuse
When Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” came out in 1948, I was 11 years old and just beginning a long fascination with the mystery of mysteries.
E. coli bacteria • Photo by Janice Haney Carr, National Escherichia, Shigella, Vibrio Reference Unit at CDC, USCDCP on Pixnio
Some bacteria sniff their way through life
Bacteria have noses. Well, not noses exactly, but scent-sensitive spots where a nose should be, up front, heading into the wind.
Photo by Miguel Discart (CC BY-SA 2.0)
On aggression, wimpy fish and professional wrestling
My flight was delayed. I slipped into a booth at the airport lounge and ordered a beer to pass the time. Pro wrestling was on the big TV over the bar. A half-dozen men perched on bar stools watched the action, whooping it up with each eye gouge or knee to the groin.
Jonathan, a giant tortoise hatched in c. 1832 • Photo by Kevstan (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Of mayflies, turtles, and a ripe old age
Life is ephemeral. Especially if you belong to that order of insects called Ephemeroptera, the mayflies. An adult mayfly lives for minutes or hours.