Summertime! The season of family reunions. And this year I was fortunate enough to be invited to the first-ever Primate Family get-together, as representative of the Homo sapiens branch of the family.
Biology
Photo by Sophie Dale on Unsplash
Photo by Renee Grayson (CC BY 2.0)
Kindred spirits
“A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree,” writes Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson in his autobiography.
A cross-section from the Visible Human Project • National Library of Medicine (Public Domain)
One male: sliced thin and digitized
Start with a male human cadaver.
A SpaceX launch in June 2019, which carried a secondary payload of Celestis customer remains • Photo by SpaceX (CC0)
Hair-brained in space
Man’s quest for immortality knows no bounds of absurdity.
Drosophila melanogaster • Photo by Sanjay Acharya (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Lord of the flies
I opened the garbage bin under the sink to toss out a grapefruit rind. Out puffed a soft cloud of tiny insects.
The STS-95 crew, including John Glenn (right) • NASA (Public Domain)
Adventure yes, breakthrough no
John Glenn’s proposed return to space in October at age 77 is pure grandstanding on the part of NASA and the senator. The ostensible justification for the trip is a bit of a stretch: to study aging.
Model of a DNA molecule • Photo by CGP Grey (CC BY 2.0)
Beauty bare on the spiral staircase
Tucked away among the exhibits of Boston’s Museum of Science is a ten-foot-high model of a segment of DNA.
Detail from “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo (c. 1512)
Do we really want to go there?
A 63-year-old California woman gives birth to a child conceived with donor egg and sperm.
Replica of a giant squid at the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan • Photo by Momotarou2012 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Even giant squid do it
From southern Australia comes news of the sex life of the giant squid.
“La Bohémienne endormie” by Henri Rousseau (1897)
Get in touch with your inner animal
“An animal and proud of it.”