We don’t like thinking about death, with good reason. It’s scary and uncomfortable, but it happens to us all. Nothing lives forever. But the end of one living thing is the beginning of many others, or at least the middle. Heads up that post is on the macabre side. 

Hi again! It’s been a while since my last post - longer than I expected. It turns out that moving to the other side of the planet and starting a new job is a bigger process than I was anticipating. In this post I’ll cover what I’ve been up to for the last 6 months or so. Then I’ll go through my new plan for the Wild Focus Project.

Hi everyone. While I was writing last week’s post about the evolution and physics of bird flight, I came across a really interesting article about a team of engineers modeling a new plane off of albatrosses and their long distance flight abilities. This pulled me into the world of bioengineering. That post, however, is going to have to wait. You see, life, uh… gets in the way. …

Most of us have, at some point, watched birds in the sky and thought something like, “Man, I wish I could fly like that...” I certainly have. But have you thought about why birds fly in the first place? Taking to the sky is a pretty big evolutionary step! …

It’s time for another installment in the Ecosystem Ed. series! In each of these posts, I focus on a different type of ecosystem around the world and break it down to the basics: what, where, why, how, and who, along with some fun facts. This week, we’re focusing on the DEEP OCEAN, one of Earth’s least-understood and inaccessible ecosystems. (Heads up – this post is kind of a long one. I’m just really excited about the deep sea, okay?)

While I was writing last week’s frog blog, I came a cross a particularly interesting amphibian called the dotted humming frog, which is friendly with the burrowing tarantula. They have what’s called a symbiotic relationship. This week, we’ll break down the different types of symbiotic relationships, and look at some fascinating examples of each one.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Phil Bishop, a professor of Zoology here at the University of Otago. Phil specializes in amphibians, and is one of the world’s foremost advocates for amphibian conservation… This week, it’s all about amphibians: What are amphibians? Why do they matter? Why are they disappearing? And what can we do about it? All of that, plus some cool amphibi-friends, on this week’s frog blog.

Picture this: You’re walking through a dark forest, late at night. There are creepy sounds all around you. Was that sound really just the wind? Why did that twig just snap? What are those glowing things in the bushes? Well, you probably don’t need to worry too much about the glowing things. It’s more likely that you’re seeing tiny bioluminescent creatures than the Mothman…

The whole reason this website exists is because of my Master’s in science communication. As part of the thesis, you have to do a creative project in addition to academic research. But what about the research I did? There have been a lot of edits and rewrites and even some new testing since then. So now, it’s time for an update on the research behind the Wild Focus Project…