The Red Notebook

My partner Jen found this on her desk at work this morning:

In my dreams, maybe.

Full story here.

A saxed up Darwinius specimen yesterday.

See also:

• PLoS ONE: Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology
• Laelaps: Poor, poor Ida, Or: “Overselling an Adapid”

I was at an all-day conference today. At lunchtime, the caterers entered the conference room bearing food of a distinctly buffetty nature. But I wasn’t looking at the food: I was staring open-mouthed at one of the gentlemen bringing it in. For he was none other than Charles Robert Darwin, scientist, explorer, and originator of the single greatest idea anyone has ever had.

What on earth was Charles Darwin doing serving me lunch? It was unmistakeably he: the bushy beard, the bald head, the distinctly ape-like brow. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

After a while, I realised that it couldn’t possibly be Charles Darwin, because Charles Darwin has been dead for almost 127 years. But it was a truly uncanny likeness. I wanted to rush over to the very distinguished elderly gentleman and ask, “Do you know that you’re the spitting image of Charles Darwin?”, and show him my Charles Darwin key-fob to prove my point. I didn’t do that, of course, for I am British, and that is not how we Brits do things. Besides, I was supposed to be taking minutes.

Over lunch, I asked my boss if he had noticed Charles Darwin serving us lunch. He hadn’t. But he did see him a short while later when Charles Darwin came back to collect the empty plates. Nobody else had noticed. Only my boss and I realised that we were in the presence of greatness.

A spooky monkey recently.

Is it my imagination, or does the monkey in this BBC story have a spookily human-like hand?

Where are Mulder and Skully when you need them?

Darwinian sexual selection is alive and kicking in the European countryside. German film-maker Tomer Eshed has been nominated for an award for his short film Our Wonderful Nature about the water shrew, which contains some amazing, never-before-seen, slow-motion footage:

(Hat-tip to Fudebakublog.)

Well, someone had to do it!

(Different sizes available, if you’re interested—or even if you’re not.)

Rhino, Tickbird Stuck In Dead-End Symbiotic Relationship

POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA—After three rainy seasons together, a black rhinoceros and a parasite-eating tickbird are beginning to suspect that their symbiotic relationship has fallen into a rut, the couple reported Sunday.

“We’re really symbiotic—almost too symbiotic,” the rhino said. “It’s just gotten so predictable lately that I’m starting to wonder, ‘Is this all there is?’”

From The Onion, of course.

I’m sure this one must have done the rounds before, but I don’t remember seeing it, so what the heckerly-weckerly:

(More evolution-themed Simpsons nuggets here.)