The interview explains how the experimental weaknesses were blown out of all proportion by creationists, who saw the flawed experiments as somehow disproving evolution. It goes on to explain how Majerus has painstakingly repeated Kettlewell’s experiments, having carefully removed the flaws, and verified Kettlewell’s original findings. It also makes a lie of the claim often made against evolution that it is unscientific because it makes no predictions by predicting that industrial melanism in moths will continue to decline in the UK, now that the air is a lot cleaner, whereas it will start to rise in countries where pollution is on the rise, such as China and India.

A fascinating programme. (The second half contains an interview with the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Sir Martin Evans, which is also pretty interesting.)

Is it a twig, or is it a caterpillar?

Isn’t Natural Selection utterly amazing? I would never have spotted this creature had it not, rather stupidly, taken up residence on a fence, rather than the branch of a tree. As a rule, fences tend not to have twigs.

The delay in posting this photo was due to my unsuccessful attempts to identify the species in question. My best guess at the moment is that it is the caterpillar of the world-famous peppered moth—which would be rather cool. Apparently, it isn’t just adult peppered moths that come in a variety of camouflaged colours, hence my uncertainty.

I will get to the bottom of this one.

See also: Books: Of Moths & Men

Postscript (21-Oct-2007): I eventually managed to find the excellent UK website Eggs, Larvae and Pupae of Butterflies and Moths, which confirmed that my find was indeed the caterpillar of a peppered moth. The website took me so long to find because I had been searching for ‘UK caterpillars’, but the experts tend to refer to them as pupae!