There is a useful test for whether an ability is special: look at what the nearest relatives can do.
For most human capabilities, the answer is that they do something…
There is a useful way of framing biological questions that makes familiar things strange, and sleep is the clearest case.
The framing is to ask what a trait costs, and…
There is a satisfying category of question where something entirely familiar turns out to be unexplained, and purring belongs in it.
The sound is known to essentially everybody. It is…
There is a category of behaviour that everybody recognises immediately and nobody can define precisely, which is usually a sign that something interesting is going on.
Play is obvious when…
There is a constraint that shapes plant biology more than almost anything else, and it is easy to overlook because it is so obvious.
Plants cannot move. Not slightly limited…
There is an assumption embedded in how nervous systems are usually described, and it comes from studying animals built like us.
The assumption is that a nervous system has a…