There is a description of this process that everybody learns and that understates it substantially.
The description is that a tadpole grows legs, loses its tail and becomes a frog…
Every surface in a home collects the same grey film, and it is a record of everything that has been shed, tracked in or blown through recently. Here are fifteen…
There is a strong temptation to explain organised-looking animal behaviour by assuming somebody is organising it.
An ant trail invites exactly that. A line of insects moving purposefully between a…
Most rock is worn away mechanically. Limestone is removed chemically, taken into solution and carried off in the water, and a landscape shaped by dissolving behaves unlike anywhere else. Here…
There is a process going on beneath almost every lawn, field and garden that is too slow to see and large enough to reshape the ground.
Earthworms eat their way…
There is a category of everyday observation that everybody has seen and that turns out to have no settled explanation, and moths around a light are among the clearest examples.…