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A trace of ancient human?
A horse comes towards me in the street. There is a lady on its back. I greet her and she halts right in front of me. From her elevated position she tells me I must remove the yellow flowers from my garden. I cannot recall ever having seen her before.
‘David-Attenborough-ise the bewildering situation’
When I was ten years old, David Attenborough personally ensured that I would go on to study biology. On cable television I watched orcas sprint onto a beach. In black and white – I noticed later, in colour, that this makes little difference for orcas in Patagonia – the limp bodies of sea lions flew through the air. The next day I told my classmates what I had seen on television. To my surprise, none of them watched nature documentaries. David's seemingly endless series kindled the biologist in me.
A cry for recognition
The sixth edition of the European Seagull Crying Championship took place last Sunday in Belgium. A competition that is simultaneously light-hearted and deadly serious,...
Griet is gone
Griet is dead. Griet was a chicken. For three years we had four, and for the past eighteen months we had seven. Now there...
Experiments in the Living Room
We have long combined field research and laboratory research. But recently, a third setting has been added. Increasingly, rigorous research is also being conducted...
Paying the Price
Panic has broken out in the Kroes household. The local snack bar has closed. The building has been demolished. While waiting for new premises,...
There’s no place like a small home
Hermit crabs sometimes line up neatly side by side in a row. Sometimes as many as twenty at a time, arranged from smallest to...
What sticks
When teaching my students, I always try to explain the full sequence of the scientific process. An idea, a theoretical background, a question, experiments...
Shrink!
De new novel by Ian McEwan, Wat we kunnen weten, unfolds over a hundred years. In those hundred years, floods and wars have halved...
At a gallop into the movies
Sometimes you come across books that you read in a flash. Literally. Recently I was given a few flipbooks as a gift. Little books...